Chapter XII: The Child in Earlier United States (6)

This gruesome story of public punishments may well be ended with the most gruesome part of all, that of public hangings. Far greater than the amusement afforded our old colonial ancestors by witnessing the whipping or maiming or branding of offenders or even the getting to rail at them set in stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, was the thrilling spectacle of a public execution and which became all the greater gala day if several persons were hanged together at the one occasion. One of the greatest of these exhibitions occurred at Boston on June 30, 1704, when seven pirates were executed. "Sermons were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional exhortations. Yet as they led a wicked and vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently hardened in their sin."[362] So ran the account in the _News Letter_ in an "extra" for the event. Of course such a noted happening could not have escaped so good a chronicler as Judge Sewall for he gave the following account of this hanging in his diary:

"After dinner about 3 p. m. I went to see the Execution. Many were the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill. But when I came to see how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a due height the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place."[363]

=Manufactures.= The colonists were very busy people. This was particularly true of the earlier times when nature had to be conquered. They had to make a great many of their own implements and to learn to use in a skillful manner the few tools they had. They had to learn to adapt the materials that nature furnished and to shape them into forms best fitted for their work. They learned to select the natural forms of things that could serve various purposes. They had two tools, the ax and the knife, that were readily and skillfully used in home manufacturing.

The colonists cut and shaped the logs for their houses and made stanchions and clapboards and shingles and laths. They selected pieces of timber and trimmed them for snaths for their scythes and flails, sled-runners and thills for carts, hames and ox-yokes, stakes and poles for various uses, whip-stalks and ax-handles, and handles for spades. They made salt-mortars, hog troughs, maple-sap troughs, and similar articles by burning and scraping out logs cut to the lengths wanted. They made wooden hinges and door-latches and buttons for fastening doors. They made spinning-wheels and reels and looms and the things used with them. They made various kinds of wooden bowls and trays and spoons for household use. They learned from the Indians how to make brooms by taking the length of a small birch tree and slitting the lower end into a brush and shaping the upper end into a handle; they also learned to make a broom by tying about a handle hemlock branches together for the brush. They made spoons from clam-shells set in split sticks. They used gourd-shells for bowls and skimmers and dipper and bottles and pumpkin-shells for seed and grain holders. Turkey-wings were used for hearth-brushes. There was one implement that the colonist in his frontier life spent much time on and that was the powder-horn. "Months of the patient work of every spare moment was spent in beautifying them, and their quaintness, variety, and individuality are a never-ceasing delight to the antiquary. Maps, plans, legends, verses, portraits, landscapes, family history, crests, dates of births, marriages and deaths, lists of battles, patriotic and religious sentiments, all may be found on powder-horns. They have in many cases proved valuable historical records, and have sometimes been the only records of events."[364]

=Boys' Work and Manufactures.= It is not to be wondered at that great men arose in the early history of our country, for the young were so trained to work that the whole physical being of the boy was cultivated, and so when a great brain came there was a sound body in which to keep it and help it. A boy's life on a farm is thus described by one who went through it:

"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do 'chores' at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."[365]

Not only did the boy have to work hard, but also, at least in New England, he had to provide his own spending money, and various were the ways he devised to obtain it. The boy's jack-knife was a great instrument and highly prized, for with it he not only made things for his own use but also to sell to procure spending money. With knives and mallets the boys split out shoe-pegs from maple sticks. They made and set teeth in wool-cards. They made traps and caught wild animals. They made birch splinter brooms. One man stated in London during the middle of the eighteenth century that when a boy in New Hampshire his only spending money was earned by making these brooms and carrying them on his back ten miles to town to sell them. The boys whittled cheese-ladders and cheese-hoops and butter-paddles for their mothers' use. They collected the bristles from the hogs at hog-killing time and sold them for brush-making. They gathered nuts and berries and wild cherries, the cherries being used in making cherry-rum and cherry-bounce. Tying onions was another means of money-making. The older boys sometimes made staves and shingles. Where a boy could turn a hand for making a little money for himself he did it.

=Girls' and Women's Work.= In the colonial days everybody worked and the girls and women did their share of it. The following quotations well show this. In the last half of the eighteenth century the qualifications of a housekeeper were such as asked for in the following advertisement:

"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character."[366]

"There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775. Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries run like this:

'Fix'd gown for Prude,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Spun short thread,--Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,--Carded tow,--Spun linen,--Worked on Cheese-basket,--Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs. apiece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a Sermon of Doddridge's,--Spooled a piece,--Milked the cows,--Spun linen, did 50 knots,--Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Set a Red dye,--Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,--I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the pewter.'

