Free Republic

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Town of Billerica, Mass., was in the middle of an extraordinary baby boom. Twelve other families in the town had 13 children. Five had 14 offspring and one had 15. Twenty-six families each had 10 children, 20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children. The largest family had 21 children by two wives. That meant 90 families accounted for 1,043 children. The average Billerica family had an average of 11.6 children per family. The town’s population grew almost exclusively because of its fecundity. In 1810, the population of the...

The Littleton Historical Society’s event last week drew a crowd of close to a hundred people to hear a presentation by Littleton resident Daniel Boudillion. His main topic of research concerned the numerous New England locales incorporating the word “Tophet” into their name, in particular eight Massachusetts swamps so named by the Puritans. Illustrating his remarks with slides, Boudillion began by noting that the word “Tophet” was peculiar to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was chartered in 1629. The Puritan Bible of choice was the Geneva Bible, a translation that used the word Tophet to depict a...

The following essay is part of The Federalist’s 1620 Project, a symposium exploring the connections and contributions of the early Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in New England to the uniquely American synthesis of faith, family, freedom, and self-government.In recent years, some prominent voices on the left have contended that America is and has been from its inception a nation established on racism and racial subjugation. This judgment implicitly informs The New York Times’s 1619 Project. According to its introductory blurb, the project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery … at the very center of...

This is the time that Americans from coast to coast cease their workaday activities and gather with friends and loved ones for Thanksgiving. It is a time-honored ritual, observed by the overwhelming majority of the American population. What are the origins of this celebration, and what meaning should it have for Americans today? Thanksgiving is a combination of two longstanding traditions in Anglo-American civilization—the joyous harvest festival and the more somber declaration of a day of prayer or thanksgiving in the midst of some national crisis.The origin of the present American Thanksgiving, spiritually and emotionally, harkens back to the 1621...

On November 29, 1623, two years after the first Thanksgiving, Governor William Bradford made an official proclamation for a second day of Thanksgiving. In it Governor Bradford thanked God for their abundant harvest, bountiful game, protection from “the ravages of savages… and disease,” and for the “freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.” Well over a hundred Natives attended, bringing plenty of turkey and venison along with them. The Pilgrims had the proper perspective. As Bradford would note, “As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light [of Jesus] kindled here has shown...

The unintended consequence of widespread birth control — on individuals, families and society — cannot be denied. Loneliness has become an “epidemic” in the world today, says scholar Mary Eberstadt, author of the 2013 book “Adam and Eve After the Pill." “Fifty years after the embrace of the pill — undeniably, because of the embrace of the pill — loneliness is spreading across the materially better-off countries of the planet." She expands on the themes of her new article, describing the “prophetic power” of “Humanae Vitae” (“On Human Life”), Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical letter on birth control and married...

Jack Phillips may be able to bake cakes as his conscience dictates, but the conflict between religious conscience rights and the expanding rights of LGBT Americans is ongoing. Exhibit A: the Equality Act pending before Congress, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes, forcing tens of millions of Americans who hold traditional views of marriage and sexuality to conform to a new sexual worldview or face consequences. As Congress considers the Equality Act in the coming days, it’s instructive to consider the similarities between LGBT ideologues of today...

Archaeologists in Boston have unearthed surprising luxury items from the 17th century, shedding new light on the lives of Puritans in the city. Items found include an extravagant fragment of 17th-century Venetian glassware and part of an Italian plate decorated with a flower that dates from around 1630, which may be the oldest piece of European ceramic ever found in Boston. “The items are significant because we rarely see them, archaeologically,” Joe Bagley, city archaeologist for Boston’s Landmarks Commission, told Fox News via email. “Also, Puritan Boston is often seen as an extremely conservative, reserved, and religious location in the...

How did Salem, Massachusetts become a Halloween destination? For centuries, the New England town avoided any association with its infamous Puritan ancestors, who executed 19 people under suspicion of practicing witchcraft. The surprising answer, author Stacy Schiff writes for The New York Times, has a lot to do with the sitcom "Bewitched." These days, Salem is rife with kitschy witches and Halloween attractions. But before the late 20th century, town citizens rarely acknowledged the Puritan trials. When playwright Arthur Miller visited Salem to research "The Crucible" in 1952, locals refused to help him. "You couldn't get anyone to say anything...

A war on Christmas? Has nobody seen Arthur Christmas? The North Pole has stealth technology and fanatical commando elves—you screw with that at your own peril.  But there was a time in America when celebrating Christmas was illegal. For 22 years in the 17th century, from 1659-1681, celebrating Christmas carried a hefty fine imposed by Puritans who viewed the holiday as a borrowing from pagan Roman celebrations. “Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so...

