Old age
All four culture honored their elders, but in different ways. The Puritans viewed a long life as a sign of God’s favor and therefore venerated their elders as saints. In very hierarchical Virginia, the main way a person of low rank could achieve status was as an elder. People were taught to respect their elders – meaning not just old people, but anyone older than they were – and betters. Respect due to age equalled and sometimes exceeded respect due to rank. A young gentlemen was expected to respect the authority of an older man of lower rank. Quakers saw their elders as teachers and nurturers, guides to the community. But, an elder’s authority was not as strong as in New England or Virginia; it yielded to the Inner Light. Competition for authority was fierce among elders in the back country. Winners became people of great authority and esteem. Losers were abandoned to lives of lonely destitution.
One ingenious measure of people’s attituded about age is the practice of “age heaping.” This is based on the understanding that, then as now, people tended to fib about their ages. So looking for statistically improbable age groupings (just an incredible number of people who are 29 or 39, compared to 30 or 40) tells us something about a society’s attitudes toward age. No age heaping statistics were availabe for Quakers. My own interpretation of Fischer’s statistics (not necessarily shared by Fischer) is that Puritan and back country attitudes toward age were not so different from our own. Very young people (around 20) wanted to be older than they were. People of intermediate age wanted to be younger. But when people reached the status of honored elders, when, as some wag put it, you stop complaining about your age and start boasting about it, people started to want to be older again. In other words, you do not achieve the status of honored elder until you are recognizably old. The difference was that in the 17th and 18th Centuries, that happened around 60. These days, it happens around 80 or even 90. Virginians had quite a different pattern. Although people around 30 were apparently too young to benefit from elder status, once they approached 40 people had a strong desire to exagerate their ages, which grew stronger with each passing decade. Seniority conveyed authority much earlier in this culture.
Another distinction Fischer did not note is that people fib about their ages much less now than they used to. I can only assume that this is part of a general tendancy to view time with much greater precision now than in the past.
Death
Untimely death was much, much more common in the 17th and 18th Centuries than it is today. People learned to be fatalistic, never knowing when death might strike. But these four cultures were not all fatalistic in the same way.
Puritans lived in constant fear of damnation. Not to fear hellfire was a sure sign of being hellbound. They encouraged people to think often about their death (they called it "daily dying.") Children were encouraged to fear hell, to live in fear that they might die any time, and to stare at the bodies of the deceased to see what their inevitable fate would be. Funerals were austere matters, with sermons that took care not to exagerate the virtues of the dead. And yet, after funeral Puritans held receptions, feasted, and got drunk (one of the few times they allowed such indulgence).
Cavaliers adopted an attitude Fischer calls “stoic fatalism,” in other words, an attitude of oh well, everyone has to die some day. Living lives surrounded by disease and uncertainty, in which anyone could sicken and die at any time, Virginians learned to be dismissive and say that there was no point in crying and carrying on. At the same time, they mourned as much for the loss of loved ones as anyone else. One way of showing grief was by elaborate funerals with pallbearers,
mourning gloves, love scarves, and much feasting, drinking and firing of salutes. Funeral customs were as hierarchical as everything else in their society. People marked funerals with as much ceremony as they could afford. People were buried according to rank, in family cemetaries on the family estate for people who could afford such a plot, with a minimum of ceremony and often no marker for servants and slaves.
If Puritans lived in fear of Hell, Quakers lived in hope of Heaven. Their favored narative of death was the sick person who feared it at first, but moved past fear to welcome death. Families gathered at deathbeds to say farewell and recorded last words for their spiritual significance. Once the event was past, though, the funeral was as quick and austere as possible. They did allow a dinner after, with the bottle circulated – but only twice.
Death by disease was less common in the backcountry than in Virginia, but death by violence was more common. Although the back countrymen, like the Puritans, were Calvinists, they focused less on salvation and more on dying bravely. Funerals had many folk traditions borrowed from Scotland – laying the body on the floor to be in contact with the earth, placing a platter of salt mixed with dirt on the stomach of the deceased, wakes, and gifts to the guests. Everyone was required to touch the body because foul play was often suspected and it was believed that if a murder touched his victim, the body would bleed.
Next: The closely related subjects of religion and magic.
