Colonial dames and good wives

								


                             COLONIAL DAMES

                                  AND

                               GOOD WIVES

                               WRITTEN BY

                           ALICE MORSE EARLE



                            BOSTON AND NEW YORK

                      HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY

                     THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE

                            Copyright, 1895,

                         BY ALICE MORSE EARLE.



                         All rights reserved.

                                  TO

                   THE MEMORY OF THE COLONIAL DAMES



                     Whose blood runs in my veins

                     Whose spirit lives in my work



       Elizabeth Morse, Joanna Hoar, Esther Mason, Deborah

           Atherton, Sarah Wyeth, Anne Adams, Elizabeth

           Browne, Hannah Phillips, Mary Clary, Silence

             Heard, Judith Thurston, Patience Foster,

                 Martha Bullard, Barbara Sheppard,

                            Seaborn Wilson

                              CONTENTS

Chapter                                                         Page
I. Consorts and Relicts                                            1
II. Women of Affairs                                              45
III. “Double-Tongued and Naughty Women”                           88
IV. Boston Neighbors                                             109
V. A Fearfull Female Travailler                                  135
VI. Two Colonial Adventuresses                                   160
VII. The Universal Friend                                        173
VIII. Eighteenth-Century Manners                                 189
IX. Their Amusements and Accomplishments                         206
X. Daughters of Liberty                                          240
XI. A Revolutionary Housewife                                    238
XII. Fireside Industries                                         276

                     COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES.

                              CHAPTER I.



                         CONSORTS AND RELICTS.

In the early days of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, careful lists
were sent back to old England by the magistrates, telling what “to
provide to send to New England” in order to ensure the successful
planting and tender nourishing of the new settlement. The earliest
list includes such homely items as “benes and pese,” tame turkeys,
copper kettles, all kinds of useful apparel and wholesome food; but
the list is headed with a most significant, a typically Puritan item,
Ministers. The list sent to the Emigration Society by the Virginian
colonists might equally well have been headed, to show their most
crying need, with the word Wives.