"She tells also of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden, picking geese, etc., and many visits to her friends. She dipped candles in the spring, and made soap in the autumn."[367]

Knitting was an accomplishment of every girl in New England and among the Dutch in New York and probably with every other girl in all the colonies. Little girls were taught to knit as soon as they could hold the needles, and at four years of age they could knit stockings and mittens. They knit in wool and silk, doing fine knitting with many intricate and elaborate stitches. "A beautiful pair of long silk stockings of open-work design has initials knit on the instep, which were the wedding hose of a bride of the year 1760; and the silk for them was raised, wound, and spun by the bride's sister, a girl of fourteen, who also did the exquisite knitting."[368]

These colonial women were thrifty and saving, being well prepared to care for the garments needing repair, as is shown from an advertisement in the _New York Gazette_ of April 1, 1751:

"Elizabeth Boyd gives notice that she will as usual graft Pieces in knit Jackets and Breeches not to be discern'd, also to graft and foot Stockings, and Gentlemen's Gloves, mittens or Muffatees made out of old Stockings, or runs them in the Heels. She likewise makes Children's Stockings out of Old Ones."[369]

The one kind of work that all the colonial women reveled in and which allowed them to display their love of color, their skill in needle-craft, and their thrift in using up odds and ends, was that of quilt-making. In the early days cotton goods were scarce and so the quilts were made from woolen garments and pieces, and all kinds of garments and remnants were used, as, the old discarded militia uniforms, worn-out flannel sheets, old petticoats, coat and cloak linings, and any other things that could not be further worn. These were thoroughly washed and where needed dyed with home-dyes and then pressed out and cut into quilting pieces. Later, cottons and linens were more readily procured and often the very best stuffs were used, for they prided themselves on the beauty of the pieces and their arrangement and the careful stitching. Not only did the making of quilts afford a chance to use up the material that could not be used otherwise and thus make coverings of value and warmth, it also gave to the women the opportunity for coming together and enjoying themselves, and so quilting-bees became one of the most social and enjoyable occasions.

One of the great industries of the women was that of soap-making. The refuse grease from cooking, butcherings, and the like, was stored up through the winter as was also the wood-ashes from the fire-place for the spring soap-making. From the ashes they obtained lye by pouring water over the ashes in barrels set on boards with grooves in them and letting it filter out at the bottom to be caught in vessels set under the ends of the boards. The lye thus obtained was poured over the grease in a great pot and boiled over a fire out of doors. The soft soap thus made was used for household purposes, especially in the washing of clothing, which was done usually once a month and in some households once in three months, the soiled clothing having been allowed to accumulate and be stored away to be washed together on one great wash-day. Another kind of labor in which the women engaged was the picking of the domestic geese, which were raised for the feathers rather than for food. The feathers were greatly desired for pillows and beds and the quills for pens.

Among the industries in which women engaged were those of flax-culture and spinning, wool-culture and spinning, and hand-weaving. The women and children aided in the culture of the flax and did quite a good deal of the work in its preparation and almost all the spinning. Women and children, too, did a great deal in helping in the wool-culture and spinning and weaving. In those early days all in the family could help and a family at work is well portrayed in the following.

"The wool industry easily furnished home occupation to an entire family. Often by the bright fire-light in the early evening every member of the household might be seen at work on the various stages of wool manufacture or some of its necessary adjuncts, and varied and cheerful industrial sounds fill the room. The old grandmother, at light and easy work, is carding the wool into fleecy rolls, seated next the fire; for, as the ballad says 'she was old and saw right dimly.' The mother, stepping as lightly as one of her girls, spins the rolls into woolen yarn on the great wheel. The oldest daughter sits at the clock-reel, whose continuous buzz and occasional click mingles with the humming rise and fall of the wool-wheel, and the irritating scratch, scratch, of the cards. A little girl at a small wheel is filling quills with woolen yarn for the loom, not a skilled work; the irregular sound shows her intermittent industry. The father is setting fresh teeth in a wool-card, while the boys are whittling hand-reels and loom-spools."[370]

After the first years in the new country, when all time and labor would be consumed in carrying on the plain necessaries of life, women began to enter more into fancy lines of work, and during later colonial times the women and girls did quite a lot of fine work in sewing, knitting, embroidering, and other kinds of decorative work. There arose schools for teaching girls and young women feather-work, fancy knitting, painting on glass, embroidery, netting, fine sewing, wax-work, the making of artificial fruits and flowers, paper-cutting, and many other things.

