To Bundle Or Not?

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To Bundle Or Not To Bundle,
Aye, That Is The Question.

To Bundle: A man and woman lying on the same bed with their clothes on; an expedient practised in America on account of a scarcity of beds, where on such occasions, husbands and parents frequently permitted travellers to bundle with their wives and daughters (Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Grose)

Reverend Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, London, 1781: Notwithstanding the great modesty of the females is such, that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to bundle."

So, just what is bundling? A description by Charles Francis Adams, (Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England) enlightens us:

"Two young persons proposed to marry. They and their families were poor; they lived far apart from each other; they were at work early and late all the week. Under these circumstances Saturday evening and Sunday were the recognized time for meeting. The young man came to the house of the girl after Saturday's sun-down, and they could see each other until Sunday afternoon, when he had to go back to his own home and work. These houses were small, and every nook in them occupied; and in order that the man might not be turned out of doors, or the two be compelled to sit up all night at a great waste of lights and fuel, and that they might at the same time be in each other's company, they were "bundled" up together on a bed, in which they lay side by side and partially clothed."

He goes on to add, "The only good and redeeming feature about it was the utter absence of concealment and secrecy. All was open and recognized. The very "bundling" was done by the hands of mother and sisters."

According to Mr. Adams, nowhere was this practice more prevalent than on Cape Cod, and was the place in which the practice held out longest against the advance of "more refined manners."

Bundling is spoken of by many of the esteemed of the day. Mr Elliott calls it "corrupt" and a "debasing" practice. A Mr. Weeden who wrote Economic and Social History of New England, speaks of it as "certainly an unpuritan custom" which was "extensively practised in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts," against which "Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful voice."

In Worthington's History of Dedham, it is noted that the Rev. Mr. Haven, alarmed at the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, attributed it to "the frequent recurrence of the fault to the custom then prevalent of females admitting young men to their beds who sought their company with intentions of marriage."

In 1781 Mrs. John Adams gives fame to this peculiar habit when she references a voyage across the Atlantic in which the passengers lived in a common cabin: "Necessity has no law; but what should I have thought on shore to have laid myself down in common with half a dozen gentlemen? We have curtains, it is true, and we only in part undress-- about as much as the Yankee bundlers."

So there you have it. Bundling. Another "piece of work" by our every frugal New England brethren that sometimes saved fuel, but unprovidentially served to light a fire of an entirely different nature!