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III. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE IN

COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND

38

In essentials the marriage usages of the United States run back to the period before the Revolution. The American colonist of English stock was a home-builder from the beginning. It was because the hazards of life at home made it impossible to gather a competence for their children that the religious enthusiasts sought a settled habitation over seas. These sturdy Englishmen came, not as individual adventurers, but as fam-\ ilies. If men came alone it was to prepare the way for wife and children or sweetheart by the next ship and they came to stay. The success of English colonization as contrasted with the more brilliant but less substantial French and Spanish occupation of the new world is due to its family nature.

The white colonial population of New England was pure English save for some Scotch-Irish in New Hampshire and Huguenots in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This homogeneity of the North Atlantic colonies makes it possible to study them as a group and simplifies the understanding of their cultural lineage.

Marriages began at an early date in the new world. Love-making must have been a welcome pastime on the interminable voyages of those days and chaperonage seems to have been unknown in colonial life. Men took long rides with the damsel on the pillion behind them. Certainly the Puritans, sharply struggling, fru38 Smythe. Conquest of Arid America, 12, 14.

gal, and homekeeping, did not multiply social functions as means for intercourse of youths and maidens. Till the singing-school came to save the day, regular opportunities for young New Englanders to become acquainted with prospective mates were apparently few. But even in New England, maidens enjoyed large liberty, for the neighborhoods were at first composed of approved families and in any case it was impossible in the wild, rough, new land, where every hand was needed for urgent labor, to think of secluding girls. To such influences we may trace the liberty of the modern American girl. Untoward results sometimes ensued, even in supposedly staid colonial days, before the primitive simplicity was adequately safeguarded.

Love and marriage at first sight brought romantic interest to the wilderness life where existence without home connections offered no attraction to serious men. In more than one instance a lonely Puritan came to the door of a maiden he had never seen, presented credentials, told his need of a housekeeper, proposed marriage, obtained hasty consent, and notified the town clerk, all in one day. On one occasion a bold fellow removed a rival's name from the posted marriage notice, inserted his own, and carried off the bride. After his death she married the first lover. Another Lochinvar kidnapped a bride-to-be on the eve of marriage.

In some parts of Connecticut courtship was carried on in the living-room in the presence of the family. Sara Knight, who journeyed from Boston to New York and back in 1704, notes the Puritanism of people along the way who would not allow harmless kissing among the young people. An earlier English traveller gives a cheering glimpse of Boston: "On the South there is a small but pleasant common, where the gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their Marmalet-Madams

till the nine o'clock bell rings them home to their respective habitations.”

In at least one noteworthy case the maiden did the courting. Cotton Mather writes:

There is a young gentlewoman of incomparable accomplishNo gentlewoman in the English Americas has had a

more polite education.

She is one of rare witt and sense; and

of a comely aspect; and . . she has a mother of an extraordinary character for her piety. This young gentlewoman first addresses me with diverse letters, and then makes me a visit at my house; wherein she gives me to understand, that she has long had more than an ordinary value for my ministry; and that since my present condition has given her more of liberty to think of me, she must confess herself charmed with my person, to such a degree, that she could not but break in upon me, with her most importunate requests, that I should make her mine, and that the highest consideration she had in it was her eternal salvation, for if she were mine, she could not but hope the effect of it would be that she should also be Christ's. I endeavored faithfully to set before her all the discouraging circumstances attending me, that I could think of. She told me that she had weighed all those discouragements but was fortified and resolved with a strong faith in the mighty God for to encounter them all.. I was in a great strait how to treat so polite a gentlewoman. I plainly told her that I feared, whether her proposal would not meet with unsurmountable opposition, from those who had a great interest in disposing of me. However I desired that there might be time taken. . In the meantime, if I could not make her my own, I should be glad of being any way instrumental, to make her the Lord's. . . She is not much more than twenty years old. I know she has been a very aiery person. Her reputation has been under some disadvantage. What snares may be laying for me I know not. [The gossip that arose about this case became such a nuisance that] all the friends I have persuade me, that I shall have

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no way to get from under these confusions but by proceeding unto another marriage. Lord help me, what shall I do? 39

39 Mather's Diary (Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, seventh ser., vol. vii), part i, 457-458, 477.

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The fathers seem to have relied much on the Lord in their courtship. On the occasion of his widowhood Mather wrote: "I have committed unto my Lord Jesus Christ the care of providing an agreeable consort for me, if my support in the service of his church render it necessary or convenient." Later he thinks that the Lord is arranging things tho the people are worrying him about matches. It would be hard for them to tell, one might suppose, how much had been done by divine agency, inasmuch as match-makers were common. Thus Sewall writes of his second wife: ".

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My loving wife, who was the promoter of the match [of daughter Judith] and an industrious contriver of my daughter's comfortable settlement" has died. "I need your prayers that God would yet again provide such a good wife for me, that I may be able to say I have obtained favor of the Lord; or else to make it best for me to spend the remnant of my life in a widowed condition."

Parents had, of course, a profound interest in their children's matrimonial outlook. We find Judge Sewall craftily and slyly endeavoring to ascertain whether his daughter Mary's prospective suitor had previously courted another girl. Later we read: "In the evening Sam Gerrish came not; we expected him; Mary dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment." A month later the delinquent lover returned and finally married Mary, who died shortly and thus opened the way for a speedy remarriage to his first love. Zeal for parental authority shows itself in legal attempts to restrain eager suitors from their unauthorized courting of "men's daughters and maids under guardians and of mayde servants." As late as 1756, Connecticut recognized the right of parents to dispose

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of children in marriage. In New Haven, 1660, Jacob Minline went into the room where Sarah Tuttle was, seized her gloves, and then kissed her. "They sat down together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour." Father Tuttle sued Jacob for inveigling his daughter's affections. When asked in court whether Jacob inveigled her affections she answered "No;" so the court fined Sarah rather than Jacob, calling her a "bould virgin." She answered "she hoped God would help her to carry it better for time to come." At the end of two years her fine was still unpaid and half of it was remitted.

In spite of all the seeming parental tyranny that prevailed in colonial days young women seem to have exercised considerable independence in love affairs. Betty Sewall, to her father's dismay, refused several suitors. Once he writes urging her to think well before she dismisses a certain suitor but telling her, nevertheless, that if she can not love, honor, and obey the man, her father will say no more.

Parents were not, indeed, legally supreme over their children's espousal. The general authority pursued its own ends and might work against the parental authority as well as with it. In a new country, needing population, it was natural that pious authorities should frown upon any discouragement of legitimate increase. The interests of the community took precedence over the pri vate interests of parents, guardians, and masters. Marriage was normally undelayed. Appeal to a magistrate was in order in case of unreasonable opposition by those in charge of the young people. Thus unruly parents could be brought to terms.

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