"A child of Sarah Good's was likewise apprehended, being between 4 and 5 years old. The accusers said this child bit them, and would shew such like marks, as those of a small set of teeth, upon their arms...."

"March 31, 1692, was set apart as a day of solemn humiliation at Salem ... on which day Abigail Williams said, 'that she saw a great number of persons in the village at the administration of a mock sacrament, where they had bread as red as raw flesh, and red drink.'"

The husband of Mrs. Cary, who afterwards escaped, tells this: "Having been there [in prison] one night, next morning the jailer put irons on her legs (having received such a command); the weight of them was about eight pounds: these with her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion fits, so that I thought she would have died that night. I sent to entreat that the irons might be taken off; but all entreaties were in vain...."

"John Proctor and his wife being in prison, the sheriff came to his house and seized all the goods, provisions and cattle ... and left nothing in the house for the support of the children...."

"Old Jacobs being condemned, the sheriff and officers came and seized all he had; his wife had her wedding ring taken from her ... and the neighbours in charity relieved her."

"The family of the Putnams ... were chief prosecutors in this business."

"And now nineteen persons having been hanged, and one pressed to death, and eight more condemned, in all twenty and eight ... about fifty having confessed ... above an hundred and fifty in prison, and above two hundred more accused; the special commission of oyer and terminer comes to a period...."

During the summer of 1692 the disastrous material and financial results of the reign of terror became so evident that the shrewd business sense of the colonist became alarmed. Harvests were ungathered, fields and cattle were neglected, numerous people sold their farms and moved southward; some did not await the sale but abandoned their property. The thirst for blood could not last, especially when it threatened commercial ruin. Moreover, the accusers at length aimed too high; accusations were made against persons of rank, members of the governor's family, and even the relatives of the pastors themselves. "The killing time lasted about four months, from the first of June to the end of September, 1692, and then a reaction came because the informers began to strike at important persons, and named the wife of the governor. Twenty persons had been put to death ... and if the delusion had lasted much longer under the rules of evidence that were adopted everybody in the colony except the magistrates and ministers would have been either hung or would have stood charged with witchcraft."[32]

The Puritan clergymen have been severely blamed for this strange wave of fanaticism, and no doubt, as leaders in the movement, they were largely responsible; but even their power and authority could never have caused such wide-spread terror, had not the women of the day given such active aid. The feminine soul, with its long pent emotions, craved excitement, and this was an opportunity eagerly seized upon. As Fisher says, "As their religion taught them to see in human nature only depravity and corruption, so in the outward nature by which they were surrounded, they saw forewarnings and signs of doom and dread. Where the modern mind now refreshes itself in New England with the beauties of the seashore, the forest, and the sunset, the Puritan saw only threatenings of terror."[33]

We cannot doubt in most instances the sincerity of these men and women, and in later days, when confessions of rash and hasty charges of action were made, their repentance was apparently just as sincere. Judge Sewall, for instance, read before the assembled congregation his petition to God for forgiveness. "In a short time all the people recovered from their madness, [and] admitted their error.... In 1697 the General Court ordered a day of fasting and prayer for what had been done amiss in the 'late tragedy raised among us by Satan.' Satan was the scapegoat, and nothing was said about the designs and motives of the ministers."[34] Possibly it was just as well that Satan was blamed; for the responsibility is thus shifted for one of the most hideous pages in American history.

IX. Religion Outside of New England

Apparently it was only under Puritanism that the colonial woman really suffered through the requirements of her religion. In other colonies there may have been those who felt hampered and restrained; but certainly in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Southern provinces, there was no creed that made life an existence of dread and fear. In most parts of the South the Established Church of England was the authorized, or popular, religious institution, and it would seem that the women who followed its teachings were as reverent and pious, if not so full of the fear of judgment, as their sisters to the North. The earliest settlers of Virginia dutifully observed the customs and ceremonies of the established church, and it was the dominant form of religion in Virginia and the Carolinas throughout the colonial era. John Smith has left the record of the first place and manner of divine worship in Virginia: "Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three or four trees to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of Wood; our seats unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses were of like curiosity.... Yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months a holy Communion till our Minister died: but our Prayers daily with an Homily on Sundays wee continued two or three years after, till more Preachers came."

