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Tavern Tales: Stories from Boston’s Colonial Taverns

Murder, affairs, brawls and politics! They all had a home in Boston’s colonial taverns.

Taverns provided vital services in colonial times. Strangers with no one to vouch for them could stay and dine there. Businessmen conducted meetings and transactions at colonial taverns. News flowed through them. And the taverns served as the political petri dish where the ideas and principles of the American experiment in democracy took root.

Of course, the other element to tavern life was the alcohol they dispensed. The colonial government tightly regulated alcohol – the General Court dictated everything from how much alcohol cost to how much someone could drink. Despite the government’s best efforts, however, Boston’s colonial taverns took center stage in a number of scandals and spats over the years. Here are seven great scandalous tales from colonial taverns in Boston:

Castle Tavern Cuckold

The Castle Tavern – William Hudson kept the Castle Tavern in Dock Square (near Faneuil Hall). It would later go by many names, but that’s how people knew it in 1642. Hudson had returned to England to fight in the English Civil War. For two years, he left his wife and family in the care of a friend. When he returned, however, he found his wife and his friend had gotten too friendly. Servants in the home saw the pair slipping into the bedroom together and accused them of adultery.

Adultery called for the death penalty, and that’s what the town’s magistrates recommended. A jury, however, adopted a more lenient posture and convicted them of “adulterous behavior,” accepting the woman’s story that the two had, in fact, been in bed together (as reported by servants). However, they did not consummate their affair because she persuaded her suitor it would be wrong.

As punishment, the couple stood in the town gallows for an hour wearing halters, and then submitted to a whipping. Hudson accepted his wife’s story and the two lived happily ever after.

Drunken Lawmaking at the Royal Exchange

In 1747, Boston’s Old Statehouse burned. The building still stands today, after repairs. The first floor housed the mercantile exchange, while the second floor held offices for the governor, assembly and courts. Many records survived the fire, though it did prompt the Commonwealth to establish laws requiring records be duplicated and backed up.

Repairs would be completed in 1748, but for a time the fire rendered the General Court homeless. Where better to makes laws than a tavern? And that’s where the legislators relocated: to the Royal Exchange. The Exchange was popular with Masons. It also featured in another shady event, this one in 1728. Henry Phillips and Benjamin Woodbridge had been drinking at the tavern when they got into an argument. The fight escalated until Woodbridge and Phillips found themselves on Boston Common, dueling with swords. Two sons of well-known families dueling caused a stir.

Woodbridge died of wounds incurred in the fight. Woodbridge, meanwhile, with aid from wealthy friends, fled Boston for France, where Phillips would die before 1730, leaving behind a massive lawsuit over his estate and a slew of new laws increasing the penalties for dueling.

Outrage at the British Coffee-House

The British Coffee-House, also on State Street, served as a sort of headquarters for the royalist faction in Boston. Here, a heated fight broke out between the Patriot agitator James Otis and British officers in 1769. One officer struck Otis on the head. The effects of the blow lingered for the rest of his life.

But the tavern gained notoriety first nearly 20 years earlier. In 1750 the tavern presented a play, Thomas Otway’s “The Orphan.” The play tells a tragic story of a love triangle that ends in suicides all around. Theater was frowned upon in New England and this play particularly infuriated the public . . . so much that the government outlawed the performance of plays altogether.

Poison At The Golden Ball Colonial Tavern

In 1735, Humphrey Scarlett owned the Golden Ball Tavern, also located near Faneuil Hall. The tavern dated back about 100 years at that point, with Scarlett as its latest keeper.

Scarlett and his second wife, Mary, had a year earlier had a son, and apparently their servants did not think highly of their living arrangements. Two black servants (some sources identify them as slaves), tried to poison the entire family, according to a criminal indictment. The two servants put arsenic in the chocolate and served it at breakfast.

The pair tried to implicate a maid in the scheme, but she proved her innocence by showing that she, too, had drunk some of the chocolate – something she would hardly do if she knew it contained poison.

