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92 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

anxiety about their relations with the French, American Indians, and even the
English government.
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Belief in witchcraft had been widespread in Europe and England for centuries. It
was part of a general belief in supernatural causes for events that could not otherwise
be explained — severe storms, a suspicious fire, a rash of deaths among livestock. When
a community began to suspect witchcraft, they often pointed to individuals who chal-
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
lenged cultural norms.
Women who were difficult to get along with, eccentric, poor, or simply too inde-
pendent, most especially those widows inheriting and controlling land, were easy to
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
imagine as influenced by evil spirits and invisible demons. Some 160 individuals, mostly
women, were accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and fifteen were
put to death between 1647 and 1691.
At Salem, Massachusetts, potentially powerful females were targeted by residents
in 1692. Within weeks of the initial accusations, more than one hundred individuals,
80 percent of them women, stood accused of witchcraft. Twenty-seven of the accused
came to trial, and twenty were found guilty, with nineteen people hanged and one
pressed to death under the weight of stones. Many of the accused were poor, childless,
or disgruntled women, but widows who inherited property also came under suspicion,
especially if they fought for control against distant male relatives and neighbors.
Shortages of land in established Puritan communities intensified social conflicts. In
New England, the land available for farming shrank as the population soared. By 1700,
a New England wife who married at age twenty and survived to forty-five bore an aver-
age of eight children, most of whom lived to adulthood. In the
original Puritan New England colonies, the population rose
from 100,000 in 1700 to 400,000 in 1750, and many par-
ents were unable to provide their children with sufficient land
for profitable farms.
The shortage of land led many New England men to
seek their fortune farther west, leaving young women with
few eligible bachelors to choose from. Marriage prospects
were affected as well by battles over inheritance. Still, for
most Puritan women, daily rounds of labor shaped their lives
more powerfully than legal statutes or inheritance rights. The
© Worcester Art Museum/Bridgeman Images of neighbors. Husbands and wives depended on each other to
result was increased migration to the frontier, where families
were more dependent on their own labor and a small circle

support their families.
An ideology of marriage as a partnership took practi-
cal form in communities across the colonies, including New
England. By the early eighteenth century, many colonial

if the wife remained the junior partner through common law.
This option was not accessible to all. Before 1700, ser-
Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary (1674) This writers promoted the idea of marriage as a partnership, even
portrait shows Elizabeth Freake, the wife of merchant vants who survived their indenture had a good chance of
John Freake, and their eighth child, Mary. Here securing land, but by the mid-eighteenth century, only two of
Elizabeth and her daughter demonstrate Puritan every ten were likely to become landowners.
simplicity in their white head coverings and aprons, In Puritan towns, and also commercial cities such as Boston
yet they also display their family’s wealth and John
Freake’s commercial ties through their silk gowns and Salem, the wives of artisans learned aspects of their hus-
and embroidered cloth. band’s craft and assisted their husbands in a variety of ways.
What does this painting reveal about Puritan Given the overlap between living spaces and workplaces in the
values and society? eighteenth century, extended households of artisan women

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