American Colonies-New England

Lauren Campbell

English Puritans

During the 1530’s, Queen Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII, had rejected the Catholic pop to become head of an independent Church of England.

“Puritan”- persists in scholarship to name movement of diverse people who shared a conviction that the Protestant reformation reamined incomplete in England.

“The Puritan vision appealed to many pious and propertied people weary of the economic upheaval, crime, and poverty of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Puritan magistrates strictly enforced the long-neglected laws against gambling, blasphemy, adultry, public drunkenness, and Sabbath breaking.”

Land and Labor

The New England colonies granted lands to men who banded together as a corporate group to found a town.

New English leaders favored compact settlement in towns to concentrate people sufficiently for defense, to support publice schools, promote mutual supervision of morality, & above all, sustain convenient and well attended local church.

All farmers enjoyed complete ownership- “freehold”- and created wheat, rye, maize, potatoes, beans, and garden plants.

Healthy climate and diet allowed parents to raise six or seven children-by age ten boys worked with father on the farm, and daughters worked with mothers in the house and garden.

Family Life

Men conducted the heaviest work including clearing, constructing, tending the livestock, harvesting the hay, and cultivating grain crops.

Women maintained the home and nearby garden, cared for the numerous children, made clothing and soap, prepared and preserved the foods such as butter, eggs, and cheese. However, when husband was away, the women were responsible for his duties as well.

Puritans didn’t dictate marriages, but could overturn choices if the didn’t like them.

Puritanism preached the importance of love and mutual respect as the foundations for Christian marriage.

New England magistrates and church congregations protected women from insult and abuse.

Commerce

Commerce began with the creation of a fishing trade based in the north eastern coastal towns of Maine, New Hampshire, and Essex County, Massachusetts.

Food such as better quality fish were shipped to Spain and Portugal and their Atlantic islands. The inferior fish went to the West Indies to feed the slaves working on sugar plantaions.

By developing fishing trade, Puritans rescued the region’s economy.