PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD
Built in 1683
Title: Domestic life in New England in the seventeenth century
Author: George Francis Dow
Release date: May 11, 2025 [eBook #76065]
Language: English
Original publication: Topsfield, Massachusetts: The Perkins Press, 1925
Credits: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
DOMESTIC LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND
IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD
Built in 1683
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
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
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.
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[Pg 2] 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.
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.
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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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.
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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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.
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[Pg 9] 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[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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.
The large fireplace in the kitchen had its usual equipment of pothooks, fire shovel and tongs, gridiron, trivet, and bellows, and beside it was an old dark lantern valued at only two shillings. There were iron pots, kettles, skillets and ladles; a brass pot and a mortar. There was a frying-pan with a hole in it and in a box were kept “bullets, hinges and other smale things.” Two beer vessels were listed; a case of bottles, two jugs, three pans, a tray, and two baskets. Such was the simple equipment of the Dillingham kitchen. There were plenty of table-cloths and napkins but no curtains at any of the windows. If a broom were used it probably was made of birch twigs bound together around a long handle. Candlesticks do not appear in the inventory and the only store of food mentioned (aside from twenty-one new cheeses valued at £2. 16. 0.) was seven bushels of rye, two firkins and a half of butter, a half bushel of malt, six pounds of raisins, and some spice. Our ancestors had a highly developed appreciation of the[Pg 12] value of condiments. In a Salem inventory at a somewhat later date appear salt, pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmegs, and allspice.
Mrs. Dillingham’s wearing apparel unfortunately is not listed item by item, but given a total value of £5. 8. 4. Her linen amounted to an almost equal sum. Some of her deceased husband’s clothing is included in the inventory, such as a coat with silver buttons, a red waistcoat, a suit of serge and a black suit of serge unmade, a jacket of cloth, and an old suit and cloak. Little Sara Dillingham, the orphaned child, when sent to school to goodwife Symonds was supplied with “a stuffe petticoat & waskote” and four “shifts with shewes”; also a gown that cost £2. 10s. Perhaps after a time she may have been able to read and fully appreciate the books formerly in her loving father’s chest. They were:—“Perkins works in 3 volumes, Seaven Treatises bound in 2 volumes, the Spowse Royall, the bruised reade, & a little new testiment.”
By way of contrast let us glance at the inventory of the possessions of William Googe of Lynn, who died in 1646, ten years after Mrs. Dillingham had willed that her body be “decently buyried” and her child “religiously educated if God give it life.” Googe left a house and twelve acres of land and the total value of his possessions amounted to but £28. 11. 7, with debts of £4. 9. 7. He left a widow and three small children, and though dying in very lowly circumstances he may have known better times, for John Mascoll, the servant of Mr. Googe of Lynn, was fined in 1643, for neglecting the watch. The title of honor, “Mr.,” was used but sparingly in those early days and usually indicated a degree of social standing in the community.
JOHN WARD HOUSE, SALEM
Built in 1684; showing overhanging second story, gable windows and casement sash
Googe had been a soldier, for among his personal belongings at death were a sword and belt, a musket and bandoleers, and also gunpowder. One cow and four hogs comprised his entire livestock, and five bushels of wheat, ten bushels of Indian corn, and flax in the bundle lay in the garret of his house, which was frugally furnished with a chest,[Pg 13] a chair, an old chair, a stool, and a trunk. The family probably slept on pallet beds made up on the floor, for bedding is listed but no bedsteads. They had a frying pan, a gridiron, a skillet, a posnet, an earthen pot, six spoons, and the following wooden ware, viz: “3 wood trayes & 3 wood boules & 3 wood dishes, 1s. 9d.; one runlitt, 1s.; paieles & tubs, 3s.” Two bags valued at two shillings bring to a close the list of the earthly possessions of William Googe of Lynn. When the inventory was brought into court it very properly gave the goods to the widow “for the bringing up of her three small children.” So reads the record.
Doubtless there were many families in the Colony little better conditioned, judging from the relatively small number of estates settled through the courts when compared with the deaths and estimated population.
Googe’s house and twelve acres of land were valued at only £8. This must have been a very simple, thatch-roofed house of not more than two rooms, comparable with the outlying farmhouse of Jacob Perkins that was burned in Ipswich in 1668. And thereby hangs a tale. Master Perkins and his wife had gone to town one summer afternoon leaving the house in charge of Mehitable Brabrooke, a sixteen-year-old serving maid. We will let the ancient document in the court files relate what happened.
“About 2 or 3 aclocke in the afternoone she was taking tobacco in a pipe and went out of the house with her pipe and gott upon the oven on the outside & backside of the house (to looke if there were any hogs in the corne) and she layed her right hand upon the thatch of the house (to stay herselfe) and with her left hand knocked out her pipe over her right arme upon the thatch on the eaves of the house (not thinking there had been any fire in the pipe) and imediately went downe into the corne feild to drive out the hogs she saw in it, and as she was going toward the railes of the feild ... she looked back, and saw a smoke upon her Mistress’ house in the place where she had knocked out her pipe at which shee was much frighted.”[13]
The wife of a neighbor came running to the assistance of Mehitable and afterwards testified that when she reached the house she looked into both fireplaces and saw no appearance of fire, only a few brands nearly dead under a great kettle hanging in the chimney. She also looked up into the chamber through the floor boards that lay very open on the side where the smoke was.
Could photographs more vividly picture the scene? The thatch-roofed farmhouse had two rooms on the ground floor and a chimney with two fireplaces. An oven was built on the backside probably having an opening inside the kitchen fireplace in the usual manner. The house was of but one story judging from the low roof that the maid was able to reach when standing on the oven, and the floor of the chamber in the loft had wide cracks between the boards so that it was possible to look through from below and see the under side of the roof. In similar homes lived many a family in the early days in comparative comfort.
As for the careless Mehitable, she was brought before the Quarterly Court on suspicion of wilfully setting the house on fire; a serious offence, which as late as 1821, was the cause of the execution in Salem of a sixteen-year-old boy. Among those who deposed at her trial was a young man who said that as he and she were going into the meadow, before the fire, to make hay, she told him that her mistress was angry with her, but she had “fitted her now” for she had put a great toad into her kettle of milk. As it turned out the Court ordered Mehitable to be severely whipped and to pay £40 damages to her master Jacob Perkins. It now seems incredible that a serving maid of 1668 could ever get together so large a sum of money.
