[153] Tyler: _England in America_, p. 115, _American Nation Series_.
[154] _The Jeffersonian System_, p. 218, _American Nation Series_.
[159] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 166.
[163] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 56.
[164] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 186.
[190] Andrews: _Colonial Self-Government_, p. 302, _American Nation Series_.
[214] _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 35.
[215] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, pp. 55-57.
[217a], [217b] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 77.
[219] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 214.
[220] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 213.
[221] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 215.
[222] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 209.
[225] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 230.
[227] Robertson: _Louisiana under Spain, France, and U.S._, Vol. I, p. 70.
Of course, practically every American novel dealing with the colonial period--or any other period, for that matter--closes with a marriage and a hint that they lived happily ever afterwards. Did they indeed? To satisfy our curiosity about this point let us examine those early customs that dealt with courtship, marriage, punishment for offenses against the marriage law, and the general status of woman after marriage.
For many years a wedding among the Puritans was a very quiet affair totally unlike the ceremony in the South, where feasting, dancing, and merry-making were almost always accompaniments. For information about the occasion in Massachusetts we may, of course, turn to the inevitable Judge Sewall. As a guest he saw innumerable weddings; as a magistrate he performed many; as one of the two principal participants he took part in several. He has left us a record of his own frequent courtships, of how he was rejected or accepted, and of his life after the acceptances; and from it all one may make a rather fair analysis not only of the conventional methods and domestic manners of New England but also of the character and spirit of the other sex during such trying occasions. The evidence shows that while a young woman was generally given her choice of accepting or declining, the suitor, before offering his attentions, first asked permission to do so from her parents or guardians. Thus a marriage seldom occurred in which the parents or other interested parties were left in ignorance as to the design, or ignored in the deciding of the choice.