Living a Healthy Life in New England.
The views and living arrangements in the Chesapeake Bay and New England in the 1600s were very different from each other. Compared to the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, people in New England were healthier physically, had more stable religion and better family values. .
Health conditions overwhelmed the Chesapeake colonies with infections, diseases, and deaths. .
"Plagued by horrendous mortality, the Chesapeake remained, for most of the seventeenth century, a land of immigrants rather than of settled families." (Nash pg. 39).
Grandparents were almost unheard of because the surrounding environment full of disease. Pregnant women were prone to malaria, and if they did actually bear a child, chances are the child died sick before he or she became an adult (Nash pg. 39).
There was no separation of church and state in the seventeenth century in New England society. Members of the church were the only ones who governed towns and villages, and only male members could hold such positions. Women had few rights as far as politics is concerned, even though they made up an average of two-thirds to three-fourths of the church throughout New England (Pestana pg. 10). The Puritans believed that God would punish them if they did not civilize and "Christianize" the natives of North America (Nash pg. 45), and anyone who was not a Christian was known as a "savage". .
The Chesapeake colonies were not strictly of the Puritan faith. Maryland was governed by a Catholic in the 1600s until the Glorious Revolution in 1688, when it was then governed by a Protestant (Nash pg. 77). The Chesapeake colonies, especially Virginia, were tolerant of all religions, unlike the Puritans, who felt that all people should convert to their Christianity. Virginia had less attendance at churches; voting and political positions were not typically dependent of church attendance or memberships (Nash pgs.
