COLONIAL LONGSHOREMANOrigin of the Term “Longshoreman”Mercantilist Exploitation

The roots of the International Longshoremen’s Association lie deep in the history of colonial America when the arrival of each new ship bearing goods from the Old World was greeted with cries for “Men ‘long shore!” The longshoremen who rushed up to the ships were colonists, normally engaged in any number of full-time occupations. In the first hard years of life in this country, they left their occupations freely to unload the anxiously awaited, sometimes desperately needed, supplies without pay. As the new land began to develop a fledgling economy, and the ships were too many to count, the men were drawn to the shores by the extra money they could earn stevedoring precious cargo on and off the ships.

As the nation matured, European imperialism gave birth to exploitative mercantilist trade practices. Land was no longer cheap or easy to be get, and many new immigrants congregated in the cities, hoping to find work amid the bustle, especially along the coast, where the bulk of the growing country’s business was still being done. The number of professional longshoremen grew by thousands.

1800 THE DAWN OF UNIONISMExploitation of WorkersThe First Longshoremen’s UnionBy the early 19th century, the longshoreman of the day eked out a meager existence along the North Atlantic coast. Their working conditions were wretched and their wages pitiful. Many were new to the country and unfamiliar with the customs and language. Exploitation was the order of the day. But an unseen change was being wrought in the souls of these good men. The day was coming when none but they themselves would be the masters of their destinies.

“It wasn’t until 1864 that the first modern longshoremen’s union was formed in the port of New York.”

By mid-century, the longshoremen had begun to organize. We know this from various historical documents that tell of work stoppages and the creation of worker benevolent associations; a primitive form of unionism was gradually coming into existence. Nevertheless, resistance to this change was strong, and it wasn’t until 1864 that the first modern longshoremen’s union was formed in the port of New York; the Longshoremen’s Union Protective Association (LUPA).

Source: http://www.ilaunion.org/history/

ShipbuilderCraftsmenAmerican Eras COPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Research Inc.

Shipbuilding. The first European settlers in America founded towns along navigable rivers and next to deep Atlantic harbors. Waterways were the bases of transportation, communication, and travel. Necessity impelled colonists to use boats as their principal means of travel and trade as well as to ensure their future survival and wealth. The shipbuilding industry was of central importance to the New England economy from 1600 to 1754. Colonial shipyards during the 1600s produced five different classes of vessels: the shallop, a small, single-masted boat without a deck; the bark and the ketch, both of which had decks and two masts; the pinnace, a larger vessel used for coastal trading and exploration; and the ship, the largest vessel, having a cargo capacity of well over one hundred tons. During the 1700s the types of vessels changed, and four new classes of vessels appeared. The sloop was a coastal vessel in widespread use but was not as popular as the schooner, a more maneuverable boat. The brigantine was much larger than the schooner, and the snow larger than the brigantine. Colonial vessels usually had square sails in the fore and main masts (front and center of vessel) and a lateen (triangular) sail on the mizzenmast (at the stern). Locally grown hemp was used as cordage in rigging. Larger vessels often had several decks, and for stability sand or stone ballast filled the holds.

Shipwrights. Master shipwrights drew up the plans and then directed the building of colonial vessels. Noise and activity filled colonial shipyards. Dozens of craftsmen worked over the space of a year to build one vessel. It was built next to the water, and an elaborate oak scaf folding supported the boat during the construction process. The oak keel formed the backbone of the vessel, running fore and aft (bow to stern). Shipwrights fitted oak ribs (the frame) to the keel. Builders attached ribs to a beam, upon which the deck was built. Shipwrights preferred pine for the deck and outside planking. Locust pegs joined the keel to ribs and ribs to beam. Sawyers sawed the wood for the boat; joiners did much of the interior carpentry; and caulkers used oakum, made from hemp, to fill all seams. Pitch and tar from New England forests made the boat watertight.

Apprentices. Workers in the colonial shipyard included journeymen, apprentices, indentured servants, and slaves. The journeyman was a former apprentice who worked for the shipwright learning the master’s craft. Apprenticeship was a widespread colonial program of providing vocational education for boys under age twenty-one. Parents bound their sons to a master craftsman in return for room and board, the rudiments of liberal education, and sometimes a small wage. The boy who worked for the master shipwright did odd jobs and various chores around the shipyard, slowly learning the craft until the contract ended. Servants worked for no pay up to seven years. English convicts transported to the colonies worked up to fourteen years. Southern shipyards

frequently used black slaves for manual labor. Some slaves (and indentured servants) were skilled workmen. One Maryland merchant in 1754 used slave shipwrights to design and construct his ship. Other slaves were apprenticed to master craftsmen (but without the hope of ultimate freedom).

Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/craftsmen

Apothecary In colonial times, the apothecary was more than simply a druggist. An apothecary often:

Provided medical treatment Prescribed medicine Trained apprentices Performed surgery Served as man-midwives

Apothecary practiced as doctor

A colonial apothecary practiced as doctor. Records kept by 18th-century Williamsburg's apothecaries show that they made house calls to treat patients, made and prescribed medicines, and trained apprentices. Some apothecaries were also trained as surgeons and man-midwives.

The Pasteur & Galt Apothecary Shop on Duke of Gloucester Street is the site where two apothecary-surgeons practiced. The shop features copies of Dr. Galt's certificates in medical theory, midwifery, and surgery, for training completed at Saint Thomas's Hospital in London. A large collection of British delft drug jars for storing medications line one wall, and antique implements for compounding and dispensing drugs are also displayed, with some items original to the site. Medications made from recipes in 18th-century professional pharmacy books are also shown.

Some modern treatments based upon old remedies

Some of the ingredients that were used in colonial remedies are the basis for modern medications. They included chalk for heartburn, calamine for skin irritations, and cinchona bark for fevers. Later it was discovered that cinchona bark contains quinine for malaria and quinidine for cardiac conditions.

Expensive treatment led people to self-diagnose and treat

Medical treatment was expensive and individuals frequently diagnosed their own problems and compounded medications guided by tradition, folklore, or domestic medical books. Headaches were often treated by vinegar of roses, a remedy made of rose petals steeped in vinegar and applied topically.

Williamsburg apothecaries also sold cooking spices, candles, salad oil, anchovies, toothbrushes, and tobacco, making them true precursors of today's drugstores.

Source:http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/trades/tradeapo.cfm

Colonial Doctor

17th Century Medicine

During the 17th century operations were performed by barber-surgeons. Their knowledge of anatomy improved. Medicine also improved. In 1628 William Harvey published his discovery of how blood circulates around the body. Doctors also discovered how to treat malaria with bark from the cinchona tree.

However medicine was still handicapped by wrong ideas about the human body. Most doctors still thought that there were four fluids or 'humors' in the body, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Illness resulted when you had too much of one humor. Nevertheless during the 17th century a more scientific approach to medicine emerged and some doctors began to question traditional ideas.

The average life span in the 17th century was shorter than today. Average life expectancy at birth was only 35. That does not mean that people dropped dead when they reached that age! Instead many of the people born died while they were still children. Out of all people born between one third and one half died before the age of about 16. However if you could survive to your mid-teens you would probably live to your 50s or early 60s. Even in the 17th century some people did live to their 70s or 80s.

Source: http://www.localhistories.org/colonial.html

Colonial Farmer

Plowing a field at Great Hopes plantation.

Farming encompasses the life skills of most colonial Virginians

Farmers worked the land and generally grew cash crops of tobacco and wheat, as well as a variety of other food and fiber crops like corn, oats, cotton, flax, and hemp. They raised livestock, including beef, dairy and oxen cattle, horses, hogs, sheep, and poultry.