They made most beautiful embroidery. Articles of clothing had vines, trees, fruits, flowers, and other designs worked on them and also words and mottoes and texts from the Bible. Some of the christening caps and robes of the babies had beautiful embroidered work on them. Among the embroidered goods of those days were the mourning pieces. They had worked on them weeping willows and urns, tombs and mourning figures, epitaphs, and names of deceased members of the family or friends with dates of their deaths.

One piece of embroidering which was done by every little girl in families of standing was the making of a sampler, which consisted of a long and narrow, or nearly square, piece of linen canvas with designs worked in colored silks and wools. These were among the works of children in early colonial times, as there is one still preserved made by a daughter of a Pilgrim Father and another bearing on it the date of 1654. In the older samplers there was little bother with realism in using the colors as a green horse might be alongside a blue tree and the green horse might have his legs worked in red. On them were worked crude or strangely represented trees and fruits and flowers and animals. There were verses embroidered and portions of hymns and sometimes pictures portraying family or public events. Some were quite pretentious, one such sampler shows the Old South Church with a coach passing by it and ladies and gentlemen on horses and afoot in the costumes of the time, and even a negro lad holding a horse, and birds flying in the air above them.

Laces were made for using on pillows and made on net for veils and collars and caps. "Girls spent years working on a single collar or tucker. Sometimes medallions of this net lace were embroidered down upon fine linen lawn. I have infants' caps of this beautiful work, finer than any needlework of to-day."[371]

Netting was another of their arts, the net being used on coverlets and curtains and valances, this kind being made of cotton thread or twine, while a finer kind was made of silk or fine cotton for trimming sacks and petticoats; also netted purses and work-bags as well as knitted ones were made. On small looms they made tapes and braids and ribbons for use as glove-ties, shoe-strings, hair-laces, stay-laces, garters, hatbands, belts, etc.

They did painting on glass, representing fruits and flowers, and an especial subject was coats of arms. They made feather-work, which consisted in pasting small feathers or portions of feathers together to form flowers for use on head-dresses and bonnets. Another form of decorative work indulged in by colonial women was the cutting of designs out of stiff paper with scissors. They cut out coats of arms, valentines, wreaths of flowers, marine views, religious symbols, animals, landscapes, and other designs. They were sometimes mounted on black paper, framed and glazed, and given as presents to friends.

=Religion.= The first colonists of all parts were religiously inclined. Captain John Smith tells of the first colonists in Virginia: "We had daily Common Prayer morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months a holy Communion till our Minister died; but our Prayers daily with an Homily on Sundays we continued two or three years after, till more Preachers came."[372] They held to the Church of England and believed in strict observance of Sunday. This day was kept for religious services and all were compelled to go to church except the sick and journeys were forbidden and all work not strictly necessary and all sports, such as shooting, fishing, game-playing, etc. In New Netherlands there was likewise strict observance of Sunday by the Dutch and working, playing in the streets, fishing, hunting, going on pleasure trips, and such like, were strictly forbidden. With the Puritans in New England the strictest observance of Sunday as a holy day was rigidly enforced. No work on the farm was permitted on that day nor any pleasures whatsoever in the way of fishing, shooting, sailing, dancing, jumping, and the like, nor riding except going to or from church. The laws for this day were rigidly enforced as is shown from their writings on the subject and court records. Beside the three faiths as represented above, there were the Roman Catholics in Maryland, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Baptists in Rhode Island, and Huguenots, Lutherans, Moravians, Waldenses, Walloons, Jews, and others, in the different colonies. There was room for any and all of them and although there were persecutions yet it did not destroy any faith but caused the people to move out into new fields where they would be unmolested.

The first places of worship in Virginia were thus described by Captain John Smith:

"Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three of foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of wood; our seats unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses were of like curiosity, that could neither well defend from wind nor rain."[373]

In a short time a timber church sixty feet long was built and some years afterward this church was replaced by a brick one. Some of the churches in the Southern colonies were modeled in shape after the old English churches and were built of stone, but most of them were wooden buildings without "spires or towers or steeples."

