Wonderful excerpts on how the children in this house played have been found in the family’s diaries. When Sally’s daughter Agnes was 13, she wrote that on some winter days, she watched as the boys went sleighing and skating, and she stayed indoors. She observed, “How much pleasure the boys do take skating. I wish I could skate. Frederic said he would teach me next Saturday.” Abby Brown mentioned in her diary that her children were learning to ice skate and were busy “attempting the jumpy rope.” Around this time in early America, parents began adhering to the ideas of philosopher John Locke, who believed that children were born naturally innocent. More and more, play was encouraged, especially those pursuits that instilled adult skills and values. In fact, alphabet blocks were popularized by John Locke, and were sometimes called Locke’s Blocks.
Some historians have remarked that starting in the middle of the eighteenth century, women’s roles in families acquired new significance, and paternal power in the household began to decrease. Certainly, in the case of Sally and her family, she dominated her domestic realm, especially when her male counterparts were increasingly absent from homelife. Even before Charles Herreshoff passed away, Sally was the main influence and authority over her children as they grew up in this house. As such, she and other mothers of this time were responsible for shaping their children’s character and morals.