The settlers in the New England Colonies, unless persons of wealth or possessed of large families, during the early years lived generally in houses having but one room and an entry-way on the ground floor. Above would be a chamber—sometimes only a garret. As the family[Pg 15] increased in size and became more prosperous another room would be added to the house on the other side of the entry and chimney, making the structure a so-called two-room house. Still later, with the need for more room, a leanto would be built on the back of the house, thereby supplying three additional rooms on the ground floor with a kitchen in the middle. The earlier kitchen would then become a living-room or “sitting room”—in the New England phrase. This earlier kitchen was usually called “the hall” during the seventeenth century and in it centered the life of the family. It was the room where the food was cooked and eaten. There the family sat and there the indoor work was carried on. A loom sometimes occupied considerable space near a window and frequently a bed was made up in a corner, on which the father of the family slept, and there sometimes also he died.
The principal feature of this common room was its huge fireplace in which hung pots and kettles suspended by means of pot chains and trammels from the hardwood trammel-bar or lug-pole that rested on wooden cross bars and so bisected the wide flue in the chimney. These large fireplaces in the early days were sometimes called “chimneys” in the vernacular of the time. They were generally as wide as eight feet and a ten foot opening is not unknown.
This cavernous opening was spanned by a wooden lintel—a stick of timber sometimes sixteen inches or more square, and when exposed to a roaring fire, piled high with logs, this became an element of danger, the charring wood smoldering all night and setting fire to the house. The trammel-bar in the flue also caught fire not infrequently and gave way, allowing the pots and kettles to fall to the hearth, bringing disaster to the dinner or to the curdling milk and sometimes to those seated near. A trammel stick in the house of Captain Denney gave way from this cause and a large kettle filled with wort[14] fell down and spilt the boiling liquid over four of his children who were[Pg 16] sitting or lying on the hearth, some of them asleep, “which scalded them in so terrible a manner, that one died presently after, and another’s life is dispaired of” continues the record.
“Here is good living for those who love good fires,” wrote Higginson in his “New-Englands Plantation,” and under the spell of the glowing flames, the bare, whitewashed walls, the brown timbers and floor boards of the ceiling, the dress of pewter, and the simple furnishings of the room, enriched by the shadows, became a place full of cheer—a place where privation and homesickness might be forgotten in the glow of the bright firelight. On cold nights the short bench inside the fireplace was a chosen place and the settle, a long seat made of boards with a high back to keep off the draft, was drawn before the fire and here sat the older members of the family.
The larger kettles hanging in the fireplace, were of brass and copper and some of them were of prodigious size. Hot water was always to be had and these kettles also served for the daily cooking, the cheese-making, soap-boiling, and candle-dipping.
Much of the food of the average New Englander until comparatively recent times consisted of corn-meal, boiled meats and vegetables and stews. Every well-equipped household had its spits for roasting and many had gridirons, but the usual diet of the average family was “hasty pudding,”—cornmeal mush and milk—varied by boiled meat or fish served in the center of a large pewter platter and surrounded by boiled vegetables. Baked beans and stewed beans appeared on the table several times every week in the year. Indian bannock, made by mixing corn meal with water and spreading it an inch thick on a small board placed at an incline before the fire and so baked, was a common form of bread. When mixed with rye meal it became brown bread and was baked in the brick oven with the beans and peas.
JOHN WARD HOUSE, SALEM
The Parlor
The brick oven was a feature of every chimney. Sometimes[Pg 17] in early days it was built partly outside the house but so far as known the opening was always in the kitchen fireplace. To reach it the housewife must stoop below the oaken lintel and stand inside the fireplace, taking care that her woolen skirts did not come near the flames. To heat it for a baking, a fire was built inside, usually with specially prepared pine or birch wood that had been split and seasoned out of doors for a short time and then housed. The oven was hot enough when the black was burned off the top and the inside had become a uniform light color. The fire and ashes were then taken out by means of a peel—a long-handled, flat-bladed shovel made for the purpose—and when dusted out with a broom made of hemlock twigs it was ready for the brown bread, beans, peas, Indian pudding, pies, and rye drop cakes which were made with rye meal, eggs and milk and baked directly on the bricks in the bottom of the oven. Potatoes and eggs were roasted in the ashes of the fireplace.
Between the years of 1635 and 1655, court records and inventories of estates in the Massachusetts Bay Colony mention the following articles of food:
Bacon, beef, butter, cheese, eggs, fowls, lamb, milk, mutton, pork, suet, veal, wild game, and cod, herring, mackerel, salmon and sturgeon.
Barley, beans, Indian beans, bran, cabbages, carrots, chaff, corn, English corn, Indian corn, hops, Indian meal, rye meal, oatmeal, oats, parsnips, pease, pumpions, rye, squashes, turnips and wheat.
Apples, berries, fruit, honey, raisins, sugar and vinegar.
Biscuit, blewlman, bread, cake, malt, salad oil, porridge, rye malt, yeast, salt and many kinds of spices.
Much of this food was raised on the farm and nearly every family had its garden. Such articles of food as were imported were usually obtained at the shops in the larger towns by barter, as money was scarce. In 1651, a farmer from the frontier town of Andover came through the woods to Salem in his cart bringing twelve bushels of rye. He[Pg 18] stopped at a shop owned by George Corwin and from the daybook kept at the time and still carefully preserved, we learn that among other necessaries he carried home sugar for the goodwife and for the children—a doll and a bird whistle.
In the early years domestic animals were too valuable to be killed for meat but game was plentiful and was roasted by being trussed on iron spits resting on curved brackets on the backs of the andirons. This, of course, required constant turning to expose the roast on all sides in order to cook it evenly—a task frequently delegated to a child. A skillet would be placed beneath to catch the drippings. Sometimes a bird was suspended before the fire by a twisted cord that would slowly unwind and partly wind again, requiring some one in frequent attendance to twist the cord. Families of wealth possessed a “jack” to turn the spit. This was a mechanism fastened over the fireplace and connected with the spit by means of a pulley and cord. A heavy weight suspended by a cord which slowly unwound, supplied the power that turned the spit.
