Living in New England was truly survival of the fittest. Battling disease, performing hard physical labor, braving harsh elements and adherence to strict religious beliefs were all daily struggles in the New England Colonies. Brave men and women struck out to face life head on and ultimately forged the new land that we would come to know as our United States of America. Mary D.

Religious Beliefs by Kori H.

The Puritans were a group of people that were discontent with the Church of England. In 1620 they moved from the Netherlands to America and ended up in Delaware. After they had started to establish colonies such as Plymouth in 1620, Massachusetts in 1628 and New Hampshire in 1629, they started viewing there ability to re-colonize as a triumph of their Christianity. The Puritans strongly believed that the Bible was the passage to God. They all dressed very modestly thinking that if you did not, you were sinning. Puritans also believed that you could only receive salvation though God and God alone. The Puritans, thinking very highly of themselves, started to have the sense that God chose them to be his "Chosen People". They harshly put the imposition of religion called Christianity on a population who not willingly wanted this. This resulted in the Puritan's religious persecution, not dying down until around the 19th century. Puritanism played a colossal role in the New England colonies. The Puritans wanted to rid themselves of the Catholic faith all together and just have Puritanism. In there eyes, Catholicism was just a waste of time and also was not as correct as their way of life. Their faith shaped the colonies in many ways. It made for stronger political goals, as well as religion itself. Many colonists might not of been Puritans, but Puritanism remained a high power in the New England region. Beginning in 1646, a Puritan minister named John Eliot tried to be a missionary to the Indians. He studied there way of living, language and beliefs hoping that in knowing how they functioned he could bring Christianity to them. Some accepted the Puritan's religion but a large majority of Indians refused and did not believe.

There were multiple religions during the days of the earliest colonies. In the New England colonies, the strongest would have been Puritanism. However, in the Middle colonies there was a variety, from Quakers to Catholics and Lutherans to Jews. Down in the Southern colonies there were mixtures, and in these mixtures were Baptists and Anglicans. Most towns or colonies, whether North, Middle or South, met for church in places called a meetinghouse. The meetinghouse was used for church worship and also town meetings. It usually was the larger building in the middle of town, although the location varied on where church was held. People would end up spending the whole day at church, sitting on long wooden benches. They believed church to be of the up most importance and that it should be an all day event.

Resources:

David Cody, "Puritanism in New England," Hart wick College, (1998) http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/puritan2.html (accessed November 11, 2010).

Social Studies for Kids. "Religion and church in the 13 American Colonies," (accessed on November 11, 2010), http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/13colonieschurch.htm.

Image one ( puritans ): http://ushistoryimages.com/images/new-england-
colonies/fullsize/new-england-colonies-4.jpg.

Image two (meetinghouse) :
http://www2.curtislibrary.com/history/wheeler/images/first_meeting_house.jpg

Health and Diseases by Leeta V.

The first settlers that arrived in the the New World were often malnourished and in a weakened state due to the long voyage, and in poor condition due to the vessels they arrived on. The vessels were crowded, unsanitary, and poorly supplied with food and medicine. The colonists often spent months aboard the vessels, and contagious and infectious disease usually appeared. The most prevalent epidemic diseases that were brought to the colonies were smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and measles. Of all the diseases, smallpox caused the most devastation. Colonists combated the contagious diseases with quarantine, or isolation, of the ill. After the first outbreak of smallpox, inoculation was practiced and has since become another method used to prevent the spread of disease. As settlements started expanding, diseases started spreading to the local tribes with devastating results, especially in Southern Colonies. The Northern Colonies did not have as many problems with disease due to smaller farming communities and cold winters which limited travel and spread of disease. This fact caused death rates to dwindle and life expectancy to rise for the Northern Colonies.


Resources:

Leavitt, Judith Waltzer. Sickness and Health in America. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).

Cliffsnotes.com. "New England Colonies," (accessed November 9, 2010).
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/New-England-Colonies.topicArticleId-25073,articleId-25010.html

Lind, James. "Essay on the Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates."
1978.http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/history/assets/disease.jpg
(accessed 11/09/2010).

http://wiki.ubc.ca/images/a/ac/Jenner.jpg

Education and Professions by Sarah C.

Education in early New England was closely aligned with the cultural backgrounds of each group. Each colony had their own style and pattern for their educational system. Religion was a prominent factor affecting education. Quakers, Calvinists, and Puritans established their own means for interweaving religion with their education. The Quakers stressed the importance of nurturing families. They did not use many books or effective means of educating. They weren’t against them, but felt their methods were more effective for the goal they initially wanted to achieve. Calvinists’ main focus was emphasizing a personal interpretation of the Bible. The Puritans wanted to educate as well as shape individual lives. They succeeded in establishing grammar schools and Harvard College. Beyond the religiously based schools, there were few colonists that studied classical language or mathematics. There were other colleges established such as Oxford and Cambridge. The curriculum included “logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, history, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, physics, nature of plants, Greek grammar and literature, Hebrew grammar and Bible readings, Chaldee grammar and Apocryphal reading, Syriac grammar and New Testament readings, and catechetical divinity. The prerequisite required fluency in Latin. After a century of these educations, other colleges branched off to preserve their background, which expanded options of the colonist’s education. Doctors made medicine out of leaves, roots, tree bark, herbs and some parts of animals. The doctors got paid even if the patients died. The farmers could not thrive and accumulate money easily. This caused people to become fishermen and sailors, shipbuilders and merchants. There were little means of manufacturing, but people supplied their own desires. Most every farmer was also a mechanic. The wife and daughters spun and wove clothes for the family to wear. There were blacksmiths and craftsmen. They were considered the average men amongst the colony. The ministers were looked upon highly and had much respect around the community. Knowledgeable doctors were hard to come by and were also looked upon as a respectable profession. Resources: Boudreau, George W. "Education, 1585–1763." Smith, Billy G., and Gary B. Nash, eds. in Encyclopedia of American History: Colonization and Settlement, 1608 to 1760, vol. 2. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp? ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHII129&SingleRecord=True, (accessed November 8, 2010). "Earliest Harvard College Schedule." American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp? ItemID=WE52&iPin=AHI10881&SingleRecord=True (accessed November 8, 2010). Unger, Harlow G. "Education in the Colonial Period." Encyclopedia of American Education,Third Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. American History Online, Facts On File,Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAE0470&SingleRecord=True (accessed November 8, 2010). http://www.sonofthesouth.net/revolutionary-war/battles/weaver.jpg

Family, Children and Women's Roles by Cassandra L.

The family was at the center of each Puritan godly community. The rigidly upheld norms ensured that the proscribed proper gender roles, as well as the place of children, were maintained and enforced. Deviations from these norms were not tolerated and frequently punished harshly. The New England family model established a long-term pattern that, eventually, would become the American social expectation.

Unlike other English colonies such as Virginia, where marriage tended to occur later in life, males and females in New England married early and began to build families. The semi-theocratic Commonwealth allowed for divorce and differentiated between divorce and annulment. Adultery, desertion, or prolonged absences, usually seven years or longer, were legal grounds for terminating the marriage. It was not uncommon for men to remarry after the death of a wife because life was fragile and childbearing dangerous. The term "now-wife" came to refer to a man's present wife as compared to those that he had previously lost. Puritans held to the idea of the “limit on love"; there was no marriage in heaven. Wives were expected to be obedient to their husbands but husbands were expected to love their wives. All property in the marriage was held by the husband whose duties including providing for the wife and children.

Most families lived on small farms; therefore each member of the household was expected to assist with the seasonal rigors of planting and harvesting. Every family member that could walk helped with the chores. Women, however, were expected to do all of the household work, which included everything from cooking to making soap, washing, and nurturing children. Many children didn't survive to adulthood. An early gravestone in Vermont displays symbolic faces of thirteen infants and one child that one woman lost before her own death at forty. Young girls were placed in households once they came of age to learn the intricacies of being wives and mothers. As they got older, they were forbidden to date males without proper chaperoning. Boys were apprenticed to masters for a period of 5-7 years depending upon the terms of the contract and the type of skill to be learned. Over all, every family member had their role and pulled their weight to make the family function as smoothly as possible.

Resources:

History of American Women Blog . http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2007_12_01_archive.html (accessed November 11, 2010).

Streich, Michael. November 5, 2009. Colonial Families in Puritan New England: Social Norms and Gender Expectations Dictated Proper Roles. Suite101. (November 5), http://www.suite101.com/content/colonial-families-in-puritan-new-england-a166440 (accessed November 5, 2010).

The New England Colonies. New England Colonies Daily Life. The Thirteen Colonies.

http://www.east-buc.k12.ia.us/00_01/ca/13c6.htm (accessed November 5, 2010).