Gender and male same-sex erotic behavior in British North America in the seventeenth century

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 385-407

  Talley, Colin L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CANADA; HISTORY; HOMOSEXUALITY; HUMAN; MALE; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SEXUAL DEVIATION; UNITED STATES;

CANADA; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HOMOSEXUALITY, MALE; HUMANS; MALE; PARAPHILIAS; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0029681912     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (193)

1. Among the works dealing with twentieth-century gay, lesbian, and queer history are Martin Duberman, Stonewall (New York, 1993);
2. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1991);
3. Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York, 1990);
4. John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago, 1983).
5. For the leading sociobiologists, see Simon Levay, The Sexual Brain (Cambridge, MA, 1993),
6. and "A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men", Science 253 (1991): 1034-37;
7. John Money, Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation (Oxford, 1988),
8. and "Sin, Sickness, or Status? Homosexual Gender Identity and Psychoneuroendocrinology," American Psychologist 42 (1987): 383-89;
9. see also Neil R. Carlson, Physiology of Behavior (Boston, 1991), pp. 339-45;
10. and Chandler Burr, "Homosexuality and Biology," Atlantic Monthly 271 (March 1993): 47-65.
11. The social constructionist literature is extensive; see Bonnie B. Spanier, "Lessons from Nature: Gender Ideology and Sexual Ambiguity in Biology," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York, 1991), pp. 329-50;
12. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, "Introduction: The Guarded Body," in Epstein and Straub, eds., pp. 1-28;
13. Edward Stein, ed., Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy (New York, 1990);
14. David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago, 1988);
15. International Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies, ed., Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? (London, 1988);
16. John P. De Cecco and Michael G. Shively, eds., Origins of Sexuality and Homosexuality (New York, 1985);
17. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978).
18. Randolph Trumbach first articulated the connection between constructions of gender and constructions of homosexuality ("Gender and the Homosexual Role in Modern Western Culture: The 18th and 19th Centuries Compared," in International Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies, ed., pp. 149-70,
19. "The Birth of the Queen: Sodomy and the Emergence of Gender Equality in Modern Culture, 1660-1750," in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. [New York, 1989], pp. 129-40,
20. and "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture,in Epstein and Straub, eds., pp. 112-35).
21. Joan Wallach Scott argues that gender is a fundamental relational concept concerning not only the social organization of the relationship between the sexes but also the social construction of all of a society's power relationships (Gender and the Politics of History [New York, 1988], pp. 28-31).
22. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York, 1983), p. 111.
23. "N. Sension case (May 22, 1677), Connecticut," in Crimes in Misdemeanors, vol. 1, doc. 87-103, Manuscript Division, Connecticut State Archives, Connecticut State Library, Hartford, CT,
24. quoted in Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, p. 112.
25. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 113.
26. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac 113. Ibid.
27. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 114.
28. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 115.
29. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 116.
30. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid. 116.
31. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 117.
32. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, p. 663.
33. There was an execution in 1566 in Spanish Florida and two in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, one in 1646 and another in 1663 (Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A., a Documentary [New York, 1976], pp. 14-16,
34. and Gay/Lesbian Almanac [n. 5 above], p. 663). Robert Oaks writes that, "despite the harsh penalties for sodomy and buggery, Puritan leaders often refused to apply them, especially for homosexual activity.
35. As with other types of crimes, the courts often employed the concept of remission of sentences for many sex crimes. Remission may have . . . stemmed from a reluctance to apply capital punishment to crimes feared to be rather common" ("Things Fearful to Name: Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England," Journal of Social History 12 [1979]: 268-81, quote on 269).
36. Edmund C. Morgan, "The Puritans and Sex," in The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, ed. Michael Gordon (New York, 1983), p. 317.
37. Edmund C. Morgan, The Puritans and Sex The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective Ibid., 1983), p. 313.
38. Morgan adds: "Servants had little difficulty in finding the occasions" (The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective ibid., p. 314).
39. Morgan The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective Ibid., p. 316.
40. J. H. Plumb, review of The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800,
41. by Lawrence Stone, New York Review of Books 24 (November 24, 1977): 30.
42. John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York, 1988), p. 30.
43. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pp. 69, 73, 75, 85, 90, 92, 103, 104, 111.