In 1646 the Dutch built a little wooden church in Fort Orange. The first church at Albany was built in 1657 and it was simply a blockhouse with loopholes for permitting guns to be fired through in case of an Indian attack and three small cannon were placed on the roof. The first church in New Amsterdam was built of stone and it was seventy-two feet long. The first church in Brooklyn was built in 1666 and it had thick stone walls with a steep peaked roof with an open belfry on top. Many of the old Dutch churches were six-sided or eight-sided with a high, steep, pyramidal roof, topped with a belfry on which was a weather-vane.

Not long after landing at Plymouth the Puritans built a fort, which was used as a Lord's Day meeting-place till a meeting-house was built in 1648. As other settlements were made, religious services were at first held in tents or under trees and where a settler had a roomy house this often was used. The first meeting-house at Boston had mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor, which was used till 1640.

The first meeting-houses in New England were square and made of logs with the spaces between the logs filled with clay and with steep roofs which were thatched with reeds and long grass and with a beaten earth for a floor. These buildings were often quite small, one having been thirty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high, and another was but twenty-six feet long and twenty feet wide. Later these were replaced by larger and better buildings and these early rude structures were used for granaries and storehouses.

The second form of meeting-houses was a square wooden building having a truncated pyramidal roof with a belfry or turret. One of this type, built at Hingham in 1681, known as the "Old Ship," is still in existence. The largest and finest of this second type was the First Church at Boston, a large square brick building, built in 1713, and which was used till 1808.

The third type of New England colonial meeting-houses had a lofty wooden steeple at one end, of which the old South Church at Boston, a well-known historic building, is a good example.

In the South the churches were often placed by the waterside and people came to them over the water in various kinds of vessels. In New England the first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, or the meadow-lands and the houses of the settlers were built about them. As the population increased there could no longer be land available for all in the valleys and the houses were built out near watering places and pasturage for convenience and so the meeting-houses began to be placed on hill-tops. This was done so as to be a lookout for danger from Indians and also so it could be seen from all parts of the country as the people had to journey through narrow roads and bridle-paths obscured by trees and brush. Too, there was a pride in such a location, to show off a fine meeting-house, which would thus be visible for many miles around.

The old New England meeting-houses were used for various purposes, one of the strangest being for the nailing of the heads of wolves to the logs on the outside. Wolves were so numerous and so destructive and so feared that rewards were paid for their killing and to show this the heads were nailed to the outer walls of the meeting-house. This was all the decoration that the outer walls of the building had for near a century as during the seventeenth century it was considered vain and extravagant to paint them but by the middle of the eighteenth century paint became cheaper and more plentiful and the meeting-houses began not only to be painted but also in conspicuous colors and towns began to vie with one another in the most striking displays. One new meeting-house was painted a bright yellow and soon others were likewise adorned. "Brooklyn church, then, in 1762, ordered that the outside of its meeting-house be 'culered' in the approved fashion. The body of the house was painted a bright orange; the doors and 'bottom boards' a warm chocolate color; the 'window-jets,' corner-boards, and weather-boards white. What a bright nosegay of color! As a crowning glory Brooklyn people put up an 'Eleclarick Rod' on the gorgeous edifice, and proudly boasted that Brooklyn meeting-house was the 'newest, biggest and yallowest' in the county."[374]

There was no shade about the early meeting-houses in New England as the trees were cut down around it for fear of forest fires. There were no curtains nor window-blinds, so that the heat and blazing light in summer would make it bad for all in the church. They did often have heavy outside shutters but they could not be closed during services as the room would then be made too dark for the minister to see to read his sermon. Later the forests grew again and they were not cut away nor cleared up and the meeting-house would thus become dark and gloomy. Oiled paper was used in the windows of these early meeting-houses and later when glass came into use it was nailed in instead of being puttied.

The early meeting-house of the Puritans in New England were of a very simple interior with raftered walls and sanded puncheon floors or earthen floors. The early Dutch churches in New Netherlands also were plain and they were kept in the greatest cleanliness, scrubbed often and floors sanded with fine beach-sand. The churches of the Southern colonies were usually better furnished and flowers were used for decorations, which was never the case with the Puritans. The pulpits in all the churches were rather pretentious affairs, being elevated above the floor, enclosed, with a narrow flight of stairs leading up to them. At least in the early Puritan churches there was a sounding-board placed above the pulpit, which was a board supported from the roof by a slender iron rod.

