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Daily Life in Colonial New England
Life for the individuals who chose to come to New England during the Colonial Period was anything but easy. This reference resource explores the everyday details of colonial life in New England and exposes as myth much of what we might believe about this era, environment and people. How exactly and why did their religious beliefs help structure their lives? What roles did women play in this society? How were people tried and punished for their crimes? Students can find thoroughly researched answers to these questions and others to help them learn exactly what everyday life was like for New Englanders during the Colonial Period. Students may be surprised to find what a large role the environment played in these people's lives, from the structuring of their homes to their diet and health. Religion was a driving force for most of them, in ways that may be difficult for modern-day readers to understand. Here readers will find an excellent description of how religion could play the role it did and how it affected the details of everyday living. Details of the lives of the Native Americans in New England during this era as well as Africans who had been brought to this location by the settlers are also provided.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 31, 2018
Shout out to the public library of Mentor Ohio for mailing me their copy of this book ✌️
Daily Life in Colonial New England is extremely well researched. Very detailed and thoughtful. It was interesting to look at the Puritans from the perspectives of someone from both the 17th and 21st centuries.
Daily Life in Colonial New England is extremely well researched. Very detailed and thoughtful. It was interesting to look at the Puritans from the perspectives of someone from both the 17th and 21st centuries.
June 13, 2018
When we moved to Rhode Island at the end of April, I decided to read as much about Rhode Island in particular and New England in general that I could in order to become acquainted with the new culture in which we found ourselves.
This book goes along way with learning more about New England and the history that is painted is not for the most part a pretty one.
The best way I know to review it is just to copy the notes I made while reading it covering the areas I found most important and poignant.
The Puritans put their stamp on area from the very beginning establishing a hierarchy that was largely impenetrable by the common person.
Puritan clergy made it clear that the social status into which one was born helped one identify the calling God aimed for a person to follow. For certain work belonged to certain social levels. For example, ministers, legislators and merchants did not come from the lower cases. And it was blasphemy to assume a calling or work outside the social level to which one was born.” (55-56)
“It was believed that someone who worked sufficiently hard and well at his God-intended calling was bound to accumulate wealth and capital and land. Almost unconsciously, wealth came to be thought of as a mark of a good hard-working person & poverty was thought to be the result of shiftlessness.” (57)
The economy of the colony was tightly controlled, usually to the benefit of the nine wealthy men who sat on the Court of Assistants. They controlled the land and could assign it as they saw fit. They made the laws and could assign monopolies in various areas and put ceilings on the wages of the workmen they had to hire. One of the first orders of business in 1630 was to place a ceiling on the wages of much-needed carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, sawers, and thatchers. These limits were repeatedly revised and restated. Limits were placed on innkeepers could charge for food and drink. Servants were not allowed to sell any commodity without the permission of their masters. No one could buy land from the natives without permission of the court. In 1631, the court ruled that no one could buy commodities directly from an incoming ship; all had to go through licenses merchants.” (59-60)
“Clergymen were provided with good incomes, farms and often slaves to work their farms.” (60)
“Teachers and tutors were males on the lowest rung of the professional ladder…the salary of a teacher was one-half to two-thirds of the usual clergyman salary.” (60)
“Illnesses, both individually and collectively were invariably attributed to by the clergy to sin. At the funerals of children who had died of natural causes, ministers attributed the deaths to the sins of the parents. Ministers were also convinced that epidemics of disease, and especially the deaths of Puritan leaders, were proof of God’s anger toward a sinful community, which had brought the disaster on itself.” (105)
When a woman married in New England any property she owned became the property of the husband. (109)
“Art was discouraged because it promoted idleness regarded as one of the worse sins in colonial New England.” (120)
Most performing arts, especially theatre were banned from the New England colonies until 1793.
Dancing in public houses was banned in 1646.
There was no celebration of any holy days including Christmas. (121)
“Most New Englanders regarded the imagination as an agent of the devil who through appeals to human imagination, leads people to commit all manner of sinful overt actions as well as sins of the mind and heart.” (126)
On slavery:
An infamous triangle of trade developed. Slave traders took New World beans, corn, lumber, fish, and other goods to the West Indies in exchange for rum. From the West Indies, they sailed to Africa, where they exchanged the rum for slaves, returning to the West Indies with the slaves and picking up rum, sugar, and molasses to bring back to New England. The healthiest and strongest slaves were always sold in the West Indies to the sugar planters. The comparatively few slaves kept in New England were, on the whole, the weakest physically. An acute shortage of labor in the eighteenth century prompted the importation of even greater number of slaves….by the time of the American Revolution, slave trading was a cornerstone of the New England economy.” (148)
“Boston was the chief port of the slave trade.” (148)
“The founders of Brown University in Rhode Island made their fortunes as slave traders.”