44. Greenberg (n. 2 above) continues: "Bevenuto da Imola found the University of Bologna 'infested' by sodomites in 1375; he denounced them, but, warned by a sodomite priest, many got away. According to Saint Bernardino of Siena, Florence and other early fifteenth-century Tuscan cities had such a reputation for sodomy that Genoa would not hire Tuscan schoolmasters, and boys walking down the streets of Florence were in greater danger than girls of being sexually assaulted. In Venice, a coterie of homosexual sodomites came to light in 1406. In a sermon of 1494, Savonarola charged that Florence had become infamous for sodomy, a charge that literary figures of the time, including Sabadino and Bandello, confirmed" (p. 305). See also Michael J. Rocke, "Sodomites in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany: The Views of Bernardino of Siena," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 7-32;
45. Giovanni Dall'Orto, "Socratic Love as a Disguise for Same-Sex Love in the Italian Renaissance," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 33-66;
46. Mary Elizabeth Perry, "The Nefarious Sin in Early Modern Seville," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 67-90;
47. Luiz Mott and Aroldo Assuncao, "Love's Labors Lost: Five Letters from a Seventeenth-Century Portuguese Sodomite," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 91-104;
48. Robert Oresko, "Homosexuality and the Court Elites of Early Modern France: Some Problems, Some Suggestions, and an Example," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 105-28;
49. Dirk Jaap Noordam, "Sodomy in the Dutch Republic, 1600-1725," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 207-28;
50. Jan Oosterthoff, "Sodomy at Sea and the Cape of Good Hope during the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Homosexuality 16 (1988): 237-48;
51. James M. Saslow, "Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds. (n. 3 above), pp. 90-105;
52. Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York, 1986),
53. and "Lesbian Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Europe," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds., pp. 67-75.
54. Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York, 1985), p. 134.
55. Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice ( Ibid.1985 134.
56. Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice ( Ibid., 1985 p. 135.
57. Rocke, p. 11.
58. Saslow, p. 93.
59. Ibid., p. 92.
60. Ibid., p. 97;
61. see also Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), pp. 39, 88.
62. Trumbach, "The Birth of the Queen" (n. 3 above), p. 132.
63. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: England before the Industrial Age (New York, 1984), p. 157.
64. Interestingly Vivien W. Ng reports that in China there was "a boom in homoerotic literature in the seventeenth century, . . . with frequent references to homosexual behavior in scholarly jottings" ("Homosexuality and the State in Late Imperial China," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds. [n. 3 above], p. 88).
65. Likewise in Japan, "in 1687, a collection of forty short stories depicting homosexual relations between men and youths was published in Japan. It was titled The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) and written by Japan's first commercial author, Ihara Saikaku, 1642-1693"
66. (Paul Gordon Schalow, "Male Love in Early Modern Japan: The Literary Depiction of the Youth," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds., pp. 118-19). The transgenerational form of same-sex eroticism was considered normative for Japan at that time.
67. John Boswell discusses deliberate and misleading mistranslations and deletions by heterosexist historians dealing with references to same-sex eroticism, in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago, 1980), pp. 20-21.
68. John Boswell Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century ( Ibid., pp. 71, 75.
69. Molt and Assuncao (n. 23 above), pp. 99-100.
70. Perry (n. 23 above), pp. 87, 71. The crime pecado nefando included bestiality as well.
71. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for pointing out this citation and for clarifying the case in southwestern Europe: William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (New York, 1990);
72. Rafael Carrasco, Inquisición y represión sexual en Valencia: Historia de los sodomitos, 1565-1785 (Inquisition and sexual repression in Valencia: History of the sodomites, 1565-1785) (Barcelona, 1985).
73. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for clarifying the situation in Mexico for me; see Salvador Novo, Las locas, el sexo, los burdeles (Sissies, sex, brothels) (Mexico City, 1972), p. 15;
74. Clark Taylor, "Mexican Gaylife in Historical Perspective," in Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine: An Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Politics, and Culture, ed. Winston Leyland (San Francisco, 1991), p. 194.
75. Arend H. Huussen, Jr., "Sodomy in the Dutch Republic during the Eighteenth Century," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds., p. 144.
