Now they were using great strictness to preserve the chastity of their daughters.
A worthy planter, who has been in the island since 1800, stated, that it used to be a common practice for mothers to _sell their daughters_ to the highest bidder!--generally a manager or overseer.

"But now;" said he, "the mothers _hold their daughters up for marriage_, and take pains to let every body know that their virtue is not to be bought and sold any longer." He also stated that those who live unmarried now are uniformly neglected and suffer great deprivations.

Faithfulness after marriage, exists also to a greater extent than could have been expected from the utter looseness to which they had been previously accustomed, and with their ignorance of the nature and obligations of the marriage relation.
We were informed both by the missionaries and the planters, that every year and month they are becoming more constant, as husband and wife, more faithful as parents, and more dutiful as children.

One planter said that out of a number who left his employ after 1834, nearly all had companions on other estates, and left for the purpose of being with them.

He was also of the opinion that the greater proportion of changes of residence among the emancipated which took place at that time, were owing to the same cause.[A] In an address before the Friendly Society in St.John's, the Archdeacon stated that during the previous year (1835) several individuals had been expelled from that society for domestic unfaithfulness; but he was happy to say that he had not heard of a single instance of expulsion for this cause during the year then ended.
Much inconvenience is felt on account of the Moravian and Wesleyan missionaries being prohibited from performing the marriage service, even for their own people.