Caesar and Yaw – the servants – had to stand on the gallows for an hour with a noose around their necks and endure 39 lashes with a whip as punishment for the attempted murder.

Eloping at the Exchange

Royal Exchange – Located on State Street at the corner of Exchange, the two-story building passed through several owners. In 1772 it became the Boston end of the first Boston-to-New York stage, and was a stagecoach stop for decades. It also no doubt witnessed its fair share of agitation in the days leading up to the American Revolution, as it looked out on the spot where the Boston Massacre occurred.

The Exchange’s clientele skewed toward the loyalists. Mrs. Mary Clapham, in charge of the tavern, boarded a number of British officers at the establishment – a decision she may have regretted. Clapham had several daughters, one of whom took a liking to their British guests and eloped with an officer who caught her eye.

Gambling for Grapes

The Bunch of Grapes tavern stood on State Street. John Marston, originally from Salem, managed the tavern before and during the American Revolution. Marston had an illustrious military career and served on Boston’s Committee of Correspondence during the war, helping to arm and supply the revolutionary soldiers.

John Marston also reportedly took part in the Boston Tea Party – which seems plausible since the Bunch of Grapes served as an unofficial headquarters for the Sons of Liberty, who plotted the revolt against England.

But Marston also had a blot on his record, as well. In 1778 he was cautioned by the courts. His crime? Allowing or encouraging gambling at his establishment with games such as backgammon.

Off With Cromwell’s Head

Politics permeated Boston’s taverns, and none more so than the oddly named Cromwell’s Head on School Street. In England, Cromwell’s literal head served as a warning to any who would challenge the authority of the king.

Oliver Cromwell, bearing the title Lord Protector, took charge of England after his colleagues beheaded King Charles I during the English Civil War. Cromwell died in 1658 of natural causes and his countrymen buried him in a ceremony every bit as grand as a funeral for a king. However, when the monarchy returned to England, under King Charles II, the government disentombed Cromwell and his fellow revolutionaries, removed Cromwell’s head and posted it on a stick in London as a warning to potential traitors. There it stood for 20 years (give or take).

In Boston 100 years later, however, Cromwell’s head did not represent a repudiation of the man. Rather, Cromwell’s Head tavern celebrated his pluckiness and willingness to take on the king, or at least that’s how the British loyalists saw it.

When passing by, loyalists would cross to the other side of the street rather than pass under Cromwell’s likeness on the sign above the tavern door. And, when the British took control of Boston in the early days of the American Revolution, the tavern owners had to remove the sign and store it for safekeeping. It made its return after the hostilities ended.

Thanks to:

The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, John Winthrop.

Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs, Samuel Adams Drake, Walter K. Watkins.

Diary of the Rev. Samuel Checkley, edited by Henry Winchester.

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How the Codfish Started the American Revolution

The American Revolution was to some extent a fight over the big, stupid, slow-moving codfish.

Codfish were by far colonial New England’s biggest export. The codfish was so important to New England that John Adams made sure the British allowed U.S. fishermen access to the Grand Banks and other banks off Newfoundland as part of the Treaty of Paris.

Adams believed the fledgling country needed a thriving fishery in order to have trained mariners who could serve in the navy. The U.S. Congress agreed with him, and in 1792 decided to pay fishermen a bounty for catching codfish.

The codfish had special importance to Massachusetts, where to this day the wooden Sacred Cod hangs above the chambers of the commonwealth’s House of Representatives.

The Sacred Codfish

Between 1768 and 1772, fish accounted for 35 percent of all the money New England made overseas. Livestock came in a poor second, at 20 percent.

When the American Revolution broke out, 10,000 New Englanders worked as fishermen, or eight percent of the adult male working population.

In Massachusetts, Marblehead and Gloucester ranked as the top fishing ports, with Salem, Beverly, Cape Cod, Ipswich and Plymouth heavily engaged in fishing.

The fisheries had a multiplier effect, generating income for people engaged in overseas trade, timbering, shipbuilding, ship rigging, sail making and other waterfront industries.

But powerful British plantation owners and fish merchants viewed the colonial fishing fleets as a threat to their own business. In 1733, they began to pressure Parliament to crack down on their colonial competitors. Their increasing success inhibited the New England economy and fomented much of the anger that led to revolution.

Dried Codfish

In the early 17^th century, New England fishermen didn’t venture far from home. They fished in small boats near the shore.

But later in the 1600s they began to fish offshore in two-masted schooners with crews of seven or eight men. The skipper recruited the crews, chose where to fish, navigated and counted the fish. Sharesmen handlined for cod and processed the catch. The cuttails – inexperienced boys and young men – cut bait, baited the hooks and processed the catch.

Fishing schooner L. A. Dunton at Mystic Seaport.

By the time they reached 30, most fishermen retired from the trade or died from drowning, fishing accidents or fever caught in the West Indies. It was a physically demanding job in a profane work environment.

Nor was it always pleasant, as the fishermen cut up and salted the fish on board ship.

But as historian Christopher Paul Magra pointed out, “the nature of work in the commercial cod fishing industry uniquely prepared fishermen and fish merchants to play leading roles in securing American independence.”

The French

In the 18^th century the market expanded for dried codfish, which contained 80 percent protein. New England fish merchants began to ship dried codfish to the Catholic countries of Europe, where the Pope was declaring more and more meatless feast days. Dried codfish also fed the burgeoning slave populations on West Indian sugar plantations.

By the middle of the 18^th century, New Englanders shipped most of their dried codfish to the West Indies and exchanged it for sugar, molasses and rum. They found the French island plantations sold sugar cheaper, and the French slave populations grew faster, than the British. Plus, the New England fish merchants had so much fish to sell they couldn’t unload it all on British customers.

Slaves planting sugar cane in Antigua.

So the New Englanders began to trade with the French. But the powerful British plantation owners did not appreciate the British colonists buying from their French competitors. So they persuaded Parliament in 1733 to pass the Molasses Act. It imposed duties on imported – that is, French – sugar, molasses and rum. Parliament reenacted the law every five years, but rarely made sure it was enforced.

Parliament

By 1764, the British planters convinced Parliament to pass the Sugar Act, which put a tariff on sugar and banned the import of non-British rum.

Parliament did something else to harm New England fishing interests: It banned trade with the French in North America. British fish merchants in the West Country did not like the colonists trading with fishermen in Newfoundland – they wanted to do it themselves.

Edmund Burke

This time, Parliament ordered the Royal Navy to enforce the Sugar Act. British ships from Halifax began to seize New England’s fishing vessels. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish statesman, condemned the Sugar Act. He described it as corrupt heads of state creating a monopoly to generate revenue and to use the military to enforce that monopoly.

The Sugar Act

The Sugar Act meant most of the dried fish processed in New England could not be sold. New Englanders retaliated by boycotting British goods. At the same time, fishing vessels lay idle in Massachusetts harbors and fishermen looked for work.

As tensions mounted between Britain and the colonies, some members of Parliament proposed a moratorium on the New England fishing industry. On March 30, 1775 – less than two weeks before the shot heard round the world – Parliament passed a law that limited New England’s trade to Britain and the British West Indies. It also banned New England ships from the fisheries off Canada. Under the law, ships couldn’t even carry fishing tackle unless granted special permission.

Revolution

Unsurprisingly, New England’s cod fishermen played a disproportionate role in combating the British. Their role in the war led leaders like Adams to argue the fisheries served as nurseries for fighting men.

They helped lay siege to British forces at Boston, and they converted their fishing vessels into warships. The fishing fleets turned into privateers or became part of state navies, the Continental Navy or the coast guard.

