Social Enjoyments

1. Social Enjoyments • Outside of the household many people enjoyed socializing with neighbors and those in their communities. • This differentiated between cities, villages and rural settlements. • In the villages and neighborhoods women would visit other women and drink tea and enjoy the afternoon. • Americans were very mobile and some families never stayed long in one community. • Families that did stay in one place for long periods of time would visit neighbors weekly or even daily.

2. Mary White-Boylston, MA • Mary White was a character spoken about in this section. • She was said to have visitors come to her house at least nine or ten times a week on average. She would also visit other families three or four times. • Mary would go to Sunday meetings, funerals, vacations with her husband and the meetings with other women. • Mary no longer had children to care for and shared household work with her daughters. Pamela Brown-Plymouth, VT • Pamela had a different social life than Mary. She only went to church once or twice a month. She attended every funeral in Plymouth and stayed up many nights with the sick. • The most important visits were the four or five visits a week she had with young male and female friends. • She would often leave for two or three days to visit relatives in other towns. • Pamela was a young woman of courting age who helped her mother but had not taken on domestic responsibilities of her own.

3. Women’s Socializing • Women with young children and demanding household responsibilities had less time and opportunities to socialize or even to keep diaries. • Most country women found some time for visiting even in the middle of difficult work. • The social isolation of families in the thinly settled parts of America hurt mostly the women. The sexes had different opportunities to move beyond the farmstead. • With the amount of household chores the women could not really leave the household while the men had to leave frequently for business, trading, hunting or attending public gatherings. • Women sometimes went several months without seeing someone outside their immediate family circle. • Women were responsible for managing the domestic life of dozens or even hundreds of other people on the farmstead. • They were also confined by childbearing and their heavy daily responsibilities.

4. Social Gatherings • Most social gatherings occurred during the season-driven swings of agricultural work. Mostly between spring plowing and fall harvest. Visits were shorter and gatherings less frequent during these times. • During July most activities were stopped because of the labor of getting in the Northern Hay Crop. Stores and shops closed, visits declined, few couples were married and few children were conceived. • After the crops had been pulled in the stores were more then an economic link but they were also a central gathering place that linked households and neighborhoods, community forums and information centers. Just before planting or past harvest these were lively and crowded places.

5. Winter Time • Winter in the Northern states was a time of growing discomfort and greater leisure. • Family life was confined to one or two rooms. Outdoor chores grew difficult as the temperature dropped. During a severe storm a household could be confined to the house for several weeks. • Winter was a courting season for many. Also, a time for young people to remember sleigh rides, singing schools and dances. • Stores had less business during the winter but often stayed open as men gathered there late in the evening.

6. Urban America • In Urban America people lived closer together. Some neighborhoods had a closely knit social life based around workshops, stores, taverns and groceries. • Cities were not a place for social intimacy. Many people did not stay long enough to develop many social connections. • Women of the richer families often spent their time in elaborate and very different networks of social exchange. In the evenings they had dinner parties, dances and formal balls. • Families connected by kinship, business and politics, interchanged calls and invitations. • Etiquette books became more and more popular explaining the rules of social interchanges.

7. Socializing for Slaves • Slaves led a communal life that was not known by their masters. • Slaves would pass the evening by visiting, moving freely in and out of each other’s cabins on the street, or talking and singing outdoors. • On many plantations the owner would allow them occasional Saturday night parties and would give them whiskey and chickens. • The most adventurous or determined young men would go courting or would go to visit quarters away from their own plantations. • Some owners would try to impose a curfew to limit slave socialization but was mostly used to discourage off plantation visiting.