In February, 1779, Ebenezer Bragg began to spend the night with Abigail Washburn. Many people in Keene knew about this unmarried liaison — indeed, “girling of it” and “afrolicking” were common practices, and hinted at much more than the shared beds, or bundling, that was an expedient of a time with few inns.

Bragg’s regular overnights with Abigail provoked jealous journal entries by another young man in the village, who had hopes of his own with fair Abigail, not to mention Hephzibah Crossfield and other young ladies of the town. Abner Sanger, a young farmer, privately slandered Ebenezer as “Lord Debauche.”

As lovers celebrate Valentine’s Day, those aching for a return to traditional romance might be surprised to learn that love in the first years of our country was pretty steamy. By some estimates, one in three New England brides was pregnant in the early Republic, and young unmarried couples often kept their trysts under the same roof as their pragmatic parents, who made sure they knew who the father of any future child was.

We know about the Americans’ intimate habits because couples with babies delivered seven months after the wedding had to admit their sin publicly so their children could be accepted in church. Historian Richard Godbeer painstakingly tracks these records in “Sexual Revolution in Early America,” in which he tells the story of Ebenezer Bragg.

The thunderclap of revolutionary ideas, especially a right to happiness, affected men and women alike. A new era in publishing replaced the dry, humorless self-help of religious elders with racy novels like “The Coquette.” Said to be the third book people bought, after Webster’s and the Bible, “The Coquette” cast a sympathetic eye on a young woman caught between a boring but upright minister and a handsome rakish Southerner.

One of the ways a greater permissiveness took hold was via a new social institution established by the Puritan elders as they grasped for control: the singing school. Puritan sermons emphasized the consequences of sin, with images of fire and brimstone moving people to the kind of paroxysms of fear typical of horror movies today. Those sermons though were contradicted by the psalm singing during the service. Most people didn’t have songbooks, didn’t know the words, didn’t learn musical notation — so singing in church was a decidedly improvisational affair. People sang their notes in a way the elders disapproved of.

To stop all this noodling around with music, the elders instituted singing schools. The only place to meet, though, that was warm enough in winter and big enough to hold the crowd, was the local tavern. And the people who came to learn were mostly young people. Both sexes. The songs tended to be old folk tunes and the singing masters struggled to get the tavern crowd to switch from the old, quite racy lyrics to the scriptures imposed on them. Meanwhile, beer flowed.

The Puritan elders soon realized their mistake but it was too late. Singing schools became one of the most popular entertainments of the latter 18th century.

For those who want to sample old-time romance, the type of singing that loosed the bounds of propriety in the early Republic today still exists. It’s called ‘shape note singing” or sometimes Sacred Harp singing, and in New Hampshire, there are regular ways to join in. Go to http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/regular.html for information.

Dorothee Kocks, a former resident of North Berwick, Maine, is the author of “The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist’s Tale,” published by rosamirabooks.com in January 2011. The novel takes place largely in Portsmouth, in the early 1800s. She invites comments at www.dorotheekocks.com.