Glover’s Regiment crossing the Delaware with Gen. Washington

Fish merchants like Marblehead’s Elbridge Gerry and Jeremiah Lee used their commercial contacts in Spain and the West Indies to buy military supplies for the patriots.

And a former fish merchant played a key role in one of the most famous actions of the American Revolution. John Glover and his men ferried George Washington and the Continental Army over the Delaware River on Christmas Eve, 1776.

With thanks to The New England Cod Fishing Industry and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution by Christopher Paul Magra. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: L.A. Dunton By Ad Meskens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20754268.

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Six Mid-Century Modern Homes

Though people usually think of the quintessential New England house as a white clapboard farmhouse or Cape, we actually have quite a few mid-century modern homes. And we have even more of their successors, the ubiquitous ranch house.

Mid-century modern houses typically have big windows, open floor plans, integration with the outdoors and little ornamentation.

Frank Lloyd Wright, an early practitioner of mid-century modern homes, called it ‘Prairie Style’ or ‘Usonian.’ Refugees from Hitler’s Germany such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe brought their own modernist philosophy to America. The Germans called it Bauhaus, and they influenced a generation of architects who designed mid-century modern structures from about 1945-75.

Then mid-century modern fell into disfavor. In 1975, critic Tom Wolfe excoriated mid-century modern style as architecture that nobody liked in his book, From Bauhaus to Our House.

Today, however, mid-century modern homes are popular again and command high prices. In New Canaan, Conn., a 1,500-square-foot house designed by Philip Johnson sold for $2.3 million in 2015.

Here, then, are six mid-century modern homes, one (at least) in each New England state. If you know of others, please share them in the comments section.

The Glass House

The famous Glass House was built in one of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns.

Philip Johnson designed the Glass House in 1949 as a weekend retreat in New Canaan, an upscale suburb of New York. Johnson belonged to a group of modern architects known as the Harvard Five, who lived and worked in the town. They all followed Walter Gropius.

The Glass House is an extreme version of a mid-century modernist home. Johnson designed the kitchen, dining and sleeping areas as one glass room. He enclosed the bathroom in a brick cylinder, the only object to reach floor to ceiling.

Johnson lived in the Glass House – for a while. He could only do it because you can’t see it from the road. The house sits behind a stone wall and overlooks a pond. Johnson viewed the surrounding landscape as his wallpaper, once commenting, “I have very expensive wallpaper.”

Eventually he only used it for entertaining and stayed in another building on the property – a brick guest house.

New Canaan has about 80 other mid-century modern homes built between 1940 and 1960. Not everyone loved them, and tore down about 20. The town now tries to preserve them. You can visit the Glass House in the summer (for information, click here). You can see many of the rest of New Canaan’s mid-century modern homes in the 1997 film The Ice Storm.

Emily Muir Boat House

The Emily Muir Boat House

Deer Isle, a fishing community in Penobscot Bay, has a collection of 48 mid-century modern homes designed by Emily Muir. The Boat House is one of them.

Emily, born in 1904, was an artist who married sculptor William Muir. As a child she summered on Deer Isle and moved there permanently in 1939 with her husband.

She didn’t turn to architecture until she reached her own mid-century. Emily had no training in architecture and designed her first home for her mother. That got her hooked on architecture.
Her homes have exaggerated angles and large windows that let in plenty of light. Many, like the Boat House, are perched on boulders that overlook the water.She tried to use as much local granite and wood as possible.

People who live in them now say they love the views, but Emily didn’t cook and didn’t clean so the kitchens often need renovation and the closet space is limited. She designed the houses to be affordable so fishermen could buy them, but it was summer people who snapped them up.

Emily Muir died in 2003 at the age of 99.

You can rent the Emily Muir Boat House from the Island Agency (click here). Even If you don’t’ love mid-century modern homes, you’ll probably love the views.

Gropius House

The Gropius House stands as a symbol of modern architecture in Lincoln, Mass. But in 1937, Lincoln itself symbolized freedom to Walter Gropius, who settled in the historic town while teaching at Harvard. .