“Slavery was justified on the economic grounds that slave trading was good for the economy and that slave holding assisted the industry and farming in New England during labor shortage.
Slavery was also justified on religious grounds. Cotton Mather thought that slavery brought black Africans out of darkness into the godly company of the chosen people.” (149)
“In 1715 158,000 whites and 4,150 blacks lived in New England. By 1776 the number of blacks had increased to 16, 034. Less than 1/8th of New England families owned slaves.” (150)
“Although Africans were considered to be barbarians, slaves were fully integrated into the households of the masters for whom they worked, creating a situation that fell somewhere between slavery and indentured servanthood, the daily lives differing little from that of their masters in terms of the work they performed and the food, shelter, and clothing. They also had access to New England courts.
Black slaves in New England met a general need across the labor market in colonial times. Whereas in the South, most slaves who worked outside the house were engaged in farming of cotton, rice, and tobacco, slaves in New England did almost every kind of work that white workers did. Each slave performed whatever work his or her master performed, generally working alongside the master….On farms, slaves had to have a greater degree of skill and versatility than they had in the South…..
Slaves worked in every conceivable industry in New England, ship-building, lumbering, forging iron, blacksmithing, tanning, printing, carpentry, barrel making, innkeeping, and distilling. They also worked as artisans for tailors, barbers, bakers, sawyers, and anchor and rope makers. Usually the master and his slave worked side by side….
A few slaves in New England also entered professions in colonial days having been apprenticed to physicians and doctors, ministers and lawyers.” (151-152)
“In the south marriage between slaves was not legalized or formalized, but New England encouraged marriages between slaves.” (152)
“After these matters were settled, banns were published, a ceremony was performed- usually in the living room of one of the masters- followed by a wedding feast.” (152)
“Any children of the couple legally belonged to the mother’s master.” (152)
“In some instances, infants considered burdensome were given away, occasionally before they were born.” (153)
“Slaves were fed well in New England. They not only ate the same food provided for the master’s table in most cases they ate at the same table as the master.” (153)
“The quarters of slaves were also decent.”
“Sick slaves were attended by the same physicians who treated the master’s family, and children were delivered by white midwives.” (153)
“New England did not forbid or limit the education of their slaves aso southerners did. Rather, kind masters and concerned clergymen encouraged their slaves to become literate, well read, and well trained. For many slaves, who took on the same work performed by their masters, education and training were necessary for them to do their jobs.” (153)
“Slaves were taught to accept their lowly position in life. It was not their masters who had enslaved them, they were told, but God himself.” (154)
“But the argument that bothered most religious New Englanders was this: the biblical warning that no Christian could hold another Christian in bondage. Thus to convert a slave to Christianity and retain him or her as a slave was a violation of God’s Word. To get around this impediment, based on race: they might be Christian, but they are still black and therefore sons of Ham and meant to be enslaved….
By 1776, at the end of the colonial period, most New England black slaves were not converted to Christianity.” (155)
“By 1790, slavery had been outlawed in all New England.” (157)
When the reign of Puritan oppression came to an end, it was largely England that was responsible. They were aghast at the Salem witch trials.
“The decisive steps taken by the English, from the time of the loss of the charter to the Revolution, loosened Puritan control of government. Furthermore, church attendance was no longer a legal obligation and church membership was no longer a requisite for suffrage, opening the franchise & government participation for many more independent-minded citizens who would not be manipulated by the Puritan clergy. Anti-heresy laws were expunged, leaving the clergy with no legal weapons with which to fight their enemies.” (201)
And what was the result of the Puritan reign in New England on the rest of the nation?
“In a very real sense, however much of what we value as a nation seemed to emerge as a reaction against New England Puritanism. One might argue that our fundamental rights and liberties came into being as a part of the backlash against decades of Puritan oppression.” (202)
This was a fine and well-written book from which I learned a great deal.
This book goes along way with learning more about New England and the history that is painted is not for the most part a pretty one.
The best way I know to review it is just to copy the notes I made while reading it covering the areas I found most important and poignant.
The Puritans put their stamp on area from the very beginning establishing a hierarchy that was largely impenetrable by the common person.
