Part 1

DOMESTIC LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD

Built in 1683]

Domestic Life in NEW ENGLAND in the Seventeenth Century

A DISCOURSE

Delivered in the Lecture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it being one of a Series designed to mark the Opening of the American Wing

_By GEORGE FRANCIS DOW_

[Illustration]

_TOPSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS_: Printed for the Author at _The Perkins Press_, just off the _Main Street_, 1925.

COPYRIGHT, 1925, GEORGE FRANCIS DOW

FIVE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED

[Illustration]

THE PREFACE

The publication of the following paper in its present form, became possible when the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art found it necessary to abandon their intention to publish a volume containing the lectures given on the occasion of the opening of the American Wing. The other lectures delivered in the course were devoted to the architecture and arts of New England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and it therefore seemed fitting that some account of the domestic life of the period should also have a presentation. Within the limitations of time and space it was only possible to touch lightly upon so far-reaching a subject and the reader will soon discover that the following pages may be somewhat over-loaded with facts gleaned from original records. It also should be borne in mind that the public records that have come down to us preserve a chronicle of the offences of the day and generation while the uneventful lives of the honest and the just frequently rest in oblivion.

_The evil that men do lives after them The good is oft interred with their bones._

Nevertheless, there were fully as many sinners as saints living within the control of the Puritan autocracy in the Massachusetts Bay and it is to be hoped that the contemporaneous data here presented may aid in bringing about a readjustment of values in the mind of some reader.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD _Frontispiece_

FRONT DOOR OF CAPEN HOUSE 2

FRONT ENTRY AND STAIRS OF CAPEN HOUSE 4

OVERHANG OF THE CAPEN HOUSE 6

PARLOR OF THE CAPEN HOUSE 8

JOHN WARD HOUSE, SALEM 12

PARLOR OF WARD HOUSE 16

KITCHEN OF WARD HOUSE 20

DRESSER IN KITCHEN OF WARD HOUSE 24

WELLCURB AND SWEEP, WARD HOUSE 28

[Illustration]

DOMESTIC LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

To picture the life in the homes of the colonists in the years immediately following the settlement would require many screens. Then as now life had its contrasts and utmost poverty existed but shortly removed from comparative wealth. In 1657 an apprentice to a stone-mason in the town of Newbury, Massachusetts, testified that it was a long while before “he could eate his master’s food, viz. meate and milk, or drink beer, saying that he did not know that it was good, because he was not used to eat such victualls, but to eate bread and water porridge and to drink water.”[1] A few miles away, in the town of Ipswich, lived Madam Rebecka Symonds, writing in her sixtieth year to her son in London to send her a fashionable “lawn whiske,” for her neckwear. In due time he replied that the “fashionable Lawn whiske is not now worn, either by Gentil or simple, young or old. Instead where of I have bought a shape and ruffles, which is now the ware of the gravest as well as the young ones. Such as goe not with naked necks ware a black wifle over it. Therefore, I have not only Bought a plaine one y’t you sent for, but also a Luster one, such as are most in fashion.” The dutiful son also purchased for his mother’s wear a feather fan; but he writes, to her “I should also have found in my heart, to have let it alone, because none but very grave persons (and of them very few) use it. Now ’tis grown almost as obsolete as Russets, and more rare to be seen than a yellow Hood.” When the feather fan reached Ipswich it was found to have a silver handle and with it came “two tortois fans, 200 needles, 5 yds. sky calico, silver gimp, a black sarindin cloak, damson leather skin, two women’s Ivorie Knives, etc.”[2]

Fine clothing surrounded itself with fine furnishings, according to the standards of the period, and as the wealth of the Colonies increased with the successful exportation of fish, lumber, beaver, and peltry, it supplied them with all kinds of luxuries and refinements to be found in the shops of London, Plymouth, or Bristol. The ships were crossing frequently and the Colonies kept pace with the mother country much as the country follows the city at the present time. All the while, however, primitive living and also poverty existed everywhere. The inventories of numerous estates show meagre household furnishings, and many families of eight or more persons lived in houses only eighteen by twenty-four feet in size, possibly with a shed attached. Alexander Knight, a pauper in a Massachusetts town, was provided in 1659 with a one-story house sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide having a thatched roof and costing only £6 to build, which no doubt was typical of the simple dwellings occupied by the poorer colonists in the early days following the settlement.

When Governor Winthrop arrived at Charlestown in 1630 with the first great emigration he found a house or two and several wigwams--rude shelters patterned after the huts built by the Indians--and until houses could be erected in Boston many lived in tents and wigwams, “their meeting-place being abroad under a Tree.” Deacon Bartholomew Green, the printer of the _Boston News-Letter_, related that when his father arrived at Boston in 1630, “for lack of housing he was vain to find shelter at night in an empty cask,” and during the following winter many of the poorer sort still continued to live in tents through lack of better housing.

