COLONIAL DAMES AND GOOD WIVES WRITTEN BY ALICE MORSE EARLE [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE Copyright, 1895, BY ALICE MORSE EARLE. _All rights reserved._ _TO THE MEMORY OF THE COLONIAL DAMES_ _Whose blood runs in my veins Whose spirit lives in my work_ _Elizabeth Morse_, _Joanna Hoar_, _Esther Mason_, _Deborah Atherton_, _Sarah Wyeth_, _Anne Adams_, _Elizabeth Browne_, _Hannah Phillips_, _Mary Clary_, _Silence Heard_, _Judith Thurston_, _Patience Foster_, _Martha Bullard_, _Barbara Sheppard_, _Seaborn Wilson_ _CONTENTS_ _Chapter_ _Page_ _I. Consorts and Relicts_ _1_ _II. Women of Affairs_ _45_ _III. “Double-Tongued and Naughty Women”_ _88_ _IV. Boston Neighbors_ _109_ _V. A Fearfull Female Travailler_ _135_ _VI. Two Colonial Adventuresses_ _160_ _VII. The Universal Friend_ _173_ _VIII. Eighteenth-Century Manners_ _189_ _IX. Their Amusements and Accomplishments_ _206_ _X. Daughters of Liberty_ _240_ _XI. A Revolutionary Housewife_ _238_ _XII. Fireside Industries_ _276_ COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. CHAPTER I. CONSORTS AND RELICTS. In the early days of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, careful lists were sent back to old England by the magistrates, telling what “to provide to send to New England” in order to ensure the successful planting and tender nourishing of the new settlement. The earliest list includes such homely items as “benes and pese,” tame turkeys, copper kettles, all kinds of useful apparel and wholesome food; but the list is headed with a most significant, a typically Puritan item, _Ministers_. The list sent to the Emigration Society by the Virginian colonists might equally well have been headed, to show their most crying need, with the word _Wives_.