had with this Irish creature the year past. Lying and unfaithfull;
w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her
mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th
fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out
of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent, as when we have taken
her to task for her wickedness she has gone away to complain of
cruell usage. I can truly say we have used this base creature w'th
a great deal of kindness and lenity. She w'd frequently take her
mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dresse herselfe
and away without leave among her companions. I may have said some
time or other when she has been in fault that she was fitt to live
nowhere but in Virginia, and if she w'd not mend her ways I should
send her thither tho I am sure nobody w'd give her passage thither
to have her service for twenty yeares she is such a high-spirited
pirnicious jade. Robin has been run away neare ten dayes as you
will see by the inclosed and this creature know of his going and of
his carrying out 4 dozen bottles of cyder, metheglin and palme wine
out of the cellar among the servants of the town and meat and I
know not w't. The bottles they broke and threw away after they had
drunk up the liquor, and they got up o'r sheep anight, killed a
fatt one, roasted and made merry w'th it before morning."
This wild Irish girl was indentured to the unfortunate Winthrop and his
more unfortunate wife for four years, and was to have fifty shillings
and some other start in the world when her time was up.
Out-of-the-way plantations fared no better in the question of service.
John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island in
Maine, wrote thus resentfully in 1639, to Mr. Trelawny, of the London
company, of his maid, one Priscilla Beckford:
"You write of some yll reports is given of my Wyfe for beatinge the
maide: yf a faire waye will not doe yt, beatinge must sometimes
vppon such Idlle girrels as she is. Yf you think yt fitte for my
Wyfe to do all the work, and the maide sitt still, and she must
forbear her hands to strike, then the work will ly vndonn. She hath
bin now 2-1/2 yeares in the house & I do not thinke she hath risen
20 tymes before my Wyfe hath bin vp to Call her, and many tymes
light the fire before she comes out of her bed. She hath twice gone
a mechinge in the woodes which we have bin fain to send all our
Company to seek her. We can hardly keep her within doors after we
are gonn to bed except we carry the kay of the door to bed with vs.
She coulde never milke Cow nor Goate since she came hither. Our men
do not desire to have her boyl the kittle for them she is so
sluttish. She cannot be trusted to serve a few piggs but my Wyfe
must commonly be with her. She hath written home I heare that she
was fain to ly vppon goates skinns. She might take some goates
skinns to ly in her bedd but not given to her for her lodginge. For
a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter vppon a good
feather bed; before my daughter being lacke 3 or 4 days to Sacco
the maid goes into bed with her cloths & stockins & would not take
the paines to pluck off her Cloths; her bed after was a doust bedd
& shee had 2 Coverletts to ly on her, but Sheets she had none,
after that tyme she was found to be so sluttish. Her beatinge that
she hath had hath never hurt her body nor limes. She is so fatt &
soggy she can hardly do any worke. Yf this maide at her lazy tymes
when she hath bin found in her yll accyons do not deserve 2 or 3
blowes I pray you who hath the most reason to complain my Wyfe or
maide. My Wyfe hath an Vnthankefull office. Yt does not please me
well, being she hath taken so much paines and care to order things
as well as she could, and ryse in the morning rath & go to bed soe
latte, and have hard speeches for yt."
We can well imagine his exhausted patience, and that of poor overworked
Mistress Wynter, at that fat soggy thing, that lag-last, so shiftless
and useless about the house, lazing from rath to latte, and then to
complete their exasperation, miching off into the woods to shirk her
work so that the whole company had to turn out with a mort of trouble to
hunt for the leg-trape. We cannot marvel at the beating, but simply
wonder at its being remarked in those days of many and hard beatings,
when scholars, servants, soldiers, and college students were well
whipped, and, in Old England, wives also.
Wynter had no better fortune without doors with his men-servants and
workmen; they proved kittle cattle. He found them not "plyable" or
"condishionabell," that they "spoke Fair to the Face and Colloged behind
the back." Of one malcontent he wrote,
"He is verry vnwilling to do vs servize, he is alwaies too hard
labored, he cares not what Spoyle he makes, and will not be
commanded but when he list. He is such a talkinge Fellow as makes
our company worse than would be."
He says his bound servants ran away at their pleasure, worked when they
pleased, and led others off to their lure, and should be punished if
they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and
promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a
knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among
New England historical collections no other such well of good old
English words and phrases.
The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant
question. The _Providence Gazette_ advertised in 1796 that a reward of
five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders"
would be given to any restoring the conditions of the good old times, or
rather what they fancied was
"The constant service of the antique world
When service sweat for duty not for meed."
The notice opens thus:
"Was mislaid or taken away by mistake, soon after the formation of
the abolition society, from the servant girls in this town all
inclination to do any kind of work, and left in lieu thereof an
independent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high
wages, a gossiping disposition for every sort of amusement, a
leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of
finery and fashion, a never-ceasing trot after new places, more
advantageous for stealing, with a number of contingent
accomplishments that do not suit the wearers."
