Colonial Dames and Good Wives by Alice Morse Earle

Of amusements for women in the first century of colonial life, we can almost say there were none. There was in New England no card-playing, no theatre-going, no dancing. The solemn Thursday lecture was the sole mid-week gathering. Occasionally there was the excitement of Training Day. In the South the distances were too great from plantation to plantation for frequent friendly meetings. As time went on, coöperation in gathering and storing the various food-harvests afforded opportunities for social intercourse. Apple-parings and corn-huskings were autumnal delights, but when these were over, the chafing youth found no recreations through the long, snowy months in country homes, and but scant opportunity for amusement in town. No wonder that they turned eagerly to the singing-school, and found in that innocent gathering a safety-valve for the pent-up longing for diversion which burned in young souls then as now. We can but wonder how, ere the singing-school became a force, young New Englanders became acquainted enough with each other to think of marriage; and we can almost regard the establishment of the study of fugue and psalm singing as the preservation of the commonwealth.

In Virginia the different elements of life developed characteristic pastimes, and by the first quarter of the eighteenth century there were opportunities of diversion offered for women.