[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD

Front Door]

There is a wide-spread misconception that the colonists on reaching New England proceeded immediately to build log houses in which to live. Historians have described these log houses as chinked with moss and clay and as having earth floors, precisely the type of house built on the frontier and in the logging camps at a much later period. A well-known picture of Leyden street, at Plymouth, shows a double row of log houses reaching up the hillside, which the Pilgrims are supposed to have constructed. In point of fact, no contemporary evidence has been found that supports the present-day theory. The early accounts of what took place in the days following the settlements along the coast are full of interesting details relating to day-by-day happenings but nowhere do we find allusion to a log house such as modern historians assume existed at that time.[3]

What happened at the Plymouth Colony after the _Mayflower_ came to anchor? The wind blew very hard for two days and the next day, Saturday, December 23, 1620, as many as could went ashore: “felled and carried timber, to provide themselves stuff for building,” and the following Monday “we went on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all that day.”[4] Bradford writes “that they builte a forte with good timber” which Isaac de Rasieres described in 1627 as “a large square house, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams.” The oldest existing houses in the Plymouth Colony are built in the same manner and some half dozen or more seventeenth-century plank houses may yet be seen north of Boston. Moreover, when the ship _Fortune_ sailed from Plymouth in the summer of 1621 part of her lading consisted of “clapboards and wainscott,” showing clearly that the colonists soon after landing had dug saw pits and produced boards in quantity suitable for the construction of houses and for exportation.

In the summer of 1623 Bradford mentions the “building of great houses in pleasant situations” and when a fire broke out in November of the following year it began in “a shed yt was joyned to ye end of ye storehouse, which was wattled up with bowes.” It will be seen that this shed was not crudely built of logs or slabs but that its walls were wattled and perhaps also daubed with clay, in precisely the same manner with which these colonists were familiar in their former homes across the sea. An original outer wall in the old Fairbanks house at Dedham, Massachusetts, still has its “wattle and daub” constructed in 1637. What can be more natural and humanly probable than to find English housewrights who had learned their trade overseas, building houses and outbuildings on this side of the Atlantic in the same manner they had been taught through a long apprenticeship in their former homes? Can we of today assume that they, upon the spur of the moment, invented a new type of building--a log house--a construction they had never seen in England--a building also unknown to the Indians?

The houses of the Indians were “verie little and homely, being made with small Poles pricked into the ground, and so bended and fastened at the tops, and on the side they are matted with Boughes and covered with Sedge and old mats.”[5] These were called “wigwams” and as they were easily constructed and the materials were readily at hand many of the poorer colonists built for themselves imitations of these rude huts of the Indians. Governor Winthrop records in his “Journal,” in September, 1630, that one Fitch of Watertown had his wigwam burnt down with all his goods, and two months later John Firman, also of Watertown, lost his wigwam by fire.

[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD

Front entry and stairs]

Thomas Dudley writing to the Countess of Lincoln, in March, 1631, relates: “Wee have ordered that noe man shall build his chimney with wood nor cover his house with thatch, which was readily assented unto, for that divers houses have been burned since our arrival (the fire always beginning in the wooden chimneys) and some English wigwams which have taken fire in the roofes with thatch or boughs.”[6] It was Dudley who was taken to task by the Governor in May, 1632, “for bestowing so much cost on wainscotting his house and otherwise adorning it,” as it was not a good example for others in the beginning of a plantation. Dudley replied that he had done it for warmth and that it was but clapboards nailed to the walls. A few months later this house caught fire “the hearth of the Hall chimney burning all night upon the principal beam.”

The frequent references to the English wigwam seem to indicate that some such temporary construction was usual among many of the colonists at the outset. Settlers were living at Salem as early as 1626 and Endecott, with a considerable immigration, arrived in 1628. Marblehead, just across the harbor, was settled early and yet when John Goyt came there in 1637, he “first built a wigwam and lived thar till he got a house.”[7] The rude buildings also put up by the planters at Salem must have been looked upon at the time as temporary structures for they had all disappeared before 1661.[8] The town clerk of Woburn, Massachusetts, writing in 1652, mentions the rude shelters of the first settlers “which kept off the short showers from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrated through, to their grate disturbance in the night season: yet, in these poor wigwams, they sing Psalms, pray and praise their God, till they can provide them homes, which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the Earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and little ones.”[9]

