Jon Kukla's message led me to look again at Demos and a couple of other
books--I recall the same point being made, but about England rather than
New England. Demos says a bit about the subject but not much. The
institution of "service in husbandry" was widespread in early modern
England, though (see Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, and Ann
Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry). Daniel Vickers' work on Essex County
(Mass.) indicates it was uncommon there, and he has a footnote that hints
Edmund Morgan's The Puritan Family might be the source of the notion Kukla
recalls--a notion that Vickers says is incorrect as a description of
practices in most of early New England. I don't have Morgan's book with me
at the moment, so I can't check to be sure. But he apparently asserted
that most or nearly all young men in colonial New England worked for a
spell (during adolescence) in the households of neighbors as servants in
husbandry.

Whoever said it relieved some of the problems associated with parenting
adolescents knew what s/he was talking about!

Douglas Deal
Professor of History and Director of General Education
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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(315)-341-5631 (voice mail)
(315)-341-3577 (FAX)

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