Women in Colonial America

Holly Brewer, North Carolina State University

Women’s lives in colonial America were very different from our own in so

many ways. To a great degree, what your life was like depended upon your status and

wealth, your religion, your race, and which colony and which century you lived in.

The variety of experiences is almost dizzying, particularly when race is factored in.

However there are some things they shared which we generally do not. I’ll began with

what they had in common: most importantly, they had many more children than

modern women, across the board. Women’s adult lives, at least between the ages of

20 and 45, and sometimes earlier, was characterized by motherhood: Most women,

most of the time, were either pregnant or nursing, and sometimes both. On average,

women had about nine children, and about 90-95% of women bore children. Their

children were typically born about 2 ½ years apart, because intensive nursing (which

they did for about that long) worked as the most reliable form of birth control. (Note

that this works in societies where calories are limited, but not as well in modern

America). Although some scholars have found that apothecaries and some women

had knowledge about birth control, in the form, generally, of powders that could

cause first term abortions, these do not appear to have been widely used, or indeed,

terribly reliable. On average, women had 9 children, of whom between 5-7

(depending on region) survived to adulthood. The number of children who died was

greater in the South.

Wealthier mothers, amazingly, had even more children: this was because they

did not usually nurse their own. (In the eighteenth century, especially, it would have

been difficult to pick up a newspaper without seeing an ad for a wetnurse (my favorite

is one from the Pennsylvania Gazette that stated simply: “Wanted: A good breast.” )

So Frances Ann Tasker, who was the wife of Robert Carter III and one of the richest

Virginians of the eighteenth century, had 17 children. She was born in 1738, the

daughter of Benjamin and Ann Bladen Tasker. Her father, Benjamin, was a member

of the Council of Maryland (the upper house) just as her future husband would be

(and his grandfather had been before). She married in 1754 (at age 16) and bore her

first child in 1757, just over two years after her marriage, when she was 19. Her last

child was born 26 years later, when she was 45. On average she had a child every year

and a half. She died in 1787, at age 49. Hers was a glamorous life: we know she had

an elegant house, went to many balls, owned several carriages, had plenty of food to

eat. A family tutor, hired to educate the children, claimed that she still looked

beautiful. She was also educated and thoughtful, as the tutor’s notebook reveals. The

family owned many slaves (more than 300) and above 50,000 acres of land, and so

Ann Tasker had to do little of the work that normally accompanied having so many

children: washing diaper clothes and other laundry, cooking meals and tending fires

were not her lot. Still, it is important to think about what all these children meant in

terms of her life; imagine for a moment, the grieving that must have accompanied

each of these children’s deaths (eight died during her life) and the joy that came with

each birth. Imagine, too, the many pregnancies, some of which ended in miscarriage,

the fatigue, the hope, the fear of possibly dying in childbirth. She still did some of the

work tending the younger ones, but her “work” was partly that of a woman whose

husband and family were so politically prominent: entertaining. It is not clear that she

pushed political opinions, as some wives of prominent colonists did (such as the wife

of Governor Berkeley in the seventeenth century) but she was certainly involved in

political discussions, as even the records of her toasting to the King in 1774 indicate.

Still, arguably the most important part of her life was motherhood, and it would

have limited her life significantly just as it enriched it in others. While many studies of

women’s lives during this period point to what they could not do–they couldn’t hold

political office, for example–rarely do they consider why. It was not simply prejudice

that prevented it, although prejudice, especially as promulgated by some religious

teachings, had a role. It was the facts of life: they had little control over their own

bodies. If one is constantly pregnant or nursing–particularly if one does not, like

Frances Tasker, have slaves or servants to do all of the onerous work that was

required to maintain a family, it was an all-consuming task. One had little time for

politics or professions (nor, I should add, did most men either–at least 90% of men

during this time were farmers). Of the other professions–doctor, lawyer, merchant,

blacksmith, etc., women did some. Few men were either doctors or lawyers, and

certainly midwives (usually women past childbearing years themselves) did much of

the medical work. Some women were merchants as well, and a few practiced trades,

such as silversmithing or hatmaking, or sometimes took over the trade their husband

had practiced, such as did Clementina Rind of Virginia (whose husband had been

editor of the Virginia Gazette). Still, fewer women practiced trades than did men, and

I would argue that motherhood was the main reason why.

I go on at such length about these issues because motherhood framed women’s

lives to such a great degree; it was also greatly valued. Looking at gravestones helps

to reveal this in remarkable ways. In the cemetary of Newbury Massachusetts, for

example lies a pair of gravestones marking the lives of a husband and wife who died in

1704 and 1705 respectively. The husband’s is of a modest size, and his epitaph briefly

comments on his contribution as Deacon in his church and his economic success.