According to Bruce's Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century[35] it would seem that the early Virginians were as strict as the New Englanders about the matter of church attendance and Sabbath observance. When we come across the notation that "Sarah Purdy was indicted 1682 for shelling corn on Sunday," we may feel rather sure that during at least the first eighty years of life about Jamestown Sunday must have been indeed a day of rest. Says Bruce: "The first General Assembly to meet in Virginia passed a law requiring of every citizen attendance at divine services on Sunday. The penalty imposed was a fine, if one failed to be present. If the delinquent was a freeman he was to be compelled to pay three shillings for each offense, to be devoted to the church, and should he be a slave he was to be sentenced to be whipped."[36]

In Georgia and the Carolinas of the later eighteenth century the influence of Methodism—especially after the coming of Wesley and Whitefield—was marked, while the Scotch Presbyterian and the French Huguenots exercised a wholesome effect through their strict honesty and upright lives. Among these two latter sects women seem to have been very much in the back-ground, but among the Methodists, especially in Georgia, the influence of woman in the church was certainly noticeable. There was often in the words and deeds of Southern women in general a note of confident trust in God's love and in a joyous future life, rather lacking in the writings of New England. Eliza Pinckney, for instance, when but seventeen years old, wrote to her brother George a long letter of advice, containing such tender, yet almost exultant language as the following: "To be conscious we have an Almighty friend to bless our Endeavours, and to assist us in all Difficulties, gives rapture beyond all the boasted Enjoyments of the world, allowing them their utmost Extent & fulness of joy. Let us then, my dear Brother, set out right and keep the sacred page always in view.... God is Truth itself and can't reveal naturally or supernaturally contrarieties."[37a]

There is a sweet reasonableness about this, very refreshing after an investigation of witches or myriads of devils, and, on the whole, we find much more sanity in the Southern relationship between religion and life than in the Northern. While there was some bickering and quarreling, especially after the arrival of Whitefield; yet such disputes do not seem to have left the bitterness and suspicion that followed in the trail of the church trials in Massachusetts. Indeed, various creeds must have lived peacefully side by side; for the colonial surveyor, de Brahm, speaks of nine different sects in a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and makes this further comment: "Yet are (they) far from being incouraged or even inclined to that disorder which is so common among men of contrary religious sentiments in other parts of the world.... (The) inhabitants (were) from the beginning renound for concord, compleasance, courteousness and tenderness towards each other, and more so towards foreigners, without regard or respect of nature and religion."[37b]

Perhaps, however, by the middle of the eighteenth century religious sanity had become the rule both North and South; for there are many evidences at that later period of a trust in the mercy of God and comfort in His authority. We find Abigail Adams, whose letters cover the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, saying, "That we rest under the shadow of the Almighty is the consolation to which I resort and find that comfort which the world cannot give."[38] And Martha Washington, writing to Governor Trumbull, after the death of her husband, says: "For myself I have only to bow with humble submission to the will of that God who giveth and who taketh away, looking forward with faith and hope to the moment when I shall be again united with the partner of my life."[39] In the hour when the long struggle for independence was opening, Mercy Warren could write in all confidence to her husband, "I somehow or other feel as if all these things were for the best—as if good would come out of evil—we may be brought low that our faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the protecting providence of God."[40] Among the Dutch of New York religion, like eating, drinking and other common things of life, was taken in a rather matter-of-fact way. Seldom indeed did these citizens of New Amsterdam become so excited about doctrine as to quarrel over it; they were too well contented with life as it was to contend over the life to be. Mrs. Grant in Memoirs of an American Lady has left us many intimate pictures of the life in the Dutch colony. She and her mother joined her father in New York in 1758, and through her residence at Claverach, Albany, and Oswego gained thorough knowledge of the people, their customs, social life and community ideas and ideals. Of their relation to church and creed she remarks: "Their religion, then, like their original national character, had in it little of fervor or enthusiasm; their manner of performing religious duties regular and decent, but calm, and to more ardent imaginations might appear mechanical.... If their piety, however, was without enthusiasm it was also without bigotry; they wished others to think as they did, without showing rancor or contempt toward those who did not.... That monster in nature, an impious woman, was never heard of among them."[41]

Unlike the New England clergyman, the New York parson was almost without power of any sort, and was at no time considered an authority in politics, sickness, witchcraft, or domestic affairs. Mrs. Grant was surprised at his lack of influence, and declared: "The dominees, as these people call their ministers, contented themselves with preaching in a sober and moderate strain to the people; and living quietly in the retirement of their families, were little heard of but in the pulpit; and they seemed to consider a studious privacy as one of their chief duties."[42] However, it was only in New England and possibly in Virginia for a short time, that church and state were one, and this may account for much of the difference in the attitudes of the preachers. In New York the church was absolutely separate from the government, and unless the pastor was a man of exceedingly strong personality, his influence was never felt outside his congregation.