A Lincoln philanthropist, Helen Osborne Storrow, gave Gropius the land on which to build a house.

Gropius built a simple, efficient contemporary home that melded industrial and traditional New England architectural materials. He used a fieldstone foundation, white painted wood, a brick chimney and a screened-in porch. Many of the fixtures were ordered from catalogs. It cost $18,000.

He later said he wanted to take a contemporary approach to traditional New England architecture.

When finished, the Gropius House created a sensation. Composer Igor Stravinsky, lecturing at Harvard, was so anxious to see it that he and his new bride visited it scarcely an hour after their wedding in March 1940. Mrs. Storrow was so pleased with it she allowed other architects to build mid-century modern homes on her land.

For information about visiting the Gropius House, click here.

The Zimmerman House

The Zimmerman House.

Frank Lloyd Wright was designing mid-century modern houses well before mid-century, but he designed the Zimmerman House in Manchester, N.H., smack in the middle of the 20^th. In 1950. Wright didn’t just design the house. He also designed the interiors, the furniture, the gardens and even the mailbox for Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman.

The Zimmerman House is one of the few Prairie Style houses in the Northeast. They are typically small, single-story dwellings without a garage or much storage. The Zimmerman House has a carport – a mid-century modern concept and a word Wright came up with.

Like many Wright houses, the Zimmerman House has an L-shape. It also fits around a natural feature – a large rock near the front door.

The Zimmermans meticulously maintained the house, and bequeathed the property to the Currier Museum of Art in 1988. The National Register of Historic Places added it to its list in 1970 partly because of its craftsmanship and detailing.

For information about tours of the Zimmerman House, click here.

Ira Rakatansky Home

Ira Ratansky designed this mid-century modern structure as a synagogue, now the Rhode Island Hindu Temple. Image courtesy Google Maps.

Ira Rakatansky was Rhode Island’s most renowned modernist architect. The son of Russian immigrants, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1942. He then studied architecture under Walter Gropius at Harvard.

He subsequently set up his architecture practice back home in Providence, where he worked from 1947 to 1992. Rakatansky designed dozens of mid-century modernist homes, temples, offices, bowling alleys and drive-ins, mostly in New England.

A former student wrote a book about Ira Rakatansky. He noted ‘his brand of mid-century modernism blew a fresh breeze through staid colonial New England.’

He designed his own house on Everett Avenue in Providence. It features soaring ceilings, large windows that bring in the outdoors and open interior space.

Rakatansky died in 2014. You can take a youtube tour of Ira Rakatansky houses here. Sadly, we couldn’t find any Ira Rakatansky homes open to the public. But we did find a temple he designed, then known as Beth Am in Warwick, which became Am David.

Norwich, Vt., Mid-Century Modern Historic District

A mid-century modern home in Norwich, Vt.

You may not think of Vermont as a hot spot of mid-century modern homes, but Norwich has an entire collection of them. Located on Hopson, Pine Tree and Spring Pond Roads, the National Register of Historic Places listed the district in 1991.

The town lies across the Connecticut River from Dartmouth College, which attracted academics open to mid-century modern design.

Norwich’s role in mid-century modern style may have started when another German architect, Walter Curt Behrendt, escaped Nazi Germany, according to the Valley News. He came to the Upper Valley, and Dartmouth made him artist in residence. He built his own home in Norwich in 1945.

Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter, students of Gropius, taught at Dartmouth and designed several mid-century modern homes in the area.

And Keith and Edna Warner get credit for starting the mid-century modern trend in 1951. They bought a large piece of land and built a house on it. They then sold off parcels to similarly minded people. Many had their home designed by Charles McKirahan of Fort Lauderdale.

Typically they are generally set back from the roads. They also have a horizontal orientation, flat roofs and large glass windows looking out on the hills.