At night, on going to bed, the fire was carefully covered with ashes in order to keep it for the next day. This was called “raking up the fire.” If through poor judgment the fire didn’t keep some one would go to a near neighbor to borrow coals, or if this was inconvenient, resort was then had to the tinder box. Tinder was made by charring linen or cotton rags and the tinder box was kept in the niche on the inside of the fireplace, made by leaving out a couple of bricks.
In “the hall,” usually upon open shelves, but sometimes upon a dresser, was displayed the pride of the housewife,—the dress of pewter and lattin ware. “China dishes,” imported by the East India Company or made in Holland, were used sparingly during the early years of the colonies. There was much earthenware and stoneware bottles and jugs, but it was woodenware and pewter that were commonly used. When Lionel Chute died in 1645 he bequeathed[Pg 19] his silver spoon to his son James.[15] It was the only piece of silver in the house. Of pewter he died possessed of fourteen dishes “small and great,” eleven pewter salts, saucers and porringers, two pewter candlesticks and a pewter bottle. The widow Rebecca Bacon who died in Salem in 1655, left an estate of £195. 8. 6., which included a well-furnished house. She had brass pots, skillets, candlesticks, skimmers, a little brass pan, and an excellent supply of pewter including “3 large pewter platters, 3 a size lesse, 3 more a size lesse, 3 more a size lesse,” having a total value of £1. 16. She also had a pewter basin, six large pewter plates, and six lesser, nineteen pewter saucers, two fruit dishes, an old basin and a great plate, two candlesticks, one large salt and a small one, two porringers, a great flagon, one lesser, one quart, two pints and a half pint; and an old porringer. She also left “1 silver duble salt, 6 silver spoones, wine cup & a dram cup of silver.”
Giles Badger of Newbury left to his young widow, a glass bowl, beaker, and jug valued at three shillings; three silver spoons valued at £1, and a good assortment of pewter, including “a salt seller, a tunell and a great dowruff.” The household was also furnished with six wooden dishes and two wooden platters. In other inventories appear unusual items such as a pewter brim basin, pewter cullenders, pewter beer cups, pans, and mustard pots. Pewter tankards were common. There were new and old fashioned candlesticks. Pewter salts came in three sizes and the saucers were both small and large. In 1693, best London pewter plates cost the Boston shopkeepers 9-1/2 pence per pound in quantity.
The seventeenth century “hall” must have had little spare room for its daily occupants, for in addition to its table and chairs, its settle, stools and wash bench, the long ago inventories disclose such chattels as powdering tubs in which the salted meats were kept, the churn, barrels containing a great variety of things, keelers and buckets,[Pg 20] bucking tubs for washing, and the various implements used in spinning and weaving, washing and ironing, cooking and brewing, and the making of butter and cheese. In the chimney hung hams and bacon and suspended from the ceiling were strings of dried apples and hands of seed corn.
It is claimed by some that the floors were sanded. That certainly was true at a later period but there are strong elements of doubt as to the prevalence of this custom during the seventeenth century. Sand, however, was used freely with home-made soft soap, to scrub the floors which were always kept white and clean, and whenever an early house is restored or taken down sand is always found, sometimes in considerable quantity, where it has sifted down through the cracks between the floor boards. The downstairs rooms had double floors but the chamber floors were made of one thickness of boards with here and there a knothole and frequently with cracks between the boards through which the dust and dirt from above must have sifted down upon the heads of those seated at dinner or engaged in their daily tasks in the rooms below. Not only does the structural evidence show this to be true but a number of instances occur among the papers in Court files, where witnesses have deposed as to what they had seen and heard through the cracks in chamber floors. A grandson of Governor Endecott once fell a victim of two gossiping sixteen-year old girls who had spent some time on their knees peeping through the cracks in a chamber floor. Capt. Richard More, the last survivor of the company on the “Mayflower,” late in life kept a tavern in Salem. He was spied upon in this manner and eventually brought before the justices of the Quarterly Court to answer for his evasion of the law set forth and maintained at that time.
JOHN WARD HOUSE, SALEM
The kitchen showing roasting jack, settle, birch broom, hands of seed corn, etc.
The parlor, called “the foreroom” at a later time, was the room where guests of station were received. The best bed hung with curtains and valance and covered with a rug, stood in a corner. In those days rugs were not used on[Pg 21] floors but as bed furnishings. Even the baby’s cradle had its rug. Carpets, likewise, were too fine for wooden floors and were used as table covers. Of bedsteads there were many kinds,—high and low, canopy, close, corded, half-headed, joined, side, standing, inlaid, and wainscott, and slipped under the higher bedsteads during the daytime, were trundle or “truckle” beds in which the children slept at night. Lionel Chute, the schoolmaster, had an “old darnkell coverlet” on his bed while some of his neighbors possessed branched and embroidered coverlets and several had coverlets made of tapestry.
Among the better families the parlor and chamber windows had curtains hung from rods. In the parlor stood one or more chests in which were stored the family clothing and bedding, for closets did not exist in the seventeenth century house. There were great chests and small chests, long boarded and great boarded chests, chests with a drawer, carved chests, wainscot chests, trunks, and boxes. A few stools and chairs, a looking glass, a small table, and perhaps a cupboard completed the furnishings of the well-supplied parlor. In Capt. George Corwin’s best room there were chairs with leather bottoms and straw bottoms, a clock valued at £2, a screen having five leaves, a napkin press, and a “Scriture or Spice box.” White calico curtains hung at his chamber windows and the maid had a “Calico Cuberd cloth” in her room. Parlor walls were whitewashed and bare of ornament. The first families owned a portrait or two in oils and here and there a map in unglazed frame decorated a wall. The Puritan character did not warm to the fine arts and austere living was the aim if not always the achievement of the time.