In conclusion, what may we say as to the general status of the colonial woman in the church? Only in the Quaker congregation and possibly among the Methodists in the South did colonial womanhood successfully assert itself, and take part in the official activities of the institution. In the Episcopal church of Virginia and the Carolinas, the Catholic Church of Maryland and Louisiana, and the Dutch church of New York, women were quiet onlookers, pious, reverent, and meek, freely acknowledging God in their lives, content to be seen and not heard. In the Puritan assembly, likewise, they were, on the surface at least, meek, silent, docile; but their silence was deceiving, and, as shown in the witchcraft catastrophe, was but the silence of a smouldering volcano. In the eighteenth century, the womanhood of the land became more assertive, in religion as in other affairs, and there is no doubt that Mercy Warren, Eliza Pinckney, Abigail Adams, and others mentioned in these pages were thinkers whose opinions were respected by both clergy and laymen. The Puritan preacher did indeed declare against speech by women in the church, and demanded that if they had any questions, they should ask their husbands; but there came a time, and that quickly, when the voice of woman was heard in the blood of Salem's dead.

CHAPTER II

I. Feminine Ignorance

The result was that there long existed an astonishingly large amount of illiteracy among them. Through an examination made for the U.S. Department of Education, it has been found that among women signing deeds or other legal documents in Massachusetts, from 1653 to 1656, as high as fifty per cent could not write their name, and were obliged to sign by means of a cross; while as late as 1697 fully thirty-eight per cent were as illiterate. In New York fully sixty per cent of the Dutch women were obliged to make their mark; while in Virginia, where deeds signed by 3,066 women were examined, seventy-five per cent could not sign their names. If the condition was so bad among those prosperous enough to own property, what must it have been among the poor and so-called lower classes?

We know, of course, that early in the seventeenth century schools attended by both boys and girls were established in Massachusetts, and before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth there was at least one public school for both sexes in Virginia. But for the most part the girls of early New England appear to have gone to the "dame's school," taught by some spinster or poverty-stricken widow. We may again turn to Sewall's Diary for bits of evidence concerning the schooling in the seventeenth century: "Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1688. Little Hanah going to School in the morn, being enter'd a little within the Schoolhouse Lane, is rid over by David Lopez, fell on her back, but I hope little hurt, save that her Teeth bled a Little; was much frighted; but went to School."[43]"Friday, Jan. 7th, 1686-7. This day Dame Walker is taken so ill that she sends home my Daughters, not being able to teach them."[44] Wednesday, Jan. 19th, 1686-7. Mr. Stoughton and Dudley and Capt. Eliot and Self, go to Muddy-River to Andrew Gardner's, where 'tis agreed that £12 only in or as Money, be levyed on the people by a Rate towards maintaining a School to teach to write and read English."[45] to Capt. Townsend's Mother's, his Cousin Jane accompanying him, carried his Hornbook." [46]

And what did girls of Puritan days learn in the "dame schools"? Sewall again may enlighten us in a notation in his Diary for 1696: "Mary goes to Mrs. Thair's to learn to Read and Knit." More than one hundred years afterwards (1817), Abigail Adams, writing of her childhood, declared: "My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to any school. I was always sick. Female education, in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing."[47]

The Dutch women of New York, famous for their skill in housekeeping, probably did not attend school, but received at home what little they knew of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mrs. Grant, speaking of opportunities for female education in New Amsterdam in 1709, makes it clear that the training of a girl's brain troubled no Hollander's head. "It was at this time very difficult to procure the means of instruction in those inland districts; female education, of consequence, was conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and aunts; they were taught too at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinist tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing. This confined education precluded elegance; yet, though there was no polish, there was no vulgarity."[48]

The words of the biographer of Catherine Schuyler might truthfully have been applied to almost any girl in or near the quaint Dutch city: "Meanwhile [about 1740] the girl [Catherine Schuyler] was perfecting herself in the arts of housekeeping so dear to the Dutch matron. The care of the dairy, the poultry, the spinning, the baking, the brewing, the immaculate cleanliness of the Dutch, were not so much duties as sacred household rites."[49] So much for womanly education in New Amsterdam. A thorough training in domestic science, enough arithmetic for keeping accurate accounts of expenses, and previous little reading—these were considered ample to set the young woman on the right path for her vocation as wife and mother.

