" Perhaps the Salem maids also
built too high and imposing a pew. In Haverhill, in 1708, young women were
permitted to build pews, provided they did not "damnify the Stairway." This
somewhat profane-sounding restriction they heeded, and the Haverhill maids
occupied their undamnifying "pue" unmolested. Medford young women, however,
in 1701, when allowed only one side gallery for seats, while the young men
were assigned one side and all the front gallery, made such an uproar that
the town had to call a meeting, and restore to them their "woman's rights"
in half the front gallery.
Infants were brought to church in their mothers' arms, and on summer days
the young mothers often sat at the meeting-house door or in the porch,--if
porch there were,--where, listening to the word of God, they could attend
also to the wants of their babes. I have heard, too, of a little cage, or
frame, which was to be seen in the early meeting-houses, for the purpose
of holding children who were too young to sit alone,--poor Puritan babies!
Little girls sat with their mothers or elder sisters on "crickets" within
the pews; or if the family were over-numerous, the children and crickets
exundated into "the alley without the pues." Often a row of little
daughters of Zion sat on three-legged stools and low seats the entire
length of the aisle,--weary, sleepy, young sentinels "without the gates.
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