76. Noordam, pp. 213-22.
77. Laslett (n. 32 above) continues, "It seems likely . . . that only very little of what went on ever reached the authorities, especially as to homosexuality" (p. 157).
78. Pierre Hurteau, "Catholic Moral Discourse on Male Sodomy and Masturbation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of the History of Sexuality 4 (1993): 1-26.
79. Gonzalo Solis de Meras, Pedro Menendez de Aviles; Adelantado; Governor and Captain-General of Florida, trans. Jeannette Conner (Delan, FL, 1923), pp. 180-81,
80. quoted in Katz, Gay American History (n. 15 above), pp. 14-16.
81. Katz Gay American History ( Ibid.;14-16.
82. Charles E. Bennet, Laudonnier and Fort Caroline (Gainsville, FL, 1964), pp. 107, 137-38;
83. Charlton W. Tebeau, A History of Florida (Coral Gables, FL, 1971), p. 29;
84. David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in America (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 30-36, 69-76.
85. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), p. 38;
86. see also Katz, Gay American History, pp. 1-27;
87. Louis Crompton, "Homosexuals and the Death Penalty in Colonial America," Journal of Homosexuality 1 (1976): 290-92;
88. Robert F. Oaks, "Defining Sodomy in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of Homosexuality 6 (1980-81): 79-83,
89. "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia," Journal of Homosexuality 5 (1979-80): 35-41,
90. and "Things Fearful to Name" (n. 15 above), pp. 268-81;
91. Carole Bingham, "Seventeenth-Century Attitudes toward Deviant Sex," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 (1971): 447-72.
92. For an alternative view, see B. R. Burg, "Ho Hum, Another Work of the Devil: Buggery and Sodomy in Early Stuart England," Journal of Homosexuality 6 (1980-81): 69-78,
93. and Sodomy and the Perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York, 1983).
94. George Francis Dow, ed., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County (Salem, MA, 1911), p. 1,
95. quoted in Katz, Gay American History, pp. 85-86.
96. Katz, Gay American History, pp. 90-91.
97. See Oaks, "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia," p. 36;
98. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pp. 36-37.
99. William Strachey, For the Colony in Virginia Britannia Laves Divine, Morall, and Martiall, etc. (1612), ed. David H. Flaherty (Charlottesville, VA, 1969), pp. 1-11;
100. see also Darret B. Rutman, "The Virginia Company and Its Military Regime," in The Old Dominion: Essays for Thomas Perkins Abérnathy, cd. Darret B. Rutman (Charlottesville, VA, 1964), p. 15.
101. Strachey, p. 12.
102. Rutman, pp. 16-19.
103. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pp. 36-37.
104. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac Ibid., p. 55;
105. see also William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York, 1952), pp. 404-13;
106. and Oaks, "Defining Sodomy in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts," pp. 79-82,
107. "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia," pp. 37-39,
108. and "Things Fearful to Name," pp. 267-78.
109. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), p. 55;
110. Bradford, Gay/Lesbian Almanac ( pp. 404-13.
111. Lyle Koehler, "The Case of the American Jezebels: Anne Hutchinson and Female Agitation during the Years of Antinomian Turmoil, 1636-1640," William and Mary Quarterly 31 (1974): 73;
112. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Glenview, IL, 1958), pp. 134-53.
113. Oaks, "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia" (n. 46 above), pp. 35-41.
114. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J. H. Hertz (London, 1965), pp. 492, 507.
115. Daniel Boyarin develops similar arguments in "Are There Any Jews in 'The History of Sexuality'?" Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1995): 340-48.
116. Saul M. Olyan, "'And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman': On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 188, 179-206; Boyarin also argues that these texts have to do with gender constructions not sexuality (p. 334).
117. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr., following an anthropological model, suggest that "homosexual relations (among women and men) are likely to be organized in one of three broad patterns: (1) between adults and youths, often in an initiatory context; (2) between persons who abide by their culture's gender conventions (i.e., 'feminine' women and 'masculine' men) and persons who assume the cultural status of the other sex or of an 'intermediate' gender; and (3) between persons of equal age and status (as is conventional in our own society). Considerable evidence also exists of homosexual relations between men whose status is differentiated as superordinate and subordinate on the basis of class or race, rather than age or gender" ("Introduction," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds. [n. 3 above], p. 9).