The Norwich Historical Society has an online exhibit called Mad for Mid-Century Modern. You can see it here.

Images: Glass House By Staib – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7797606; Zimmerman House By Jane023 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21316008; Norwich, Vt. Home By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72230045; Emily Muir Boat House courtesy The Island Agency. This story was updated in 2022.

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Eunice Cole, The Witch of Hampton Who Could Not Be Stopped

Virtually the entire town of Hampton, N.H., believed Eunice Cole was a witch. Town officials hauled her into court to face charges three times in the 24 years from 1656 to 1680. The court convicted her once. Yet the greatest magic feat she accomplished was dying peacefully in her own bed.

Eunice Cole and her husband William were servants indentured to Matthew Craddock, a Puritan and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Though Craddock never left England, he actively recruited English settlers to move to America and take part in his new venture.

Eunice Cole, from Ballad of New England by John Greenleaf Whittier

In 1637, when Eunice would have been about 47, she and her husband came to Massachusetts. They promised to pay Craddock £10 for releasing them from his service.

The Coles were first offered land in Quincy, Mass., and then Exeter, N.H., and finally settled on a 40-acre parcel of land in Hampton, N.H.. The Coles followed the Rev. John Wheelwright, a somewhat controversial Christian minister.

William, a carpenter, never prospered in Hampton, though he and Eunice were accepted members of society and attended meeting. Eunice, by all accounts, was a difficult and unlikable person. That probably contributed to her legal problems.

The Rev. John Wheelwright

Eunice Cole, Witch

In 1656, Eunice Cole was taken to Boston to stand trial for witchcraft. She faced charges that included bringing sickness on people she feuded with, killing their animals through mysterious ways and even knowing secrets about people she could only know through aid of the devil.

The court definitely declared Eunice guilty of familiarity with the devil. But there is some debate about whether Eunice was actually convicted of witchcraft. Some say she was, but others believe the court convicted her of a lesser crime because it didn’t order her execution. Rather, she was ordered to be whipped and imprisoned for as long as the court thought appropriate.

Court record from the witchcraft prosecution of Eunice Cole in 1673. Massachusetts Archives Collection, Vol. 135, No. 9

William Cole apparently did not miss his wife much, though he did miss her labor on their farm. With Eunice languishing in prison, William turned to the townspeople for help with his daily needs. The townspeople provided it, but it could not use his property as a means of payment because he had deeded it to Eunice. She had apparently threatened to leave him if he did not.

William Cole petitioned the courts to return his land to him, though he apparently did not ask for the return of Eunice.

Recidivist

Eunice did get herself freed from jail, however, by arguing that her aging husband needed her help. But before she could get herself free, William had managed to get the deed to the couple’s property returned to him, and he promptly died. His death set up a dispute over the land. In invalidating Eunice’s deed, the court had ordered the town to take the property and use it to pay for Eunice and William’s care.

William, meanwhile, had written a will that left the property to a neighbor. The court stepped in and settled the matter, giving half the estate to the neighbor and giving half of it to the town, for support of Eunice.

Eunice did not stay free for long. The terms of her release from jail required that she leave the colony within one month. Rather than depart, Eunice went back to her old ways. Soon she was back in prison. She faced charges of slanderous speech. In and out of prison over the next 10 years, in 1673 she was again formally charged with witchcraft. This time she was accused of attempting to lure a young girl into living with her, taking various animal shapes and causing a neighbor’s oven to produce foul-tasting bread.

Unconvinced that Eunice’s crimes met the legal requirements for a finding that she was a witch, the court did conclude that there was reasonable suspicion that she had “familiarity with the devil.”

The Hampton marshes

Charity Case

Eunice’s care was now up to the town of Hampton, which provided her with a small dwelling. Each family in town had to take turns providing her with food and fuel. In 1680, the townspeople made one final attempt to have Eunice convicted. They gathered up all the previous charges and added a few more. Once again she went to court. The court, however, was unpersuaded. Eunice was allowed to return home.