The chambers in the second story must have been curiously furnished rooms, containing a huddle of stores of all descriptions. Henry Short, the town clerk of Newbury, died in 1673 leaving a goodly estate valued at nearly £2000.[16] He owned a negro slave and his house was large and well[Pg 22] furnished. There was an old parlor and a new parlor containing beds, chests, chairs, trunks, and boxes. In the chamber over the new parlor there was a good feather-bed and bed clothing but no bedstead. Wool and yarn were stored in this room together with boxes, tubs, some feathers, and miscellaneous “lumber”—the phrase of the period for odds and ends. The chamber over the kitchen, a comfortable room of course, in winter, had its bed and bedding, also “5 hogsheds, 6 barrels, 5 Iron hoopes, a pair of stock-cards, meale trough & other lumber, a parcell of old Iron, a pike, a bed cord & other cordage.” Small wonder in such a clutter that the rooms frequently had other tenantry than the human occupants.
When Jasper Dankers arrived in Boston in 1680, the captain of the packet took him to his sister’s house where he lodged. “We were taken to a fine large chamber,” he writes, “but we were hardly in bed before we were shockingly bitten. I did not know the cause, but was not able to sleep.... My comrade who was very sleepy, fell asleep at first. He tumbled about very much; but I did not sleep any the whole night. In the morning we saw how it was, and were astonished we should find such a room with such a lady.”[17]
With the present wide-spread belief in Puritan austerity of character, there is associated a conception of a simplicity of dress and manners. But the channels of information by which present day beliefs have been shaped usually have been ecclesiastical, and bias and convenient forgetfulness have been factors in outlining the composition of the picture. Human nature and human frailities were much the same in the seventeenth century as at the present time. In point of fact, our New England ancestors when viewed as a body, are found to have had standards of living far below those of today. The common speech was gross in the extreme. Crowded living led to familiarity. There was more drunkenness, profanity, loose living and[Pg 23] petty crime in proportion to the population than at the present time, and by no means did every one go to meeting on Sunday. The ministers controlled the lawmaking body and sumptuary laws were enacted which are enlightening. Because of “newe and immodest fashions” the wearing of silver, gold and silk laces, girdles and hat bands was prohibited. It was the fashion at that time to slash the sleeves so that a fabric of another color worn beneath would show in an ornamental manner through the slash. The ministers decreed that neither man nor woman should wear clothing with more than one slash on each sleeve and another on the back. “Cuttworks, inbroidered or needle worke capps, bands & rayles,” were forbidden.[18] Ruffs and beaver hats were prohibited, as was long hair. Binding or small edging laces might be used, but the making or selling of bone lace was penalized at the rate of five shillings per yard.
But this didn’t change human nature and although from time to time offenders were taken into court and punished, the wearing of fine clothing fashioned after the London mode continued and a few years later the ministers tried their hand again. Any kind of lace was anathema and “no garment shalbee made with short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arme may bee discovered.” On the other hand, large sleeves were forbidden, so the maids and goodwives of the time must have been somewhat at a loss to know how lawfully to fashion their clothes.
The minister at Ipswich grew so ill-tempered over the ungodly state of the women in his town that he vented his spleen as follows:—“When I hear a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week, what the nudius tertian of the Court, I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable substance than either honoured or humoured.”[19]
The minister in the adjoining town, Rowley, actually cut off his nephew from his inheritance because he wore his hair long in the prevailing fashion. Later in the century the offense of wearing long hair was forgotten in the unspeakable sin of wearing wigs. The Great and General Court again took a hand and in 1675 condemned “the practise of men’s wearing their own or other’s hair made into periwigs.” Judge Sewall in his Diary alludes to the custom. In 1685 three persons were admitted to the Old South Church in Boston. “Two wore periwigs,” comments the Judge.
“1708, Aug. 20, Mr. Chievar died. The Wellfare of the Province was much upon his Spirit. He abominated Periwigs.”[20]
The Great and General Court at one time ordered that no person should smoke tobacco in public under a penalty of two shillings and six pence, nor in his own house with a relative or friend. But everybody smoked who wanted to, even the maids, and the repressive legislation in time met the usual fate of similar efforts to restrain individual liberty and manners.
It is sweet to fancy Priscilla at her spinning wheel wearing the coif and nun-like garb of the Puritan maiden of the poet and the artist. But the inventories of estates in the early years of the Colony, as well as at a later time, furnish evidence of a different character. The variety of fabrics listed is amazing and holds its own with the modern department store. There are most of the well-known fabrics of today, such as calico, cambric, challis, flannel, lawn, linen, plush, serge, silk, velvet, and many others; and there are also names that sound strangely in modern ears, viz: cheney, darnex, dowlas, genting, inckle, lockrum, ossembrike, pennistone, perpetuana, sempiternum, stammell, and water paragon.
JOHN WARD HOUSE, SALEM
Corner of the kitchen showing dresser with its “dress of pewter,” wash bench, meal chest, wooden ware, etc.
As for dress,—the women wore bonnets, caps, silk hoods, coifs, forehead cloths, ruffs, and whisks. Gowns, cloaks,
mantles, and muffs are mentioned frequently; as are many kinds of lace and even fans and veils. Shawls and scarfs were not unknown and there were gold, silver, and enamelled rings. At least one woman possessed a mask, and stomachers were not uncommon. Tortoise shell combs appear; all well-to-do persons wore gloves, and as for shoes—there were shoes with French heels, fall shoes, and those with silver buckles. Even shoe-strings appear in the inventories. There were silver, pewter, and steel buttons and those of gympe, thread, and silk.
Laboring men wore leather and coarse fabrics and for others there were suits, doublets, waistcoats and breeches. Trousers are mentioned; also a cane and periwigs. Of caps and hats there were a number of kinds—felt, castor, demi-castor, and even straw. Capt. George Corwin, a Salem merchant, owned a cloth coat trimmed with silver lace, a velvet coat, a tabby doublet, an old fashioned Dutch satin doublet, four cloaks of various kinds, two pairs of golden topped gloves, one embroidered pair, and a pair with black fringe. He also took his walks abroad wearing silk stockings, with a hat encircled by a silver band and carrying a silver headed cane or a plate hilt rapier, according to fashion. He possessed two silver watches. Who shall say that the men and women of the New England colonies did not dress well and live well in the early days according to their means?
