What do you think of when you hear the words sex and colonial America?
There’s a big chance that you do not think of anything, or that you think sex was taboo and only used for reproduction. We all have preconceived notions of a prudish colonial America, shaped by what we learn about the beliefs of the Puritans who settled in America in the 17th century. In our minds, sex and Puritans simply do not go together.
In this episode of History: with Acadia and Emily, we dive into these preconceptions to see how true our stereotypes of colonial America are. Framing our research around our and other Grinnellians’ preconceived notions of colonial sexuality, we delve into secondary literature and primary sources ranging from diaries to court cases in order to answer the question: what were colonial attitudes towards sex?
What we discovered with our research surprised us. In colonial America, sex was everywhere. It was talked about incessantly, in handbooks, legal cases, and church sermons. Colonial leaders constantly tried to dictate what types of sexual relationships colonists should have. However, there existed a divide between what church and political figures wanted people to do—which is from where our preconceptions come—and what people actually did. Young couples had accepted pre-marital sex, men sought to pleasure women, and colonists used lots of crass language. Sex was not taboo in colonial America. Colonists talked and wrote about it openly and frequently. In fact, the citizens of colonial America seem obsessed with sex.
We’ve divided our podcast into four sections. In the first, we discuss godly vs. deviant sex. We explore what types of sexual relationships and acts were accepted, and which were not. In the second section, we look at regional differences in sexual attitudes. If something was accepted in the Chesapeake, it does not necessarily mean it was accepted in colonial New England. In the third section, we discuss courtship practices in colonial America, and how people decided who they were going to marry. Finally, we explore colonists’ views on pleasure, and its role in colonial marriages.
Meet the Historians
Acadia Broussard
Acadia Broussard is from St. Louis, Missouri and is currently majoring in History and French. She is also in the education licensure program and will receiving teaching licenses in both subjects. Broussard loves American History but typically focuses on the 20th century, so learning about colonial America was a fun new challenge.
Emily Rhodes
Emily Rhodes comes from just north of the Twin Cities. She is a second-year History and French major with a concentration in European Studies at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Rhodes’ research interests focus on 19th century European history, but she was excited to explore another era and region with this podcast assignment. In her free time, Rhodes plays viola in the Grinnell Symphony Orchestra and enjoys reading and travelling.
Listen Here
Acknowledgements
Acadia and Emily would like to thank:
- Gina Donovan (technical support)
- Carolyn Herbst-Lewis (professor)
- Lily Hamilton, Moya Roarty, Michael Sundby, and Emily Zaffiro (interviewees)
- Grinnell College Audio-Visual Center (recording and editing equipment)
- Grinnell College Burling Library (research materials)
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Berkin, Carol and Leslie Horowitz, eds. Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives: Documents in Early American History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.
D’Emilio, John and Thomas A. Foster, eds. Documenting Intimate Matters: Primary Sources for a History of Sexuality in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Peiss, Kathy, ed. Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Secondary Sources:
Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2006.
Block, Sharon and Kathleen M. Brown. “Clio in Search of Eros: Redefining Sexuality in Early America.” The William and Mary Quarterly. 60, no. 1 (2003): 5-12.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Crane, Elaine Forman. Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores: Common Law and Common Folk in Early America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.
D’Emilio, John. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Smith, Merril D. Sex and Sexuality in Early America. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Murrin, John M. “‘Things Fearful to Name’: Beastiality in Colonial America.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 65 (1998): 8-43.
Myles, Anne G. “Queering the Study of Early American Sexuality.” The William and Mary Quarterly. 60, no. 1 (2003): 199-202.
Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Rupp, Leah J. A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Treckel, Paula A. “Breastfeeding and Maternal Sexuality in Colonial America.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20, no. 1 (1989): 25-51.
