Childhood in the Early Colonial Period

Abstract

A great deal has been written about the life, struggles, and accomplishments of pioneer men and women who crossed the ocean to build a new world in the wilderness; but infant and child life during early colonial days is largely hidden in obscurity. Little has been recorded.¹

It is known that few children under the age of 7 survived in the crowded immigrant ships: falling into the sea, accidents, hunger, thirst, and sickness took its sad toll. Nevertheless, there were many young^2-5: a third of the founders of Plymouth were children; Puritan youth were evident in the great migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony; several cargoes of poor children and orphans from Dutch almshouses were "bound out" to the burghers of New Netherlands; children were frequently dispatched from England as indentured servants and apprentices; the London Company sent 100 children to Virginia in 1619, and 1,500, kidnapped from Ireland and England, in 1627; African slave children were shipped to the colonies after 1620; and the colonial mother⁶ bore many children, buried many, and often followed them to the grave at an early age. Fecundity,⁵ characteristic of early colonists, served to people a continent (the population was 2.5 million in 1776), and provided needed child labor. Over 50% of Plymouth colony consisted of children.⁷

Colonial children were viewed as miniature adults; and boys and girls were dressed alike until the age of 7.^1,7,8 The infant^1,7 wore a long linen smock; was covered with a woolen blanket; and a wooden or wicker cradle, hooded to protect from cold draughts, much like those in which Indian babies slept, was its bed.