proof that in this
country from the first, the social power was used not to make girls
accept husbands that might be chosen for them but to protect girls
from exploitation of designing persons, and if they had not a family
protection they were held secure in that of the officers of the
community. The law of 1719, in New York, that no person under
twenty-one should be married without the written consent of parent or
guardian was a step in the direction of social control. This law aimed
not to make marriage choices for any young person but to safeguard
such choice from possible harm.

The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place to give
every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when
the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give
the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors
and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment
of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor
Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he
declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a
stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;"
and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to
special tax and social odium.

The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at
least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or
financial security outside of marriage--it set at work forces to
provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a
free competition for masculine favor.

=Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.=--There were, however, some
distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret
Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with
men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is
historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor
Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared
a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years,"
who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others
of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right
not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had
not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained
in the case of young girls in our own country from the first.

The lot of most women