Transcript
[MUSIC]
ACADIA: Welcome to the second episode of History: with Acadia and Emily. For today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about everyone’s favorite topic: sex. More specifically, we’re going to be delving into a time that people don’t normally associate with sex: Colonial America. That’s right, we’re talking about Puritans, Pilgrims, and Plantation owners all doing the dirty. We all know they had sex, I mean babies come from somewhere right? But most people assume that their sex was strictly reproductive and entirely secretive. What would you say though, if I told you that Colonial America might not be as prudish as you think? What if I told you that colonists said words like fuck, slut, whore, and cunt? Today, we’ll be going under the covers and looking into the sex lives of Colonial Americans.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: So as we said welcome back, to our Spring 2017 episode. We’re Acadia and Emily coming to you from Grinnell, Iowa, and today we hope to show you ways that your conceptions of Colonial American sexuality do not align with reality. We know that what we discovered while making this certainly did not align with what we were expecting. To establish what “common conceptions” of Colonial American sexuality even are though, we walked around and asked some Grinnell College students what they thought about the topic.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: When we say the words, colonial America and sex, what do you think of?
GRINNELL STUDENT #1: Nothing. Literally nothing. Like procreation that’s it.
GRINNELL STUDENT #2: I don’t really see those two going together.
GRINNELL STUDENT #3: I think of like puritans
GRINNELL STUDENT #4: We’re still inhabiting this place, but, like I don’t really see them really doing it, because you don’t really think about past generations having sex.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: Now that we’ve got our conceptions, let’s dive into what is and isn’t true about American colonial sex.
One of our perceptions of colonists is that they considered all sexual acts sinful. But this is clearly not the case, as the colonists continued to marry and produce children. In fact, some sexual acts were not only accepted by colonial communities, but considered holy. In order to explore this, let’s distinguish between godly and deviant sex in colonial America.
Let’s start with the godly sex. In Puritan America, marital sex was celebrated by church educators as quote “an expression of love and fellowship between husband and wife” end quote. Priests often pointed to biblical passages which supported marital sex and made conjugal sex a central part of their sermons. In fact, sex was considered so important in colonial marriages that a lack of marital sex could lead to legal prosecution. In 1640, James Matock of Boston was excommunicated for having quote “denied conjugal fellowship unto his wife for the space of two years together” unquote.
However, there were very practical reasons that marital sex was so revered by early American churches. In the early years of colonial America, populating the colony was a huge issue. Those in power promoted marital sex and painted it as godly in an attempt to raise birth rates.
Most sexual relationships and acts that took place outside of the marriage bed were considered deviant in colonial America.
Male homosexual relationships—or instances of sodomy, as they were called—did not lead to children and were thus considered wrong. Officially, a sodomizer would if caught would be castrated, whipped every three months, and imprisoned for life. In some communities, they could even be put to death.
However, in other communities, men in homosexual relationships could not only escape prosecution but thrive. In New Jersey in the early 18th century, two men were accused of being in a romantic relationship. Even though the resulting scandal lead to one man taking a wife, neither man’s reputations in the community was tarnished in any way. This shows a seeming disconnect between the doctrine of the church and the opinions of the citizens of early America.
Women in homosexual relationships on the other hand were rarely prosecuted in colonial America. Since only penetrative acts were considered sex, women in sexual relationships were not to puritans really having sex at all.
Beastiality was considered a big problem and particularly deviant in colonial America. In fact, in the 1640s, bestiality paranoia swept through New England, and many men were accused of having sex with their farm animals. Those who were accused of bestiality often faced a lifetime prison sentence or death. The animal often faced a similar fate, as they would henceforth be considered unclean.
As shown, there was a clear divide between what was considered good sex and what was considered bad sex in colonial America. As expanding the population was the number one priority of many colonial leaders, any sex that did not do that was considered deviant.
As you can see, some of our perceptions of early American sexuality are true. Colonists were intolerant of some sexual acts. But they accepted others, and the fact that colonists categorized sexual acts so thoroughly shows that sex was discussed in society, which certainly goes against my preconceptions of early American sexuality.
[MUSIC]
ACADIA: Our perception of colonial America is often due to our perception of Puritan communities, and while a lot, but not all, of those perceptions are true, we have to keep in mind that Puritan communities did not represent all of colonial America. In fact, religious communities don’t even represent all of America. A lot of colonists in the southern colonies were coming to America as indentured servants, not because they were seeking religious freedom. This difference in motivation for coming to America caused a lot of variation between these communities, and a lot of variation in their sex lives.