In the earliest meeting-houses in New England the seats were made of rough hand-riven boards placed on legs and without backs. Later there were pews with narrow seats around the sides and high partition walls between. In the early Dutch churches the men had places in pews around the walls while chairs were placed in the center of the church for the women to occupy. In some of the Virginia churches the seats were comfortably cushioned. In later times in all the churches the pews were carefully assigned and persons who crowded into pews above their station were unceremoniously put out by those in charge.

The meeting-houses in New England were wholly without means of heating until the middle of the eighteenth century. Throughout the long and tedious services during the coldest weather of a bitter climate, attendants at the meetings had to get along as best they could. The men wore their heaviest clothing during the services. The minister, too, would keep himself wrapped up while in the pulpit just as on his way to the meeting-house. The women in the earlier times dressed to suit the temperature, but as wealth came fashion also entered in and thin silk hose, cloth or kid or silk slippers, linen underclothing, dresses with elbow sleeves and round low necks, and a thin cloth cape or mantle for the shoulders was too often in midwinter the Sunday apparel. The women did protect their heads with caps and mufflers and veils and their hands with gloves and muffs.

The officials must be given credit for trying to keep the meeting-house free from the winds as well as possible, as in some places it was ordered that during the cold weather "no doors be opened to the windward and only one door to the leeward." In 1725 in one place it was ordered that the "several doors of the meeting-house be taken care of and kept shut in very cold and windy seasons according to the lying of the wind from time to time; and that people in such windy weather come in at the leeward doors only, and take care that they are easily shut both to prevent the breaking of the doors and the making of a noise."[375]

In some of the early log meeting-houses the skins of wolves and other fur-bearing animals were made into bags which were nailed or tied to the benches in such a way as to let the people thrust their feet into them for warmth. In the bitterest weather foot-stoves were taken to the meeting-houses for the use of the women and children. During the middle of the eighteenth century stoves began to appear in the meeting-houses in New England, perhaps the first stove used having been at Hadley in 1734. But there was a hard fight to introduce stoves and it was near another century later before they came into general use.

If the meeting-house should have been situated in a town, at noon the people went to their homes or to the tavern or to neighbors' houses in that vicinity to eat their dinners and to warm themselves. If the meeting-house in the country was near the home of a hospitable farmer the congregation would go there at noon. But too often the meeting-house was away off at the top of a hill or in an out-of-the-way place and so there would be built near it a rough-like structure, known as the "noon-house." Sometimes it was called the "Sabba-day house" and again a "horse-hows," this last name because in some of the houses the horses were placed at one end. At the other end was built a large rough stone chimney. Of severe Sundays some one, a servant or an older son, would usually be sent at an early hour to start a good fire in this fireplace for warming the family after their cold ride. At noon all would repair to this house for warmth and for eating their dinner. Before starting for home a warming was again taken. Too, during the long sermons in forenoon and afternoon a servant or some member of the family would replenish the coals in the foot-stoves from the coals in the fireplace of this noon-house.

In front of the meeting-house there were usually horse-blocks, or stepping-stones, or hewn logs, for mounting their horses as usually all rode. All kinds of notices were posted on the meeting-house, notices of town-meetings, prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians, notices of sales of cattle or farms, lists of town officers, copies of the laws against Sabbath-breaking, notices of intended marriages, and sometimes even scandalous and insulting libels. Often on the meeting-house green stood the stocks, pillory, cage, and whipping-post. The meeting-house was not only used for religious services, but also for town meetings and likewise as a store-house. Never having fire in it nor about it, it was the safest place for a powder-magazine and some place in it was fitted up for such purpose. Also grain was stored in its loft and in particular that which might have been given to the minister as pay for his services.