“Before you come,” wrote Rev. Francis Higginson, the first minister at Salem, “be careful to be strongly instructed what things are fittest to bring with you for your more comfortable passage at sea, as also for your husbandry occasions when you come to the land. For when you are once parted with England you shall meete neither markets nor fayres to buy what you want. Therefore be sure to furnish yourselves with things fitting to be had before you come: as meale for bread, malt for drinke, woolen and linnen cloath, and leather for shoes, and all manner of carpenters tools, and a great deale of iron and steele to make nails, and locks for houses, and furniture for ploughs and carts, and glasse for windows, and many other things which were better for you to think of there than to want them here.”[10] Elsewhere the good pastor set down “A catalogue of such needfull things as every Planter doth or ought to provide to go to New England” in which he enumerated the necessary victuals per person for the first year, viz:

“8 Bushels of meale, 2 Bushels of pease, 2 Bushels of Otemeale, 1 Gallon of Aquavitae, 1 Gallon of Oyle, 2 Gallons of Vinegar, 1 Firkin of Butter; also Cheese, Bacon, Sugar, Pepper, Cloves, Mace, Cinnamon, Nutmegs and Fruit.”

The household implements listed were:--“1 Iron pot, 1 Kettel, 1 Frying pan, 1 Gridiron, 2 Skellets, 1 Spit, Wooden Platters, Dishes, Spoons and Trenchers.”

Clothing, arms, and tools of all kinds of course must be taken and the natural resources of New England and the fruits of their husbandry and of the sea were expected to supply the rest of those things necessary to life and comfort. Those who settled along the shore line north of Boston found much “fat blacke earth” that yielded bountiful crops. The soil to the southward of Boston Bay was lighter and less productive, but the valley of the Connecticut was found to be of unsurpassed richness.

[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD

Overhang and one of the “drops”]

Pastor Higginson wrote enthusiastically of the natural abundance of the grass that “groweth verie wildly with a great stalke” as high as a man’s face and as for Indian corn--the planting of thirteen gallons of seed had produced an increase of fifty-two hogsheads or three hundred and fifty bushels, London measure, to be sold or trusted to the Indians in exchange for beaver worth above £300. Who would not share the hardships and dangers of the frontier colony for opportunity of such rich gain?

But the housewives in the far-away English homes were more interested in the growth of the vegetable gardens in the virgin soil, and of these he wrote: “Our turnips, parsnips and carrots are here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are stores of pumpions, cucumbers, and other things of that nature I know not. Plentie of strawberries in their time, and penny-royall, winter saverie, carvell and water-cresses, also leeks and onions are ordinary.” Great lobsters abounded weighing from sixteen to twenty-five pounds and much store of bass, herring, sturgeon, haddock, eels, and oysters. In the forests were several kinds of deer; also partridges, turkeys, and great flocks of pigeons, with wild geese, ducks, and other sea fowl in such abundance “that a great part of the Planters have eaten nothing but roast-meate of divers Fowles which they have killed.”

These were some of the attractive natural features of the new colony in the Massachusetts Bay, as recounted by the Salem minister. Of the hardships he makes small mention, for his aim was to induce emigration. There was much sickness, however, and many deaths. Higginson himself lived only a year after reaching Salem. The breaking up of virgin soil always brings on malaria and fever. Dudley wrote “that there is not an house where there is not one dead, and in some houses many. The naturall causes seem to bee in the want of warm lodgings, and good dyet to which Englishmen are habittuated, at home; and in the suddain increase of heate which they endure that are landed here in somer * * * those of Plymouth who landed in winter dyed of the Scirvy, as did our poorer sort whose howses and bedding kept them not sufficiently warm, nor their dyet sufficiently in heart.”[11] Thomas Dudley wrote this in March, 1631. He explained that he was writing upon his knee by the fireside in the living-room, having as yet no table nor other room in which to write during the sharp winter. In this room his family must resort “though they break good manners, and make mee many times forget what I would say, and say what I would not.”

But these hardships and inconveniences of living which the New England colonists met and overcame differ but little from those experienced in every new settlement. They have been parallelled again and again wherever Englishmen or Americans have wandered. In a few years after the coming of the ships much of the rawness and discomfort must have disappeared, certainly in the early settlements, and comparative comfort must have existed in most homes. If we could now lift the roof of the average seventeenth-century house in New England it is certain that we should find disclosed not only comfortable conditions of living but in many instances a degree of luxury with fine furnishings that is appreciated by few at the present time. And this can now be shown by means of the itemized inventories of estates that were carefully made, listing the contents of a house, room by room, and enabling us to visualize the interiors of the homes in which lived the pioneers of New England.

