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Alice Morse Earle (April 27, 1851 - February 16, 1911) was an American historian and author from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was christened Mary Alice by her parents Edwin Morse and Abby Mason Clary. On 15 April 1874, she married Henry Earle of New York, changing her name from Mary Alice Morse to Alice Morse Earle. Her writings, beginning in 1890, focussed on small sociological details rather than grand details, and thus are invaluable for modern social historians. She wrote a number of books on colonial America (and especially the New England region) such as Curious Punishments of Bygone...

From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from the chimney on a raw winter's day he...

There is no doubt that our far-away grandfathers, whether of English, French, Dutch, Scotch or Irish blood, were much more afraid of ridicule than they were even of sinning, and far more than we are of extreme derision or mockery to-day. This fear and sensitiveness they showed in many ways.