"In one church in the Connecticut valley, in a township where it was forbidden that tobacco be smoked upon the public streets, the church loft was used to dry and store the freshly cut tobacco-leaves which the inhabitants sold to the 'ungodly Dutch.' Thus did greed for gain lead even blue Connecticut Christians to profane the house of God."[376]

There were various ways in colonial times of calling the people to the religious services of Sunday morning. In the early times and particularly so in New England, they did not always have bells on the churches and various devices were used to let people know when it was time to go to church. The time of morning service was usually about nine o'clock and this was announced sometimes by the tooting of a horn or the blowing of a conch-shell or the sounding of a trumpet. The beating of a drum was a very common signal and some also used the firing of guns, in this latter the number of times firing was different from that signifying danger, so as not to frighten the people. Sometimes a flag was used to notify the people of meeting time, having been put out when time of notice arrived and left hanging out till time for the beginning of the service, when the flag was taken down. Some meeting-houses were supplied with belfries from which the conch or horn or trumpet was sounded, or whatever signal was used, and in other places a platform was made upon top of the meeting-houses for this purpose. When bells were used, in the early churches there were often no towers in which to place them and they were hung on trees near the meeting-house.

At the first signal from conch or trumpet or horn or drum, the people would be seen starting out from their homes. With some communities it was the custom for the congregation to stop at the church door and wait until the minister and his wife arrived and passed into the house and then all followed, of course the boys hanging back and coming in at the very last moment, shuffling and scraping and clattering with their heavy boots as they went up the stairs to their place in the loft. Other congregations entered the church as they came and then all arose as the minister entered and remained standing till he went into the pulpit and then sat down as he did. It was also the custom for the congregation to remain standing in the pews at the close of the service till the minister had come down from the pulpit, joined his wife, and passed out to the church-porch, there to greet the people as they would come out of the church.

It would seem that the most important officer in church and public life in New England was the tithing-man. "He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was _Hic et ubique_."[377] Among his duties were the seeing that the children learned the church catechism, looking out that people went to church, inspecting the taverns to note that they were kept in an orderly manner and did not sell liquors to disorderly persons, and watching that boys and other persons should not go swimming in the water on week days. His most important duty, perhaps, was that of keeping order and proper decorum in the meeting-house by beating out the dogs, prodding the noisy boys, and awakening the sleeping adults. For this latter he had a long staff with a knob on one end to tap the sleeping men while on the other end was a fox-tail to dangle in the face of the sleeping women. The following from a journal of those early days tells how well he performed his duties and some of the effects thereof.

"June 3, 1646.--Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them yt will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne whereby he may pricke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as hee strutted about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping with much comfort, hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his hand grasping ye rail. And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard and give him a grievous prick upon ye hand. Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring vpp mch above ye floore and with terrible force strike hys hand against ye wall; and also, to ye great wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice, curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate scandall he had committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I think he will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."[378]

Among the Dutch in New Amsterdam there was a somewhat similar officer, "the _voorleezer_, or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town clerk. He 'tuned the psalm'; turned the hour-glass; gave out the psalms on a hanging-board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices to the dominie by sticking the papers in the end of a cleft stick and holding it up to the high pulpit."[379]

The ministers among the Puritans in New England were very greatly considered. The laity who were bold enough to criticize or disparage the minister or his teachings were severely punished. A woman who spoke harshly of her minister had her tongue placed in a cleft stick and made to stand thus in a public place. A man for declaring that he received no profit from his minister's sermons was fined and severely whipped. Worse than bodily punishment was excommunication, for if a minister pronounced such upon a member of his congregation he was excluded from partaking of the sacrament and the people of the church refrained from all communion with him in civil affairs, even from eating and drinking with him. Yet with all this great power of the ministers in early Puritan times, they were not permitted to perform the marriage-service, which was wholly a civil affair, nor could they pray or exhort at a funeral. The ordination of so important an officer as the minister was a very important event. This was celebrated by a great gathering of people and ministers for many miles around. It was a deeply serious affair and yet a great festival occasion, for frequently there was an ordination ball and always an ordination supper, where there was a plenty and a variety of things to eat and to drink.