This high respect for arithmetic was by no means limited to New York. Ben Franklin, while in London, wrote thus to his daughter: "The more attentively dutiful and tender you are towards your good mama, the more you will recommend yourself to me.... Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. For the rest, I would only recommend to you in my absence, to acquire those useful accomplishments, arithmetic, and book-keeping. This you might do with ease, if you would resolve not to see company on the hours set apart for those studies."[50] In addition, however, Franklin seems not to have been averse to a girl's receiving some of those social accomplishments which might add to her graces; for in 1750 he wrote his mother the following message about this same child: "Sally grows a fine Girl, and is extreamly industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School..."[51]

II. Woman's Education in the South

It should be noted, of course, that this message was written in the later years of the eighteenth century when the French influence in America was far more prominent than during the seventeenth. Moreover, Jefferson himself had then been in France some time, and undoubtedly was permeated with French ideas and ideals. But the established custom throughout the South, except in Louisiana, demanded that the daughters of the leading families receive a much more varied form of schooling than their sisters in most parts of the North were obtaining. While the sons of wealthy planters were frequently sent to English universities, the daughters were trained under private tutors, who themselves were often university graduates, and not infrequently well versed in languages and literatures. The advice of Philip Fithian to John Peck, his successor as private instructor in the family of a wealthy Virginian, may be enlightening as to the character and sincerity of these colonial teachers of Southern girls:

"The last direction I shall venture to mention on this head, is that you abstain totally from women. What I would have you understand from this, is, that by a train of faultless conduct in the whole course of your tutorship, you make every Lady within the Sphere of your acquaintance, who is between twelve and forty years of age, so much pleased with your person, & so satisfied as to your ability in the capacity of a Teacher; & in short, fully convinced, that, from a principle of Duty, you have both, by night and by day endeavoured to acquit yourself honourably, in the Character of a Tutor; & that this account, you have their free and hearty consent, without making any manner of demand upon you, either to stay longer in the Country with them, which they would choose, or whenever your business calls you away, that they may not have it in their Power either by charms or Justice to detain you, and when you must leave them, have their sincere wishes & constant prayrs for Length of days & much prosperity."[53]

We have little or no evidence concerning the education of women belonging to the Southern laboring class, except the investigation of court papers mentioned above, showing the lamentable amount of illiteracy. In fact, so little was written by Southern women, high or low, of the colonial period that it is practically impossible to state anything positive about their intellectual training. It is a safe conjecture, however, that the schooling of the average woman in the South was not equal to that of the average women of Massachusetts, but was probably fully equal to that of the Dutch women of New York. And yet we must not think that efforts in education in the southern colonies were lacking. As Dr. Lyon G. Tyler has said; "Under the conditions of Virginia society, no developed educational system was possible, but it is wrong to suppose that there was none. The parish institutions introduced from England included educational beginnings; every minister had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all poor children could read and write. The county courts supervised the vestries, and held a yearly 'orphans court,' which looked after the material and educational welfare of all orphans."[54]

Indeed the interest in education during the seventeenth century, in Virginia at least, seems to have been general. Repeatedly in examining wills of the period we may find this interest expressed and explicit directions given for educating not only the boys, but the girls. Bruce in his valuable work, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, cites a number of such cases in which provisions were made for the training of daughters of other female relatives.

"In 1657, Clement Thresh, of Rappahannock, in his will declared that all his estate should be responsible for the outlay made necessary in providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who, being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already been going to school for some length of time. The manner of completing her education (which, it seems, was to be prolonged to her sixteenth year) was perhaps the usual one for girls at this period:—she was to be taught at a Mrs. Peacock's, very probably by Mrs. Peacock herself, who may have been the mistress of a small school; for it was ordered in the will, that if she died, the step-daughter was to attend the same school as Thomas Goodrich's children."[55] "Robert Gascoigne provided that his wife should ... keep their daughter Bridget in school, until she could both read and sew with an equal degree of skill."[56] "The indentures of Ann Andrewes, who lived in Surry ... required her master to teach her, not only how to sew and 'such things as were fitt for women to know,' but also how to read and apparently also how to write." ... "In 1691 a girl was bound out to Captain William Crafford ... under indentures which required him to teach her how to spin, sew and read...."[57]