[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD

The Parlor]

Among the early settlements made in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay was one at Agawam, now the town of Ipswich. The news had reached Boston that the French were pushing their settlements westward along the coast, bringing with them “divers priests and Jesuits,” which so alarmed the Governor and Council that it was decided to forestall the French and hasten the planting of new towns north of Boston. The first move was to send the Governor’s son John, with twelve others, to establish themselves at Agawam. There were no roads and so they sailed along the coast in a shallop and took possession of the town site in March, 1633. Their families and other settlers soon followed and the increase of population was such that in August, 1634, the Court of Assistants decreed that the place be called Ipswich, after old Ipswich in England, “in acknowledgment of the great honor and kindness done to our people, who took shipping there.”

Three months later, in November, 1634, one John Dillingham arrived in Ipswich and the selectmen granted him six acres of land on which to build a house. He was from Leicestershire and with his wife and daughter had come over in the fleet with Winthrop in 1630, and remained in Boston until he removed to Ipswich. Life in the frontier settlement was too severe for him and he died during the next winter. On July 14, 1636, his widow, Sarah, made her “last will and testament” being in “perfect memory though my body be weake & sick” and a few days later she too was dead, leaving her orphaned daughter to be cared for by Richard Saltonstall and John Appleton, under the direction of the Quarterly Court. And this was not at all difficult for John Dillingham had left a “goodly estate,” for the times. This Dillingham home has been selected for analysis because it is one of the earliest estates in the Colony of which we have exact and detailed information, a number of documents relating to it having been preserved among the miscellaneous papers in the Massachusetts State Archives.[12] Moreover, it shows the furnishings and equipment of a settler living in a town of only two years growth from the wilderness.

The Dillingham homestead consisted of a house of two rooms and outbuildings with thirty acres of upland, sixty acres of meadow, i. e., grass land, and six acres of planting ground near the house, of which four acres were planted with corn. Apple trees and other fruits were fenced off in the garden. For livestock there was a mare, three cows, two steers, two heifers, four calves, and four pigs. There was an indentured servant, Thomas Downs, to help cultivate the land and care for the stock, and a maid, Ann Towle, who not only helped with the housework but also worked in the fields. “She hath been a faithful servant,” wrote Richard Saltonstall, executor of the estate, “and though she was discharged by her mistress a little before her time was out, yet it may be borne by the estate, considering her diligence.” Ann had come over in the ship _Susan and Ellen_, which arrived in April, 1635. Her passage cost £5.

The Dillinghams occupied a good social position in the youthful settlement but their two-room house did not contain any really fine furniture. The parlor was also used as a bedroom, a practice which was common everywhere in the seventeenth century. It had two bedsteads valued at £1. 6. 8.; a cupboard, 10s.; a sea chest, 10s.; two “joyned Chaires,” 5s.; a round table, 7s.; a deske, 4s.; and a band box, 2s. There was also a large nest of boxes valued £2. and a small nest of boxes worth only three shillings. The feather beds, boulsters, and pillows on each bed were valued at about twice as much as a bedstead and the coverlets averaged about £1. a piece. There were flaxen sheets for Mrs. Dillingham’s bed and coarse sheets for the beds of the maid and the indentured servant. A warming-pan bears silent testimony to the cold of the winter season. Another bedstead valued at only three shillings may have been in the garret and occupied by Ann Towle, the maid. A chest stood in the kitchen--more generally spoken of at that time as “the hall,” in accordance with the English usage--and two boxes, probably used for storage and also for seats. That was all the furniture listed in the kitchen that was considered of any value. The tables, stools, benches, shelving, or other furnishings seemingly necessary to housekeeping at that time either did not exist or were so crude in construction as to have little or no value in estimating the estate. We find five cushions, however, valued at fifteen shillings.

Mrs. Dillingham died possessed of a few really fine furnishings--possibly treasured ancestral pieces--for she bequeathed a silver bowl to the wife of Richard Saltonstall, and to the wife of John Appleton she gave a silver porringer. It would be extremely interesting today to know what has become of these two pieces of Colonial silver. No other silver is mentioned but on shelving in the kitchen rested 40-1/2 pounds of pewter valued at £2. 14. 0. As a pewter plate of the time weighs nearly two pounds and a platter much more the supply of pewter for the table was not large. Wooden plates, trenchers, and bowls are not mentioned, but there were twenty-five pewter saucers, six porringers, seven spoons, and five shillings worth of knives. As for table forks, they were practically unknown in the Colony at that time. Governor Winthrop brought over a fork in 1630, carefully preserved in a case, which is supposed to be the first and only table fork in the Colony in the earliest days of the settlements. Knives, spoons, and fingers, with plenty of napery, met the demands of table manners in the seventeenth century.