All four culture honored their elders, but in different ways. The Puritans viewed a long life as a sign of God’s favor and therefore venerated their elders as saints. In very hierarchical Virginia, the main way a person of low rank could achieve status was as an elder. People were taught to respect their elders – meaning not just old people, but anyone older than they were – and betters. Respect due to age equalled and sometimes exceeded respect due to rank. A young gentlemen was expected to respect the authority of an older man of lower rank. Quakers saw their elders as teachers and nurturers, guides to the community. But, an elder’s authority was not as strong as in New England or Virginia; it yielded to the Inner Light. Competition for authority was fierce among elders in the back country. Winners became people of great authority and esteem. Losers were abandoned to lives of lonely destitution.
One ingenious measure of people’s attituded about age is the practice of “age heaping.” This is based on the understanding that, then as now, people tended to fib about their ages. So looking for statistically improbable age groupings (just an incredible number of people who are 29 or 39, compared to 30 or 40) tells us something about a society’s attitudes toward age. No age heaping statistics were availabe for Quakers. My own interpretation of Fischer’s statistics (not necessarily shared by Fischer) is that Puritan and back country attitudes toward age were not so different from our own. Very young people (around 20) wanted to be older than they were. People of intermediate age wanted to be younger. But when people reached the status of honored elders, when, as some wag put it, you stop complaining about your age and start boasting about it, people started to want to be older again. In other words, you do not achieve the status of honored elder until you are recognizably old. The difference was that in the 17th and 18th Centuries, that happened around 60. These days, it happens around 80 or even 90. Virginians had quite a different pattern. Although people around 30 were apparently too young to benefit from elder status, once they approached 40 people had a strong desire to exagerate their ages, which grew stronger with each passing decade. Seniority conveyed authority much earlier in this culture.
Another distinction Fischer did not note is that people fib about their ages much less now than they used to. I can only assume that this is part of a general tendancy to view time with much greater precision now than in the past.
Death
Untimely death was much, much more common in the 17th and 18th Centuries than it is today. People learned to be fatalistic, never knowing when death might strike. But these four cultures were not all fatalistic in the same way.
Puritans lived in constant fear of damnation. Not to fear hellfire was a sure sign of being hellbound. They encouraged people to think often about their death (they called it "daily dying.") Children were encouraged to fear hell, to live in fear that they might die any time, and to stare at the bodies of the deceased to see what their inevitable fate would be. Funerals were austere matters, with sermons that took care not to exagerate the virtues of the dead. And yet, after funeral Puritans held receptions, feasted, and got drunk (one of the few times they allowed such indulgence).
Cavaliers adopted an attitude Fischer calls “stoic fatalism,” in other words, an attitude of oh well, everyone has to die some day. Living lives surrounded by disease and uncertainty, in which anyone could sicken and die at any time, Virginians learned to be dismissive and say that there was no point in crying and carrying on. At the same time, they mourned as much for the loss of loved ones as anyone else. One way of showing grief was by elaborate funerals with pallbearers,
mourning gloves, love scarves, and much feasting, drinking and firing of salutes. Funeral customs were as hierarchical as everything else in their society. People marked funerals with as much ceremony as they could afford. People were buried according to rank, in family cemetaries on the family estate for people who could afford such a plot, with a minimum of ceremony and often no marker for servants and slaves.
If Puritans lived in fear of Hell, Quakers lived in hope of Heaven. Their favored narative of death was the sick person who feared it at first, but moved past fear to welcome death. Families gathered at deathbeds to say farewell and recorded last words for their spiritual significance. Once the event was past, though, the funeral was as quick and austere as possible. They did allow a dinner after, with the bottle circulated – but only twice.
Death by disease was less common in the backcountry than in Virginia, but death by violence was more common. Although the back countrymen, like the Puritans, were Calvinists, they focused less on salvation and more on dying bravely. Funerals had many folk traditions borrowed from Scotland – laying the body on the floor to be in contact with the earth, placing a platter of salt mixed with dirt on the stomach of the deceased, wakes, and gifts to the guests. Everyone was required to touch the body because foul play was often suspected and it was believed that if a murder touched his victim, the body would bleed.
Next: The closely related subjects of religion and magic.
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