Although the minister's calling was one of trust and honor it was not also one of profit. The salary was small and paid in different ways, not a large part of it in cash. It was the universal custom to provide a house for the minister and often this was among the very first houses built in a new town and at its laying out some of the best lots were set aside for his use. He was also provided with free pasturage for his horse, the village burial-ground having been placed at his disposal for pasture land. In the early days a large part of the salary was paid in corn and labor and the amount for each church member to give was fixed by the authorities. Cord-wood was another common contribution, and each male church-member was expected to give a load of wood delivered at the door of the parsonage. Any money contributed by strangers who chanced to attend the services was usually given to the minister. A spinning bee, a forerunner of the donation party of later times, was often held at the home of the minister, wherein each woman would take her spinning-wheel and flax and all would spend the day in spinning and give the outcome to the minister's family. Also the women would meet and make patchwork bed-quilts and give them to the minister's family. Some ministers would go out among the members of their congregations and beg supplies for themselves and families. Many of the ministers found it necessary to do outside work to make a living, such as farming on week days, taking young men to teach and to fit for college, compounding and selling drugs and medicines; while some were coopers, carpenters, rope-makers, millers, and cobblers. It took great thrift and economy on the part of the minister and his family to get along. The wife not only had to be zealous in religious practices but also in domestic practices and often she was the thriftiest wife of the community. Every kind of denial had to be made and yet with this poverty the minister's children were quite often well kept and trained and many ministers were enabled to help their sons to obtain a college education.

Fear of the Indians did not keep the Puritans away from the meeting-house, but it did cause them to go there armed. At first each man carried arms to church and then later a certain number were detailed to arm themselves. In 1642 in Massachusetts the law provided for six men to be at the meeting-house with muskets and powder and shot. The armed men were placed near the door so as to be ready to protect the congregation or to rush out in case of need. When the services were ended, the armed guards went out of the meeting-house first and then the other men and the women and children were last, thus to be protected. Too, it was the custom for the men always to sit at the door of the pew, next to the aisle, so they could be ready to get their arms and rush out in case of a fight. Also being at the door of the pew the father could better protect the other members of the family, and a man who would not have occupied this place would have been considered a poor kind of husband and father.

In the early colonial days in New England there were two services in the meeting-house on Sunday, in the forenoon and in the afternoon. The sermons were long, two or three hours not being uncommon and some even ran up to five hours in length. Added to these long sermons were long prayers, frequently an hour in length and sometimes even continuing for three hours. At a desk near the pulpit there was an hour-glass and sitting near it was an officer of the church whose duty it was to turn it at the end of the hour. During the prayer the congregation stood, about its middle the minister would make a long pause to let the infirm and those ill sit down, but all the others remained standing till its close. It was the duty of the tithing-man to see that no one left the house before the close of the services without there was a real good reason and also he was to keep the congregation awake. These long prayers and sermons were not disliked by the congregation, but on the contrary they considered it a great gift for the minister to be able to continue long in prayer and a short sermon would have been looked upon as irreligious and lacking in reverence, and beside that was for what the minister was paid. "In every record and journal which I have read, throughout which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and opposition which the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry of any complaint or ill-criticism of too long praying or preaching."[380]

The music of the Puritan meeting-house is well summarized in the following: "The singing of the psalms was tedious and unmusical, just as it was in churches of all denominations both in America and England at that date. Singing was by ear and very uncertain, and the congregation had no notes, and many had no psalm-books, and hence no words. So the psalms were 'lined' or 'deaconed'; that is, a line was read by the deacon, and then sung by the congregation. Some psalms when lined and sung occupied half an hour, during which the congregation stood. There were but eight or nine tunes in general use, and even these were often sung incorrectly. There were no church organs to help keep the singers together, but sometimes pitch-pipes were used to set the key. Bass-viols, clarionets, and flutes were played upon at a later date in meeting to help the singing. Violins were too much associated with dance music to be thought decorous for church music. Still the New England churches clung to and loved their poor confused psalm-singing as one of their few delights, and whenever a Puritan, even in road or field, heard the distant sound of a psalm-tune he removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer."[381]

=The Child and Religion.= The children in the other colonies were not so strictly reared as those in Puritan New England. The people in New York enjoined that the constable attend church to look after such children as profaned the Sabbath. In Albany complaint was made that boys and girls coasted down hills on Sunday and in some other places that the young people violated the Sabbath by discoursing on vain things and the running of races. In the eighteenth century a cage was placed in City Hall Park in New York for the confining of boys who profaned the Sabbath.

In the meeting-house in New England in colonial times the young men sat together on one side and the young women sat in a corresponding place on the other side. The little girls sat on stools or low seats in the pews with their mothers or, if too many of them for place in the pew, they would sit out in the aisle, and sometimes there would be a row of little girls on a row of little stools extending the full length of the aisle. In some of the meeting-houses the boys were seated together on the pulpit and gallery stairs, while in other houses a place was made for them in the gallery, but wherever the place they were all herded together.

