dresses. After a boy reached the age of eight or nine, he would
begin to help out with the father's job, which was farming, and a dress would not suit the
job very well. Girls usually wore their hair long, but always pulled tightly back and up
under a bonnet or hat. The reason for this was that social and religious custom did not
approve or look kindly upon women or girls being in public with an uncovered head.
The women were given a workload since their early days. For example, while boys
were off with their fathers, girls would stay home with their mothers, mostly helping out
with the cooking, sewing and laundering (89). Some daughters, however, went in to the
services of families in the neighborhood, and were apprenticed to a certain skill, such as
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were very fair sunny days, as if it had been
in April, and our people, so many as were in health, were cheerful. (Brown, 56) The
overall health of early Americans was far better in the Northern colonies than in the South.
For example, a young male adult from Massachusetts, who had reached the age of twenty
could expect to live about forty-five years more. A female, about, about forty-two. It
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