Puritan forefathers? Maybe Not (Associated Press release, The Salina Journal, 30 August 1988: 4C.

New York (AP) -- The nation apparently wasn't all our forefathers fathered. Revolutionary War-era records show that sex was "part of serious courtship" and often resulted in premarital preganancy, a historian writies.

Americans in the late 1700s "were more licentious than we imagine them to be," Jack larkin writes in American Heritage magazine's September/October issue.

Larkin cites birth and marriage records of several dozen American communities to prove that in the late 18th century, pregnancy was frequently a prelude to marriage. In rural New England, nearly a third of brides were already with child. "The frequency of sexual intercourse before marriage was surely higher, since some couples would have escaped early pregnancy," Larkin wrote.

"For many couples, sexual relations were part of serious courtship after their engagement."

Larkin said "people today tend to assume we've reached the ultimate level of moral looseness, and that you can look back through our history at a steadily rising level of immorality, building up to the present. These things have gone in cycles. And while the premarital pregnancies were high then, they had really no birth control like today. It is probably much higher today."

The concept of lustful revolutionaries is particularly surprising in straitlaced New England, considering "the popular notion of what Puritanism was all about," Larkin said.

As resistance to British rule spread throughout the colonies in the late 1700's, "all hell broke loose," he said.

Lest anyone confuse Salem with Sodom or Gloucester with Gomorrah, however, Larkin offers this caveat: "Pregnancies always accelerated a marriage that would have taken place in any case. There are no records of unwed mothers. Most rural communities simply accepted the 'early pregnancies' that marked so many marriages."

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