What was their conduct not only in their homes but in their relations with their neighbors? Did they live peaceably and work together in building up the settlements? Did they set up in the wilderness domestic relations exactly like those they had abandoned over-seas? It was a raw frontier country to which they came and it is apparent that at the outset they felt themselves to be transplanted Englishmen. So far as possible they lived the lives to which they had been accustomed and they engrafted in their new homes the manners and customs of the generations behind them. Most of them fully recognized, however, that they[Pg 26] were not to return; that they had cut loose from the old home ties and it was not long before the necessities and limitations of frontier life brought about changed conditions in every direction. Politically, religiously and socially, they were in a different relation than formerly in the English parish life. Many of them, especially those somewhat removed from the immediate supervision of magistrate and minister, before long seem to have shown a tendency to follow the natural bent of the frontiersman toward independent thought and action. Their political leaders made laws restricting daily life and action and their religious leaders laid down rules for belief and conduct, that soon were repellent to many. Civil and clerical records are filled with instances showing an evasion of and even contempt for the laws and rules laid down by the leaders of their own choosing. Some of it doubtless was in the blood of the men who had come in search of a certain individual freedom of action, but much of it may be attributed to frontier conditions and primitive living. There were many indentured servants, and rough fishermen and sailors have always been unruly. Simple houses of but few rooms accommodating large families are not conducive to gentle speech or modesty of manner nor to a strict morality. The craving for land holding and the poorly defined and easily removed bounds naturally led to ill feeling, assault, defamation, and slander.
It has been stated frequently that in the olden times in New England every one was obliged to go to church. The size of the meeting houses, the isolated locations of many of the houses, the necessary care of the numerous young children, and the interesting side-lights on the manners of the time which may be found in the court papers, all go to show that the statement must not be taken literally. Absence from meeting, breaking the Sabbath, carrying a burden on the Lord’s Day, condemning the church, condemning the ministry, scandalous falling out on the Lord’s Day, slandering the church, and other misdemeanors of a similar character were frequent.
A curious instance of Sabbath breaking occurred at Hampton, N. H. in 1646. Aquila Chase and his wife and David Wheeler were presented at court for gathering pease on the Sabbath. They were admonished. The family tradition has it that Aquila returned from sea that morning and his wife wishing to supply a delicacy for dinner, fell into grave error in thus pandering to his unsanctified appetite.
At the Feb. 29, 1648 session of the court held in Salem, eight cases were tried. A Gloucester man was fined for cursing, saying “There are the brethern; the devil scald them.” Four servants were fined for breaking the Sabbath by hunting and killing a raccoon in the time of the public exercise to the disturbance of the congregation. If the animal had taken to the deep woods instead of staying near the meeting house the servants might have had their fun without paying for it. Then came a Marblehead case—a man who had sailed his boat into the harbor loaded with hay that he had brought from Gloucester. This was on the Lord’s Day at the time when people were going to the morning exercises. He, too, was fined. Nicholas Pinion, who worked at the Saugus Iron Works, was presented for absence from meeting four Lord’s Days together, “spending his time drinking and prophanely,” and Nicholas Russell of the same locality was fined for spending a great part of one Lord’s Day with Pinion in drinking strong water and cursing Pinion’s wife thereby causing jealousy in the family; and the woman in question having broken her bond for good behavior, was ordered to be severely whipped. The other cases were for swearing, in which the above named lady was included; for being disguised in drink; and for living from his wife. And so the court ended.
Drunkenness was very common in the old days. Every family kept on hand a supply of liquor and wine, and cider was considered a necessity of daily living in the country, where it was served with each meal and also carried into the fields by the workers. It was stored in barrels in the[Pg 28] cellar and the task of drawing the cider and putting it on the table usually fell to the younger members of the family. A man would often provide in his will for the comfort of his loving wife by setting aside for occupancy during her life, one half of his house, with a carefully specified number of bushels of rye, potatoes, turnips and other vegetables; the use of a horse with which to ride to meeting or elsewhere; and lastly, the direction that annually she be provided with a certain number of barrels of cider,—sometimes as many as eight.
Rev. Edward Holyoke, the President of Harvard College, was in the habit of laying in each year thirty or more barrels of cider as he had to provide for much entertaining. Late in the winter he would draw off part of his stock and into each barrel he would pour a bottle of spirit and a month later some of this blend would be bottled for use on special occasions.
WELLCURB AT THE JOHN WARD HOUSE
Showing wellsweep, wooden bucket and girl dressed in the costume of the late 17th century
As an example of life and manners in seventeenth century New England, the ministerial experiences of Topsfield may be cited. It is an inland town near Ipswich and was settled in 1639. The first minister was the Rev. William Perkins who had been a selectman and representative at Weymouth and a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston. Later he preached at Gloucester where one of his flock was presented at court for unbecoming speeches against Mr. Perkins, saying “if it were not for the law, shee would never come to the meeting, the teacher was so dead ... affirming that the teacher was fitter to be a ladys chamberman than to be in the pulpit.”[21] He removed to Topsfield in 1656 and before long was collecting his salary through the courts. Some of his flock retaliated and brought him into court for drunkenness, when it appeared that he had stopped at the Malden ordinary and called for a cup of sack but goody Hill told him that he had had too much already and Master Perkins replied “if you think I am drunk let me see if I can not goe” and he went tottering[Pg 29] about the kitchen and said the house was so full of potts and kettles that he could hardly go.
In 1663 a meeting house was built in Topsfield, and the Rev. Thomas Gilbert, a Scotchman, supplanted Mr. Perkins. The new minister also had a love for good wine and after a time Mr. Perkins entered a complaint and it appears from the records that one sacrament day Mr. Gilbert entertained at dinner a number of the older men and women whose homes were distant from the meeting house. He possessed a golden cup and what was left of the sacramental wine was drunk at dinner, the cup being passed around the table at least twice, the minister drinking deeply with the not unusual result, for he forgot to give thanks and sang a psalm with lisping utterance. Mr. Gilbert was followed in his pastorate by the Rev. Jeremiah Hobart, a Harvard graduate, who, during his eight years stay in Topsfield, became a familiar figure in the courts because of suits for non-payment of salary, for cursing and swearing, and for a damaging complaint for slander exhibiting much discreditable testimony. Then came the Rev. Joseph Capen and during his pastorate of over forty years the town and church enjoyed a peaceful growth interrupted only by the witchcraft delusion of 1692 in which an attempt to appropriate land of Topsfield men played an important part.
