SOME STRANGE AND INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT OUR EARLY AMERICAN ANCESTORS AND BRITISH AMERICAN COLONIES. - everyday life From 1600 - 1840
(ODDS AND ENDS, BITS AND PIECES, TIDBITS TO WHET THE APPETITE FOR MORE RESEARCH)
SOCIETY - CUSTOM - MODERN VS. COLONIAL SENSIBILITIES - CALENDER - LANGUAGE - etc.
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This is just the beginning. Will be updating and enlarging page often.
The Geneva Bible, rather than the King James Version, was commonly used by seventeenth-century Protestants. The 1560 Geneva Bible is the work of religious leaders who had been exiled from England to Geneva, Switzerland after 1553. It was the first Bible in English to divide the scriptures into numbered verses. It was the most widely read and influential English Bible of the 16th and 17th centuries. It was a revision of Tyndales's translation of the Bible, popularly known as the "Breeches Bible," first published during Mary Tudor's Catholic restoration circa 1560. Shakespeare quoted the Geneva Bible more than five thousand times in his plays. It was also used by Bunyan. The images contained within the Bible were produced by hand created woodcuts. The marginal notes often reflected Calvinistic and Protestant reformation influences, not yet accepted by the Church of England, and led to its demise. It was, in other words, sprinkled with controversial anti-Catholic notes. King James I considered the Geneva Bible "seditious" and made its ownership a felony. The Pilgrims and the Puritans brought the Geneva Bible to America.
"The hole byble was long before Wycliffe's days by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the English tong; and by good and godly people with devotion, and soberness, wel and reverendly red."
The thorn þ is a runic letter no longer used in English. Its modern equivalent should be "th" rather than "y" as is sometimes rendered. The thorn can be found in documents from the early British American colonies. It is still used in the Icelandic language.
New England Puritans regarded marriage as a civil contract rather than as an irreversible sacrament; such a contract could legally be voided, especially when desertion, bigamy, or adultery was involved.
As far as marriage goes, it could be said that the institution was crucial to the maintenance of social order. The model was that of peacefully dominant husbands, quietly submissive wives, obedient children, servants and slaves. But the model and the reality was, then as now, often at odds. In that model, marriage was meant to be for life and for a conjunction of interests of the man and woman. Although wives were somewhat of a commodity or an economic asset to their husbands, they could be and often were a source of trouble to their husbands. A man's inability to control an outspoken family member was a disgrace to his own abilities as a competent husband.
Seventeenth-century people believed that a woman could not conceive unless she had an orgasm. If a woman was forcibly raped, she would not feel sexual pleasure. Therefore if a woman conceived a child after claiming to have been raped, it was viewed as evidence that her charge was false. Thus, in the eyes of colonial judges and lawmakers, rape and sodomy shared two fundamental characteristics that rendered them particularly odious.
In colonial courts wives could not act independently of their husbands with the sole exceptions of seeking divorces, filing or responding to slander suits (before the 1660's) or consenting to the sale of land.
Virginia and Maryland first passed laws distinguishing among indentured English servant and enslaved Africans and Indians. There were a wide range of statutes which made such distinctions which culminated in a series of Virginia laws that subjected slaves to a variety of regulations not imposed on servants. The authorization of the killing of runaway slaves declared that "if any slave resist his master . . . death shall not be accompted [accounted a felony] ffelony." The legislators explained their reasoning thus: "it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther [murder] ffelony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate." Although there are numerous instances of physical abuse and even murder of English indentured servants by their employers, no comparable statement was ever made about English servants. (Some runaway slaves and indentured English servants when recaptured spoke of having hoped to gain their freedom by reaching "the Dutch plantation" or "the Sweades.")
In its statute applying the death penalty to a son or daughter over sixteen who cursed or hit a parent, the Bay Colony permitted as a defense the claim of provocation "by exteam, and cruel correction; that they have been forced therunto to preserve themselves from death or maiming." Virginia made the assumption explicit in 1662. The burgesses ordered masters to provide servants with "competent dyett, clothing and lodging," declaring that a master "shall not exceed the bounds of moderation in correcting them beyond the meritt of their offences." Still the laws offered no guidelines for determining what was the appropriate amount of correction for a master to give a servant or child, and the sate as well as the community had difficulty distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable force.
In general, colonial men, felt an obligation to spouse, child, servant, and slave as part of his household and estate. Kindness was considered a virtue, but the well ordered world of early-American society was very different from the world we experience. For one thing, our modern assumptions about fairness and justice are quite different than the basic assumptions by which sixteenth and seventeenth century men and women were guided. For example, only in the most extreme cases of abuse would eyewitnesses, judges, or juries step in to halt the excessive use of force.
Quotes from Court records and other sources
In the prosecution of contempt of court by oral attacks on the court, men were fined, forced to apologize, and occasionally whipped for such offenses as calling the Maryland lower house "a Turdy shitten assembly" and "a Company of pittiful Rogues, & puppyes."
"Come along with me, sayes one of them, i'le bringe you to a Woman that Preaches better Gospell then any of your black-coats that have been at the Ninneversity, a Woman of another kinde of spirit, who hath had many Revelations of things to come, and for my part, saith hee, I had rather hear such a one that speakes from the meere motion of the spirit, without any study at all, then any of your learned Scollers."
Green admitted that she had been pregnant, but clained that she had miscarried at four months and that she "did not see what she had whether it was a Childe form'd or not." Although the fetus was never found, Green's fate was sealed after Grace Parker, the local midwife, testified that "(to the best of her knowledge) the said Elizebeth Greene had gone neer her full time and had had a Childe" and that "there was milke in her breasts And it was a goeing away being hard and Curdled." Greene was convicted and sentenced to be hanged.
Sometimes, however, if women refused accuse, testify or otherwise cooperate with the court, conviction was near impossible. An infanticide case involving Hannah Lee Price and her maidservant Mary Marler, occupied the courts for a full year and ended without a conviction because no witnesses would appear.
In December 1652, Mistress Johnson attended Mary Taylor when she gave birth to a son, but she waited for four months before informing the authorities that she suspected her patient of having committed adultery. Significantly, what precipitated her action was a confrontation with Goody Taylor that occurred in April of 1653 at the childbed of a third woman, Ann Pope. (Groups of women often gathered at a "birthing") Mistress Johnson signaled her intention to "have a bout with Mary Taylor if She were there" as she approached the Pope house." Yet her assistant Sarah Goulson persuaded Mistress Johnson that such and act "would disturb her Self and the woman that was in travail," so Ann Johnson postponed talking to Mary Taylor until the birth attendants were leaving.
Then her promised "bout" took the following form. "I must have a paire of Gloves of you [if not from] Mr. Catchmey," Ann Johnson told Mary Taylor.
"Why of Mr. Catchmey?" Goody Taylor asked.
"Because he is the father of your Child," Mistress Johnson responded provocatively.
Mary retorted, "he is noe more the father of mine then he is of yours for ought I to know."
That insult led Mistress Johnson to call Mary Taylor "an Impudent whore." Taylor replied spiritedly, "it hath pleas'd God to make us both alike." Goulson described what happened next: "mrs Johnson Struck Mary Taylor Soe they were busling a Little while Soe when they had done mrs Johnson Said that the Nights work Should Cost her a whipt back." Later that month, Ann Johnson carried out her threat by going to court officials to describe the scene at the Taylor household in late December.
More fighting took place and Joan Nevell gave a gesture. "Goodie nevill held forth her fingers to wit her forfinger and her littell finger."
Lots more later folks!
List of sources for further reading: