"It is the duty of the head of a family to bring up the members thereof in the way they should go; and by 'family' you must understand the entire lineal descendants of a materfamilias, if I may coin a convenient phrase.
"The Negro"
W.E.B. Du Bois
And now, the early tea being over, Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow; his friend was shut up in his room; and materfamilias was in hers, with one of those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep away.
"Melchior's Dream and Other Tales"
Juliana Horatia Ewing
If the materfamilias knew sufficiently well the arts of spinning and weaving to be able to organize in the home a small "factory" of slaves engaged in such tasks, and knew how to direct and survey them, to make them work with zeal and without theft, she could provide the clothing for the whole household, thus saving the heavy expense of buying the stuffs from a merchant-notable economy in times when money was scarce and every family tried to make as little use of it as possible.
"The Women of the Caesars"
Guglielmo Ferrero