Even when compared to Ebenezer Scrooge, the Puritans who ruled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s were downright Grinchian. Not only were the Puritans contemptuous of Christmas, they outlawed public celebration of the Yuletide holiday for an entire generation. The pious Puritans who sailed from England in 1630 to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them something that might seem surprising for a group of devout Christians—contempt for Christmas. In a reversal of modern practices, the Puritans kept their shops and schools open and churches closed on Christmas, a holiday that some disparaged as “Foolstide.”

Despite the fact that Oliver Cromwell was vastly superior to Charles I, I have yet to hear anyone praise Cromwell for deposing and killing the king. There have been many reasonable objections to his killing of Charles, chief among them being that Charles's death immediately led to the instant popularity and eventual kingship of Charles II – historically one of the most profligate and useless kings that England ever saw. But people are more likely to complain about Cromwell and the Puritans and unfairly loathe them, despite the fact that Cromwell ruled more honestly and rightly than both his predecessor...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (RNS) The collected works of Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century preacher and one of America’s most famous theologians, are now available for download thanks to Logos Bible Software. But for those who don’t want to cough up $1,289.95 to purchase them, there’s good news: The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School lets you view them online for free. The colonial preacher was instrumental in America’s Great Awakening and is known for fiery sermons such as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The 26-volume collection, “The Works of Jonathan Edwards,” comprises more than 10,000 sermons, articles...

The latest episode of Undercover Boss has caused quite a controversy among viewers based on the content. The episode featured a company called Bikinis Sports Bar and Grill, where all the waitresses and bartenders are required to wear a bikini top and jean shorts. The CEO Doug Guller even trademarked the term “breastaurant” and says the company’s four values are booze, food, sports, and sex. In the first segment, Doug shadowed a bartender who was wearing a t-shirt during her shift. When asked why she wasn’t wearing a bikini, she said she didn’t feel comfortable wearing it on television. She...

Don't anybody be shocked, but those Pilgrims being celebrated today weren't just cardboard cut-outs. They were part of the Religious Right. Or maybe the Religious Left, since the Pilgrims emphasized communal organization as much as they did individual rights. But right or left, the Pilgrims were definitely religious. That is, they believed in something beyond themselves. Something spiritual but worldly, too. Not a stained-glass kind of faith but beliefs that impelled sacrifice, risk, commitment ... movement. And not just in the metaphorical sense. They would have to abandon their roots, forget all they had known, resettle, become strangers in...

People say America is a free country. But what if you want to drink, have a cigarette or make a bet? Government often says "no" to protect us from ourselves. It's as if the government is still run by the Puritans who settled this land four centuries ago. They said pleasure and luxury are sinful. Today's government has a better argument when it seeks to restrict activities that might harm others, but I notice that even then, it often focuses more on things that upset modern-day Puritans. Drinking and driving can be fatal. But government data show that sleeplessness and...

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Can Americans Learn Anything From Our Founders for Today? Who were the original Founders of America? Two groups can be described from the group of original hardy settlers—the Pilgrims and the Puritans. The seeds of the Pilgrim stock came from the illegal English Separatist Church. All Englishmen were expected to attend Anglican Church, weekly. It provoked much controversy in Christian circles that power swung between English Protestants and Catholics. The Separatists wanted no state meddling in private beliefs, and so left England in search of religious freedom, first to Leiden, Netherlands, and later to North America. This explains the US...

Dear liberty voter, It’s the day after Election Day. Mitt Romney lost. The media praise band is playing “O Hail, King Obama.” The gloating anchors and pundits relay the news with giddiness: “Conservatism lost. The tea party died. Liberalism has triumphed – permanently.” Welcome to a world where taking the life of the unborn is celebrated, traditional family values trounced and socialized health care and phones for everybody are the rallying cries. Sky high taxes, another 6 trillion in spending and an ever weakening military are the future. Bailouts, insults to business owners, an EPA out of control and $6...

Those who still think that it's a good idea for government to "spread the wealth around" must think they're "wiser than God." That's what Plymouth Governor William Bradford concluded nearly 400 years ago after one of America's first socialist experiments led not to shared wealth, but pooled poverty. The Pilgrims, whom we remember at Thanksgiving, started life in the New World with a system of common ownership forced on them by Plymouth colony investors. That quasi-socialist arrangement proved disastrous, and had to be scrapped for one which gave these first Americans the right to keep the fruits of their labor...