[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