Judith’s stone is much bigger, and memorializes her contribution as mother and

grandmother: “To the memory of Mrs. Judith late virtuous wife of Deac. Tristram

Coffin, Esqur. Who having lived to see 177 of her children and children’s children to

the 3d generation died Dec. 15, 1705 aged 80. Grave, sober, faithful, fruitfull vine was

she\ A rare example of true piety\ Widow’d awhile she wayted wisht for rest\ With

her dear husband in her Savior’s breast.”

Anne Bradsteet, who was of her same generation, reflected on women’s lives

in early New England in poetry, which has amazingly survived the centuries (so many

of our sources about women are lost and/or never written (partly because fewer

women were taught to write, partly because records for this period in general were

poorly kept). Bradstreet saw having children as the most intense joys of her life. Her

poem “before the birth of one of her children” written in about 1650, reflects on the

possibility that she might die in childbirth (as happened to perhaps 5-10 percent of

women during one of their births):

“All things within this fading world hath end/

Adversity doth still our joys attend;

No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet

But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet . . .

If any worth or virtue were in me,

Let that live freshly in thy memory

And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,

Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms,

And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains,

Look to my little babes, my dear remains,

And if thou lov thyself, or loved’st me,

These O protect from stepdame’s injury.”

Bradstreet’s poem makes clear that she thought of her husband as a friend and loved

him dearly, just as she did her children, and worried what would happen to them if

she died. In fact death and remarriage were common facts of family life then, just as

divorce is now (divorce then was extremely rare). The deaths of children, especially

under age five, was very common and painful. Sometimes epidemics would carry off

several children in single family in a few weeks time, as did diptheria to three

daughters of Martha Ballard in Massachusetts in the 1760s. (Modern medicine has

helped dramatically; diptheria is now one of the diseases all American children are

vaccinated against).

Puritan religion in New England idealized marriage and family at the same time

as it sought–more than in contemporary England or mainstream Anglican faith–to

privilege the rights of husbands. This meant for many women, like Anne Bradsteet, a

loving and appreciated place in society. For others, however, who transgressed

boundaries, it might make them more likely to be accused of witchcraft (more than

300 people were accused of witchcraft in seventeenth century New England, of whom

80 % were women).

The women who had life the toughest were at the lower end of the social order:

white servants and black slaves. For them, the laws offered few protections from

violence and potentially harsh punishments. White servant women, a significant

portion of the population in the southern colonies, especially in the seventeenth

century, could not marry without their master’s permission. If they came over as

indentured servants from England, they were bound until age 24. If they got pregnant

before that age (again, remember there is almost no access to birth control) then in

Virginia, for example, they would have to serve their master an additional two years

and either pay a fine (which they could not normally do) or have 25 lashes on their

bare back at the public whipping post (each last would draw blood). Their master

could pay the fine for them, but they ususally then had to agree to serve him one

additional year (total of 3). They had few protections against harrassment or even

rape, as study after study of court records reveals. Technically they were supposed to

be able to complain against masters who mistreated them and transferred to new

ones. Also, masters who fathered children on their servant women were not

supposed to reap the benefit of the extra time. However if a woman wanted the

master to pay her fine (and avoid the public whipping post) she might not complain.

(I ran across a shocking case in the early 1750s in Virginia where a woman initially

refused to state the father of her child and the master was assigned her extra two

years. Then, during childbirth, she admitted that the child’s father was her master.

After this evidence was presented in court and her extra two years were transferred to

another, her master refused to pay her fine, and she had to be publically whipped.

Her son was then bound to her master as an apprentice, the normal policy for

illegitimate children. In this case, they were binding the boy to his father.) In short,

such women had few rights. No case of a servant successfully charging a master with

rape has been uncovered. This is not to say that every master would take advantage

of a servant woman, but merely that men so inclined could.

Still, once such women finished their indentures, they had the chance to marry,

and they usually did. If they were lucky, they married well enough to be able to have a

farm that their family owned, or had a husband with a good trade. This might be out

on the frontier, where they were in danger of attack from Indians if war should come,

for land there was much cheaper. If not, they became tenants with their husbands on

others estates. Their lives would then have been full of children, though fewer than

the typical nine, as they started later. Also, they generally lived on the margins, such

that if they or their husband were injured or died, their children would likely be

indentured as apprentices, and they forced to try to earn an income, perhaps, as a

washerwoman (which paid badly) or worse. Life on the margins in early America

wasn’t pretty. Remember that this was a world where firewood had to collected and

brought in even to have heat in the winter. Water, likewise had to be collected from

wells and streams in heavy buckets. Washing clothes alone thus meant carrying water

and wood to boil it, soaking and scrubbing the clothes in a strong lye solution, etc.