But manners and crimes vary with the centuries as do dress and speech. In the year 1655, the following crimes were penalized in the courts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: eavesdropping, meddling, neglecting work, naughty speech, profane dancing, kissing, making love without consent of friends, uncharitableness to a poor man in distress, carelessness about fire, wearing great boots, etc., and a few years later we find other strange misdemeanors, such as abusing a mother-in-law, wicked speeches against a son-in-law, kicking another in the street, leaving children alone in the house, pulling hair, riding behind two fellows at night (this was a girl, Lydia by name), sleeping in meeting and dissenting from the rest of the jury.
With such minute supervision of the daily life of the colonists it can readily be appreciated that it was an age for gossiping, meddlesome interference with individual life and liberty and that in the course of time nearly every one came before the courts as complainant, defendant or witness. There were few amusements or intellectual diversions and they could only dwell on the gossip and small doings of their immediate surroundings. But all the while there was underlying respect for law, religion and the rights of others. The fundamental principles of human life were much the same as at the present day, and men and women lived together then as now and as they always will—with respect and love.
The following account of food, fabrics, household supplies and equipment furnished by the Company of the Massachusetts Bay to Rev. Samuel Skelton, the first minister at Salem, is of much economic interest. The emigrants sailed from London about the middle of April, 1629 and reached the harbor of Naumkeak (now Salem) on June 30th. Mr. Skelton died Aug. 2, 1634 and this accounting may have been made up after his death. It begins in 1629 at the time of the departure from England and covers an indeterminate period. The increase of livestock over a period of five years is described and this seems to indicate the period of residence at Salem until his death.
It is enlightening to find that the Massachusetts Bay Company seems to have maintained a company shop at which supplies of all kinds might be obtained; and it is a matter for comment that the minister’s family was supplied during the voyage and in the early days following the settlement, with such luxuries as powdered sugar, salad oil, castile soap and almonds, not to mention, also, a variety of spices, such as pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmegs.
The original of this document may be seen in the Suffolk County Court Files, Volume I.
Other interesting lists of all kinds of materials sent over by the Company, may be found in the Company records printed by the Commonwealth in 1853 (Vol. I, pp. 23-37) and also by the American Antiquarian Society (Transactions, Vol. III, pp. 5-30e).
Coppie of An Accompte of monies Mr Skelton is Creditor viz.
| Item ⅌ so much pd Mr Pearce[22] | |
| for provisions of meale, pease, | |
| Canvas, Carsey & etcr wth 3li | |
| 5s 9d after 25li ⅌ Cent. & freight. | |
| I say pd the some of | 12-15-01 |
| Ite. for 3 quarts of aquavite | 00-03-09 |
| Ite. for xli of Rice att 5d | 00-04-02 |
| Ite. 10li of Butt[er] att | 00-06-08 |
| Ite. 4 Chees[es] att | 01-03-04 |
| Ite. 10 peeces of pork | 00-11-08 |
| Ite. more 20li of Butter | 00-10-00 |
| Ite. more 4 bushells Virginia Corne | 02-00-00 |
| Ite. soape 7s & vineger 4 gallo 8s & | |
| 1 gl 2s | 00-17-00 |
| Ite. 2 pecke of wt salte att | 00:03:00 |
| --------- | |
| Sumis | 18-14-08 |
| And on the other syde the totall some of | 105-18-11 |
| --------- | |
| Suma to lis | 124-13-07 |
Now ye Increase
The first yeare next after the receipte of the 2 heiffers, both the Calues miscaried, one about a quarter ould dyed, the other neare upon a yeare ould lost by the woolves.
The second yeare there was a heiffer Calfe and a bull Calfe, wch heiffer is now in my hands And the Bull Calfe Mr Skelton sould att one yer and three quarters ould for eight pounds.
The Therd yeare was which the beginning of winter weare both eaten with the woolves. Now since the three foresaid years, the next yeare after was Twoe bull Calvs, and an heiffer Calfe, the springe before Mr Skeltons death.
And This yeare since was Three bull Calues Twoe wherof are dead the one when it was about Twenty & twoe weeks ould, the other since winter did begin. Now for the keeping of the Catle wch should haue beene att the Companyes Chardge, hath wholly lyen vpon vs.
Mr Skeltons account wth the Companie
Mr Skelton is D pr viz
rec of Mr Winthrop Governr
Ite. 3 yrds of Cambrick
6 yrds & a h: of Loomeworke
2 Drinking hornes
8 pr of shoes for men
6 pr of gray stockings for men
6 pr of stockings for women
6 pr of stockings for children
10 yrds of Carsey
Thred
2000 of pinnes
6 Alls
one webb of blew gartering
2 knots of Tape
In July, 1694, suit was brought in the Court at Boston, by John Caxy of London, England, against Joseph Mallenson of Boston, to whom the London merchant had consigned various goods for the Boston market, the shipment consisted of a great variety of clothing, fabrics, hardwear, implements, kitchen utensils and pewter. Mallenson not having remitted for the goods, suit was bought and a copy of the invoice was presented at court and is still preserved among the Massachusetts State Archives. This document throws considerable light on the furnishings of the colonial home at that time and the prevailing scale of prices.
Invoice and Contents of Sundry Goods Laden on Board the good ship called the Friendship Capt. John Ware Comandr bound from this Port of London for Boston in New England and goes consigned to Mr Joseph Mallenson for the proper Accompt & Risque of John Caxy.
One Large Fatt qt Felt & Castor hatts as vizt No. 1.