Today, Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Farmers do the work of middling farmers using 18th-century methods at Great Hopes Plantation. Here they work heirloom-variety crops of corn, tobacco, wheat, and fiber crops. Powerful oxen haul manure and pull plows through the fields, while work horses cultivate the weeds from between the plants. Historic farmers also tend poultry and hogs—some of which are a part of Colonial Williamsburg’s Rare Breeds program.

The following essays offer overviews of 18th-century farming at Great Hopes Plantation, a living history site at the edge of Colonial Williamsburg’s historic area.  These topic introductions will help those interested in digging a little deeper into the agricultural world of early Virginians.

Source:http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/trades/traderural.cfm

Blacksmith

The blacksmith shop and armoury reflects the activity present during the Revolution, with trades working together in support of the American war effort. The site re-creates the

industrial complex owned and operated by James Anderson, appointed public armourer in 1776 by the General Assembly of the newly independent Commonwealth of Virginia. In the immediate wake of his appointment, Anderson began to enlarge his small, commercial blacksmithing operation into an extensive and diverse public manufactory.

The newly reconstructed main armoury building includes four blacksmith forges and the recently reconstructed kitchen. Reconstruction of the tin shop and several other buildings on the site will continue for another year. When complete, the site will include the armoury, the kitchen, a tinsmith's shop, an outdoor forge, a work shop, two storage buildings, a privy, a bake oven and a wellhead.

Coal fire heated iron bars

A blacksmith's forge consisted of a raised brick hearth outfitted with bellows to feed its soft-coal fire and a hood to carry away the smoke. The forge heated bars of iron yellow-hot. With his journeymen and apprentices, the blacksmith used sledges weighing as much as 12 pounds to hammer the heated bars into various shapes.

From steel, he made tempered cutting edges for axes and smooth faces for special hammers.

Items made for homes and other tradesmen

Blacksmiths in Williamsburg fashioned items from iron and steel for fellow tradesmen to use in their work and also made things for household use. Among the tools blacksmiths used were the following:

forge anvil hammer tongs vise file

Source:

Colonial Tobacco Farmer

The majority of blacks living in the Chesapeake worked on tobacco plantations and large farms. Since the cultivation of tobacco was extremely labor-intensive, African slave labor was used, despite questions of whether slavery was morally right. Tobacco cultivation

rivaled the sugar production of the British West Indies. Tobacco was an eleven-month crop. Cultivation began in late January with the preparation of the fields for planting, mending tools, and laying out the seed beds. Once the soil was ready (usually in March), tobacco seedlings were transplanted to the fields. By mid summer, tobacco was growing in the fields, but the delicate plant required constant care. At harvest time, tobacco was gathered and prepared for its shipment to England.

Source: http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/african/aaintro.cfm

Tobacco planters usually relied on enslaved people to help work the fields. Each additional worker could cultivate about two to three acres of tobacco, but workers were expensive. Planters had to balance the cost of buying a slave or hiring one against the profit they expected to gain from selling their crops at the end of the year. Small planters seldom had more than five enslaved people and many had only one or two.

Although many Virginians began growing these crops, tobacco continued to be the colony’s largest export. Growing tobacco required a great deal of labor. Tobacco required attention year round. In the winter, the “hot bed” for seeds needed to be prepared. In the spring, the seedlings were planted in the fields and cultivated during the summer. Tobacco was harvested before other crops in the late summer and it needed to be “cured” before it was packed for shipment. At first tobacco planters relied on European indentured servants but by 1700 had turned to enslaved people of African origin to work the fields. Each additional worker could cultivate about three acres of tobacco, but workers were expensive. Planters had to balance the cost of buying a slave or hiring a servant against the profit they expected to gain from selling their crops at the end of the year. Small planters seldom had more than five enslaved people and many had only one or two. Not all of the enslaved people on a small farm were adults.Farmers sold their cash crop in order to buy manufactured goods from merchants in town. Since cash was scarce, farmers and merchants often used barter or a credit system for exchange of goods. To exchange his tobacco for goods, a middling farmer had to take the tobacco, packed in a hogshead (large-sized barrel), to the inspectors at a Virginia warehouse. By law, there had to be at least 1,000 pounds net tobacco within the hogshead. Two inspectors had to agree that the tobacco was either good or bad. If bad, the tobacco was burned. If good, the tobacco was weighed and placed in the warehouse and a tobacco note was issued to the farmer. The farmer then took the note to a merchant to exchange for store credit or cash.

Source: chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/tobacco-economy/TobaccoEconomyUnit1-12.pdf

Mid-Atlantic and Southern Colonial Religious Leaders

Inhabitants of the middle and southern colonies went to churches whose style and decoration look more familiar to modern Americans than the plain New England meeting houses. They, too, would sit in church for most of the day on Sunday. After 1760, as remote outposts grew into towns and backwoods settlements became bustling

commercial centers, Southern churches grew in size and splendor. Church attendance, abysmal as it was in the early days of the colonial period, became more consistent after 1680. Much like the north, this was the result of the proliferation of churches, new clerical codes and bodies, and a religion that became more organized and uniformly enforced. Toward the end of the colonial era, churchgoing reached at least 60 percent in all the colonies.

The middle colonies saw a mixture of religions, including Quakers (who founded Pennsylvania), Catholics, Lutherans, a few Jews, and others. The southern colonists were a mixture as well, including Baptists and Anglicans. In the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland (which was originally founded as a haven for Catholics), the Church of England was recognized by law as the state church, and a portion of tax revenues went to support the parish and its priest.

Virginia imposed laws obliging all to attend Anglican public worship. Indeed, to any eighteenth observer, the “legal and social dominance of the Church of England was unmistakable.”8 

After 1750, as Baptist ranks swelled in that colony, the colonial Anglican elite responded to their presence with force. Baptist preachers were frequently arrested. Mobs physically attacked members of the sect, breaking up prayer meetings and sometimes beating participants. As a result, the 1760s and 1770s witnessed a rise in discontent and discord within the colony (some argue that Virginian dissenters suffered some of the worst persecutions in antebellum America).9

In the Carolinas, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, Anglicans never made up a majority, in contrast to Virginia.  With few limits on the influx of new colonists, Anglican citizens in those colonies needed to accept, however grudgingly, ethnically diverse groups of Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, members of the Dutch Reformed Church, and a variety of German Pietists.

Maryland was founded by Cecilius Calvert in 1634 as a safe haven for Catholics. The Catholic leadership passed a law of religious toleration in 1649, only to see it repealed it when Puritans took over the colony’s assembly. Clergy and buildings belonging to both the Catholic and Puritan religions were subsidized by a general tax.

Quakers founded Pennsylvania. Their faith influenced the way they treated Indians, and they were the first to issue a public condemnation of slavery in America. William Penn, the founder of the colony, contended that civil authorities shouldn’t meddle with the religious/spiritual lives of their citizens. The laws he drew up pledged to protect the civil liberties of “all persons . . . who confess and acknowledge the one almighty and eternal God to be the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world.”[10]

\Source:https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/religion-colonial-america-trends-regulations-and-beliefs

New England Merchant

In the large port cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia merchants were the individuals who imported or exported goods in bulk. Usually they also owned or rented a warehouse.

They worked as middlemen, coordinating the buying and selling of goods between overseas suppliers and the numerous storekeepers and farmers who lived outside of the main cities. 

Just prior to the War of Independence tobacco, grown in the Chesapeake and marketed in Europe by British merchants, was the most important of the British continental colonies’export crops. These colonies also exported substantial amounts of foodstuffs such as bread, flour, fish, rice, and wheat.

Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/places/africa/zambia-political-geography/merchants

Social status: Middling Class The city was the home to many people of the "middling class." These were people who were not poor farmers, but were also not members of the very wealthy gentry class. They consisted of tradesmen (blacksmiths, tailors, coopers, etc.) and professionals (merchants, lawyers, doctors, etc.). Although these people were better off than the average poor farmer, they still worked very hard from sunrise to sunset each day. 

Read more at: http://www.ducksters.com/history/colonial_america/daily_life_in_the_city.phpThis text is Copyright © Ducksters. Do not use without permission.

Colonial Governor

In New England colonial assemblies enjoyed considerable power. Plymouth set up a popular assembly consisting of all qualified freemen, which evolved into a bicameral body as the colony incorporated out-settlements. In Massachusetts Bay, Governor John Winthrop and his supporters attempted to concentrate legislative authority in the Court of Assistants, limiting the General Court to the activities of a court of election. This effort failed because the town deputies demanded that the colonial government observe the provisions of the royal charter, which called for a legislative body. After experimenting with a primary assembly of all freemen that featured proxy voting, a representative bicameral system evolved there as in Plymouth. The Massachusetts General Court was uniquely powerful among other colonial assemblies. As in most colonies, the lower house was popularly elected. The members of the lower house, in turn, elected the members of the council, or the upper house. In other colonies, the colonial governor performed this task, and the Massachusetts assembly's popular power became a bone of contention between Massachusetts and the British government in the 1770s. In Rhode Island, the towns were empowered to initiate legislation that they referred to the assembly. Conversely, the assembly would refer measures to the towns for their approval or disapproval. The system was ineffective, however, and the charter of 1663 gave the assembly a dominating role in all matters of government. Connecticut, under its Fundamental Orders of 1639, had a General Court that served as both a representative body and, upon sitting as a court of election, a primary assembly. The latter feature continued under the charter of 1662, although in the mid-eighteenth century it disappeared in favor of local election of colonial officials. As in Rhode Island, the Connecticut assembly was the real center of governmental authority and throughout the colonial period enjoyed great freedom from outside interference.

Source:http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/colonial-assemblies

William Bradford (1590-1657) was a founder and longtime governor of the Plymouth Colony settlement. Born in England, he migrated with the Separatist congregation to the Netherlands as a teenager. Bradford was among the passengers on the Mayflower’s trans-Atlantic journey, and he signed the Mayflower Compact upon arriving in Massachusetts in 1620. As Plymouth Colony governor for more than thirty years, Bradford helped draft its legal code and facilitated a community centered on private subsistence agriculture and religious tolerance. Around 1630, he began to compile his two-volume “Of Plymouth Plantation,” one of the most important early chronicles of the settlement of New England.

Bradford served thirty one-year terms as governor of the fledgling colony between 1622 and 1656. He enjoyed remarkable discretionary powers as chief magistrate, acting as high judge and treasurer as well as presiding over the deliberations of the General Court, the legislature of the community. In 1636 he helped draft the colony’s legal code. Under his guidance Plymouth never became a Bible commonwealth like its larger and more influential neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Relatively tolerant of dissent, the Plymouth settlers did not restrict the franchise or other civic privileges to church members. 

Source:http://www.history.com/topics/william-bradford

New England Religious leader

Puritanism was a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late sixteenth century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century to the northern English colonies in the New World–a migration that laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of New England. Puritanism, however, was not only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New England; it was also a way of being in the world–a style of response to lived experience–that has reverberated through American life ever since.

Well into the sixteenth century many priests were barely literate and often very poor. Employment by more than one parish was common, and the resulting itinerancy of priests, along with their immunity to certain penalties of the civil law, fed anticlerical hostility and contributed to their isolation from the spiritual needs of the people.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/puritanism

In the early years of what later became the United States, Christian religious groups played an influential role in each of the British colonies, and most attempted to enforce strict religious observance through both colony governments and local town rules.

Most attempted to enforce strict religious observance. Laws mandated that everyone attend a house of worship and pay taxes that funded the salaries of ministers. Eight of the thirteen British colonies had official, or “established,” churches, and in those colonies dissenters who sought to practice or proselytize a different version of Christianity or a non-Christian faith were sometimes persecuted.

New EnglandMost New Englanders went to a Congregationalist meetinghouse for church services. The meetinghouse, which served secular functions as well as religious, was a small wood building located in the center of town. People sat on hard wooden benches for most of the day, which was how long the church services usually lasted. These meeting houses became bigger and much less crude as the population grew after the 1660s. Steeples grew, bells were introduced, and some churches grew big enough to host as many as one thousand worshippers.

The New England colonists—with the exception of Rhode Island—were predominantly Puritans, who, by and large, led strict religious lives. The clergy was highly educated and devoted to the study and teaching of both Scripture and the natural sciences. The Puritan leadership and gentry, especially in Massachusetts and Connecticut, integrated their version of Protestantism into their political structure. Government in these colonies contained elements of theocracy, asserting that leaders and officials derived that authority from divine guidance and that civil authority ought to be used to enforce religious conformity. Their laws assumed that citizens who strayed away from conventional religious customs were a threat to civil order and should be punished for their nonconformity.

Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/religion-colonial-america-trends-regulations-and-beliefs

Southern Colonial woman and child

The busy life of women on Virginia farms fit into the seasonal cycles and the growing season of the cash crop as well. In the winter and spring, spinning and sewing were done. In the late summer and fall, women dried and stored fruits and vegetables for winter meals. Hogs were butchered in the fall and the meat made into sausage or salted and smoked for preservation. Tallow candles and lye soap were made with leftover animal fat. Planter’s wives often grew herbs such as spearmint, peppermint, lavender, rosemary and parsley, which were used to season foods and make home healthcare remedies. Other common crops on Virginia farms were cotton and flax. Though most families bought imported fabric when they could, the long, tough fibers inside the flax plant could be spun on a spinning wheel to make linen thread. This thread was later woven into linen cloth for clothing and bedding. Throughout the year, women cooked, knitted, and sewed clothing, tended the slaves and livestock, and raised the children. On some small farms, women worked in the fields helping to grow crops, but most women spent their time running the household.

What was the role of children on a farm? Children’s chores and education varied, depending on whether they were boys or girls. Very young children were under their mother’s care. Public schools were not available in colonial Virginia, so children often learned everything they needed to know at home. Some boys received limited schooling from their local Anglican minister. Formal education was usually only considered for boys because they were expected to learn how to run the farm, make purchases, deal with finances, and manage slaves. If his parents were literate, a young boy might be taught reading, writing and arithmetic at home. Most young girls learned to cook, spin, and sew from their mothers, and they might have learned to write their names and read the Bible. Some children used a hornbook to learn their letters. A hornbook was a primer with the letters of the alphabet, mounted on wood, bone, or leather and often protected by a thin sheet of transparent horn. Few Virginians could afford to own many books; many owned only a Bible. Children’s books, which were available to the wealthy, often had a moral lesson. Aesop’s Fables were among the most popular children’s stories. Some older boys (and a few girls) worked for a master tradesman as apprentices. While serving their five to seven-year apprenticeship, they not only helped their master do important work, but also learned the skills of the trade and received an education as well.

Source: chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/colonial-life/Colonial_Life.pdf

Field Slave

A slave is a person who is owned or enslaved by another person. In colonial times, people from the west coast of Africa were captured and shipped to Virginia and other colonies to work as slaves. In Virginia these Africans lived and worked on plantations or small farms where tobacco was the cash crop. Enslaved for life, they could be bought or sold as property.

Enslaved people in Virginia faced a life of great hardship. Those on smaller farms often lived in a kitchen or other outbuilding or in crude cabins near the farmer’s house. On large tobacco plantations, the field slaves usually lived in cabins grouped together in the slave quarter, which was farther away from the master’s house but under the watchful eye of an overseer. Although large plantations had many enslaved people, most owners usually had fewer than five, including children. Living on a small farm often made it hard for black men and women to find wives and husbands to start families. Sometimes white masters split up families and sent parents or children to different places to live and work which also made it difficult to raise a family. As a general rule, enslaved people worked from sunrise to sunset, usually in the tobacco fields. On large plantations, some learned trades and worked as blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers or served as cooks and house servants.

At the end of the workday and on Sundays and Christmas, most enslaved people had a few hours to tend to personal needs. They often spent this time doing their own household chores or working in their own gardens. Many masters allowed their slaves to raise chickens, vegetables and tobacco during their spare time, and sometimes they were allowed to sell these things to earn a small amount of money. When they could, slaves spent their evenings and limited free time visiting friends or family who might live nearby, telling stories, singing, and dancing. Many of these activities combined familiar African traditions with British customs learned in the New World. Some of the slaves’ dances were similar to their African tribal dances, and their songs often told stories about how their masters treated them and the injustices of slavery. Some musical instruments used by enslaved people were similar to those used in Africa. The banjo, made out of a hollow gourd, and the drum were two instruments that slaves made and used to create music.

In Virginia, teaching enslaved people to read and write was generally not encouraged. Some learned secretly, but for those living on small farms where the master’s family was not well educated, there was little opportunity. Black Virginians kept some parts of their African religions as well. The life of a slave was hard and often cruel, and their religion was an important way to remind them that their lives had meaning and dignity.

Source:chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/colonial-life/Colonial_Life.pdf

For slaves working on farms, the work was a little less tedious than tobacco cultivation, but no less demanding. The variety of food crops and livestock usually kept slaves busy throughout the year. Despite the difficult labor, there were some minor advantages to working on a plantation or farm compared to working in an urban setting or household. Generally, slaves on plantations lived in complete family units, their work dictated by the rising and setting of the sun, and they generally had Sundays off. The disadvantages,

however, were stark. Plantation slaves were more likely to be sold or transferred than those in a domestic setting. They were also subject to brutal and severe punishments, because they were regarded as less valuable than household or urban slaves.Source: http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/african/aaintro.cfm

House Slave

A slave is a person who is owned or enslaved by another person. In colonial times, people from the west coast of Africa were captured and shipped to Virginia and other colonies to work as slaves. In Virginia these Africans lived and worked on plantations or small farms where tobacco was the cash crop. Enslaved for life, they could be bought or sold as property.

Enslaved people in Virginia faced a life of great hardship. Those on smaller farms often lived in a kitchen or other outbuilding or in crude cabins near the farmer’s house. On large tobacco plantations, the field slaves usually lived in cabins grouped together in the slave quarter, which was farther away from the master’s house but under the watchful eye of an overseer. Although large plantations had many enslaved people, most owners usually had fewer than five, including children. Living on a small farm often made it hard for black men and women to find wives and husbands to start families. Sometimes white masters split up families and sent parents or children to different places to live and work which also made it difficult to raise a family. As a general rule, enslaved people worked from sunrise to sunset, usually in the tobacco fields. On large plantations, some learned trades and worked as blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers or served as cooks and house servants.

Source:chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/colonial-life/Colonial_Life.pdf

Urban and household slaves generally did not live in complete family units. Most domestic environments used female labor; therefore there were few men, if any, on domestic sites. Most male slaves in an urban setting were coachmen, waiting men, or gardeners. Others were tradesmen who worked in shops or were hired out. In general, urban slaves did not have the amount of privacy that field slaves had. They lived in loft areas over the kitchens, laundries, and stables. They often worked seven days a week, even though Sunday's chores were reduced. Their work days were not ruled by the sun; instead, they were set by tasks. But there were advantages to working in town.

Urban and domestic slaves usually dressed better, ate better food, and had greater opportunity to move about in relative freedom. They also were go-betweens for field slaves and the owners. They were privy to a great deal of information discussed in the "big house." They knew everything from the master's mood to the latest political events. The marketplace became the communal center, the place for "networking." At the marketplace, slaves would exchange news and discuss the well-being of friends and loved ones. They often aided runaways, and they kept a keen ear to those political events that might have had an impact on their lives. Regardless of a slave's occupation, there was considerable fear and angst caused by an environment of constant uncertainty and threats of violence and abuse.

Source: http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/african/aaintro.cfm

Massachusetts explicitly permits slavery of Indians, whites, and Negroes in its Body of Liberties. It is the first mainland British colony to legalize slavery.

Source: http://www.blackpast.org/timelines/african-american-history-timeline-1600-1700

Free Blacks

Not all black Virginians were enslaved. From Virginia’s early history, a few black people were free. By 1782, there may have been as many as 2,000 free black people living and working in Virginia. Free blacks often worked as farmers and as tradesmen, and some owned property including slaves of their own

Source:chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/colonial-life/Colonial_Life.pdf

When CRISPUS ATTUCKS earned his unfortunate claim to fame as a victim in the Boston Massacre, he was not a slave. He was one of the relatively few African Americans to achieve freedom in colonial America. Although freedom is clearly desirable in comparison to a life in chains, free African Americans were unfortunately rarely treated with the same respect of their white counterparts.

There were several ways African Americans could achieve their freedom. Indentured servants could fulfill the terms of their contracts like those brought to Jamestown in 1619. In the early days, when property ownership was permitted, skilled slaves could earn enough money to purchase their freedom. Crispus Attucks and many others achieved liberty the hard way — through a daring escape. It only stands to reason that when faced with a perpetual sentence of bondage many slaves would take the opportunity to free themselves, despite the great risks involved.

Another way of becoming free was called MANUMISSION — the voluntary freeing of a slave by the master. Masters did occasionally free their own slaves. Perhaps it was a reward for good deeds or hard work. At times it was the work of a guilty conscience as masters sometimes freed their slaves in their wills. Children spawned by slaves and masters were more likely to receive this treatment. These acts of kindness were not completely unseen in colonial America, but they were rare. In the spirit of the Revolution, manumission did increase, but its application was not epidemic.

Free African Americans were likely to live in urban centers. The chance for developing ties to others that were free plus greater economic opportunities made town living sensible. Unfortunately, this "freedom" was rather limited. Free African Americans were rarely accepted into white society. Some states applied their slave codes to free African Americans as well. Perhaps the most horrifying prospect was KIDNAPPING. Slave catchers would sometimes abduct free African Americans and force them back into slavery. In a society that does not permit black testimony against whites, there was very little that could be done to stop this wretched practice.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/6e.asp

Colonial Farmer

Unlike the wealthy planters who lived in great houses on large plantations, the average Virginian had a small house, with one or two other wooden buildings on his plot of land. A typical farm family, consisting of a mother and father and four to six children, lived in a one or two-room wooden house that was often no larger than 16 by 20 feet, or about the size of a garage today.

These houses usually had a chimney and fireplace with space for storage or sleeping in an upstairs loft. Some had wooden floors, but many simply had dirt floors. If the farmer had carpentry skills, he might have built his home himself, but if not, he could hire a carpenter to do the work for him, often in exchange for farm products or return labor. The kitchen, tobacco barn, and storage buildings were usually separate from the main house. If the farmer owned slaves, they may have lived in one of these outbuildings or in a cabin nearby.

Daily life:The planter’s main job was to raise the cash crop and manage the slaves, but those who lived on small farms performed many other jobs as well. Depending on their skills, men built and repaired buildings, fences, and simple furniture for the household. Hunting, to feed the family and to keep pests away from crops and livestock, and fishing were other important tasks undertaken by most farmers. Items not produced on the farm were purchased from local merchants or imported from England. Sometimes the planter paid cash for these goods, but he usually bought on credit and paid off his account when he sold his next crop of tobacco or wheat.

Source: chrome-extension://mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden/http://www.historyisfun.org/pdf/colonial-life/Colonial_Life.pdf

The harvests gathered by colonial farmers included an expansive number of crops: beans, squash, peas, okra, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, and peanuts. Maize (corn), and later rice and potatoes were grown in place of wheat and barley which were common European crops that did not take readily to eastern American soil.  Probably one of the most important contributions to colonial food was the adoption of Native American agricultural practice and crops, chiefly corn and tobacco. Tobacco was a valuable export and corn, debatably the most important crop in colonial America, was used to feed both people and livestock. Colonists also harvested wild animals from hunting and fishing to supplement their diet with important protein. These included rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, deer, bear, and fowl as well as many types of fish and shellfish.   

Source: http://ncpedia.org/colonial-farming-and-food-famine

Northern Colonial Woman and Child:

Homes in Colonial New England

The first houses in New England were simple wooden huts. They had timber frames covered in clapboard with thatched roofs. Rather than glass windows had sheets of paper soaked in oil. The first chimneys were of logs covered in plaster - an obvious fire hazard! The earliest houses were crowded, dark and drafty.

In the early 17th century colonists relied mainly on corn for food. It was made into bread or mush or was eaten with beans in a meal called succotash. Later in the 17th century other grains like rye, wheat and barley were grown. Colonists also grew vegetable like onions, turnips, parsnips and carrots. If meat was available stew was a popular meal.Source: http://www.localhistories.org/colonial.html

New England life seemed to burst with possibilities.The life expectancy of its citizens became longer than that of Old England, and much longer than the Southern English colonies. Children were born at nearly twice the rate in Maryland and Virginia. It is often said that New England invented grandparents, for it was here that people in great numbers first grew old enough to see their children bear children.

LITERACY RATES were high as well. Massachusetts law required a tax-supported school for every community that could boast 50 or more families. Puritans wanted their children to be able to read the Bible, of course.

Names of women found in census reports of Massachusetts Bay include Patience, Silence, Fear, Prudence, Comfort, Hopestill, and Be Fruitful. This list reflects Puritan views on women quite clearly.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/3d.asp

Many of the people who settled in New England were Puritans. The church was a very important part of Puritan life, and those who disobeyed the laws of the church were punished harshly with penalties ranging from public whippings to death by hanging. Attendance of church was not optional; it was mandatory. Women were seen as inferior to men and had little say in life. The Puritans believed that the soul was made up of two parts, including a mortal feminine part and an immortal masculine one.

Source: https://www.reference.com/history/colonial-new-england-daily-life-like-ba6a130eee8d5bbc

New England Tribal member:

Potential TribesAbenaki | Eastern Pequot Nation | Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Tribe | Haudenosaunee Confederacy | Maliseet Indians | Mashantucket Pequot Nation | Mi’kmaq Indians | Mohegan Tribe | Narragansett Indian Tribe | Nipmuc Nation | Passamaquoddy Tribes of Maine | Penobscot Nation | Schaghticoke Tribal Nation | Shinnecock Indian Nation | Unkechaug | Wampanoag

Source:https://www.umb.edu/naisa/tribes

Pick a tribe! Research it-

The Narragansett Indians are the descendants of the aboriginal people of the State of Rhode Island. Archaeological evidence and the oral history of the Narragansett People establish their existence in this region more than 30,000 years ago. This history transcends all written documentaries and is present upon the faces of rock formations and through oral history. The first documented contact with the Indians of Rhode Island took place in 1524 when Giovanni de Verrazano visited Narragansett Bay and described a large Indian population, living by agriculture and hunting, and organized under powerful "kings." The Tribe and its members were considered warriors within the region. The Narragansett customarily offered protection to smaller tribes in the area. Certain Nipmuck bands, the Niantics, Wampanoag, and Manisseans all paid tribute to the Narragansett tribe. These tribes all resided in areas of Rhode Island at the time of the first European settlement around 1635. In 1636, Roger Williams acquired land use rights to Providence from the Narragansett Sachems. The colonists quickly came into contact with both the Narragansett and Niantic Sachems. Historically, tribal members had two homes; a winter home and a summer home.  The winter home would be called a long house in which up to 20 families would live in over the cold winter months. During the summer, the tribe would move to the shore and construct Wigwams or Wetus, temporary shelter made of bark on the outside and woven mats on the inside. They would dig out large canoes from trees which could hold up to forty men.

Source:http://www.narragansett-tribe.org/historical-perspective.html#.WBjRJuErJAY

Mashpee Wampanoag or Wopanaak Tribe- People of the First LightContact between Native and non-Native people is often seen as a singular event at a particular point in time. Contact is in fact and ever occurring experience between those surviving indigenous peoples in a place and those who continue to arrive and settle within and around indigenous communities. The following is a snapshot timeline of the contact experience of the Mashpee Wampanoag. 

Contact Timeline for Mashpee Wampanoag- 1616Traders from Europe bring yellow fever to Wampanoag territory. The geographical area affected was all of the 69 tribes of the Wampanoag Nation from present day Provincetown, MA to Narragansett Bay; the boundary of the Wampanoag and Narragansett Nations. Fully two thirds of the entire Wampanoag Nation (estimated at 45,000) die. This also represents a loss of as many speakers of the language, the hardest hit were elders and small children; critical age groups for any language. European disease would also place in jeopardy each tribes ability to sustain a population for defense of its territory and culture.

Source: http://www.mashpeewampanoagtribe.com/timeline

Subsidence Farmer:

Subsistence farming, or subsistence agriculture, is a mode of agriculture in which a plot of land produces only enough food to feed the family or small community working it. All produce grown is intended for consumption purposes as opposed to market sale or trade. Historically and currently a difficult way of life, subsistence farming is considered by many a backward lifestyle that should be transformed into industrialized communities and commercial farming throughout the world in order to overcome problems of poverty and famine. 

Source: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Subsistence_farming

When the Europeans arrived here, the first Virginians were more than simple subsistence farmers. A subsistence" farmer raises just enough food to feed the family, with none left over for commercial sale. When Jamestown was settled in 1607, Native American villages in Virginia did not have the luxury of consuming all the agricultural products produced by that village. Source: http://www.virginiaplaces.org/agriculture/

Subsistence farming, form of farming in which nearly all of the crops or livestock raised are used to maintain the farmer and the farmer’s family, leaving little, if any, surplus for sale or trade. Preindustrial agricultural peoples throughout the world have traditionally practiced subsistence farming. Some of these peoples moved from site to site as they exhausted the soil at each location. As urban centres grew, agricultural production became more specialized and commercial farming developed, with farmers producing a sizable surplus of certain crops, which they traded for manufactured goods or sold for cash. Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/subsistence-farming

African Slave:

It was not until 1616, when Virginia’s settlers learned how to grow tobacco, that it seemed the colony might survive. The first African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/thirteen-colonies

Beginning in 1619 with the importation of the first African slaves, the agriculture system throughout the eastern seaboard grew quickly, and by 1700 slavery had displaced indentured servitude in the southern colonies.  Before the advent of mechanized tools, farming during colonial times was hand-labour agriculture, accomplished by the hoe, scythe, and axe, and plow. These tools, in conjunction with cheap labor made available by slaves, allowed for increasingly sustaining harvests and the production of crops for trade.

Source: http://ncpedia.org/colonial-farming-and-food-famine

At the dawn of the American Revolution, 20 percent of the population in the thirteen colonies was of African descent. The legalized practice of enslaving blacks occurred in every colony, but the economic realities of the southern colonies perpetuated the institution first legalized in Massachusetts in 1641. During the Revolutionary era, more than half of all African Americans lived in Virginia and Maryland. Most blacks lived in the Chesapeake region, where they made up more than 50 to 60 percent of the overall population. The majority, but not all, of these African Americans were slaves. In fact, the first official United States Census taken in 1790 showed that eight percent of the black populace was free. [Edgar A. Toppin. "Blacks in the American Revolution" (published essay, Virginia State University, 1976), p. 1]. Whether free or enslaved, blacks in the Chesapeake established familial relationships, networks for disseminating information, survival techniques, and various forms of resistance to their condition.

Source: http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/african/aaintro.cfm

New England Puritan:

MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY was a man's world. Women did not participate in town meetings and were excluded from decision making in the church. Puritan ministers furthered MALE SUPREMACY in their writings and sermons. They preached that the soul had two parts, the immortal masculine half, and the mortal feminine half.

Puritan law was extremely strict; men and women were severly punished for a variety of crimes. Even a child could be put to death for cursing his parents.

It was believed that women who were pregnant with a male child had a rosy complexion and that women carrying a female child were pale. Names of women found in census reports of Massachusetts Bay include Patience, Silence, Fear, Prudence, Comfort, Hopestill, and Be Fruitful. This list reflects Puritan views on women quite clearly.

Church attendance was mandatory. Those that missed church regularly were subject to a fine. The sermon became a means of addressing town problems or concerns. The church was sometimes patrolled by a man who held a long pole. On one end was a collection of feathers to tickle the chins of old men who fell asleep. On the other was a hard wooden knob to alert children who giggled or slept. Church was serious business indeed.

The Puritans believed they were doing God's work. Hence, there was little room for compromise. Harsh punishment was inflicted on those who were seen as straying from God's work. There were cases when individuals of differing faiths were hanged in BOSTON COMMON.

Made famous by author Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book of the same name, the Scarlet Letter was a real form of punishment in Puritan society.

Adulterers might have been forced to wear a scarlet "A" if they were lucky. At least two known adulterers were executed in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Public whippings were commonplace. The STOCKADE forced the humiliated guilty person to sit in the public square, while onlookers spat or laughed at them.

Puritans felt no remorse about administering punishment. They believed in Old Testament methods. Surely God's correction would be far worse to the individual than any earthly penalty.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/3d.asp

Indentured Servants

Indentured servitude, followed by slavery, bolstered the farm production of colonial America, particularly in the southern colonies. Indentured servants, white immigrants from England, were the first population to cultivate the land under a master. Ideally these workers would work off their immigration debt and later buy their own land to cultivate, however, this was not always the case and indentured servants often became victim to a perpetual cycle of an inescapable labor system.

Source: http://ncpedia.org/colonial-farming-and-food-famine

The growth of tobacco, rice, and indigo and the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America. Without the aid of modern machinery, human sweat and blood was necessary for the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of these cash crops. While slaves existed in the English colonies throughout the 1600s, indentured servitude was the method of choice employed by many planters before the 1680s. This system provided incentives for both the master and servant to increase the working population of the Chesapeake colonies.Virginia and Maryland operated under what was known as the "HEADRIGHT SYSTEM." The leaders of each colony knew that labor was essential for economic survival, so they provided incentives for planters to import workers. For each laborer brought across the Atlantic, the master was rewarded with 50 acres of land. This system was used by wealthy plantation aristocrats to increase their land holdings dramatically. In addition, of course, they received the services of the workers for the duration of the indenture.

This system seemed to benefit the servant as well. Each INDENTURED SERVANT would have their fare across the Atlantic paid in full by their master. A contract was written that stipulated the length of service — typically five years. The servant would be supplied room and board while working in the master's fields. Upon completion of the contract, the servant would receive "freedom dues," a pre-arranged termination bonus. This might include land, money, a gun, clothes or food. On the surface it seemed like a terrific way for the luckless English poor to make their way to prosperity in a new land. Beneath the surface, this was not often the case.

Only about 40 percent of indentured servants lived to complete the terms of their contracts. Female servants were often the subject of harassment from their masters. A woman who became pregnant while a servant often had years tacked on to the end of her service time. Early in the century, some servants were able to gain their own land as free men. But by 1660, much of the best land was claimed by the large land owners. The former servants were pushed westward, where the mountainous land was less arable and the threat from Indians constant. A class of angry, impoverished pioneer farmers began to emerge as the 1600s grew old. After BACON'S REBELLION in 1676, planters began to prefer permanent African slavery to the headright system that had previously enabled them to prosper.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/5b.asp

Puritan Missionary/Settler:

The Puritans believed that they had been enlightened by God and had been shown the correct way to follow Him.  When they encountered the Natives of the New World, they saw them as an idolatrous race that needed to be shown the One True Faith that the Puritans subscribed to.  By converting them to Christianity, they were saving them from their sinful ways and the wrath of the Christian God.  As their seal shows, the members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony viewed the Indians as savages that were in need and in want of guidance.  They dismissed the Indian religious practices as unsubstantiated and inferior to their own.  In essence, they were doing the Indians a favor by teaching them the Christian way and they believed the Indians should be grateful for the chance to be enlightened.

The Puritans first arrived in New England in the 1620's but the first formal interest in converting the Indians was not expressed until 1644.  Their initial contacts with the Indians were mostly made for the purposes of trade and diplomacy.  At this time, the Puritans were still vastly outnumbered by the Native Americans and were still attempting to establish themselves in the area.  Missionary attempts were still considered to be too much of a risk to attempt until after the Pequot War of 1636 and 1637.  

The money that the missionaries received from the society was used to educate young Indian preachers, build the Indian college at Cambridge, print a Bible in the Algonquin language, provide tools for the Indians in the Praying Towns, and pay the salaries of the missionaries. 

Sources: http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/Indian%20Converts/the%20puritans3.htm

Praying Town Native American:

The praying towns were started as a way for the Native American converts to live in a society based on the European way of life.  The goal was for the Indians to be able to farm rather than depend completely on hunting.  They were also supposed to follow a European model for their government and live in houses with separate rooms rather than just one room per wigwam.  The intent of living in houses was to preserve the delicacy of the family.  Nonantum was the first of the Praying Towns, but it was soon determined to be too small and too close to European settlements.  As a result, it was moved to Natick which was located on the banks of the Charles River, eighteen miles southwest of Boston.  The Indians that lived in this town had moved from various other Indian villages where conversion attempts had been successful in addition to Nonantum.  The settlement officially began in the spring of 1651.  The government of the town was based on the government Eliot had recommended in his The Christian Commonwealth, and the Indians were able to elect their own rulers, but were still subject to colonial rule and were expected to adopt European culture, as can be seen by the rules that they were expected to follow.

Even though the Puritans seemed to gladly accept the Praying Indians as members of their Churches, they were hesitant to give them the responsibility of running their own church.

In the year 1675, there were an estimated 1,100 Praying Indians in mainland Massachusetts located in 14 Praying Towns.  In the Old Colony and on the Islands, there were an additional 2,500 Praying Indians.  This number was greatly reduced, however, when King Philip of the Wampanoags began to attack the colonists.  The Praying Indians had to choose a side, and most of them chose to fight on the side of the Puritans.  Unfortunately, the Puritans did not trust any Indians once the war broke out and after many requests from the colonists, the Massachusetts Council of War ordered that the Praying Indians be restricted to five specified towns.

Sources: http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/Indian%20Converts/the%20puritans3.htm

Fur Trader:

Fur trading is one of the earliest known industries in North America allowing for fur traders to be the earliest of entrepreneurs. In the 1500s when French explorers arrived in the area that is now eastern Canada, fur trading became a large business. The earliest fur traders were at the time mostly French and would export fur to Europe to be used in textile manufacturing.

The early French fur traders would trade items such as weapons and tools with the Indians for fur, mostly acquiring furs from the Huron and Ottawa tribes. Fur trading began to spread amongst other Indian tribes due to the growing demand for furs and exchange of goods. In the early 1600s, fur trading boomed into a prosperous livelihood. French explorer Samuel de Champlain established a trading post near present-day Quebec that became the center of industry for fur traders. In 1670 the Hudson Bay Company established itself as the largest fur company with the help of two French fur traders.Fur traders amongst the Indians were equally prevalent and the pelt of beaver, mink, and otter became a valuable commodity. Even Indians who were not hunters or trappers would trade other goods for fur because of its value. Beaver fur was at its peak value for fur traders during the late 1600s and early 1700s as European men clambered for felt hats made from beaver pelt. It wasn’t until the 1800s that fur trading began to wane and many fur traders had to find other ways to earn a living.

Source: http://www.indians.org/articles/fur-traders.html

Fur trade, in American history. Trade in animal skins and pelts had gone on since antiquity, but reached its height in the wilderness of North America from the 17th to the early 19th cent. The demand for furs was an important factor in the commercial life of all the British and Dutch seaboard colonies, as well as of S Louisiana, Texas, and the far Southwest. But its effect in opening the wilderness was even more striking in Canada, where the rivers and lakes offered avenues to the heart of the continent. The speed with which fur traders traveled halfway across the continent was remarkable. The Great Lakes region was extensively exploited by men buying furs from the Native Americans before the end of the 17th cent. 

The effect on the indigenous peoples who received the white man's goods (including firearms and liquor, as well as diseases previously unknown to them) in exchange for the furs was cataclysmic; native cultures were overturned.

The greatest of the British trading companies, the Hudson's Bay Company, contended after 1670 with the French traders in Canada, and after Canada became British in 1763, with French and Scottish traders based in Montreal.

Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/fur-trade

Colonial Woman:

The lives of women during colonial times were different than from today. Women were expected to get married, have children, work in the home, and obey their husbands. Despite the limitations put on women, they played an important role in the growth and survival of the American colonies. In many ways, it was the backbreaking hard work of women that the United States was built upon.

Most women received very little formal education. Although some learned to read and write, many were illiterate. Girls typically learned the skills needed to manage a home from their mother. It was thought that a woman didn't need an education as she was supposed to work in the home

The main job of the woman during colonial times was to manage the home. They were responsible for raising the children, cooking meals, sewing clothes, weaving cloth, and keeping the house in order.

Women worked extremely hard during colonial times. There was always something to do to maintain the house whether it was preparing meals, mending clothes, making baskets, doing laundry, preserving food for the winter, tending to the livestock, making candles, dyeing cloth, or working in the garden. Women worked from sun up to sun down every day.

Colonial women had few legal rights or freedom. They were expected to obey the man in their life whether it was their father, brother, or husband. Women were not allowed to vote or hold public office.

A married woman's legal identity was represented by her husband. They could be beaten by their husbands and even forcibly returned to their husbands if they tried to run away. Married women could not make a will or own property. Widows and unmarried women had more rights than married women. They were allowed to buy and sell property, make a will, and sign a contract. Widows received one-third of their husband's property when he died. Sometimes widows took over the husband's business. 

Read more at: http://www.ducksters.com/history/colonial_america/womens_roles.phpThis text is Copyright © Ducksters. Do not use without permission.

Essentially, colonial women were "owned" by their husbands. The most obvious emblem of this status was the loss of her name. Married women were not referred to as "Mary Brown" or "Mrs. John Brown," but rather as "John Brown, his wife." Further, unless a husband signed a contract prior to marriage, a wife could neither own nor acquire property, nor could she enter into a contract or write a will.

And what do these sources tell us about the daily lives and what was expected from colonial women? They spent their days:

Building and regulating fires Feeding the family by cooking, baking, and canning Tending the farm animals - milk and meat cows, chickens, sheep, pigs. Tending the kitchen garden. Making cider and beer. Keeping the family clothed by gathering wool, weaving, and sewing Cleaning the home and family clothing

Keeping the family healthy Source: http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/foundingmothers.html

Colonial Quaker:The Society of Friends, or Quakers, began at the tail end of Europe’s Protestant Reformation in the 17th century. The missionary efforts of the earliest Friends took them to North America, where they became heavily involved in Pennsylvania politics before reversing their views on government participation in the mid-1750s. The Society became the first organization in history to ban slaveholding, and in the 1800s Quakers populated the abolitionist movement in numbers far exceeding their proportion of all Americans. Divisions within the Society increased in those years, although the philanthropic spirit that defined the group survived via such efforts as the formation of the American Friends Service Committee during WWI.

The missionary efforts of the earliest Friends, including founder George Fox, took them to North America where, as in England, they were persecuted. Massachusetts Bay Colony executed four. Quaker colonization of America, however, offered the prospect of a refuge and more. In contrast to other radical offspring of the Reformation, such as the Amish, Quakers believed that government was divinely instituted and virtuous men and women must help make it operate as God intended. No Quaker did more to enlist his brethren into public service than William Penn. In Pennsylvania, a responsive government of virtuous men would encourage peace, justice, charity, spiritual equality, and liberty for the benefit not just of Quakers but also of Native Americans and non-English refugees from Europe. It was to be a “Holy Experiment” and, in its way, as much a “City on a Hill” as New England.Although the reality fell short of Penn’s utopian hopes, it still succeeded mightily in the opinion of immigrants and posterity. Ambition, envy, and avarice produced thirty years of tumultuous politics in the new province and left Penn convinced that his experiment had failed. But at the same time, Pennsylvania gained a reputation as the “best poor man’s country,” free of feudal elites, established churches, tithes, discriminatory oaths, high taxes, compulsory military service, and war. While Pennsylvania prospered, Quakers prospered more than others. They always composed the majority of the elite merchants of colonial Philadelphia as well as the most prosperous farmers of the eastern counties.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/quakers

Native American Slave:Without slavery, slave trading, and other forms of unfree labor, European colonization would have remained extremely limited in the New World. The Spanish were almost totally dependent on Indian labor in most of their colonies, and even where unfree labor did not predominate, as in the New England colonies, colonial production was geared toward supporting the slave plantation complex of the West Indies. Thus, we must take a closer look at the scope of unfree labor—the central means by which Europeans generated the wealth that fostered the growth of colonies.Enslavement meant a denial of freedom for the enslaved, but slavery varied greatly from place to place, as did the lives of slaves. 

 Both before and during African enslavement in the Americas, American Indians were forced to labor as slaves and in various other forms of unfree servitude. They worked in mines, on plantations, as apprentices for artisans, and as domestics—just like African slaves and European indentured servants. As with Africans shipped to America, Indians were transported from their natal communities to labor elsewhere as slaves. Many Indians from Central America were shipped to the West Indies, also a common destination for Indians transported out of Charleston, South Carolina, and Boston, Massachusetts. Many other Indians were moved hundreds or thousands of miles within the Americas. Sioux Indians from the Minnesota region could be found enslaved in Quebec, and Choctaws from Mississippi in New England. A longstanding line of transportation of Indian slaves led from modern-day Utah and Colorado south into Mexico.

The European trade in American Indians was initiated by Columbus in 1493. Needing money to pay for his New World expeditions, he shipped Indians to Spain, where there already existed slave markets dealing in the buying and selling of Africans.

Sourec: http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/origins-slavery/essays/indian-slavery-americas

Native American HunterFishing and hunting were important activities for the Native Americans found living here by Sir Walter Ralegh's explorers and colonists in the 1580s, for Indians relied heavily on the meat of wild animals and fowl, and on fish, for their food. Lacking conventional tools, or metal, they used the materials available to them and employed a high degree of ingenuity in devising methods for catching or killing fish and game. The Europeans were impressed especially, with their fishing techniques, which proved much more effective in the shallow sounds surrounding Roanoke Island than those employed by Ralegh's colonists.

For the most part, the Indians caught their fish in net-like obstructions called weirs, which they placed across streams or channels in much the same way as modern pound-netters catch the seasonal runs of striped bass or shad. The weirs were made of reeds, woven or tied together, and anchored to the bottom by poles stuck into the sand. With their tops extending above the surface of the water the weirs looked very much like fences, and were arranged in varied patterns designed to catch the fish, and then impound them.

As was the case with most other American Indians, the natives of the Albemarle and Pamlico Sound regions relied to a great degree on bows and arrows for hunting. Harriot made special mention of black bears, which he said were " good meat, " adding that " the inhabitants in time of winter do use to take and eat many. They are taken commonly in this sort, " he said. " in some islands or places where they are, being hunted for as soon as they have spial of man, they presently run away, and then being chased, they climb and get up the next tree they can. From whence with arrows they are shot down stark dead, or with those wounds that they may after easily be killed. "

Hunting the fleet-footed deer with bow and arrow was something else again, but the Indians often employed a special technique there as well, and one involving a high degree of skill and cunning. " These savages, "Harriot said, " being secretely hidden among high reeds, where oftentimes they find the deer asleep, and kill them. "

Thus the Indians engaged in fishing and hunting not only to secure food, and hides for clothing and other uses, but as recreation and sport as well.

Source: https://www.nps.gov/fora/learn/education/indian-fishing-and-hunting.htm

Plantation Owner

PLANTATION life created a society with clear class divisions. A lucky few were at the top, with land holdings as far as the eyes could see. Most Southerners did not experience this degree of wealth. The contrast between rich and poor was greater in the South than in the other English colonies, because of the labor system necessary for its survival. Most Southerners were YEOMAN farmers, indentured servants, or slaves. The plantation system also created changes for women and family structures as well.

The TIDEWATER ARISTOCRATS were the fortunate few who lived in stately plantation manors with hundreds of servants and slaves at their beck and call. Most plantation owners took an active part in the operations of the business. Surely they found time for leisurely activities like hunting, but on a daily basis they worked as well. The distance from one plantation to the next proved to be isolating, with consequences even for the richest class. Unlike New England, who required public schooling by law, the difficulties of travel and the distances between prospective students impeded the growth of such schools in the South. Private tutors were hired by the wealthiest families. The boys studied in the fall and winter to allow time for work in the fields during the planting times. The girls studied in the summer to allow time for weaving during the colder months. Few cities developed in the South. Consequently, there was little room for a merchant middle class. URBAN PROFESSIONALS such as lawyers were rare in the South. Artisans often worked right on the plantation as slaves or servants.

The roles of women were dramatically changed by the plantation society. First of all, since most indentured servants were male, there were far fewer women in the colonial South. In the Chesapeake during the 1600s, men entered the colony at a rate of seven to one. From one perspective, this increased women's power. They were highly sought after by the overwhelming number of eager men. The high death rate in the region resulted in a typical marriage being dissolved by death within seven years. Consequently there was a good deal of remarriage, and a complex web of half-brothers and half-sisters evolved. Women needed to administer the property in the absence of the male. Consequently many developed managerial skills. However, being a minority had its downside. Like in New England, women were completely excluded from the political process. Female slaves and indentured servants were often the victims of aggressive male masters.

Settlers in the Southern colonies came to America to seek economic prosperity they could not find in Old England. The English countryside provided a grand existence of stately manors and high living. But rural England was full, and by law those great estates could only be passed on to the eldest son. America provided more space to realize a lifestyle the new arrivals could never dream to achieve in their native land.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/5e.asp

The middle colonies contained Native American tribes of Algonkian and Iroquois language groups as well as a sizable percentage of African slaves during the early years. Unlike solidly Puritan New England, the middle colonies presented an assortment of religions.

Source: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on#q=midle%20colonies%20tribes&safe=active&ssui=on

When the British set foot on the North American continent at Jamestown, they encountered the Powhatan Indians. The Pequots and Narragansetts lived in New England as the Pilgrims and Puritans established a new home. William Pennencountered the Leni Lenape natives while settling "Penn's Woods."

Although these tribes have great differences, they are linked linguistically. All of these tribes (or nations) speak an Algonquin language. These Algonkian (or Algonquian) groups were the first the English would encounter as these early settlements began to flourish.

The group of Native Americans that lived in Pennsylvania and the surrounding area before European settlement referred to themselves as Lenni-Lenape. It was the Europeans who called them Delaware.

The Algonkians relied as much on hunting and fishing for food as working the land. These tribes used canoes to travel the inland waterways. The BOW AND ARROWbrought small and large game, and the SPEARgenerated ample supplies of fish for the Algonkian peoples. Corn and SQUASH were a few of the CROPS that were cultivated all along the eastern seaboard.

Misunderstandings

This painting, by Tall Oak of the Narragansett tribe, depicts a scene from King Philip's War which pitted Metacomet against the British settlers.

As the first group to encounter the English, the Algonkians became the first to illustrate the deep cultural misunderstandings between British settlers and Native Americans. British Americans thought Algonquian women were oppressed because of their work in the fields. Algonkian men laughed at the British men who farmed — traditionally work reserved for females. Hunting was a sport in England, so British settlers thought the Algonkian hunters to be unproductive.

The greatest misunderstanding was that of land ownership. In the minds of the Algonkians selling land was like selling air. Eventually this confusion would lead to armed conflict.

The Powhatan Confederacy

The POWHATAN organized a confederacy. Virginians were met with strong resistance as they plunged westward. In New England, WAMPANOAGS under the leadership of METACOMET fought with Puritan farmers over the encroachment west onto Indian land. The pacifist Quakers were notable exceptions. Pennsylvania refused to raise a militia against the Indians for as long as Quakers dominated the government.

Unfortunately, the good times between the groups were few. The marriage of POCAHONTAS to JOHN ROLFE and the first THANKSGIVING with the Puritans did little to prevent the fighting. In most cases, each side regarded the other with fear and suspicion.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/1c.asp

The history of early Georgia is largely the history of the Creek Indians. For most of Georgia's colonial period, Creeks outnumbered both European colonists and enslaved Africans and occupied more land than these newcomers. Not until the 1760s did the Creeks become a minority population in Georgia. They ceded the balance of their lands to the new state in the 1800s.

Early HistoryThe Creek Nation is a relatively young political entity. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, no such nation existed. At that time most Southeastern natives lived in centralized mound-building societies, whose architectural achievements are still visible today in such places as the Etowah Mounds at Cartersville and the Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon.About A.D. 1400, for reasons still debated, some of these large chiefdomscollapsed and reorganized themselves into smaller chiefdoms spread about in Georgia's river valleys, including the Ocmulgee and the Chattahoochee. The Spanish incursions into the Southeast in the sixteenth century devastated these peoples. European diseases such as smallpoxmay have killed 90 percent or more of the native population. But by the end of the 1600s Southeastern Indians began to recover.They built a complex political alliance, which united native peoples from the Ocmulgee River west to the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers in Alabama. Although they spoke a variety of languages, including Muskogee, Alabama, and Hitchiti, the Indians were united in their wish to remain at peace with one another. By 1715 English newcomers from South Carolina were calling these allied peoples "Creeks." The term was shorthand for "Indians living on Ochese Creek" near Macon, but traders began applying it to every native resident of the Deep South. They numbered about 10,000 at this time.

Relations with the EnglishWhen General James Oglethorpe and his Georgia colonists arrived in 1733, Creek-English relations were already well established. Early interaction between Creeks and colonists centered on the exchange of slaves and deerskins for foreign products like textiles and kettles. Soon after the establishment of South Carolina in 1670, the Creeks set up a brisk business capturing and selling Florida Indians to their new neighbors. By 1715 this segment of the trade had nearly disappeared for lack of supply and demand. Deerskins then became the main currency.By the 1730s tens of thousands of skins were leaving the port of Charleston, South Carolina, each year, bound for English factories, where they were cut into breeches, stretched into book covers, and sewn into gloves. Savannah, Georgia, later joined Charleston as a leading port, and in the 1750s it may have exported more than 60,000 skins each year. In Creek towns the profits from the trade included cloth, kettles, guns, and rum. These items became integral parts of the culture, easing the labor tasks of Creeks. However, they also created conflict by enriching some, but not all, Indians.

Source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/creek-indians