President Dwight wrote that the servants of that day were "distinguished
for vice and profligacy;" so the nineteenth century opened no more
promisingly than the eighteenth.
The pious colonists felt that great spiritual, as well as temporal
responsibility rested upon them in regard to their bond-servants. We
find in contemporary letters frequent reference to the souls of the
indentured ones; Englishmen at the old home wrote to the settlers to
remember well their religious, their proselyting duties; and they
faithfully reminded each other of their accountability for souls. For
instance, when a smart young Irishman came over with some Irish hounds,
his consigner besought the New Englanders to remember that it was as
godly to "winne this fellowes soule out of the subtillest snare of
Sathan, Romes pollitick religion, as to winne an Indian soule out of the
Dieuells clawes;" and he urged them to watch the Papist narrowly as to
his carriage in Puritandom, his attitude toward Protestantism. This was
the same religious zeal that led the Boston elders to send missionaries
from New England to convert the heathen of the Established Church in
Virginia.
The moral and religious condition of these servants was truly of great
importance in the preservation of such a theocracy as was New England,
since few of them returned to England, but after serving out their time
became freemen with homes and land and votes of their own; and the
commonwealth could not live as a religious organization unless it
thrived through the religious spirit of its citizens.
One other form of domestic service existed until this century. A limited
amount of assistance was given in some households by those unhappy
wights, the town-poor. These wretched paupers were sold to the lowest
bidder. Sometimes the buyer received but a few shillings a year from the
town for the "keep" of one of these helpless souls. We may be sure that
he got some work out of the pauper to pay for his board. We read of one
old Dimbledee, of Widow Bump and Widow Bumpus, degenerate successors in
name as well as in estate of the Pilgrim Bompasse, who were sold from
year to year from one farm to another and given a grudged existence,
till at last we find the town paying for their welcome coffins and
winding sheets. Two curious facts are to be noted in the poor accounts:
that the women paupers were almost invariably "very comfortable on it
for clothes," as were other women of that dress-loving day; and that
liquor was frequently supplied to both male and female paupers by the
town. Sometimes ten gallons apiece, a very consoling amount, was given
in a year. I have also noted the frequent presence on the poor-list of
what are termed "French Neuterls." These were Acadians--the neighbors
and compatriots of Evangeline--feeble folk, who, void of romance,
succumbed in despair to exile and home-sickness, a new language and a
new manner of living, and yielded weakly to work as servants when they
had no courage to maintain homes. New England paupers lived to a good
old age. I have been told that the unhappy fate of one of these
town-poor--an Acadian--was traced for over thirty years in the town
records of her sale. In 1767 there were twenty-one paupers in Danvers,
Mass., and their average age was eighty-four years, thus apparently
offering proof of good rum and good usage from the town. There was also
an hereditary pauperism. In Salem a certain family always had some of
its members on the list of town-poor from the year 1721 to 1848; and
perhaps they found better homes through "living around" than in trying
to support themselves.
Criminals were also sold into service to work out their sentences. Thus
did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's
Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck
squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden,
than to have a white burglar or ruffian in either situation.
It is well to observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in
calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or
heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called
being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired
laborers in the field, those contracting to work under a master at any
trade for a period of time, apprentices, and many whom we should now
term agents or stewards, were then called servants, and signed contracts
as servants, and did not appear at all insulted by being termed
servants.
IV
HOME INTERIORS
It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial
houses from a contemporary and reliable source--the inventories of the
estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court
records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much
minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room,
instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a
clear picture of the household belongings of that day.
The first room beyond the threshold of the door that one finds named in
the houses "of the richer sort," is the entry. This was apparently
always bare of furniture, and indeed well it might be, for it was seldom
aught but a vestibule to the rest of the house, containing, save the
staircase, but room enough to swing the front door in opening. Dr. Lyon
gives the inventory of John Salmon of Boston in the year 1750 as the
earliest record which he has found of the use of the word hall instead
of entry, as we now employ it. In the _Boston News Letter_, thirty one
years earlier, on August 24th, 1719, I find this advertisement: "Fine
Glass Lamps & Lanthorns well gilt and painted both Convex and Plain.
Being suitable for Halls, staircases, or other Passage ways, at the
Glass Shop in Queen Street." This advertisement is, however,
exceptional. The hall in Puritan houses was not a passageway, it was the
living-room, the keeping-room, the dwelling-room, the sitting-room; in
it the family sat and ate their meals--in, it they lived. Let us see
what was the furniture of a Puritan home-room in early days, and what
its value. The inventory of the possessions of Theophilus Eaton,
Governor of the New Haven colony, is often quoted. At the time of his
death, in 1657, he had in his hall,
"A drawing Table & a round table, £1.18s.
