Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history Book 1) (VOLUME I)

by David Hackett Fischer

A case in point was the web that formed between the Mather and Cotton families. The founders of these two houses in America, John Cotton and Richard Mather, both married the same woman, Sarah Story. John Cotton’s daughter Maria Cotton became the wife of Richard Mather’s son Increase Mather. A child of that union was the eminent minister Cotton Mather. By these various connections, John Cotton was simultaneously Cotton Mather’s natural grandfather on the mother’s side, and his step-grandfather on his father’s side. At the same time, Richard Mather was both Cotton Mather’s paternal grandfather, and his maternal step-grandfather. To compound the confusion, Cotton Mather married Ann Lake Cotton Mather, who was both his cousin and also his nephew’s widow.

At the same time, the cold climate also had other cultural consequences. It proved to be exceptionally dangerous to immigrants from tropical Africa, who suffered severely from pulmonary infections in New England winters. Black death rates in colonial Massachusetts were twice as high as whites’—a pattern very different from Virginia where mortality rates for the two races were not so far apart, and still more different from South Carolina where white death rates were higher than those of blacks. So high was mortality among African immigrants in New England that race slavery was not viable on a large scale, despite many attempts to introduce it. Slavery was not impossible in this region, but the human and material costs were higher than many wished to pay. A labor system which was fundamentally hostile to the Puritan ethos of New England was kept at bay partly by the climate.6

The Puritans often quoted the Pauline expression that the husband was “the head of the wife.” Sermons and advice-books (all written by men) uniformly urged that a woman was duty-bound to submit to her husband, and counseled obedience and resignation in that respect. Ministers also preached that the husband ruled with God-given authority, and even represented divine sovereignty in the family. This idea was summarized in one of Milton’s mighty lines: “He for God only; She for God in Him.”5

This dual idea of the depravity of infants and the perversity of their natural will led Puritans to the conclusion that the first and most urgent purpose of child rearing was what they called the “breaking of the will.” This was a determined effort to destroy a spirit of autonomy in a small child—a purpose which lay near the center of child rearing in Massachusetts.3

Another staple of New England diet was rough brown bread, which the first generation made from a coarse mix of wheat flour and cornmeal. After a disease called wheat rust became a major problem in the 1660s, this mixture was replaced by rye flour and cornmeal—the immortal “rye n’ injun” which nourished New Englanders for many generations. This combination produced a crust so hard that it could be used in place of a spoon to scoop up the beans. Wheat flour alone was reserved for special occasions, and ornamental uses such as the top layer of pies—hence the New-England folk expression, “upper crust.”

Washing was uncommon amongst these people. Charles Francis Adams recalled that there were no baths in the town of Quincy for two hundred years. But much use was made of scented powders and leaves. Houses were hung with bouquets of herbs. Perfumed leaves were heated over the fire, to mask the ripe aroma of the inhabitants.

Sad colors also survive in the official culture of New England. In the older universities of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, scholars and athletes do not appear in colors such as Princeton’s gaudy orange or Oxford’s brilliant blues and reds. The color of Harvard is a dreary off-purple euphemistically called crimson. Brown University’s idea of high color is dark brown, trimmed with black. On ceremonial occasions, the president of that institution wears a mud-colored garment which is approximately the color of used coffee grounds. Dartmouth prefers a gloomy forest-green. All of these shades were on the official list of “sadd colours” in 1638; and are still in vogue today.

Even so, by comparison with other cultures, New England was remarkably egalitarian. As late as 1765, a British aristocrat named Lord Adam Gordon traveled widely in New England. He observed with an air of disapproval that “the levelling principle here, everywhere, operates strongly and takes the lead. Everybody has property, and everybody knows it.” He was correct both in the fact and the cause. The wealth ways of new England rose in large measure from a “levelling principle” which was embedded in its culture.16

Here was an event of no small importance in American history. The founders of Massachusetts, unlike the rulers of other European colonies, deliberately excluded an aristocracy from their ranking system. At the same time, the leaders of Massachusetts also made a concerted and highly successful effort to discourage immigration from the bottom of English society. They prohibited the entry of convicted felons (many of whom had been punished for crimes of poverty) and placed heavy impediments in the path of the migrant poor. A series of poor laws were enacted in Massachusetts, with rules of settlement and “warning out” that were even more strict than in England.