A big difference between these colonists’ attitudes towards sex was about their attitude towards pre-marital sex. While pre-marital sex occurred sometimes in New England, it was actually pretty common in the Chesapeake region due to the fact that there was a 4 to 1 male to female sex ratio and these colonists weren’t even allowed to get married until they became free. So… celibacy really wasn’t their top priority. Premarital sex culture in the Chesapeake was so strong that up to 1/3 of brides in the Chesapeake region were pregnant. What’s more is that women didn’t have to worry about being pure or virgins because, like I said, there was a 4:1 ratio, so honestly anybody could make good wife material. If you were a woman with multiple bastard children, you were definitely still an eligible bachelorette in the Chesapeake region.
Chesapeake and New England did share some attitudes towards sex, but most of these attitudes were similar in law more than they were in practice. Laws in both regions carried harsh punishments for those who were sexually deviant, however New England communities were much more likely to uphold those laws. New England communities monitored each other’s sexual crimes way more extensively, and the punishments for these crimes were much more intense, including some instances of the death penalty. This is because some religious communities believed that one individual’s sin could harm the entire community. While there is definitely some truth to the idea that colonists were prudish about their sex lives, they definitely weren’t quiet about it. It wasn’t as taboo as we think it was. New England communities were obsessed with talking about and monitoring each other’s sex lives.
Another difference is that homes in New England were much closer together than in the agricultural Chesapeake, which meant it was a lot easier for people to spy on their neighbors’ sex lives. In the Chesapeake, however, farmland spread these houses apart, which made it easier for people to find hiding spots for more intimate moments.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: How accepted do you think premarital sex was in colonial America?
GRINNELL STUDENT #1: Not very socially acceptable.
GRINNELL STUDENT #2: Ahh, bad.
GRINNELL STUDENT #3: I think it was probably pretty common, but still a taboo thing that people would work to cover up. That would be my guest.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: As these interviews show, many modern Americans believe that pre-marital sex was taboo in Colonial America. But as we’ll soon see, sex between unmarried couples was more common than you’d think. But before we can talk about pre-marital sex, we need to talk about how couples in early America became couples. How did young colonists decide who they were going to marry? One might expect that most colonial marriages were arranged between families, but the evidence does not support this idea. In fact, there was a thriving “dating culture” in colonial America, especially in the 18th century.
One way that teenagers in colonial America met romantic partners was through events called junkets or frolicks. These were basically group dates with many young adults, that took place late at night and could involve anything from quilting to sledding. For the most part, these practices were accepted by parents and the community.
One thing that was most shocking to learn about colonists, and this is actually something we’ve already talked about, was that pre-marital sex wasn’t as taboo you would think it was. Of course, if the pre-marital sex ended in a bastard child being born, it could ruin the woman and her child. This happened in 1664 when indentured servant Anne Orthwood had a child with the wealthy and single John Kendall of Norfolk, Virginia. The resulting scandal not only ruined Anne’s reputation, but also that of her child.
However, if the couple got married, it was a completely different story. As long as the pregnant woman married the father and repented, the couple would still be accepted by society. Furthermore, if the couple was already engaged, many community members considered it fine for them to have premarital sex, although this mindset was heavily discouraged by the church.
In fact, colonial parents sometimes even encouraged unmarried young adults to sleep together under their roof. This was part of a widespread practice known as bundling, where couples were encouraged to sleep in the same bed. However, as shocking as this seems to our preconceived notions of colonists, there was a practical reason for it. As historian Richard Godbeer notes, quote “If the the couple did conceive, the parents would know who was responsible and could pressure the father to marry or at least support the mother unquote.”
However, bundling did not only occur between committed partners. In his 1780 diary, the young New Hampshire farmer Abner Sanger gives an account of his friend Zadock Dodge’s one night affair with Hephzibah Crossfield, complaining that the next day Dodge was quote “overcome with the fatigue of the last night with Hephzibah” unquote. Zadock and Hephzibah never married and are never again coupled together in Sanger’s diary. This displays that there may have even been a casual sex culture in parts colonial America.
