ed that these same American women in the days of tribulation
when their husbands were battling for a new nation were willing to cast
aside such indications of wealth and pride, and don the humble homespun
garments made by their own hands.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Fiske: _Old Virginia_, Vol. I, p. 246.

[129] Page 76.

[130] Smyth: _Writings of B. Franklin_, Vol. IV, p. 449.

[131] _Ibid._ Vol. III, p. 431.

[132] _Ibid._ Vol. III, p. 419.

[133] _Ibid._ Vol. III, p. 438.

[134] _Letters of A. Adams_, p. 282.

[135] _Letters of A. Adams_, p. 250.

[136] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 227.

[137] Buckingham: _Reminiscences_, Vol. I, p. 34.

[138] Buckingham. Vol. I, p. 88.

[139] Buckingham, Vol. I, p. 115.

[140] _Ibid._

[141] Vol. II, p. 115.

[142] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 59.

[143] Quoted in Earle: _Home Life in Colonial Days_, p. 290.

[144] Earle: _Home Life in Colonial Days_, p. 291.

[145] Wharton: _Through Colonial Doorways_, p. 89.

[146] Wharton: _M. Washington_, p. 225.

[147] Earle: _Home Life in Colonial Days_, p. 294.

[148] Goodwin: _Dolly Madison_, p. 54.

[149] Wharton: _Through Colonial Doorways_, p. 219.

[150] Wharton: _Through Colonial Doorways_, p. 79.

[151] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 230.

[152] Crawford: _Romantic Days in the Early Republic_, p. 53.

CHAPTER V

COLONIAL WOMAN AND SOCIAL LIFE

_I. Southern Isolation and Hospitality_

In the earlier part of the seventeenth century the social life of the
colonists, at least in New England, was what would now be considered
monotonous and dull. Aside from marriages, funerals, and church-going
there was little to attract the Puritans from their steady routine of
farming and trading. In New York the Dutch were apparently contented
with their daily eating, drinking, smoking, and walking along the
Battery or out the country road, the Bowery. In Virginia life, as far as
social activities were concerned, was at first dull enough, although
even in the early days of Jamestown there was some display at the
Governor's mansion, while the sessions of court and assemblies brought
planters and their families to town for some brief period of balls,
banquets, and dancing.

As the seventeenth century progressed, however, visiting, dinner
parties, dances, and hunts in the South became more and more gay, and
the balls in the plantation mansions became events of no little
splendor. Wealth, gained through tob