5 courtship rituals from colonial America

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

1. FIND A LIVE ONE

The earliest colonists — the Puritans who struggled for every mouthful of food and whose yearly death count exceeded that of any George Romero movie — did not have time for the frippery of love and courtship. Marriage was a survival pact. Courtship involved finding a woman of childbearing-ish age who had survived the previous winter. The man plowed things and kept threats of attack at bay. In return, the woman would keep the vermin out of the gruel she whipped up and would provide an outlet for sinful Puritan urges. Urges which would, in turn, provide the young couple with more laborers, so that this circle of mosquito-infested, frost-bitten drudgery could continue until they were released to God by sweet death.

2. HAVE YOUR DADS ARRANGE IT

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

After things were more settled in the (not-at-all-new) "New World," the living got a little easier, and marriage became more businesslike. In the early 18th century, the American patriarchal home was at its finest. And not patriarchal as we use the term today, where it can be applied to anything from the injustice of the glass ceiling to men who insist on standing up to pee. Back then, a woman literally belonged to her father or husband. They had something called "laws of coverture" which prohibited a married woman from owning property, even if it was hers before the marriage. So "dating" wasn't really a thing then. Dads did the dating for people.

Marriage was a business arrangement that two men would make, their bargaining chips being their sons' inheritance and their daughters' dowries. The goal was to marry wealth and property together; the people were incidental. Love schmove. Our corn crop was terrible this year. You're marrying for maize.

3. OVERTHROW A MONARCHY, EROTICALLY

Ah, but then came the Revolutionary era. Everybody suddenly got cool. A bunch of stuff was changing all at once. America had gotten crowded; there were more ways to sustain life than farming and acreage. It was no longer so deathly important that the farm of Goodman Figgenbottom share the water rights of Goodman Pundersnoot, by way of their children sharing bodily fluids.

Plus, the idea of "patriarchy" and completely ruling your "subjects" was losing its popularity in an America that was screaming at a king to stay out of its room. Also, bigger towns and more spacious settlements meant it was harder to keep track of people's private affairs with their privates. So now that neither parents nor fear of death were choosing spouses, young people began to do it themselves. And when I say "it," I mean "it" in the Degrassi Junior High sense. Y'know. "IT."

4. PROMISE TO STAY ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BUNDLING BOARD

By comparing marriage records with subsequent birth records, historians can tell that by the late 18th century, 30 to 40 percent of American brides were pregnant at their weddings. Society wasn't really upset that the girls were pregnant, as long as they got married to the father. But not all men were that honorable, especially since the towns were now drawing in unsupervised, strange men to work in seaports and industry. Colonial society came up with a fairly ingenious solution.

If you were 17, you might suggest to your strict Christian parents that you'd like to snuggle up with sultry Goodie Sally from across the hog farm. You'd promise to keep your underpants on. And your parents would likely help you arrange it. Which makes modern parents look pretty lame by comparison. You've probably heard of this practice, called "bundling," where unmarried couples could sleep together in the same bed, sometimes with a plank placed between them (for all the good it would do). Parents weren't stupid. They knew the kids were likely to have sex. Not necessarily while bundling, but behind the barn, in the meadow, during the corn shuck fest. They planned ahead for it like some parents today stock their son's skater pants with condoms.

Gone were the days that a girl pointing across a magistrate's court to a scruffy farm boy was enough to force him to marry her. But with bundling, if the girl should fall pregnant, there would be plenty of witnesses to claim the boy in question had access and opportunity. So he either had to pay up or put a ring on it. No ruination for the girl, no fatherless child, no shame for the parents, and the guy? Well, he got some. Totally worth it.

5. HOLD HANDS AND MAKE EMPTY PROMISES

Handfasting, or spousing, was another way for a dishonorable young rogue to get lucky. Marriage wasn't as formal an affair back then as you might think. You didn't need a license or even a presiding authority. It was acceptable to have a common-law marriage, where you basically held hands and agreed to be married. You could do it anywhere. And as court records of the day show, lots of men chose to do it right in front of a nice big bed with a woman they had no intention of eating breakfast with. Sometimes they hopped the next ship for England and got away with it; sometimes they were caught and escorted by armed guard and enraged father into marital bliss.

Sources for this article were provided by Molly Wolf, Library Liaison to the School of Human Sexuality at Widener University.

More from Mental Floss...