With Eunice Cole nearing 90, one day in October of 1680 several townspeople remarked that no one had seen Eunice for several days. Proceeding to her home, they found her dead. Legend holds that the townspeople hastily dug a grave and tossed Eunice’s body in it. They then attached a horseshoe (for luck) to a stake and drove it through her grave.

Eunice Cole’s story was immortalized in poems by John Greenleaf Whittier. In 1938 the Town of Hampton finally corrected the error of its ways when it adopted a formal resolution acknowledging that Eunice Cole was not a witch.

The Hampton public library maintains a thorough collection of materials related to Eunice Cole at its website.

This story last updated in 2022.

Thanks to: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen and Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England by John Putnam Demos.

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Personal Ads and Swiping Right in 1680: Five Colonial Courtship Customs

The course of true love is never smooth, and in colonial New England young couples had many courtship customs to contend with.

Here are five that might seem foreign to today’s young people (or maybe not so different):

Engagements Were Difficult to Break

Divorces were hard (though not impossible) to get in early New England, but even breaking off an engagement could cause a legal row. In the earliest days of the Plymouth Colony men could and did sue their future fathers-in-law for withdrawing consent to marry their daughters. And men and women who were jilted (or shabbed as it was sometimes called), could sue for lost time spent in courting.

courtship customs

Failing to follow Puritan courtship customs could land you in court.

Kissing Was a Crime

The Puritans, of course, frowned upon public displays of affection. But even in the privacy of the home, young men and women weren’t supposed to kiss one another.

In a 1660 case in New Haven, Sarah Tuttle had to pay a fine for kissing Jacob Murline. Jacob seized one of Sarah’s gloves and playfully said he would return it if she gave him a kiss. Quite a kiss it was. The couple kept at it for a half an hour, to the shock of someone who spotted them and had them hauled to court. The result was a rebuke and a fine for Sarah.

Oafish Young Men, Even in 1680

Judge Samuel Sewall recorded the struggles of his daughter to find love with Sam Gerrish. Sam’s father had conspired with the judge to marry off the boy to the judge’s daughter, Mary. Sam, it seems, had feet of clay when it came to this particular romance. The judge noted how one difficult-to-arrange dinner between the couple went awry:

In the evening Sam Gerrish comes not; we expected him; Mary dress’d herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment.

Still, Gerrish did go through with marrying Mary. However, she died shortly after the wedding and Sam could pursue his true love.

Courting Sticks

In the Connecticut River Valley, especially, colonial courtship customs kept two wooing lovers apart. The couple had to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of the desired one from a distance of six to eight feet.

They accomplished this feat with a device called a courting stick — a wooden tube with a cup at each end. One party held the cup to her mouth while the other placed his cup at his ear and listened. And in case the couple was inclined to abandon the device for closer contact, these courting sessions were generally held in a room packed with the couple’s family.

Personal Ads

One way around all the negotiating over an arranged marriage was to cast a wide net for potential partners. An early and very direct personal ad appeared in a Boston Evening Post of Feb 23, 1759. The author, “A.W.” addressed it to:

Any young Lady between the Age of Eighteen and twenty three of a Midling Stature; brown Hair, regular Features and a Lively Brisk Eye: Of Good Morals & not Tinctured with anything that may Sully so Distinguishable a Form possessed of 3 or 400£ entirely her own Disposal and where there will be no necessity of going Through the tiresome Talk of addressing Parents or Guardians for their consent.

Should that interest a young lady who met the qualifications, she could leave a line directed for A.W. at the British Coffee House in King Street. She should appoint a place for an interview, where she will find A.W., who ‘flatters himself he shall not be thought Disagreeable by any Lady answering the above description.’

He promised profound secrecy and concluded, ‘No Trifling Answers will be regarded.’

No word on how well that colonial courtship custom worked.

Thanks to Customs and Fashions of Old New England by Alice Morse Earle. This story about colonial courtship customs was updated in 2022.

