ings: "Whether there is any masters of trade that want apprentices[,] or children of Friends to be put forth, that they apply themselves to the monthly meetings before they take those that are not Friends, or put forth their children to such?" Another query was: "Whether have the children of the poor due education so as to fitt them for necessary employment?"

Family government in the colonies was patriarchal tho not necessarily harsh and forbidding. Pioneer exigencies magnified the family into a compendium of church, state, and school. Immigrant peoples had the same problem as modern immigrants in respect to maintaining the mother tongue and folk standards. The Mennonists in the Valley of Virginia trained their children in their peculiar religious ways. Generally they strictly forbade the dance or other juvenile amusements common to other sects of Germans. Virginia had disreputable taverns and saloons that were an offset to family interests and discipline. The Maryland Quaker queries already mentioned contain the following:

bringing forth their

Are all careful to keep meetings. families? . . . Do those that have children train them up in the nurture and fear of the Lord, restraining them from vice, wantonness, and keeping company with such as would teach them vain fations and corrupt ways of this world to the misspending of their precious time and substance?

An old writer remarks of the Scotch-Irish and Scotch settlers of North Carolina:

These Presbyterian mothers gloried in the enterprise, and religion, and knowledge, and purity of their husbands and children, and would forego comforts and endure toil that their sons might be well instructed enterprising men.

Chastellux says that like the English the settlers were fond of their infants but cared little for their children. The annals and biographies do not confirm his asser

tion. George Wythe learned Greek at home from a Testament while his mother held an English copy and guided him. John Mason carried through life the effect of his mother's influence. She died when he was seven yet all his life "mother's room" was vivid in his memory.

Of course one can find instances to the opposite effect. Thus the reverend Mr. Urmstone writes from North Carolina that the people are unwilling to pay minister or schoolmaster, "nay they need to be hired to go to church or send their children to school." There are indications, however, that he was no model rector or pattern. Indeed he himself writes:

I intend to send my two youngest children as a present to the society hoping they will put them into some charity school or hospitall. Whereby they may be educated and provided for, when they come to age, for I am not able to maintain them. My eldest is near twenty, capable of helping me, but is bent upon going for England. There is no boarding here, there is never a family that I know of that I would live in if they would hire me.

As an instance of aliens' experience with their children in the midst of the English environment we may cite the Huguenots. The children of the immigrants grew up more proficient in English than in the mother tongue. Gradually the church services became confined to the surviving refugees and such of their children as out of respect accompanied them. The second and third generations in America were ready to join the established church of the province.

With regard to the character of youth under the colonial régime the following additional citations will be suggestive. A Virginia lady of the olden time reported:

Very little from books was thought necessary for a girl. She was trained to domestic matters, however, must learn the accom

plishments of the day, to play upon the harpsichord or spinet, and to work impossible dragons and roses on canvas.

Doctor Brickell wrote of early eighteenth century North Carolina:

The young men are generally of a bashful, sober behavior, few proving prodigals, to spend what the parents with care and industry have left them but commonly improve it. . The girls are most commonly handsome and well featur'd, but have pale or swarthy complexions, and are generally more forward than the boys, notwithstanding the women are very shy, in their discourses, till they are acquainted.

The author of Itinerant Observations in America which appeared in the London Magazine of 1745-1746, after travels in the South wrote thus:

The girls, under such good mothers, generally have twice the sense and discretion of the boys; their dress is neat and clean, and not much bordering upon the ridiculous humour of the mother country, where the daughters seem dressed up for a market. Adieu Maryland.

XVIII. FAMILY PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL CENSORSHIP IN THE COLONIAL

SOUTH

The colonial South had its share of irregularities in the relations between husbands and wives, parents and children. Civic treatment of family disorders was somewhat less radical than in New England. Isolation of residence made for a low degree of civic control. Continental blood worked against tendencies to Puritan asperity in domestic life.

In 1624 in Virginia it was ordained that

Three sufficient men of every parish shall be sworn to see that every man shall plant and tende sufficient corne for his family. Those men that have neglected so to do are to be by the said three men presented to be censured by the governor and counsell.

Sometimes Virginia church wardens relieved wives who, with children, had been ejected by husbands. Mary Laurence in 1676 complained that her husband had driven her out and refused to maintain her. The justices ordered her returned home. If the husband proved vagabond he should be put to forced labor for their support. Meanwhile the churchwarden was to see that she and the child did not lack food. In 1688 a man had deserted an old, deaf wife, who unless the rest of her estate should be sold would be thrown on the parish. The court ordered wardens to act as trustees of the property and use it for her.

In 1692 the Grand Council of South Carolina

Upon hereing the petition of Jan La Salle ordrd that her hus-
band Peter.
cohibitt wth: the said Jane his wife and
maintaine her in all necessaryes as his wife, or else that he allow

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his said wife the negro woman he had with her and pay his said wife £6 ster. p. annum.

He was charged costs.

A North Carolina law of 1755 provides that vagrants shall be whipped from constable to constable to the counties where their wives and children formerly lived and there give bond for good behavior and "for betaking him or herself to some lawful calling or honest labor." Otherwise the culprit should be hired out for one year; the money to cover expenses of arrest and any balance to go to the family.

In Georgia there was special need of social maintenance of families: it was a charity establishment in part. At a board meeting in 1735 in Palace Court was received a

Petition of Mary Bateman, mother of Wm. Bateman now in Georgia, setting forth, that her son, William Bateman went to Georgia by the way of Charlestown at his own expense, with one servant to take possession of a grant of 75 acres of land; that his servant left him at Charles Town; that he has had great illness, and been at extraordinary expenses on other occasions; and praying credit for a years maintenance for himself and his wife in Georgia and to have the assistance of a servant. Resolved that credit be given to the said Wm. Bateman and his wife for a year's maintenance and that a servant be sent him.

Resolvd that a town lot in Savannah be granted to Austin Weddell; And that he and his wife be sent over by the said ship and that they be maintained for a year.

In regard to Georgia the following regulation was made:

The children of six years and upwards of [certain] servants to