Puritan clergy made it clear that the social status into which one was born helped one identify the calling God aimed for a person to follow. For certain work belonged to certain social levels. For example, ministers, legislators and merchants did not come from the lower cases. And it was blasphemy to assume a calling or work outside the social level to which one was born.” (55-56)
“It was believed that someone who worked sufficiently hard and well at his God-intended calling was bound to accumulate wealth and capital and land. Almost unconsciously, wealth came to be thought of as a mark of a good hard-working person & poverty was thought to be the result of shiftlessness.” (57)
The economy of the colony was tightly controlled, usually to the benefit of the nine wealthy men who sat on the Court of Assistants. They controlled the land and could assign it as they saw fit. They made the laws and could assign monopolies in various areas and put ceilings on the wages of the workmen they had to hire. One of the first orders of business in 1630 was to place a ceiling on the wages of much-needed carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, sawers, and thatchers. These limits were repeatedly revised and restated. Limits were placed on innkeepers could charge for food and drink. Servants were not allowed to sell any commodity without the permission of their masters. No one could buy land from the natives without permission of the court. In 1631, the court ruled that no one could buy commodities directly from an incoming ship; all had to go through licenses merchants.” (59-60)
“Clergymen were provided with good incomes, farms and often slaves to work their farms.” (60)
“Teachers and tutors were males on the lowest rung of the professional ladder…the salary of a teacher was one-half to two-thirds of the usual clergyman salary.” (60)
“Illnesses, both individually and collectively were invariably attributed to by the clergy to sin. At the funerals of children who had died of natural causes, ministers attributed the deaths to the sins of the parents. Ministers were also convinced that epidemics of disease, and especially the deaths of Puritan leaders, were proof of God’s anger toward a sinful community, which had brought the disaster on itself.” (105)
When a woman married in New England any property she owned became the property of the husband. (109)
“Art was discouraged because it promoted idleness regarded as one of the worse sins in colonial New England.” (120)
Most performing arts, especially theatre were banned from the New England colonies until 1793.
Dancing in public houses was banned in 1646.
There was no celebration of any holy days including Christmas. (121)
“Most New Englanders regarded the imagination as an agent of the devil who through appeals to human imagination, leads people to commit all manner of sinful overt actions as well as sins of the mind and heart.” (126)
On slavery:
An infamous triangle of trade developed. Slave traders took New World beans, corn, lumber, fish, and other goods to the West Indies in exchange for rum. From the West Indies, they sailed to Africa, where they exchanged the rum for slaves, returning to the West Indies with the slaves and picking up rum, sugar, and molasses to bring back to New England. The healthiest and strongest slaves were always sold in the West Indies to the sugar planters. The comparatively few slaves kept in New England were, on the whole, the weakest physically. An acute shortage of labor in the eighteenth century prompted the importation of even greater number of slaves….by the time of the American Revolution, slave trading was a cornerstone of the New England economy.” (148)
“Boston was the chief port of the slave trade.” (148)
“The founders of Brown University in Rhode Island made their fortunes as slave traders.”
“Slavery was justified on the economic grounds that slave trading was good for the economy and that slave holding assisted the industry and farming in New England during labor shortage.
Slavery was also justified on religious grounds. Cotton Mather thought that slavery brought black Africans out of darkness into the godly company of the chosen people.” (149)
“In 1715 158,000 whites and 4,150 blacks lived in New England. By 1776 the number of blacks had increased to 16, 034. Less than 1/8th of New England families owned slaves.” (150)
“Although Africans were considered to be barbarians, slaves were fully integrated into the households of the masters for whom they worked, creating a situation that fell somewhere between slavery and indentured servanthood, the daily lives differing little from that of their masters in terms of the work they performed and the food, shelter, and clothing. They also had access to New England courts.
Black slaves in New England met a general need across the labor market in colonial times. Whereas in the South, most slaves who worked outside the house were engaged in farming of cotton, rice, and tobacco, slaves in New England did almost every kind of work that white workers did. Each slave performed whatever work his or her master performed, generally working alongside the master….On farms, slaves had to have a greater degree of skill and versatility than they had in the South…..
Slaves worked in every conceivable industry in New England, ship-building, lumbering, forging iron, blacksmithing, tanning, printing, carpentry, barrel making, innkeeping, and distilling. They also worked as artisans for tailors, barbers, bakers, sawyers, and anchor and rope makers. Usually the master and his slave worked side by side….
A few slaves in New England also entered professions in colonial days having been apprenticed to physicians and doctors, ministers and lawyers.” (151-152)
“In the south marriage between slaves was not legalized or formalized, but New England encouraged marriages between slaves.” (152)
“After these matters were settled, banns were published, a ceremony was performed- usually in the living room of one of the masters- followed by a wedding feast.” (152)
“Any children of the couple legally belonged to the mother’s master.” (152)
“In some instances, infants considered burdensome were given away, occasionally before they were born.” (153)
“Slaves were fed well in New England. They not only ate the same food provided for the master’s table in most cases they ate at the same table as the master.” (153)
“The quarters of slaves were also decent.”
