Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England
In the year 1883 I prepared a somewhat detailed sketch of the history of the North Precinct of the original town of Braintree, subsequently incorporated as Quincy, which was published and can now be found in the large volume entitled “History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts.” In the preparation of that sketch I had at my command a quantity of material of more or less historical value, – including printed and manuscript records, letters, journals, traditions both oral and written, etc., – bearing on social customs, and political and religious questions or conditions. The study of this material caused me to use in my sketch the following language: —
“That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later, is a proposition which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The habits of those days were simpler than those of the present; they were also essentially grosser. The community was small; and it hardly needs to be said that where the eyes of all are upon each, the general scrutiny is a safeguard to morals. It is in cities, not in villages, that laxity is to be looked for.” But “now and again, especially in the relations between the sexes, we get glimpses of incidents in the dim past which are as dark as they are suggestive. Some such are connected with Quincy… The illegitimate child was more commonly met with in the last than in the present century, and bastardy cases furnished a class of business with which country lawyers seem to have been as familiar then as they are with liquor cases now.”1
Being now engaged in the work of revising and rewriting the sketch in which this extract occurs, I have recently had occasion to examine again the material to which I have alluded; and I find that, though the topic to which it relates in part is one which cannot be fully and freely treated in a work intended for general reading, yet the material itself contains much of value and interest. Neither is the topic I have referred to in itself one which can be ignored in an historical view, though, as I have reason to believe, there has been practised in New England an almost systematic suppression of evidence in regard to it; for not only are we disposed always to look upon the past as a somewhat Arcadian period, – a period in which life and manners were simpler, better and more genuine than they now are, – not only, I say, are we disposed to look upon the past as a sort of golden era when compared with the present, but there is also a sense of filial piety connected with it. Like Shem and Japhet, approaching it with averted eyes we are disposed to cover up with a garment the nakedness of the progenitors; and the severe looker after truth, who wants to have things appear exactly as they were, and does not believe in the suppression of evidence, – the investigator of this sort is apt to be looked upon as a personage of no discretion and doubtful utility, – as, in a word, a species of modern Ham, who, having unfortunately seen what ought to have been covered up, is eager, out of mere levity or prurience, to tell his “brethren without” all about it.
On this subject I concur entirely in the sentiments of our orator, Colonel Higginson, as expressed in his address at the Society’s recent centennial. The truth of history is a sacred thing, – a thing of far more importance than its dignity, – and the truth of history should not be sacrificed to sentiment, patriotism or filial piety. Neither, in like manner, when it comes to scientific historical research, can propriety, whether of subject or, in the case of original material, of language, be regarded. To this last principle the published pages of Winthrop and Bradford bear evidence; and, in my judgment, the Massachusetts Historical Society has, in a career now both long and creditable, done nothing more creditable to itself than in once for all, through the editorial action of Mr. Savage and Mr. Deane, settling this principle in the publications referred to. I am, of course, well aware that Mr. Savage did not edit Winthrop’s History for this Society, but nevertheless he is so identified with the Society that his work may fairly be considered part of its record. Whether part of its record or not, Mr. Savage and Mr. Deane, – than whom no higher authorities are here recognized, – in the publications referred to, did settle the principle that mawkishness is just as much out of place in scientific historical research as prurience would be, or as sentiment, piety and patriotism are. These last-named attributes of our nature, indeed, – most noble, elevating and attractive in their proper spheres, – always have been, now are, and I think I may safely say will long continue to be, the bane of thorough historical research, and ubiquitous stumbling-blocks in the way of scientific results.
