Religion: love and death

The records of children's own writing tend to be very religious. Dorothy Plumpton, writing about 1600 to beg her father to allow her to return home, ends, 'And I beseech you to send me a fine hatt and some good cloth to make me some kevercheffes. And thus I beseech Jesu to have you in his blessed keeping to his pleasure and your harts desire and comforth.' Cotton Mather's diary records how 13 of his 15 children died. Just after his wife and two daughters had died of measles, 'My lovely Jerusha expired.