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Updated: May 19, 2025
The boys, the Puritan boys, those wild animals who were regarded with such suspicion, such intense disfavor, by all elderly Puritan eyes, and who were publicly stigmatized by the Duxbury elders as "ye wretched boys on ye Lords Day," were herded by themselves. They usually sat on the pulpit and gallery stairs, and constables or tithingmen were appointed to watch over them and control them.
In Windsor, Connecticut, "boys' pews" were a feature of the church until 1845. As years rolled on, the tithingmen became restricted in their authority: they could no longer administer "raps and blows;" they were forced to content themselves with loud rappings on the floor, and pointing with a staff or with a condemning finger at the misdemeanant. Rev. Dr.
In Newbury, in 1688, there were twenty tithingmen, and in Salem twenty-five. They were men of authority, not only on Sunday, but throughout the entire week. These families he also watched specially on the Sabbath, and reported whether all the members thereof attended public worship.
And after he had tucked it under my lady's tiny feet as she sat in her pew, he retired to his freezing loft high up among the beams, the "Nigger Pew," where, I am sorry to record, he more than once solaced and warmed himself with a bottle of "kill-devil" which he had smuggled into church, until he fell ignominiously asleep and his drunken snores so disturbed the minister and the congregation, that two tithingmen were forced to climb the ladder-like staircase and pull him down and out of the church and to the neighboring tavern to sleep off the effects of the liquor.
Poor goodman and goodwife! many years elapsed ere they recovered from that keen disgrace. The ministers encouraged and urged the tithingmen to faithfully perform their allotted work.
These vessels were frequently stored, when not in use, under the pulpit in a little closet which opened into "the Ministers wives pue," and which was fabled to be at the disposal of the tithingmen and deacons for the darksome incarceration of unruly and Sabbath-breaking boys.
They visited the homes of the church-members to hear the children say the catechism, they visited and prayed with the sick, and they also reported petty offences, though they were not accorded quite so powerful legal authority as the tithingmen and constables.
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