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Seven Colonial New England Games

The Puritans were never known for their lighthearted play, and the Puritan leadership viewed colonial New England games with disgust.

In the early 1600s, games that developed skills, such as shooting competitions, were viewed more favorably than those that were merely diversions.

The worst of all colonial New England games, at least to the Puritan mind: those that involved luck.

Games and sports caused controversy back in England, where the first kings James and Charles encouraged their subjects to enjoy themselves on Sunday afternoon. Anyone who didn’t want to play games could leave the country, they said. So that’s exactly what many Puritans did.

Here is a sampler of seven games they played once they arrived in the colonies.

Colonial New England Games

Stoolball. Stool ball resembles cricket. A pitcher throws a ball at a target, usually a stool, though a tree or other object could be substituted. A second man tries to swat the ball away, either with his hand or a paddle, so that it doesn’t strike the stool. Points are scored for each ball successfully swatted away.

Stoolball, one of the more popular colonial New England games. Illustration from A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, John Newbery

The game eventually evolved to include fielding and running. To score runs, a batter who hit a ball would run between two stools while the fielders would recover the hit ball — very similar to cricket.

Gov. William Bradford of the Plymouth colony reported dismay to find men playing stool ball on Christmas Day in 1621. Some men did not want to work on Christmas, and Bradford relented. He hoped, however, that they would eventually learn that Christmas was not a day for celebration and join him in his labors. When he returned from his work he found the men playing stoolball. He stopped them by confiscating their gear.

Banned in Boston

Ninepins. Another sport that flourished in America was ninepins, a form of outdoor bowling. New England’s Puritan leaders frowned on ninepins, but it did exist as the government banned it. The participants used stones rolled across the ground to knock down pins.

While played on the sly in New England, New York created a public bowling green.

Pitching the Bar. Another of the games that shocked William Bradford in 1621: pitching the bar. It involved throwing a bar or log as far as possible. He put a stop to this, too.

Foot Races. Of course, Native Americans had pastimes of their own. Many of the games helped develop the skills needed for survival as adults. Throwing balls, a ring-toss game and foot races that could cover many miles were among the common pursuits.

Slide Groat. Slide groat was another of the colonial New England games that people had to play on the sly. This was a miniature shuffleboard type of game, also called shovelboard. Players used a board, often the top of a bar. They slid pennies along the length of the board, trying to get them to stop inside a defined target area to score points.

Illustration of Gov. William Bradford ruining Christmas by forbidding colonial New England games.

A Loathsome Game

Football. Football of the 1600s wasn’t like football of today. It more resembled soccer or European football mixed with rugby, with boys kicking the ball to each other in a form of keep-away that could turn quite violent.

The Puritans loathed football. Englishman Philippe Stubbs, something of a Puritan scold, pointed out the dangers of football in his pamphlet, The Anatomie of Abuses. In it, he attacked a wide range of games, pastimes and other supposed vices. He wrote:

Now who is so grosly blinde that seeth not that these aforesaid exercises not only withdraw us from godliness and virtue, but also haile and allure us to wickednesse and sin? For as concerning football playing I protest unto you that it may rather be called a friendlie kinde of fyghte than a play or recreation—a bloody and murthering practice than a felowly sport or pastime.

Nevertheless, football invaded the pious streets of New England towns. The Puritans recorded complaints about young men playing the game in the streets of Boston.

Hats, Too?

Coasting. Coasting was what we would call sledding today. Children fashioned sleds with two runners and hopped on them to slide down any hill with a slope great enough to provide adequate gravitational inducement.

Not surprisingly, the Massachusetts government did not like coasting and outlawed it. In New York state, the officials went so far as to punish anyone caught coasting by impounding not just their sled, but their hat as well.

Thanks to A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, John Newbery; Child Life in Colonial Days, Alice Morse Earle. This story about colonial New England games was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about the birth of modern football here.

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