SOME PHASES
OF
Sexual Morality and Church Discipline
IN
COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND.
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, June, 1891.]
CAMBRIDGE:
JOHN WILSON AND SON.
University Press.
1891.
In the year 1883 I prepared a somewhat detailed sketch of the history ofthe North Precinct of the original town of Braintree, subsequentlyincorporated as Quincy, which was published and can now be found in thelarge volume entitled “History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts.” In thepreparation of that sketch I had at my command a quantity of material ofmore or less historical value,—including printed and manuscript records,letters, journals, traditions both oral and written, etc.,—bearing onsocial customs, and political and religious questions or conditions. Thestudy of this material caused me to use in my sketch the followinglanguage:—
“That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either morelaw-abiding or more self-restrained than the later, is a propositionwhich accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things.The habits of those days were simpler than those of the present; theywere also essentially grosser. The community was small; and it hardlyneeds to be said that where the eyes of all are upon each, the generalscrutiny is a safeguard to morals. It is in cities, not in villages,that laxity is to be looked for.” But “now and again, especially inthe relations between the sexes, we get glimpses of incidents in thedim past which are as dark as they are suggestive. Some such areconnected with Quincy.... The illegitimate child was more commonly metwith in the last than in the present century, and bastardy casesfurnished a class of business with which country lawyers seem to havebeen as familiar then as they are with liquor cases now.”[1]
Being now engaged in the work of revising and rewriting the sketch inwhich this extract occurs, I have recently had[Pg 4] occasion to examine againthe material to which I have alluded; and I find that, though the topic towhich it relates in part is one which cannot be fully and freely treatedin a work intended for general reading, yet the material itself containsmuch of value and interest. Neither is the topic I have referred to initself one which can be ignored in an historical view, though, as I havereason to believe, there has been practised in New England an almostsystematic suppression of evidence in regard to it; for not only are wedisposed always to look upon the past as a somewhat Arcadian period,—aperiod in which life and manners were simpler, better and more genuinethan they now are,—not only, I say, are we disposed to look upon the pastas a sort of golden era when compared with the present, but there is alsoa sense of filial piety connected with it. Like Shem and Japhet,approaching it with averted eyes we are disposed to cover up with agarment the nakedness of the progenitors; and the severe looker aftertruth, who wants to have things appear exactly as they were, and does notbelieve in the suppression of evidence,—the investigator of this sort isapt to be looked upon as a personage