Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								




     "A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from

     Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He

     was about 16 or 18 years of age."
Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the Boston Gazette,
of 1749, and the Boston Evening Post, of 1758. The February News
Letter, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of
Different Sizes."
In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a privateersman in 1712
were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his brother in 1695, told
him that "toys would sell if in small quantity." In exceeding small
quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the Boston News Letter advertised
"English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not until October, 1771, on the
lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell
every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament,
dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item "Boys
Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in 1761. I know that no
little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even the
serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were
advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of
milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion
plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still
survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and
mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of their
youth.
As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity and worldliness took
the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England children shared
with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which found but few
and inadequate methods of expression in the lives of either old or
young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of
New England parentage--Anna Green Winslow--to live with her aunt and
receive a "finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her
parents and her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept
a diary, of which portions have been preserved, and which I do not
hesitate to say is the most sprightly record of the daily life of a girl
of her age that I have ever read. There is not a dull word in it, and
every page has some statement of historical value. She was twelve years
old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then had a "coming-out
party"--she became a "miss in her teens." To this rout only young ladies
of her own age and in the most elegant Boston society were invited--no
rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has written for us more than one prim and
quaint little picture of similar parties--here is one of her clear and
stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account also of the evening
dress of a young girl at that time.



     "I have now the pleasure to give you the result Viz; a very genteel

     well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last evening,