Hush! my dear, lie
still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy
bed!
Heavenly blessings
without number
Gently falling on thy
head.
Sleep, my babe; thy
food and raiment,
House and home, thy
friends provide;
All without thy care
or payment:
All thy wants are well
supplied.
— From “A Cradle Hymn” by Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748)
The first time I saw a colonial cradle, I was visiting the home
of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Concord, Massachusetts.
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| Nathaniel Hawthorne Home, Concord, MA |
I was just a young girl and I can still see the rich, dark
wood, so smoothly crafted with loving care. I remember imagining the children
of the household that were rocked to sleep within the comforting confines. Seeing
that cradle brought to life tender traces of the love and care of the people
who had lived there. I cherished that memory long into adulthood, when I named
my own son “Nathaniel.” And I still eagerly drink in the images of antique
cradles wherever I see them.
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| Peregrine White's Wicker Cradle |
The first cradle in America came over on the Mayflower in
1620. It was the Dutch wicker bed that soothed the first child born to the
Pilgrims in the New World: Peregrine White. The young boy was birthed onboard
the wooden vessel as it docked in Cape Cod Bay. It can still be seen at the
Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Most of the cradles made in the colonies were wrought from
wood and the designs ranged from plain, solid boards, to engraved embellishments
along the panels, to spindled sides similar to modern crib designs.
Author Eric Sloan in American Yesterday wrote, “At one
time or another, cradles have been attached to butter churns, turnspits, dog
mills, and even windmill gears to give them automatic movement, but the simple
rocker cradle remained in the American household for over two centuries before
its disappearance.”
A rather unique cradle, thought to have multiple uses for
nursing mothers, twins or invalids, was the “adult cradle.” These wooden
cradles were about the size of a single bed, but built closer to the floor.
According to Jack Larkin in The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790
– 1840, not every infant slept in a cradle in Early America. “…it was
common, noted the physician and reformer William Alcott in 1830, for an
American mother to ‘sleep with her infant on her arm,’ and children often
shared the parental bed until they were weaned.”
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| Cradle from Storrowton Village Museum |
But whether some infants shared their parents’ bed or not,
the cradle seemed to be the predominant shelter for little ones while they
slept.
Shirley Glubock in Home and Child Life in Colonial Days
writes:
“Nothing could be prettier than the old cradles that have
survived successive years of use with many generations of babies….In these
cradles the colonial baby slept, warmly wrapped in a homespun blanket or
pressed quilt.”
How much better
thou’rt attended
Than the Son of God
could be,
When from heaven he
descended
And became a child
like thee!
Soft and easy is thy
cradle:
Coarse and hard thy
Savior lay
When His birthplace
was a stable
And His softest bed
was hay.
— From “A Cradle Hymn” by Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748)
