Abstract
I T is a commonplace of historical observation that social functions, activities, and behavior are differentiated by gender and that customary sex roles change over time. Yet even for a society as closely studied as that of seventeenth-century New England,' the distribution and changing content of men's and women's roles remain obscure. Local court records furnish useful and still largely untapped information on sex roles. They provide explicit data on criminal behavior and the contemporary legal code; they also give scattered but valuable glimpses of normal behavior in the depositions of ordinary townspeople. This article offers a report of findings from the Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Court records for the years i636 to i683. The investigation focuses on the women of Salem and suggests connections between changes in sex roles and changes in the character of social relations during a period when Salem developed from a small farming community into a bustling mercantile town.2
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