Place:Plymouth (colony)

"Freeman" status: “The status of “freeman” conferred the right to take part in the government of the Colony as a whole; and scholars have generally associated it with the attainment of a majority in our own sense, that is, with the age of twenty-one years. But the point was never established officially until the broad revision of the Colony laws in 1671, and twenty-one would in any case represent only a minimum. What, then of actual practice in this regard? An examination of some sixty persons for whom there is sufficient data shows clearly that no set age brought admission to freemanship. The sample spreads out across a broad range from twenty-five to forty, with some tendency to cluster in the early thirties. This privilege and responsibility (for it was both) was perhaps the last in the series of steps leading to full adult citizenship in the community.” [from John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 148]