But, as shown in previous pages, female illiteracy in the South, at least during the seventeenth century, was surprisingly great. No doubt, in the eighteenth century, as the country became more thickly settled, education became more general, but for a long time the women dragged behind the men in plain reading and writing. Bruce declares: "There are numerous evidences that illiteracy prevailed to a greater extent than among persons of the opposite sex.... Among the entire female population of the colony, without embracing the slaves, only one woman of every three was able to sign her name in full, as compared with at least three of every five persons of the opposite sex."[58]

III. Brilliant Exceptions

In the middle colonies, as in New England, schools for all classes were established at an early date. Thus, the first school in Pennsylvania was opened in 1683, only one year after the founding of Philadelphia, and apparently very few children in that city were without schooling of some sort. As is commonly agreed, more emphasis was placed on education in New England than in any of the other colonies. A large number of the men who established the Northern colonies were university graduates, naturally interested in education, and the founding of Harvard, sixteen years after the landing at Plymouth, proves this interest. Moreover, it was considered essential that every man, woman, and child should be able to read the Bible, and for this reason, if for no other, general education would have been encouraged. As Moses Coit Tyler has declared, "Theirs was a social structure with its corner stone resting on a book." However true this may be, we are not warranted in assuming that the women of the better classes in Massachusetts were any more thoroughly educated, according to the standards of the time, than the women of the better classes in other colonies. We do indeed find more New England women writing; for here lived the first female poet in America, and the first woman preacher, and thinkers of the Mercy Warren type who show in their diaries and letters a keen and intelligent interest in public affairs.

It seems due, however, more to circumstances that such women as Mercy Warren and Abigail Adams wrote much, while their sisters to the South remained comparatively silent. The husband of each of these two colonial dames was absent a great deal and these men were, therefore, the recipients of many charming letters now made public; while the wife of the better class planter in Virginia and the Carolinas had a husband who seldom strayed long from the plantation. Eliza Pinckney's letters rival in interest those of any American woman of the period, and if her husband had been a man as prominent in war and political affairs as John Adams, her letters would no doubt be considered today highly valuable. True, Martha Washington was in a position to leave many interesting written comments; for she was for many years close to the very center and origin of the most exciting events; but she was more of a quiet housewife than a woman who enjoyed the discussion of political events, and, besides, with a certain inborn reserve and reticence she took pains to destroy much of the private correspondence between her husband and herself. Perhaps, with the small amount of evidence at hand we can never say definitely in what particular colonies the women of the higher classes were most highly educated; apparently very few of them were in danger of receiving an over-dose of mental stimulation.

"I have got no further than the first volm of Virgil, but was most agreeably disappointed to find myself instructed in agriculture as well as entertained by his charming penn, for I am persuaded tho' he wrote for Italy it will in many Instances suit Carolina."[59] "If you will not laugh too immoderately at mee I'll Trust you with a Secrett. I have made two wills already! I know I have done no harm, for I con'd my lesson very perfectly, and know how to convey by will, Estates, Real and Personal, and never forgett in its proper place, him and his heirs forever.... But after all what can I do if a poor Creature lies a-dying, and their family takes it into their head that I can serve them. I can't refuse; butt when they are well, and able to employ a Lawyer, I always shall."[60]

And again she gives this glimpse of another study: "I am a very Dunce, for I have not acquired ye writing shorthand yet with any degree of swiftness." That she had made some study of philosophy also is evident in this comment in a letter written after a prolonged absence from her plantation home for the purpose of attending some social function: "I began to consider what attraction there was in this place that used so agreeably to soothe my pensive humour, and made me indifferent to everything the gay world could boast; but I found the change not in the place but in myself.... and I was forced to consult Mr. Locke over and over, to see wherein personal Identity consisted, and if I was the very same Selfe."[61]

Locke's philosophical theory is surely rather solid material, a kind indeed which probably not many college women of the twentieth century are familiar with. Add to these various intellectual pursuits of hers the highly thorough study she made of agriculture, her genuinely scientific experiments in the rotation and selection of crops, and her practical and successful management of three large plantations, and we may well conclude that here was a colonial woman with a mind of her own, and a mind fit for something besides feminine trifles and graces.

Jane Turell, a resident of Boston during the first half of the eighteenth century, was another whose interest in literature and other branches of higher education was certainly not common to the women of the period. Hear the narrative of the rather astonishing list of studies she undertook, and the zeal with which she pursued her research: