They did replenish the
earth. They also filled the churchyards.
TWENTY-ONE OF THOSE SEVENTY-ONE CHILDREN DIED IN CHILDHOOD.
This left fifty to grow up. It was an average of five surviving
children for each of the ten fathers. But it was an average of
only 2.7 for each of the eighteen mothers.
In commending the colonial family one must make an offset for the
unfair frequency with which it had more than one wife-and-mother
to help out its fertility record. And in commending the era of
young wives and numerous children one must make an offset for the
hideous frequency with which it killed them.
Turn from Harvard to Yale. Look at the men who graduated from
1701 to 1745.
The girls they took in marriage were most of them under
twenty-one and were many of them down in their 'teens, sometimes
as far down as fourteen.
May we observe that they were not taken in marriage out of a
conscious sense of duty to the Commonwealth and to Population?
They were taken because they were needed. The colonial gentleman
had to have his soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and
smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels and other
industrial machines operated for him by somebody, if he was going
to get his food and clothes and other necessaries cheap.
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