“Sick slaves were attended by the same physicians who treated the master’s family, and children were delivered by white midwives.” (153)
“New England did not forbid or limit the education of their slaves aso southerners did. Rather, kind masters and concerned clergymen encouraged their slaves to become literate, well read, and well trained. For many slaves, who took on the same work performed by their masters, education and training were necessary for them to do their jobs.” (153)
“Slaves were taught to accept their lowly position in life. It was not their masters who had enslaved them, they were told, but God himself.” (154)
“But the argument that bothered most religious New Englanders was this: the biblical warning that no Christian could hold another Christian in bondage. Thus to convert a slave to Christianity and retain him or her as a slave was a violation of God’s Word. To get around this impediment, based on race: they might be Christian, but they are still black and therefore sons of Ham and meant to be enslaved….
By 1776, at the end of the colonial period, most New England black slaves were not converted to Christianity.” (155)
“By 1790, slavery had been outlawed in all New England.” (157)
When the reign of Puritan oppression came to an end, it was largely England that was responsible. They were aghast at the Salem witch trials.
“The decisive steps taken by the English, from the time of the loss of the charter to the Revolution, loosened Puritan control of government. Furthermore, church attendance was no longer a legal obligation and church membership was no longer a requisite for suffrage, opening the franchise & government participation for many more independent-minded citizens who would not be manipulated by the Puritan clergy. Anti-heresy laws were expunged, leaving the clergy with no legal weapons with which to fight their enemies.” (201)
And what was the result of the Puritan reign in New England on the rest of the nation?
“In a very real sense, however much of what we value as a nation seemed to emerge as a reaction against New England Puritanism. One might argue that our fundamental rights and liberties came into being as a part of the backlash against decades of Puritan oppression.” (202)
This was a fine and well-written book from which I learned a great deal.
July 2, 2025
Learned some things and have a better understanding about what a repressive government can do to a people. Our ancestors were made very afraid. There was lack of adequate food and shelter, a prescription to 'come to God' while laboring within your proscribed calling. There were droughts and waves of deadly disease and the natives menacing communities. For infringement of rules there were the stocks on the green, whippings, banishment. People you knew were made an example of. . .Anne Hutchinson, the Quakers, Mary Dyer. In the aftermath of puritan persecutions "ever-pressing lessons perpetually warned that anything one said, any association one had, any enemy one made, could lead to being branded as a criminal, subject to prison or public corporeal punishment or worse."
April 26, 2022
Very interesting look at Colonial New England. Well researched but not so in-depth that the reader loses interest.
June 16, 2009
Fascinating, well-researched book that is sort of half textbook, half narrative (don't know what that format would be called). While I never was one for historic facts and tend to forget them as soon as I hear them, I've always been fascinated with Colonial New England -- and this breaks it down into fun chapters such as Crime and Punishment, Shelter and Attire, Indentured Servants, and Marriage and Sex(!). Great book! Other volumes in this Daily Life In series are about US in 1960-1990 (may try that one) and Civil War America, as well as Victorian England, 18th Century England, and 19th Century American Frontier. Hate to think of myself as a self-absorbed American, but I'm not interested in the England ones. Oh well! Maybe one day if I get absorbed enough in American history I'll want to venture off our shores.
August 26, 2011
This is an awesome book!
As part of my research of early life in America (to add another dimension to this historical journey); see my original series review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
This book is so clearly written that even my youngest grandchildren (ages 4, 7 & 9) could understand it. It offers an indebth look at colonial New England life. The information was so precise, that it can be easily followed to set up a reproduction of colonial life. I was so enthralled by the book, that I finished it in one day! This was an extrodinary book, with obsessively accurate information; hail to William Burns for his work!
As part of my research of early life in America (to add another dimension to this historical journey); see my original series review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
This book is so clearly written that even my youngest grandchildren (ages 4, 7 & 9) could understand it. It offers an indebth look at colonial New England life. The information was so precise, that it can be easily followed to set up a reproduction of colonial life. I was so enthralled by the book, that I finished it in one day! This was an extrodinary book, with obsessively accurate information; hail to William Burns for his work!
August 6, 2015
This is a book for die hard history lovers as I think others would find it mind numbingly boring. With that in mind, I do love history so I found it extremely interesting to read about daily life in Puritan New England. Before reading this book, I used to think that life back in early America was a utopian society. Now, I have to admit, that I'm actually glad I live in modern times. Children playing outside on the Sabbath could cause their parents to be whipped! No thanks - not for me! I recommend reading this if you are truly interested in understanding more about Colonial life - otherwise leave it for the history nerds such as myself :)
July 1, 2015
Very easy to read and I learned quite a bit more bout the Puritans, from a critical viewpoint. t's easy to gloss over their atrocities in favor of their positive contributions. Those faults have caused a good deal of conflict in this country to this day, so it is good to see them realistically.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews