Hometown American History

Women in the

Early Colonial Period

Gravestone, Mary LattimerFarber Gravestone Collection

Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Her Baby Mary, 1676

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA

PrologueAnne Bradstreet

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits. A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits. If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope’s own child? So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie. The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. Men have precedency and still excel; It is but vain unjustly to wage war. Men can do best, and Women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

Hall-Parlor House PlanNew England

17th-18th centuries

John Lewis Krimmel, Blind Man’s Bluff (1814)

Terra Foundation for American Art

Law and Gender: Adultery

Status

Married Woman and Single Man

Single Man and Single Woman

Married Man and Married Woman

Punishment

Whipping and/or Fine for Fornication

Death

Whipping and/or Fine for Fornication

Married Man and Unmarried Woman

Death

The Gibbs Children

Museum of Fine Art, Boston (left and middle), and Clay Center, Charleston, WV (right)

Robert Feke, Isaac Royall and His Family, 1741

Harvard University

John Durand, The Rapalje Children, 1768

The New-York Historical Society

“Dignifying the Seats”

Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, CT

Prudence Punderson,The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality

1776-1783

Connecticut Historical Society

Keep Within Compass, 1785-1805“Enter Not into the Way of the Wicked, and Go Not in the Path of E

Evil Men.”Winterthur Museum

A Society of Patriotic Ladies, London, 1765

Library of Congress