Clothes and sheets were fantastically expensive compared to today, partly because

spinning and weaving, especially, was all done by hand, often by women in families.

Food had to be grown or raised. Cookbooks began with such instructions as: kill the

piglet; scrape off the hair; remove the innards . . . And women and men had to do all

of these jobs just to live. Life was physically demanding for everyone.

The lot of enslaved women was the hardest. Their had fewer children,

undoubtedly because they got less to eat and had to work so hard (some body fat is

usually essential for women to conceive). Mortality was also higher among enslaved

children. Most importantly, however, enslaved women were not allowed to legally

marry at all, and had no rights to their children. Both marriages and families could be

(and were) broken apart as masters died or needed money, or whatever. Thus black

women, whose lives like those of white women were circumscribed by the cycle of

pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing, had those bonds cut away even more frequently

than by simply death. Once a child had been sold, or deeded to a relative, or sent

away to live with the white daughter of the master’s family when she married, they

might not ever be heard from again. Marriages too could be broken up in such a way.

Evidence indicates, I should note, that in the eighteenth century such sales were less

common than in the nineteenth: before the Revolution, legal codes (entails) prevented

the ready sale of slaves in some circumstances. Still, the lack of recognition of slave

families must have been a heavy burden. These stories are difficult to fully recover,

but consider the enslaved woman “Arrabell” who lived in Berkeley County, South

Carolina, in 171. She named one of her children “Mines,” which indicates her

attachment, and when her master died soon afterwards, Arabell and Mines were sold

together, which often happened when the child was under five. Still, she was lucky,

that time.

Slave women, much more than white women of any class, were more likely to

have to work in the fields. In Anglo-American culture, most agricultural labor was

considered men’s work, except in the case of slaves. Occaisionally, white women

would be pressed into service in emergency, such as if the harvest needed to be

brought in in a hurry. However generally this was considered inappropriate work for

white women.

The cultural norms were so strongly against it that when European observers

saw Indian women doing the main cultivating, they accused Indian men of enslaving

their wives. These are of course cultural norms, and Indian women were definitely

not enslaved by their husbands (they in fact had more privileges, politically and

otherwise, than white women, compared to their men). Indeed, Indian women played

roles in, for example, treaty negotiation. Indian men’s work–of hunting to provide all

of the meat and furs (clothes) for themselves and tribes–was much more onerous than

whites realized (of course Europeans raised cattle and pigs, so hunting for them was a

luxury).

This brief survey leaves so much unsaid. In closing I’d like to talk briefly about

the American Revolution and its impact on women. The Revolutionary rhetoric, with

its appeal to “all men are created equal” potentially meant opportunity for women too.

However the Common Law, as that was being reinterpreted in the late eighteenth

century, actually was cutting down on married women’s rights, granting more control

to husbands over the wife’s property and giving him more authority over her. The

early nineteenth century would open new chapters in women’s experiences in more

ways than one: the revolutionary promise inspired some women to try to fulfill it,

leading to the growth of the women’s rights movement (made more fierce, I think, by

the countervailing trend in the common law); in some places, women who met

property requirements were allowed to vote in the wake of the Revoluiton (in New

Jersey) or thought they should, like Abigail Adams. They ceased to punish women for

illegitimacy and stopped using public whipping posts, except for slaves; indeed

indentured servitude became much rarer for whites.

At the same time, knowledge about birth control was spreading (and arguably

the costs of having a family were going up)– by the middle of the nineteenth century,

women were having on average half the number of children that they did in the

colonial period. Freedom from the joys and cares of childbirth and rearing would give

some women more options in terms of professional lives, that meant that more

women sought to challenge emerging norms about work boundaries. This is

complicated, because mens options in terms of trades and professions were changing

so profoundly during this period as well, with many of the traditional trades in decline,

with the emergence of factories, with growing opportunities for doctors (and the

decline of midwifery) and lawyers.

Many historians who write about women’s lives in the colonial period focus on

their legal and cultural restraints: noting, for example, that they couldn’t be lawyers.

However I prefer to focus on the what they could and did do, what made their lives

rich and fulfilling, which was to a great degree their role as mothers. It is pretty clear

that most women, however, given the choice, would have fewer children. Arguably,

control over fertility has made the biggest difference in women’s lives, in their ability

to pursue work outside of the home and professional careers.