Customs and Fashions in Old New England

In Short

Alice Morse Earle’s historical study reconstructs the daily existence of colonial New Englanders from infancy to the grave. Synthesizing early diaries, almanacs, town records, and old newspaper advertisements, the book details the physical realities of early American life—from pediatric cold-water baths and strict courtship rituals to domestic service troubles, larder supplies, tavern customs, and elaborate funeral displays. Earle reveals how European traditions evolved under harsh provincial conditions, celebrating the endurance of ancestors while acknowledging the hard edges of their society. The work endures as a vivid, humored, and meticulously researched window into early American social history.

The Story

The book traces the human lifecycle alongside the material culture of early New England. It begins at infancy, where newborn children face Spartan survival conditions in freezing, drafty homes. Medical advice of the period recommends hardening infants by drenching their feet in cold water, dressing them in thin soles, and feeding them warm beer and brown bread rather than sweets. As children grow into youth, they encounter strict societal governance, yet manage to secure simple joys like crystalline rock candy or rare imports brought home by merchant ships.

Transitioning into adulthood, courtship and marriage emerge as structured yet surprisingly complex social affairs. Through the candid diary entries of figures like Judge Samuel Sewall, courtship reveals itself as a blend of genuine affection and pragmatic negotiation over property. Weddings feature psalm-singing, sack-posset drinks, and bride-cake gifts, gradually evolving over decades into elaborate social gatherings where dozens of contra-dances, minuets, and hornpipes stretch late into the night. Within the home, domestic management presents constant hurdles. Indentured servants and bound youths frequently rebel against hard labor and poor rations, stealing food or running away, while housewives struggle to secure reliable help.

Earle then turns her lens toward the physical framework of colonial domestic life. Early homes progress from dark, oiled-paper windows and exposed summer-tree ceiling beams to wainscoted walls, imported glass panes, and landscape wall-papers. Inside these spaces, time is marked by sun-dials and hour-glasses before tall clocks become common. Tables shift from pewter voiders and basic trenchers to refined china, milk-ewers, and silver sugar-boxes. Food and drink tell a story of adaptation: early settlers endure years of near-starvation, subsisting on clams or five kernels of corn, before establishing abundant larders stocked with hasty-pottage, venue-pasties, and spiced metheglin or cider sillabubs. Travel across the colonies remains rugged, relying on turnpikes, sedans, and licensed taverns bearing quirky names like the Two Palaverers or the Good Woman.

Public life and diversions gradually widen. Despite religious cautions against idle shows, amusement-hungry crowds flock to see touring lions, Greenland bears, and wild catamounts. Print culture grows slowly, moving from Cotton Mather’s dense, unpublishable theological treatises and Anne Bradstreet’s poetry to early American novels. Personal adornment expands as well; women adopt wire commode head-dresses and perukes despite pulpit tirades against vanity, while men trade oil-leather doublets for scarlet waistcoats and fine kersies.

Finally, the narrative arrives at illness and mortality. Lacking modern medical science, colonists rely on bizarre herbal compounds, hot turf applications, and neighborly watching with the sick. Death itself is met not with despair, but with a distinct, exalted spiritual composure. Elaborate funeral customs, detailed epitaphs, and solemn tomb visits bring the colonial narrative to a quiet, reflective close.

How It Unfolds

The cradle and the hearth The narrative opens on the chilling environment into which Puritan infants are born, detailing their harsh physical rearing, austere diets of warm beer and brown bread, and the rare sweetmeats that occasionally reach foreign ports.

Courtship and colonial wedlock The text moves into romance and matrimony, using Judge Sewall’s pragmatic wooing of local widows to illustrate how romance, financial negotiation, psalm-singing, and sack-posset tradition shape colonial unions.

Servants, interiors, and table wares The focus shifts to household management, chronicling refractory indentured servants who steal turkeys, while surveying home interiors as they evolve from rough log cabins with oiled-paper windows to papered walls, tall clocks, and pewter voiders.

Larders, taverns, and public diversions Earle explores colonial sustenance and social gatherings, detailing early starving times, rich recipes for metheglin, tavern signboards, Thanksgiving feasts, and the sudden appearance of traveling menageries featuring lions and Greenland bears.

Books, fashions, and final rites The closing chapters examine literary production, elaborate hair perukes and red knit caps, home remedies for cold stomachs, and the calm, faith-filled exaltation with which colonists approach sickness, burial, and tomb visits.

The People

Judge Samuel Sewall A prominent colonial figure whose detailed diary anchors much of the book’s social commentary. In his courtships, he seeks a "dear Yoke fellow," balancing sincere affection with careful financial calculation as he visits local widows, offers small religious books, and negotiates potential marriages. In daily life, he demonstrates deep neighborly devotion, sitting up through long nights with sick friends and bringing them chocolate, figs, or small gifts of money.

Cotton Mather An influential Puritan minister who represents the dense intellectual and religious atmosphere of early Boston. He rails vigorously from the pulpit against feminine vanity and false locks of hair, comparing complex hairstyles to comets. As an author, his massive theological works like the Biblia Americana struggle to find publishers as public tastes shift, leaving him as a literary relic of an earlier, more rigid era.

Anne Bradstreet A colonial poet and blue-stocking whose domestic household highlights the practical strains of colonial life. Her indentured servants rebel against her heavy, sour black bread, illustrating the sharp friction between household authorities and bound laborers in early Massachusetts. Her printed verse stands out as a rare early milestone for women writers in the colonies.

In Its Own Voice

"Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort;"

Earle describes the intense thermal contrast experienced by a Puritan baby born in an ill-heated colonial home during a raw New England winter.

"A psalm preceding and a prayer following a Puritan posset-pot made a satisfactorily solemn wassail."

The author notes how early settlers modified traditional English wedding festivities to fit their earnest religious sensibilities without abandoning celebration entirely.

"For it is plain to any student of early colonial days that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was religion, the second certainly was neighborliness."

Earle reflects on the deep mutual reliance that bound colonial families together during barn-raisings, domestic chores, and long bedside watches over sick neighbors.

What It's Really About

Beneath its rich catalog of antique furniture, recipes, and clothing, the book is an inquiry into human adaptation and social evolution. Earle examines how strict English traditions were reshaped by the wilderness, turning rigid doctrine into a practical, neighbor-dependent society. The narrative contrasts the austere, self-denying theology of early leaders with the stubborn human desire for comfort, vanity, and diversion. Ultimately, the book argues that modern American identity was forged not merely through political charters, but through the quiet, daily struggle of ordinary families enduring harsh winters, managing rough households, and maintaining an unwavering faith in the face of constant mortality.

Why Read It Today

This work appeals to history enthusiasts, writers, and curious readers who crave concrete details over broad political summaries. Earle writes with dry wit, sharp observational skill, and an affectionate yet clear-eyed view of her subjects. Reading the book feels like sifting through an expertly curated attic filled with forgotten diaries, old almanacs, and vintage newspaper clippings.

The prose remains eminently readable, though readers should prepare for archaic terminology, old-fashioned spelling in original quotes, and the casual presence of colonial prejudices regarding indentured servants, Native Americans, and social class. What stays with the reader is the vivid reality of pioneer life: the shock of ice-cold rooms, the comfort of spiced honey mead, the humor of runaway servants, and the quiet dignity of early gravestone inscriptions. It offers a grounded, deeply human bridge to the American past.