One Small Case haire Powder, & Wash Balls No 1.
| 4 doz & halfe of Sweet haire Powder at 8d doz: | 1.16.0 |
| 3 li of best Damask Powder at 3/ p li | 0.09.0 |
| 7 gross Wash Balls at 8d p gs | 2.16.0 |
| a Case cost 2s | 0.02.0 |
| ------- | |
| 5.03.6 |
Two hhds Turnerie Ware No 1 & 2 as vizt & 7 bundles of Steel Shoe Shovells & Spads No 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
One Case Lookeing Glasses No 3 as
| No | 1 | 6 Dressing Glasses 10 Inches in Sight at 5/ ps. | 1.10.0 |
| 2 | 6 ditto at 6s ps 11 Inches in Sight | 1.16.0 | |
| 3 | 6 ditto at 7s ps 12 Inches in Sight | 2.02.0 | |
| 4 | 3 Glasses in Large Frames at 15/ ps 12 Inches | 2.05.0 | |
| 5 | 3 ditto at 18s ps 14 Inches in Sight | 2.14.0 | |
| 6 | 2 ditto at 22s ps 16 Inches in Sight | 2.04.0 | |
| 7 | 2 ditto at 28s ps 18 Inches in Sight | 2.16.0 | |
| 8 | 2 ditto at 35z ps 20 Inches | 3.10.0 | |
| A Case Cost 5s | 05.0 | ||
| ------- | |||
| 19.02.0 |
One Case No 2 qt as vizt
| No | 1 | 2 Perriwiggs at 18s p ps | 1.16.0 |
| 2 | 2 ditto at 2s | 2.00.0 | |
| 3 | 1 ditto at 25s | 1.05.0 | |
| 4 | 1 ditto at 30s | 1.10.0 | |
| ------- | |||
| 6.11.0 |
Thirty One Quoiles of Cordage Cont as vixd
| No. | 1 | 3 Inch 1/4 qt | 3.02.09 | |
| 2 | 1 ditto | 4 Inches | 4.01.00 | |
| 3 | 1 ditto | 5 Inches | 6.01.06 | |
| 4 | 1 ditto | 5-3/4 Inches | 8.02.02 | |
| 5 | 1 ditto | 6 | 9.01.25 | |
| 6 | 1 Quoile | 3 | 2.03.25 | |
| 7 | 1 Quoile | 2-3/4 | 2.02.08 | |
| 8 | 1 Quoile | 2-1/4 | 1.03.13 | |
| 9 | 1 Quoile | 2-1/2 | 2.00.10 | |
| 10 | 1 Quoile | 2-1/2 | 2.00.12 | |
| 11 | 1 Quoile | 2-1/4 | 1.03.23 | |
| 12 | 1 ditto | 2-1/2 | 2.00.17 | |
| 13 | 1 ditto | 2-3/4 | 2.02.04 | |
| 14 | 1 ditto | 3 Inches | 3.01.02 | |
| 15 | 2 ditto | 2 | 2.00.25 | |
| 16 | 2 ditto | 2 | 2.00.12 | |
| 17 | 2 ditto | 2 | 2.00.21 | |
| 18 | 2 ditto | 2 | 2.00.13 | |
| 19 | 2 ditto | 1 Inch 1/2 | 1.02.24 | |
| 20 | 2 ditto | 1-1/2 | 1.01.13 | |
| 21 | 3 ditto | 1-1/4 | 1.03.20 | |
| 22 | 2 ditto | 1-3/4 | 1.03.11 | |
| 23 | 3 Quoiles | 1-1/4 | 1.02.27 | |
| 1 Cable | 8 Inches 3/4 | 19.00.14 | ||
| 2 | 5-1/2 | 7.02.26 | ||
| 1 ditto | 4-1/2 | 5.01.22 | ||
| 1 ditto | 4-3/2 | 5.03.07 | ||
| 1 Quoile | 2-3/4 | 2.01.11 | ||
| 1 Quoile | 2-3/4 | 2.01.11 | ||
| 1 Quoile | 2-1/4 | 1.01.08 |
| For a Lyghter to carry it on board | 15.00 |
One hhd No 4 qt wrot Brass & wrot Iron worke as vizd
One Trunk No 1 qt Nothing butt Buttons as vizt
| No. | 1 12 gs Gimp Fallow Brest at 9d p gro | 09.0 |
| 2 48 gs Gymp Fallow Coatt at 1.11d | 2.04.0 | |
| 3 34 baggs Coat Pillers qt 136 gro: 18d p gro: | 10.04.0 | |
| 4 10 gross bla: haire best at 20d | 16.8 | |
| 5 10 baggs best Pillers Coats qt 40 gro: at 23d | 3.16.8 | |
| 6 24 gross Silke browne best at 23d | 2.06.0 | |
| 7 13 baggs qt 52 gross of Accor. Coats 2/6 p gs | 6.10.0 | |
| 8 12 gross bla: hayre Milo Coats 3/3d | 1.19.0 | |
| 9 20 gross Cutt haire Coats at 3/10 p gs | 3.16.8 | |
| 10 30 gross Large Silke Coats at 3/10 | 5.15.0 | |
| A Trunk & Cords Cost 15/ | 15.0 | |
| ------- | ||
| 38.12.0 |
One Large hhd No 3 qt of Tinnerie Ware as vizt
One Bayle of Stuffs & No 8 qt as vizt
One Drume Fatt No 2 Containing Pewter as vizt
| 12 Pottle Tankards at 3s 10d ps | 2.06.0 |
| 12 Quart ditto at 3s | 1.16.0 |
| 24 Midle ditto at 2/6 | 3.00.0 |
| 24 Small ditto at 2/ | 2.08.0 |
| 12 doz: Large Poringers at 9s 6d p. doz | 5.14.0 |
| 12 doz: Small ditto at 8/ | 4.16.0 |
| 3 pr New-fashion’d Candlesticks at 4s | 12.0 |
| 3 pr ditto at 3s | 09.0 |
| 2 pr Round ditto at 2s 10d | 05.8 |
| a Fatt Cost | 07.0 |
One Drume Fatt No 3 qt more Pewter vizt
| 18 Large Chamber Potts at 2/10s ps | 2.11.0 |
| 30 Middle ditto at 2s dd | 3.10.0 |
| 40 Small ditto at 2s | 4.00.0 |
| 12 doz Alkney Spoons at 2/9 | 1.13.0 |
| 24 doz Powder ditto at 2/3d p doz | 2.14.0 |
| 12 Large Salts at 2s 2 ps | 1.06.0 |
| 24 Middle ditto at 20d ps | 2.00.0 |
| 48 Small ditto at 12d ps | 2.08.0 |
| 18 Basons qt 32-1/2 at 12d | 1.12.6 |
| 2 doz: Sawcers at 9s p doz | 18.0 |
| 4 doz Small ditto at 7s p doz | 1.08.0 |
| 2 Pottle Wine Measure Potts at 5/6 | 11.0 |
| 6 Quart ditto at 2/8 | 16.0 |
| 6 Pint ditto Potts at 22d ps | 11.0 |
| 6 halfe Pint ditto at 14d | 07.0 |
| 6 Quartern ditto Potts at 9d p ps | 04.6 |
| a ffat Cost 7s | 07.0 |
One halfe Barell Fatt No 4 Cont more pewter
| No A 78 Dishes qt 265li at 9d 1/2 | 10.09.9-1/2 |
| A ffat Cost 3s6 | 03.6 |
| ------------ | |
| £76.02.5-1/2 |
One Bayle of Lincy Woolsie Cont 30 ps
| No 7 at 31s ps | 46.10.0 |
| Canvis &Ca | 1.07.0 |
| ---------- | |
| 47.17.0 |
Two Large Bayles of Kersyes No 4:5 vizt
| No | A | 3 Browns) | |
| 1 Gray) at 26s p ps. | 5.04.0 | ||
| B | 3 Browne) | ||
| 1 Gray) at 28s ps | 5.12.0 | ||
| C | 1 Browne) | ||
| 3 Grays) at 30s | 6.00.0 | ||
| D | 4 Browns at 31s | 6.04.0 | |
| E | 4 Browns at 32s | 6.08.0 | |
| F | 3 Browns) | ||
| 2 Grays) at 35s | 10.10.0 | ||
| G | 4 Browns) | ||
| 2 Grays ) at 37s | 11.02.0 | ||
| H | 4 Browns) | ||
| 2 Grays)at 38s | 11.08.0 | ||
| I | 6 Browns at 39s | 11.14.0 | |
| K | 3 Browns) | ||
| 2 Drabbs) at 42s | 12.12.0 | ||
| 1 Gray) | |||
| L | 6 Honly Reds at 42s | 12.12.0 | |
| M | 2 Grays) | ||
| 1 Drabb) | |||
| 3 Browns ) at 43s ps | 25.16.0 | ||
| 6 Nap’t) | |||
| N | 3 Browns) | ||
| 2 Grays ) at 58s ps | 14.08.0 | ||
| 1 Drabb ) | |||
| O | 3 Browns) | ||
| 3 Grays ) at 55s ps 20 yds Long | 16.10.0 | ||
| Canvis Cord Paper & packing 38s p bayle | 3.16.0 | ||
| ---------- | |||
| 159.16.0 |
One Bayle of Cottons of Severall Collers vizt
One hhd No 5 Cont Sundry Lotts of Goods as Vizt
One Bayle of Linning Cloth No 3 Cont as vizt
| 20 | 40:2 | 19:2 | 20 | 39 | 330:2 |
| 20 | 39:2 | 39:2 | 17 | 18 | 394 |
| 19:2 | 40: | 39 | 20 | 20 | 435 |
| 19: | 19:2 | 20 | 19:2 | 20 | 313:2 |
| 19:2 | 19 | 19:2 | 19:2 | 40 | 392 |
| ------ | |||||
| 20:2 | 20 | 19:2 | 19: | 19:2 | 1864:2 |
| 17 | 20 | 62 | 40 | 40: | 932:1 |
| 20 | 38:2 | 60 | 19:2 | 19:2 | |
| 19 | 40 | 38 | 19:2 | 39:2 | |
| 37 | 20 | 20 | 19:2 | 20: | |
| 19 | 19 | 19:2 | 20 | 19:2 | |
| 20 | 19 | 20 | 18:2 | 39:2 | |
| 19 | 19 | 19:2 | 20:2 | 19:2 | |
| 24 | 19 | 19:2 | 20:2 | 19: | |
| 40 | 19 | 19:2 | 19:2 | 19 | |
| ----- | --- | ---- | ---- | ---- | |
| 330:2 | 394 | 435 | 313:2 | 392 | |
| ----- | --- | ---- | ----- | ---- |
Is 932 Ells 1/4 of Kamells cloth at 6dp ell23.6.0
85 50 60 86 69 43 73 68 78 101 42
42 43 49 78 77 44 91 is 1129 of
| Brown Oxenbrigs at 50li p Role 1500 | |
| ells to a Role at 8d p ell | 37.12.8 |
| --------------- | |
| 60.18.8 | |
| --------------- | |
| £1127.17.7 |
[1] Essex County Quarterly Court Records, Vol. II, p. 28
[2] Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
[3] In the Delaware settlement houses of logs split through the middle or hewed square were built “according to the Swedish mode.”
[4] Mourt’s Relation, Boston, 1841.
[5] Higginson, New-Englands Plantation, London, 1630.
[6] Force’s Tracts, Washington, 1838.
[7] Essex County Quarterly Court Records, Vol. VI, p. 363.
[8] Essex County Deeds, Book V, leaf 107.
[9] Johnson, Wonder Working Providence, London, 1654.
[10] Higginson, New-Englands Plantation, London, 1630.
[11] Force’s Tracts, Washington, 1838.
[12] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 15B, leaves 59-67.
[13] Essex County Quarterly Court Records, Vol. IV, pp. 56-57.
[14] Beer in the making.
[15] Probate Records of Essex County, Mass. Vol. I, p. 47.
[16] Probate Records of Essex County, Mass., Vol. II, p. 348.
[17] Dankers, Journal of a Voyage to New York, Brooklyn, 1867.
[18] Records of the Mass. Bay Colony, Vol. I, p. 126.
[19] Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam, London, 1647.
[20] Sewall’s Diary, Vol. II, p. 231.
[21] Essex County Quarterly Court Records, Vol. I, p. 275.
[22] The master of the ship George Bonaventure in which Mr. Skelton came over.
Transcriber’s Notes
Perceived typographical errors in the author’s text have been silently corrected.
Archaic spelling and inconsistent punctuation in quoted text and tables have been retained as in the original.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have been maintained as printed.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text.
The per sign ⅌ is a symbol used to indicate a ratio.