118. The historical and anthropological evidence suggests that each of these patterns are rooted in different social relationships of power. The first category is rooted in hierarchical, hypermasculine relationships of power that can be based on age, class, or race. I use the term "dominative" to indicate the similarity, in terms of the power relationship of hierarchy, between an adult male having sex with a male prostitute, slave, or adolescent. It is the axis of power that defines my use of this term. For example, the cultural meaning of sex with male prostitutes or slaves and sex with adolescents in ancient Roman culture represented a particular dominative form of gendered and class power relationship specific to that society. To see how changing relationships of power contributed to the construction of the second pattern of homosexual relations mentioned above, see Trumbach, "Gender and the Homosexual Role in Modern Western Culture" (n. 3 above),
119. "The Birth of the Queen" (n. 3 above),
120. and "London's Sapphists" (n. 3 above).
121. Michael L. Satlow, "'They Abused Him Like a Woman': Homocroticism, Gender Blurring, and the Rabbis in Late Antiquity," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 1-8, 12.
122. Michael L. Satlow, 'They Abused Him Like a Woman': Homocroticism, Gender Blurring, and the Rabbis in Late Antiquity Journal of the History of Sexuality Ibid., 5 ( 1994): p. 13;
123. Boyarin, Journal of the History of Sexuality pp. 338-39.
124. Boyarin, p. 354.
125. Greenberg (n. 2 above), p. 212. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the controversy on this point; see Boswell (n. 34 above), pp. 335-53; George R. Edwards, Gay/Lesbian Liberation: A Biblical Perspective (New York, 1984), pp. 81-91;
126. Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 192-93.
127. Quoted in Boswell, p. 157. I do not intend to show that for the next thousand years Christian writers were concerned with gender variance with respect to sodomy. It is not necessary to do this to sustain my argument about the importance of localism.
128. Greenberg, pp. 26-40.
129. Oaks, "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia" (n. 46 above), pp. 277-78;
130. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), pp. 76, 85, 91, 101, 105, 107.
131. Rayner to Governor William Bradford, 1642, Massachusetts Bay Colony, quoted in Bradford (n. 54 above), p. 404.
132. Katz, Gay American History (n. 15 above), p. 19.
133. Trumbach, "The Birth of the Queen" (n. 3 above), p. 131.
134. Howard I. Kushner points out that "the heirs of Jamestown's first settlers became English patriarchal landholders, not self-transforming new men"
135. ("The Persistence of the 'Frontier Thesis' in America: Gender, Myth, and Self-Destruction," Canadian Review of American Studies [1992], pp. 53-82).
136. See also Nicholas P. Canny, "The Ideology of English Colonization," in Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, ed. Stanley N. Katz and John M. Murrin (Boston, 1983), pp. 47-68.
137. Helena M. Wall writes that "one of the many ironies of early American society is that the European colonists sought to reproduce, even to freeze in time, patterns of family and community life that were already beginning to erode in Europe" (Fierce Communion: Family and Community in Early America [Cambridge, MA, 1991], p. 1).
138. Robert K. Martin, "Knights-Errant and Gothic Seducers: The Representation of Male Friendship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America," in Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds. (n. 3 above), p. 178.
139. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, p. 39.
140. Bradford, p. 316; see also Katz, Gay American History, p. 20,
141. and Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pp. 86-89.
142. Rayner to Governor William Bradford, quoted in Bradford, p. 321.
143. Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pp. 41-42.
144. Samuel Danforth, The Crime of Sodom Enquired Into; Upon The Arraignment and Condemnation of Benjamin Goad for his Prodigious Villainy. Together With a Solemn Exhortation to Tremble at Gods Judgements and to Abandon Youthful Lusts (Cambridge, MA, 1674),
145. quoted in Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), pp. 108-9.
146. Harleian MSS. 2194 ff. 26-30, British Museum, London, quoted in Bingham (n. 46 above), p. 455.
147. Ibid.
148. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), pp. 7-10, 448.
149. Ottavia Noccoli, "Menstruum Quasi Monstruum: Monstrous Births and Menstrual Taboo in the Sixteenth Century," trans. Mary M. Gallucci, in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore, 1990), pp. 1-25.
150. Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA, 1975), p. 124.
151. Brown, "Lesbian Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Europe" (n. 23 above), p. 67.
152. Lyle Koehler, A Search for Power: The "Weaker Sex" in Seventeenth-Century New England (Urbana, IL, 1980), p. 90.
153. Oaks, "Things Fearful to Name" (n. 15 above), p. 277.
154. Koehler, A Search for Power, p. 272.
155. Koehler, A Search for Power, Ibid., pp. 272-73.
156. John Demos writes that "many of the accused seem to have been unusually irascible and contentious in their personal relations" ("Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England," American Historical Review 75 [1970]: 1317).
157. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1982), p. 97.
158. Koehler, "The Case of the American Jezebels" (n. 56 above), p. 73;
159. see also Morgan The Case of the American Jezebels ( (n. 56 above), pp. 134-53.
160. Quoted in Koehler, "The Case of the American Jezebels," p. 73.
161. Koehler, The Case of the American Jezebels Ibid., p. 60.
162. Koehler, The Case of the American Jezebels Ibid., p. 74.
163. Koehler, The Case of the American Jezebels Ibid. 74.
164. Roger Thompson, "Attitudes toward Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies," Journal of American Studies 23 (1989): 34.
165. William Prynne, Historiomastix, or the Players Scourge (London, 1633),
166. William Prynne, Historiomastix, or the Players Scourge ( quoted in ibid., p. 35.
167. William Prynne, Historiomastix, or the Players Scourge ( Ibid., p. 36.
168. William Prynne, Historiomastix, or the Players Scourge ( Ibid. 36.
169. Greenberg (n. 2 above), pp. 26-40.
170. Trumbach, "The Birth of the Queen" (n. 3 above), pp. 129-35.
171. Ruggerio (n. 24 above), pp. 116-18, 124, 140, 145.
172. Rocke (n. 23 above), p. 11; Perry (n. 23 above), p. 78; Noordam (n. 23 above), p. 211.
173. Saslow (n. 23 above), p. 91.
174. Arthur H. Hughes and Morse S. Allen, Connecticut Place Names (Hartford, CT, 1976), p. 693.
175. R. C. Simmons, The American Colonies: From Settlement to Independence (New York, 1976), pp. 36-38.
176. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut (Princeton, NJ, 1985), p. 13.
177. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut ( Ibid., 1985 p. 377.
178. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut ( Ibid., 1985 p. 371.
179. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut ( Ibid., 1985 p. 95.
180. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut ( Ibid., 1985 p. 377.
181. For colonial social structure, see James A. Henretta, "The Morphology of New England Society in the Colonial Period," in The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. T. K. Rabb and R. I. Rotber (New York, 1973), pp. 191-210;
182. Philip J. Greven, Jr., "Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly 23 (1966): 234-56;
183. and Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA, 1956), pp. 141-52.
184. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "A Friendly Neighbor: Social Dimensions of Daily Work in Northern Colonial New England," Feminist Studies 6 (1980): 392.
185. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Feminist Studies Ibid., 1980 6 ( p. 393;
186. see also Ulrich, Good Wives (n. 89 above), pp. 13-34;
187. Koehler, A Search for Power (n. 85 above), pp. 113, 128.
188. Ulrich, "A Friendly Neighbor," pp. 397, 403.
189. Ulrich, A Friendly Neighbor Ibid., p. 394.
190. Ulrich writes that women's "external economic power was limited" A Friendly Neighbor (ibid., p. 403).
191. Koehler argues, "The great majority of women in early New England worked under a condition of dependence, whether as servants under the control of masters, poor women under the control of almshouse attendants or other keepers, widows under the relative control of their children, or (in the most common occupation of all) housewives under the control of their husbands" (Koehler, A Search for Power, pp. 128-29).
192. Mary P. Ryan points out that women's "status still ensued out the side of males, the husbands and fathers who alone held independent and powerful positions in colonial society" (Womanhood in America from Colonial Times to the Present [New York, 1975], p. 22).
193. Though some believed that a man's sperm supply was a limited and precious resource it does not automatically follow that this stopped nonreproductive sexual behavior. After all, men through the evidence of their own bodies would have been able to reach a different conclusion. For a contrary argument, see Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (n. 5 above), p. 33.