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es of families. In seventeenth century Virginia there were numerous bequests from the colonial branch of a family to the English. Often Virginia children were commended to the care of their kindred oversea while pursuing education at an English school. These transoceanic relations were hard to maintain in that day of slow transit. In Maryland false claims to property were frequently made in the absence of the rightful heirs abroad.

The dominance of familism in the colonial South was promoted by rural isolation as has been seen. Landed gentry had family burying-grounds on their own estates. Hugh Jones wrote regretfully of this individualism: "It is customary to bury in garden, or orchards, where whole families lye interred togeththe graves kept decently." Some of the German settlers in western North Carolina had family graveyards. It could scarcely be expected that plantation dwellers on widely separated estates and remote pioneers would observe the institution of burial in church grounds.

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Early Virginia legislation showed a disposition to promote familism. By acts of 1623-1624

All the old planters that were here before or came in at the last coming of Sir Thomas Gates they and their posterity shall be exempted from their personal service to the warrs and any public charge (church duties excepted) that belong particularly to their persons (not exempting their families) except such as shall be employed to command in chief.

In 1631 the phrase "they and their posterity" was struck

out.

About the time that Puritanism was getting hold in Massachusetts, Virginia enacted blue laws: Men were to dress according to rank and the law of 1619 provided Against excesse in apparell that every man be cessed in the

church for all publique contributions, if he be unmarried according to his owne apparell, if he be married according to his owne and his wives, or either of their apparell.

We read of charming family relations in the colonial South. Life at the South was grander, shabbier, and more genial than in the Puritan commonwealths. Home rather than church was the shrine of the colonial cavalier, notwithstanding his nominal reverence for "mother church." It was at home that most christenings and funerals occurred and Hugh Jones complained that "in houses they most commonly marry."

The Virginia planter on his manor surrounded by his family and retainers was a feudal lord. At the great Christmas festival around the huge log fires gathered the family clan. It was a time of joy for high and low. This plantation life in a mild climate and cut off from the great world gave rise to the greater geniality of southern family relations and to the deep attachment to the soil, so proverbial in those regions. Coaches of four rolled from the doors of the aristocracy. Profusion of gold and silver plate shone on the boards even while the Declaration of Independence in high-sounding phrase voiced the stage-play theories of make-believe "democracy." More than a hundred years earlier the English people had been informed:

Your ordinary houses in England are not so handsome [as the houses in Virginia] for usually the rooms are large, daubed and white-washed, glazed and flowered, and if not glazed windows, shutters which are made very pretty and convenient.

Soil engrossment was a means to that isolation of dwelling that has always appealed to the Englishman. No hedge or walls were needed in Virginia. Hill and grove furnished natural screens. The secluded life intensified hospitality as well as family affection. As houses were small and families large, bed-rooms were

overcrowded in early colonial days. 130 Governor Berkeley's home at Green Spring had only six rooms and a hall. The planters found it necessary to put beds in every room save the kitchen. In the parlor might be found not only beds but chests of clothing and linen. An account of the eastern shore of Virginia (seventeenth century) says that there seem to have been few homes at that time without musical instruments. The James River mansions and others that survive were erected in the eighteenth century.

Rude tenant huts about the southern mansions formed sharp contrast to the relative grandeur of aristocratic life. But for many years in Virginia wages were high; so that laborers could accumulate means to buy a farm.131 Squatters were sometimes driven from homes

and farms.

Colonial Virginia was well supplied with taverns, or grog shops. The use of liquor was general. The development of high class hotels was retarded by the fact that the presence of strangers was a welcome break in the montony of plantation life and hence the traveler need not pay for accommodations. A Virginia act of 1663 throws interesting side-light on the entertainment of strangers:

Whereas it is frequent with divers inhabitants of this country to entertain strangers into their home without making any agreement with the party what he shall pay for his accomodations, which (if the party live) causes many litigous suites, and if the stranger dye lays a gap open to many avaricious persons to injure the estate of the person deceased, ffor remedy whereof for the future, be it enacted that noe person not making a positive agreement with any one he shall entertayne into his home for diet or storeage shall recover anything against any 130 Wertenbaker. Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, 113; Yonge. Site of Old "James Towne," 141.

131 Wertenbaker, op. cit., 183-184.

one soe entertayned, or against his estate, but that every one shall be reputed to entertayne those of curtesie with whom they make not a certain agreement.

Early Maryland did not differ from Virginia in pride of birth and family. There are strong proofs of family affection. Deeds of gift of large lands to sons and daughters for "natural love and affection" show us the human side of remote forbears. Sons were not expected to wait till their parents' death before having a home of their own. Fathers encouraged sons to marry early; this was easy with a good plantation. Daughters were endowed with land at the time of marriage. Many homes originating thus are still the foundation of family pride after nine generations. Hospitality to friends ran high. Home life was fuller in those early days, the days on which ideals of home life ground. Yet no modern town could equal Annapolis in the proportion of club life.182

The Huguenots embellished society with the courtesies and graces of domestic life. J. A. Johnson says: When the writer on the South wants characters for a story of domestic joy and content, and that cause life to run smoothly into a green old age- an age crowned with the glory of children's children - he can turn to old Huguenot life at Bordeaux in Abbeville County.

In the later eighteenth century wealthy families of Charleston kept open house. One merchant had "guests almost every day at one or more of the four meals." He had to entertain ship captains and the like. Perhaps Huguenot influence cherishing French usage had something to do with society standards. On the eve of the Revolution marriages were formal affairs requiring consultation of parents and guardians, and approbation of the family.

132 Fisher. Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. ii, 207.

XIV. SOUTHERN COLONIAL COURTSHIP

AND MARRIAGE AS SOCIAL

INSTITUTIONS

As commonly in new countries so in the American South marriage was highly esteemed. The foundation was early laid for that conservatism that even yet characterizes southern marriage.

The exigencies and opportunities of pioneer life operated to produce universal, early, and repeated marriage. The colonial maiden came into society and married with astonishing precocity. In seventeenth century Virginia if the father made a gift to his daughter it was customary to insert a proviso in case she married before sixteen. In one clandestine marriage in Northhampton County the wife was not past her twelfth year. Chief Justice Marshall met and fell in love with his wife when she was fourteen and married her at sixteen. In North Carolina cheap lands and large families promoted early marriage of the children. Marriage at thirteen was not very unusual and at fifteen was most common. Doctor Brickell, who practised in North Carolina at Edenton about 1731, wrote: "They marry generally very young, some at thirteen or fourteen, and she that continues unmarried until twenty, is reckoned a stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in that country." A colonial spinster of over twenty-five was regarded as a hopeless and confirmed old maid.

Men also married at an early age. But marriage was

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