The boys among the Puritans were as other boys in all times and among all peoples, and the huddling them together in meeting-houses only helped to bring out their growing physical activities, as the taking them away from the watchfulness of the parents gave them better opportunities for expression of their repressed powers. One way of doing this was by slamming the pew-seats at the close of prayer and sermon and the vigor with which they did this called for an order from one church at least that "The boys are not to wickedly noise down there pew-seats." Another pastime was the twisting of the balustrades of the gallery railing in order to make them squeak. Whittling and cutting the woodwork and benches where they sat gave opportunity to put in time and also to try out their jack-knives. They passed the time in other ways, for there are court records showing that youths were taken before magistrates and fined for playing and laughing in church and doing things to make others laugh and play.

The best evidence left us to show that boys kept themselves busy in the meeting-houses is that they kept other people busy attending to them. There are plenty of records left to show that the tithing-man was continually being ordered to look after the behavior of the boys and also of the appointing of extra men to look after these unruly beings, in one church as many as six men had to be appointed at one time to keep them in order. These men had power to inflict punishment on the boys, and they did not hesitate to rap them soundly with their sticks and, too, sometimes a boy was taken out of the meeting-house and given a severe whipping. The tithing-man also used other means, for sometimes he took a boy from his place with the other boys and paraded him across the house and put him by side his mother on the women's side. If a young man would not behave himself, sometimes he was taken away from his place among the men and led to where the boys sat and forced to sit with them. Even during the noon hour the boys were watched over. While in the noon-house they had to listen to Bible teachings and interpretations. This was done to keep them quiet during this time so they might not "sporte and playe."

It is not wondered at that under such training much early religion developed. The Bible was read through many times by the young and much precocity in religious things was developed. A father gives in his diary the following in reference to a little girl of eight: "A little while after dinner she burst out into an amazing cry, which caused all the family to cry, too. Her mother asked the reason; she gave none. At last said she was afraid she would goe to Hell; her sins were not pardoned. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's, Text, ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, ye shall seek me and die in your sins ran in her mind and terrified her greatly ... told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, was like Spira not elected."[382]

Another father makes this entry in his diary about his four-year-old daughter: "I took my little daughter Katy into my study and then I told my child I am to dye shortly and shee must, when I am dead, remember Everything I now said to unto her. I sett before her the sinful Condition of her nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."[383]

These two quotations are from the diaries of educated men, the first being from Judge Sewall and the second from Cotton Mather. It is hard for us now to see any reason for such a talk as Cotton Mather gave a child of four, especially as he lived for thirty years afterward and died long after this little girl died.

The religious books of Puritan New England children were of a remarkable character. Mrs. Earle gives the following in reference to one of the most popular and widely read books:

"Young babes chide their parents for too infrequent praying, and have ecstacies of delight when they can pray _ad infitum_. One child two years old was able 'savingly to understand the mysteries of Redemption'; another of the same age was a 'dear lover of faithful ministers.' Anne Greenwich, who died when five years old, 'discoursed most astonishingly of great mysteries'; Daniel Bradley, who had an 'Impression and inquisitiveness of the State of Souls after Death,' when three years old; Elizabeth Butcher, who, 'when two and a half years old, as she lay in the Cradle would ask herself the Question What is my corrupt Nature: and would answer herself It is empty of Grace, bent unto Sin, and only to Sin, and that Continually,' were among the distressing examples."[384]

The following is an extract from a letter written about 1638 by a Puritan boy of twelve years of age and well displays the tendency toward religious fears as found in the young people of that period:

"Though I am thus well in body yet I question whether my soul doth prosper as my body doth, for I perceive yet to this very day, little _growth_ in grace; and this makes me question whether grace be in my heart or no. I feel also daily great unwillingness to good duties, and the great ruling of sin in my heart; and that God is angry with me and gives me no answers to my prayers; but many times he even throws them down as dust in my face; and he does not grant my continued request for the _spiritual blessing of the softening of my hard heart_. And in all this I could yet take some comfort but that it makes me to wonder what God's _secret decree_ concerning me may be: for I doubt whether even God is wont to deny grace and mercy to his chosen (though _uncalled_) when they seek unto him by prayer for it; and, therefore, seeing he doth thus deny it to me, I think that the reason of it is most like to be because I belong not unto _the election of grace_. I desire that you would let me have your prayers as I doubt not but I have them, and rest

"Your Son, SAMUEL MATHER."[385]