But in the case of history, as with medicine and many other branches of science and learning, there are, as I have already said, many matters which cannot be treated freely in works intended for general circulation, – matters which none the less may be, and often are, important and deserving of thorough mention. Certainly they should not be ignored or suppressed. And this is exactly one of the uses to which historical societies are best adapted. Like medical and other similar associations, historical societies are scientific bodies in which all subjects relating to their department of learning both can and should be treated with freedom, so that reference may be made, in books intended for popular reading, to historical-society collections as pure scientific depositories. It is this course I propose to pursue in the present case; and such material at my disposal as I cannot well use freely in the work upon which I am now engaged, will be incorporated in the present paper, and made accessible in the printed Proceedings of the Society for such general reference as may be desirable.
Among the unpublished material to which I have referred are the records of the First Church of Quincy, – originally and for more than a century and a half (1639-1792) the Braintree North Precinct Church. The volume of these records covering the earliest period of the history of the Society cannot now be found. It was in the possession of the church in 1739, for it was then used and referred to by the Rev. John Hancock, father of the patriot, and fifth pastor of the church, in the preparation of two centennial sermons preached by him at that time; but eighty-five years later, when, in 1824, the parish was separated from the town, the earliest book of regular records then transferred from the town to the parish clerk went no farther back than Jan. 17, 1708.
There is, however, another volume of records still in existence, apparently not kept by the regular precinct clerk, the entries in which, all relating to the period between 1673 and 1773, seem to have been made by five successive pastors. Small and bound in leather, the paper of which this volume is made up is of that rough, parchment character in such common use during the last century, and the entries in it, in five different handwritings, are in many cases scarcely legible, and frequently of the most confidential character. In the main they are records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths; but some of them relate to matters of church discipline, and these throw a curious light on the social habits of a period now singularly remote. In view of what this volume contains, the loss of the previous volume containing the record of the church’s spiritual life from the time it was organized to 1673, a period of thirty-four years, becomes truly an hiatus valde deflendus.2
For a full understanding of the situation it is merely necessary further to say that, during the period to which all the entries in the volume from which I am about to quote relate, Braintree was a Massachusetts sea-board town of the ordinary character. It numbered a population ranging from some seven hundred souls in 1673, to about twenty-five hundred a century later; the majority of whom during the first half of the eighteenth century lived in the North Precinct of the original town, now Quincy. The meeting-house, about which clustered the colonial village, stood on the old Plymouth road, between the tenth and the eleventh mile-posts south of Boston. The people were chiefly agriculturists, living on holdings somewhat widely scattered; the place had no especial trade or leading industry, and no commerce; so that, when describing the country a few years before, in 1660, – and since then the conditions had not greatly changed, – Samuel Maverick said of Braintree, – “It subsists by raising provisions, and furnishing Boston with wood.”3 In reading the following extracts from the records, it is also necessary to bear in mind that during the eighteenth century the whole social and intellectual as well as religious life of the Massachusetts towns not only centred about the church, but was concentrated in it. The church was practically a club as well as a religious
History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, p. 231.
In 1839 the Rev. William P. Lunt prepared and delivered before the First Congregational Church of Quincy two most scholarly and admirable historical discourses on the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the gathering of the society. In the appendix to these discourses (p. 93) Dr. Lunt states that the earlier records of the church had never been in the possession of either of its then ministers, the Rev. Peter Whitney or himself; and he adds: “In a conversation with Dr. Harris, formerly the respected pastor of Dorchester First Congregational Church, I understood him to say that Mr. Welde, formerly pastor of what is now Braintree Church, had these records in his possession; but when he obtained them, and for what purpose, was not explained. They are probably now irrecoverably lost. As curious and interesting relics of old times, their loss must be regretted.”
The extent of this loss is here stated by Dr. Lunt with great moderation. The records in question cover the history of the Braintree church during the whole of the theocratic period in Massachusetts; and, for reasons which will appear in my forthcoming history of Quincy, the loss of these records causes not only an irreparable but a most serious break, so far as Braintree is concerned, in the discussion of one of the most interesting of all the problems connected with the origin and development of the New England town, and system of town-government. There is room for hope that the missing volume may yet come to light.
Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 2d series, vol. i. p. 239.
