9 Sewall, Diary, 12-13 Oct. 1693, 10 Feb. 1696.

10 Another example appears in the diary of Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, Mass., 30 miles west of Boston. “Captain [Rowland?] Storey [of Boston] conversed with me about his Sons living with me. His words were these about the Conditions of our Discourse. ‘Take the Lad, Sir, till about May, when I expect to return from Sea, but if it please God to prevent me, if you like the boy keep him till he is 15 or 16 years old, when I would have him put to apprentice. All I desire is that you keep him warm, and feed him Suitably. Instruct him [in] Christianity. My main expectation and hope is that you’ll give him Education proper to such an one. Let him serve you as he is able, impose not on him those heavy burthens that will either Cripple him or Spoil his Growth. But in all regards I am willing he should Serve you to his Utmost. Upon my Consenting to this he said he has no Hatt. Let him have one of yours, and if it should so happen that he doth not remain with you I’ll pay for it.’ Upon all I got him a Hatt at my Brothers and took him with Me at the Entrance of the Evening. It was very Cold and for the Sake of the Boy I was forc’d to call in twice by the way to Cambridge.” Young John Storey duly entered the Parkman household. Parkman, Diary, I, 8, 13 (20 Jan., 6 June 1726).

11 A comparison of “sending out” in two Puritan households in East Anglia and Massachusetts yields the following result:

The Children of Samuel Sewall, Boston, Mass.

 

Name

Date Sent Out

Age (yr.month)

Place and Purpose

Samuel Jr.

11.10.1694

16.4

Boston, bound apprentice

Hannah

11.10.1693

13.8

Rowley, learning housewifery

Elizabeth

24.08.1696

14.8

Salem, learning needlework

Joseph

16.08.1703

15.0

Cambridge, attends college

Mary

02.11.1696

5.0

Boston, learning to read and knit

Judith

27.04.1704

2.7

Dedham, “to be healed of her rupture”

The Children of Ralph Josselin, Earls Colne, Essex

 

Name

Date Left

Age (yr.month)

Place and Purpose

Thomas

25.05.1659

15.5

London, bound apprentice

Jane

21.04.1656

10.6

Colchester, education

John

09.01.1667

15.4

London, bound apprentice

Anne

24.06.1668

14.0

London, bound as servant

Mary

02.02.1668

10.0

White Colne, education

Elizabeth

23.04.1674

13.9

Bury St. Edmunds, education

Rebecka

17.05.1677

13.5

London, bound as servant

Sources: Sewall, Diary; Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, A Seventeenth-Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), 93.