Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1897-11-20

Families.
Those who want to know just what
sort of people they We're who gave
America Thanksgiving day should
read Alice Morse Earle's book, "Cus-
toms and Fashions In Old New Eng
land"
The reader will surely wonder how
it came about that these people were
responsible for an anniversary day when
they so bitterly opposed letting their
poor, little, half frozen, skinny children
celebrate April Fools day.
The young ones of those days were
beautifully clad in linen-goose feshy
thought-little, thin linen, short sleev-
ed, low necked shirts and baglike dress
es Of linen, drawn in around the neck
with puckering strings.
Then the Sunday after they were born
they We're carried off to the meeting
house to be baptized There was no fire
in those meeting houses, and they often
had to break the ice in the christening
bowl. But the Puritans had no monop-
oily Of such cruelty to children. The ru-
brio of the Episcopalian prayer book
says that parents must not defer baptism
longer than the first or second Sunday
after birth
One Of these New England parsons
believed in infant immersion and prac-
ticed it, too, till his own child nearly
lost its life by it. After that he learned
some sense.
Judge Sewall writes Jan. 20, 1894:
IA very extraordinary storm by reason
Of the falling and driving of the snow
Few women could get to meeting A
child named Alexander was baptized in
the afternoon
1t Is not surprising that consumption
struck SO deep into New England or
that infant mortality was SO great Re-
member, too, that in the books on the
rearing Of children it was advised that
their feet be often dipped in cold water
and that they wear thin soled shoes,
that the wet may come freely to
them.
One doesn't wonder, either, at the
size Of the families. Sir William Phips
was one of 26 children by the same
mother; Printer Green had 30 children;
had 26 children by two wives-2O by
his last. With death making SO many
subtractions, the Puritans had to do
little multiplication.
It must have taken good deal of
scuff1ing with the elements to provide
bread and meat and clothes for family
like small Sunday school. They didn't
get enough to eat, it is plain, for the
children were almost all rickety, and
all had to take elaborate compounds of
baked snails, mashed earthworms, herbs,
hartshorn and strong ale to cure them.
But the children were smart children.
Phebe Bartlett was powerfully convert
ed when she was years old. Jane Tur-
ell could tell Scripture stories before
she was 2 years old, and before she was
she could say the greater part of her
catechism, many Of the Psalms, read
distinctly and make pertinent remarks
on many things she read. She asked
many astonishing questions about divine
mysteries.
Cotton Mather took his little daugh-
ter Katy, aged 4, into his study and
told her that he was to die shortly and
that she must remember all he said He
set before her the sinful condition of
her nature and charged her to pray in
secret places every day, and so on, with
much more lugubrious matter of the
same sort. He lived 80 years after he
scared poor little Katy so.
That's the lively sort of time the
Puritan children had.
The poor little Puritan boys We're not
allowed to go swimming at all, and
every tithtngman was strictly enjoined
to keep them from it. Each tithingman
had ten families under his charge, and
If one may estimate that there We're ten
boys in each family the chances are
that on hot August day some one of
those 100 young onos defied the law, it's
dread executor and the chances of going
to place where it is more than August
all the year around, and no good swim
ming holes either.
But the young ones danced, and they
had punch to drink. One little girl 8
years old wouldn't stay at her grand
mothers house because she couldn't
have wine to drink at every meal, and
her parents upheld her in her conduct.
They had candy and gingerbread and
oranges and pictured story books; but,
alas, they were stories of the "Conver-
sion and Holy and Exemplary Lives of
Several Young Children, 1.-The Life of
Mary Paddock, Who Died at the Age of
Nine, "Praise Out of the Mouths of
Babes" and the likes of them!
They went to school and froze there
when they weren't warmed up with
"lamming and with whipping and such
benefits of nature" Besides, the teach
er had devilish devices, such as split
branch, into whose cleft the bad child's
nose was put and pinched. They had
leather paddles, and the whole commu-
nifty didn't rise up in horror at it,
though little children We're blistered,
not grown up young men.
Bachelors and clone men, had the
worst of it very decidedly. The tithing-
man kept his eye on them all the time
In Hartford they had to pay 30 shil-
lings a week to the town for living
without wife. Widowers hardly wait
ed till their wives We're good and cold
before they married again. The father
and mother of Governor Winslow had
been widOwer and widow 7 and 10
weeks respectively when they were
married The governor of New Hamp-