All in all, the colonial attitudes towards courtship are very different from what I’d expected, and colonists were certainly less prudish and more open towards unmarried couples exploring their sexuality than I’d thought.
[MUSIC]
ACADIA: If you had to guess when American society generally understood that females had pleasure during sex, but not only that but that pleasure stemmed from the clitoris, when would you guess that would be?
GRINNELL STUDENT #1: I don’t know, 2000?
GRINNELL STUDENT #2: The 80s.
GRINNELL STUDENT #3: I don’t know, the 80s?
GRINNELL STUDENT #4: Oh, I would say that we still haven’t discovered that.
ACADIA: How would you react if I told you that in colonial America, this was a very understood fact, but not only that, female pleasure during sex was seen as essential?
GRINNELL STUDENT #2: I would be…I am surprised to learn that, if that’s true.
ACADIA: It is true!
GRINNELL STUDENT #2: Ok, well I’m surprised to learn that.
ACADIA: Like many of the people I interviewed, when I started this research I too thought that public and common conceptions of female pleasure, or really sexual pleasure in general, were a fairly recent phenomenon. I definitely did not imagine the extent to which Colonists acknowledged sexual pleasure. First of all, colonists acknowledged this pleasure at a medical level. In Jane Sharpe’s midwife’s book, the author explicitly discusses the clitoris and its relationship to pleasure. Another text wrote that the clitoris is the organ quote “which makes women lustful and take delight in copulation” unquote and that without it they quote “would have no desire nor delight nor would they ever conceive” unquote. These early medical texts stressed not just sexual pleasure, but its necessity for conception and overall good health.
Our conceptions about sexual pleasure in colonial America stem from our belief that religious attitudes towards sex and pleasure are in opposition to each other, but that is far from the case. Not only was pleasure acknowledged in colonial America, it was seen as a necessity both biologically and religiously. Lack of pleasure in a sexual relationship was grounds for divorce in some areas. Certain religious communities believed that marital sex was a way to channel human’s inherent lust into a religiously acceptable relationship. They also believed that pleasure for both partners was absolutely essential for a quality marital relationship and was a gift from God for reproducing. Even Puritans, who have a reputation for being the most prudish and uptight, believed that although sex within a marriage is a duty it quote “must be performed with good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully.”
Thus, religious communities framed sexual pleasure, as long as it was within a marital context of course, as a religious experience rather than placing the two in opposition with each other. While many couples did view their sex as Godly due to reproduction, it is important to note that sex was common even while pregnant, so reproduction was not the only reason these couples were having sex.
Couples in Colonial America were very cognisant of pleasurable sex. In a love letter from one couple, a colonial woman forgives her husband for ejaculating too quickly, as she understands that he had not had sex for a while and so the experience was particularly pleasurable. A four year old child in another part of colonial America told her servant that she had seen a man in bed with her mom who had told her to quote “lay up higher.” This example of a dialogue during sex shows that the couple was communicating about sexual positions to ensure comfort and pleasure.
Breastfeeding often caused tension in the household because colonial medical beliefs dictated that a woman must remain celibate while breastfeeding in order to preserve the quality of the milk. This belief was partially the reason that there were demands for wet nurses; if someone else was nursing your child then there was no need for you to remain celibate. For women who did breastfeed, weaning was a particularly stressful time because the stress of weaning was combined with the sexual tension from being so close to finally being able to have sex again.
Overall, the conception that sex in colonial America was always reproductive or always sinful is just not true. Sex in colonial America was often pleasurable, and everyone acknowledged this.
[MUSIC]
EMILY: In fact, many of our conceptions of Colonial Americans’ sexualities are incorrect. We hope you enjoyed learning about the sex lives of these colonists as much as we enjoyed researching it. We were certainly surprised by what we discovered. Colonists did not only enjoy and discuss sex, they almost seemed obsessed with it. Thank you for joining us for this episode of History: with Acadia and Emily.
[MUSIC]
