This paper investigates aspects of literacy and numeracy skills in seventeenth and early eighteenth century New England in order to provide a qualitative context for recent quantitative studies of colonial literacy. Sources include colonial legislation on education and apprenticeship, town records, schoolchildren's textbooks and copybooks, as well as newspaper advertisements. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) basic to all literacy/numeracy instruction was the specific teaching of those skills; (2) literacy and numeracy instruction were offered in the order of the "three R's": reading, then writing, then arithmetic--and each skill presupposed the mastery of the preceding one; (3) subjects were gender-specific; (4) economics lay behind the teaching of writing to boys and sewing to girls; (5) numeracy skills were likewise restricted to boys; (6) colonial requirements for literacy/numeracy became more stringent over time; and (7) teaching was gender-determined as well as learning (men taught writing and arithmetic; women taught reading). Three more tentative conclusions are drawn: Many New England towns may have restricted their schools to boys; the expectation that children would enter town schools knowing how to read proved unrealistic; and women had the opportunity to earn money by teaching reading throughout the colonial period. (Author/TE)