Can someone just give a brief overview of social life in colonial times?

Question

Can someone just give a brief overview of social life in colonial times?

Answer 1

It would depend where you were in the colonies.  In the south, people were very isolated, living on farm and plantations.  In 'America's Women' Gail Collins writes:

'Southern hospitality was to a great extent the creation of a desperately lonely people.  George Washington used to post a slave at the crossroads near his plantation to invite any passerby to dinner.  "Strangers are sought after with greediness" wrote an observer.  a circuit judge in North Carolina stopped at the home of some well-to-do newlyweds who were living on the husband's farm, eighteen miles fromt he nearest neighbor.  He wrote that when a male visitor told the young bride he would bring his own wife to visit her, she wept with gratitude.  But a good hostess had no control over when the blessing of company would arrive, or for how long.  Friends, family, and unknown passerby felt free to drop in by the wagonful without notice, and they expected to be fed and lodged when they arrived.  Neighbors who came together for balls, weddings, or even dancing lessons, stayed on for several days.

  church was an important social event for southerners, who didn't take their religion quite as seriously as the colonists up north.  visitors were scandalised to see southern women joining the men as they smoked after church.  Inside during services, it was the general custom for the women and lower classes to take their seats on time, and for the wealthy men to arrive half an hour into the proceedings, the better to display their fine clothes.   The less prosperous families in rural areas also came together for communal events like barn raisings and husking frolics that might attract thirty to fifty people.  These combinations of neighbourly helpfulness and socializing were popular in the rural north too.  Women must have approached them with mixed emotions.  They were a chance to see neighbours, but they were often alcahol fueled and violent.  As time went on, farmers began to question whether their half-drunk neighbours were really doing  a very good job of husking the corn or building the house, and the tradition died out.

Answer 2

It was limited to arranged marriages or with in walking distances.