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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/customsfashionsiOOearluoft BY THE SAME AUTHOR COLONIAL DAYS IN OLD NEW YORK. l2mo, $1.25 net. COSTUME OF COLONIAL TIMES. l2mo, $1.25 net. CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND. l2mo, $1.25 net. THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENG- LAND. l2mo, $1.25 net. CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With 75 illustrationi. Square 8vo, $3.00 net. MARGARET WINTHROP (ft^omen of Co- lonial and Revolutionary Times)^ l2nno, $1.25 net. IN OLD NARRAGANSETT (Ivory Sertts) l6mo, 75 cent* net. OMS AND Fashions IN OLD NEW ENGLAND ' / IT ALICE MORSE EARLE 'Let us thank God for having given as sneh ancestors; aad let each saccessive generation thank him not less fervently, ibr being one step farther from them in the march of ages." NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1916 COFYWCHT, 1893, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS So tbt Mitmotn of ms fatliar CONTENTS PAOS I. Cftld Lfre, 1 II. Courtship and Marriage CuaTOMS, ... 36 IIL^ Domestic Service, 83 IV. Home Interiors, 107 'V. Table Plenishings, 132 VI. Supplies of the Larder, 146 Vn. Old Colonial Drinks and Drinkers, . 163 VIII. Travel, Tavern, and Purnpike, . 184 ^ IX.' Holidays and Festivals 214 X. Sports and Diversions, 234 XI. Books and Book-Makers, 257 XII. Artifices of Handsomeness, . .289 XIIL Raiment and Vesture, 314 Xrv. Doctors and Patients, 331 XV. Funeral and Burial Customs, .... 364 CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS IK OLD NEW ENGLAND I CHILD LIFE From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared compara- tively well, but in winter the ill-heate3 houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing Welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature that would make a modem infant scream with indignant discomfort or lie stupefied with cold. Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay peacefully within-doors. On the /Sunday following his birth h^ was carried to' the meetifig^ouse to be baptized. When we consider trochill and gIcK5nr~-of-^6se unheated, freezing li OLD NEW ENGLAND churches, growing colder and damper and deadlier with every wintry blast — we wonder that grown persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In villages and towns where the houses were all clus- tered around the meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be baptized ; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child : "Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly lost its life thereby. Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket—a " bearing-cloth "—the unfor- tunate young Puritan was carried to church in the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast im- portance and dignity as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the baby was placed in his proud father's axms, and received his first cold and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather was little heeded when : : : CHILD LIFE religious customs and duties were in question. On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records " A very extraordiDary Storm by reason of the falHng and driving of the Snow. Few women could get to Meet- ing. A child named Alexander was baptized in the after- He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656 "Between 3 & 4 p.m. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up." And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but six days old " Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was about half done in the Afternoon." Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrink- ing away from the icy water, but too benumbed to cry ! Small wonder that they quickly yielded up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived him, a majority dying in —; 4 OLD NEW ENGLAND infancy ; and of fifteen children of his friend Cotton Mather but two survived their father. This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of selection enforced by every de- tail of the manner of life in early New England., The mortality among infants was appallingly large and the natural resvdt—the survival of the fittest may account for the present tough endurance of the New England people. Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict church- goers, and all the members of the household were equally church-attending ; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit upright. Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but iittle. Linen formed the chilling substructure of their attire—little, thin, linen, short-sleeved, low- necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen mittens have evi- dently been worn off by the active friction of baby fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or calico. The gowns are generally CHILD LIFE 5 rather shapeless, large - necked sacks of Knen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin.