Puritan Women in Early America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Michelle Jarrett Morris
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Early America ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
Domestic Economies ◽  
The Church

Puritan women could be found throughout early America, but the majority lived in New England. More is known about those who were white and of middling or elite rank, but Puritans could be found in all ranks of society, and some Native Americans and Africans converted to Christianity in response to Puritan missionary efforts as well. Puritan women’s lives were multifaceted. They were the backbone of the Puritan church and expert witnesses in court. They were economic partners in domestic economies, household managers, and could if necessary act in their husbands’ stead. Women were dispensers of charity and the workforce of military garrisons. As wives under coverture (a legal doctrine which placed wives’ legal and economic identities under their husbands’ control), they were expected to be submissive, but as mothers and mistresses, their role was to exercise authority. As members of earthly churches they were subordinate, but, as souls in the Church universal, they were equal before God. Although many Puritan women shared basic roles, their experiences and the daily rhythms of their lives varied considerably. Age and life-cycle, as well as inequities of wealth, made some women mistresses and others servants. Married women’s work was focused primarily around food, clothing, and childcare, but geography and their husbands’ occupations shaped what women grew in their gardens and what food they foraged or bought, as well as which raw materials they had available for other types of domestic production. Aptitude and informal education led some women to become sought-after healers or midwives to whom other women turned in difficult times. Puritan women were part of both heterosocial and homosocial communities which might be sustaining or riddled with conflict. In extreme cases, social conflict might even lead to accusations of witchcraft. Often in those cases, both accused and accusers were Puritan women.

Women and Patriarchy in Early America, 1600–1800

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly A. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Women ◽  
Early America ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere

Patriarchy profoundly affected social relations and the daily lives of individuals in early America by supporting the elaboration of both racial differences and sexual hierarchies. Patriarchal ideals held that men should supervise women and that economic, sexual, legal, and political power rested with men. Laws and religious practices demanded women’s subordination to men, and governmental and extralegal controls on women’s sexual and familial lives buttressed patriarchal ideals and practices by enforcing their dependence on white men. Women played a variety of roles within households, which differed according to region, race, generation, and condition of servitude. Marriage was central to the delineation of white women’s roles, and slavery was critical to developing ideas and laws affecting African American women’s place in society. Interactions with Europeans brought patriarchal influences into native women’s lives. Indian servitude and slavery, European missionary efforts, and cross-cultural diplomacy resulted in the transmission of patriarchal practices that undermined Indian women’s access to political, sexual, economic, and religious power Women gained esteem for fulfilling their duties within the household and community, while others resisted patriarchal customs and forged their own paths. Some women served as agents of patriarchy and used their status or positions to oppress other women. White women often held power over others in their households, including servants and slaves, and in the early republic some of the public sphere activities of middle-class white women targeted the homes of Native Americans, African Americans, and poor women for uplift. Other women resisted subordination and found autonomy by pursuing their own goals. Sexuality was a critical arena in which women could breech dictates on behavior and advance their own agenda, though not always without consequences. Women in urban communities found greater economic opportunities, and some religious communities, like the Society of Friends, allowed women a larger role in decision making and religious speech. Though patriarchal structures would change over time, the idea of men as the leaders of the household and society was remarkably resilient through the 19th century.

Concepts of Mission in Scottish Presbyterianism: The SSPCK, the Highlands and Britain's American Colonies, 1709–40

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 190-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Church

This article examines the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) and its missions in the Highlands and Britain's American colonies. Constituted in 1709 and operating as an auxiliary arm of the Church of Scotland, the SSPCK aimed to extend Christianity in ‘Popish and Infidel parts of the world’. It founded numerous Highland charity schools, and from 1729 sponsored missions to Native Americans in New England and Georgia. Missions were increasingly important in British overseas expansion; consequently, historians have viewed the society as a civilizing agency, which deployed religious instruction to assimilate ‘savage’ heathens into the fold of Britain's empire. This article suggests that the SSPCK was equally concerned with Christianization: missionaries focused on spiritual edification for the salvation of souls, indicating a disjuncture between the society's objectives and the priorities of imperial expansion. It also challenges the parity assumed by historians between the SSPCK's domestic and foreign missions, arguing that the society increasingly prioritized colonial endeavours in an attempt to recover providential favour. In doing so, it sheds new light on Scottish ideas of mission during the first half of the eighteenth century, and reassesses the Scottish Church's role in Britain's emerging empire.

North America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Bell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Early America ◽  
Charles I ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Church

In step with the gradually unfolding imperial policies of the successive governments of King Charles I and later monarchs, the Church of England was extended to the northern part of the Western hemisphere between 1662 and 1829. Under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Plantations until 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from that year, decade after decade an increasing number of men of differing origins and places of collegiate education in Britain came to serve missions of the Church in early America. The ranks included natives of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies, who were supported by the SPG or the legislatures of the provinces in which the Church was established. Development was shaped by imperial policies and administration over 160 years amid rising populations, changing political situations, and the consequences of war and diplomacy.

scholarly journals Slavery in Puritan New England

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-313
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Pleck
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early America ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Staple Crops

Wendy Warren’s deeply researched New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America depends on investigation of handwritten texts rather than the several new databases about slavery and the slave trade. Warren has tracked down references in the extant literature and added research in unpublished court cases, wills, probate inventories, and private papers in New England as well in London. With her ability to convert a line or two in a court deposition or a will into an argument about the nature of New England slavery, Warren successfully circumvents the illegibility of the archive. The theme of this highly accessible study is how the immoral conjunction of cultivating staple crops for export and racialized slavery reshaped the entire Atlantic world, beginning with a fateful exchange of goods and people between the Caribbean and New England.

Algonquian Diasporas

Memory Lands ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Community Members ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Native American Tribes

This chapter examines how King Philip’s War gave rise to a significant but often ignored or misperceived history of bondage, enslavement, and diaspora that took Native Americans far from their northeast homelands, and subjected them to a range of brutal conditions across an Atlantic World. It focuses on Algonquians’ transits into captivity as a consequence of the war, and historicizes this process within longer trajectories of European subjugation of Indigenous populations for labor. The chapter examines how Algonquian individuals and families were forcibly placed into New England colonial as well as Native communities at the war’s conclusion, and how others were transported out of the region for sale across the Atlantic World. The case of King Philip’s wife and son is especially complex, and the chapter considers how traditions around their purported sale into slavery in Bermuda interact with challenging racial politics and archival traces. Modern-day “reconnection” events have linked St. David’s Island community members in Bermuda to Native American tribes in New England. The chapter also reflects on wider dimensions of this Algonquian diaspora, which likely brought Natives to the Caribbean, Azores, and Tangier in North Africa, and propelled Native migrants/refugees into Wabanaki homelands.

New England Puritans: The Grandparents of Modern Protestant Missions

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
Protestant Missions

New England Puritanism was decisive in preparing for the “Great Century of Missions.” Reaching the Native Americans was a leading rationale for the Puritans crossing the Atlantic in the first place. John Eliot established precedents that were looked to as models of missionary practice. David Brainerd joined Eliot as a model missionary, mostly through the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the last great Puritan. To that, Edwards added his emphasis on prayer and his theological struggles for an evangelistically minded Calvinism. His writings were key in teaching English Particular Baptists, among others, that God used means “for the conversion of the heathen.”

Native Americans, Conversion, and Christian Practice in Colonial New England, 1640—1730

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Gospel Message ◽  
Over Time

Fortunately, the two travelers arrived before sunset. Earlier in the day, on 5 May 1674, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin had set out from Boston for Wamesit, the northernmost of the fourteen Indian “praying towns” within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the one most subjected to retaliatory attacks from raiding bands of Mohawks in the previous few years. Upon safe arrival, the Englishmen greeted their Pennacook friends and gathered as many as they could at the wigwam of Wannalancet, the head sachem of Wamesit, where Eliot, the aging missionary to the Indians, proceeded to talk about the meaning of the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22:1—4. Wannalancet, according to Gookin, was a “sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty”; he had from the beginning been “loving and friendly to the English,” and in return they had tried to encourage him to embrace Christianity. Although the English missionaries would have desired him to readily accept the gospel message they preached, Wannalancet voluntarily incorporated Christian practices slowly, over time, without necessarily repudiating his native culture and traditional religious practices.1 For four years Wannalancet “had been willing to hear the word of God preached”; when Eliot or other missionaries made their periodic visits to Wamesit, Wannalancet made sure he was there. Over time, Wannalancet adopted the English practices of keeping the Sabbath, learning to go to any available meeting or instruction, fellowshipping, and refraining from various activities proscribed by the town's praying leaders. Despite all that, however, the English missionaries still complained that he “hath stood off” since he had “not yielded up himself personally.”2

Cities, States, and Citizens in the Atlantic World: Towards a New Narrative

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 179-246
Author(s):  
Emma Hart ◽  
Robert J. Allison ◽  
Paul P. Musselwhite ◽  
Daniel K. Richter ◽  
Mark Peterson
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Early America ◽  
Us History ◽  
Early American ◽  
Mark Peterson ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Abstract In his book Mark Peterson presents an innovative perspective on the development of Boston and its New England hinterland as an early modern city-state. His purpose was to tell the story of Boston in its own right, shedding US national history as the dominant interpretative framework. The four reviewers pick up various strands, focusing, among others, on the validity of the city-state concept, especially as Boston did not become an incorporated city until 1822, criticize what one of them sees as an attempt to return New England to the center of early American historiography, and assess whether the city-state model can be applied elsewhere in early America and in the Atlantic World. In his response, Peterson argues that his aim was not to propose a city-state paradigm for comparative purposes, but rather to employ the city-state concept as the best way to explain Boston’s historical trajectory over two centuries, and to highlight the contingency of US history.

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