Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk, though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the child was born. By tradition, ""groaning cake," to be used at the time of the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later, also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old, seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats, "Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts." Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at the bedside of the mother.

As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into spending a tidy sum — for him — on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries,"" spent his entire day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms; — in the house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death. When Betty was a year older her father wrote:

Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed evidence of the dejection of soul around him.