A cubberd & 2 long formes, 14s.
A cubberd cloth & cushions, 13s.; 4 setwork cushions,
12s. £1.5.
6 greene cushions, 12s; a greate chaire with needleworke,
13s. £1.5.
2 high chaires set work, 20s; 4 high stooles set worke,
26s 8d £6.6.8.
4 low chaires set worke, 6s 8d, £1.6.8.
2 low stooles set worke, 10s.
2 Turkey Carpette, £2; 6 high joyne stooles, 6s. £2.6.
A pewter cistern & candlestick, 4s.
A pr of great brass Andirons, 12s.
A pr of small Andirons, 6s 8d.
A pr of doggs, 2s 6d.
A pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes, 7s."
Now, this was a very liberally furnished living-room. There were plenty
of seats for diners and loungers, if Puritans ever lounged; two long
forms and a dozen stools of various heights, with green or embroidered
cushions, upon which to sit while at the Governor's board; and seven
chairs, gay with needlework covers, to draw around his fireplace with
its shining paraphernalia of various sized andirons, tongs, and bellows.
The low, heavy-raftered room with these plentiful seats, the tables with
their Turkey covers, the picturesque cupboard with its rich cloth, and
its display of the Governor's silver plate, all aglow with the light of
a great wood fire, make a pretty picture of comfortable simplicity,
pleasant of contemplation in our bric-a-brac filled days, a fit setting
for the figures of the Governor, "New England's glory full of warmth and
light," and his dearest, greatest, best of temporal enjoyments, his
"vertuous, prudent and prayerful wife."
Contemporary inventories make more clear and more positive still this
picture of a planter's home-room, for similar furniture is found in all.
All the halls had cisterns for water or for wine (and I fancy they stood
on the small table usually mentioned); all had a table for serving
meals; a majority had the cupboard; a few had "picktures" or "lookeing
glasses;" very rarely a couch or "day-bed" was seen; some had
"lanthorns" as well as candlesticks; others a spinning-wheel for the
good wife, when she "keepit close the house and birlit at the wheel."
Chairs were a comparatively rare form of furniture in New England in
early colonial days, nor were they frequently seen in humble English
homes of that date. Stools and forms were the common seats. Turned,
wainscot, and covered chairs are the three distinct types mentioned in
the seventeenth century. Turned chairs are shown in good examples in
what are known as the Carver and Brewster chairs, now preserved in
Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. The president's chair at Harvard College is
another ancient turned chair.
The seats of many of these chairs were of flags and rushes. The bark of
the elm and bass trees was also used for bottoming chairs.
The wainscot chairs were all of wood, seats as well as backs, usually of
oak. They were frequently carved or panelled. One now in Pilgrim Hall is
known as the Winslow chair. Another fine specimen in carved oak is in
the Essex Institute in Salem. Carved chairs were owned only by persons
of wealth or high standing, and were frequently covered with "redd
lether" or "Rusha lether." Sometimes the leather was stamped and
different rich fabrics were employed to cover the seats. "Turkey
wrought" chairs are frequently mentioned. Velvet "Irish stitch," red
cloth, and needlework covers are named. Green appeared to be, however,
the favorite color.
Cane chairs appeared in the last quarter of the century. It is said that
the use of cane was introduced into furniture with the marriage of
Charles II. to Catharine of Braganza.
The bow-legged chair, often with claw and ball foot, came into use in
the beginning of the eighteenth century. "Crowfoot" and "eaglesfoot"
were named in inventories. These are copies of Dutch shapes.
Easy-chairs also appeared at that date, usually as part of the bedroom
furniture, and were covered with the stuffs of which the bed-hangings
and window-curtains were made, such as "China," "callico," "camblet,"
"harrateen."
The three-cornered chair, now known as an "As you like it" chair,
appeared in the middle of the century under the names of triangle,
round-about, and half-round chair.
The chairs known now as Chippendale may date back to the middle of the
century; Windsor chairs, also known and manufactured in Philadelphia at
that date, were not common in New England till a score of years later,
when they were made and sold in vast numbers, being much more
comfortable than the old bannister or slat-backed chairs then in common
use.
Another piece of hall furniture deserves special mention. Dr. Lyon gives
these names of cupboards found in New England: Cupboard, small cupboard,
great cupboard, court cupboard, livery cupboard, side cupboard, hanging
cupboard, sideboard cupboard, and cupboard with drawers. To this list
might be added corner cupboard. The word court cupboard is found from
the years 1647 to 1704. It was a high piece of furniture with an
enclosed closet or drawers, originally intended to display plate, and
was the highest-priced cupboard found. Upon it were set, in New England,
both glass and plate. The livery cupboard, similar in its uses, seldom
had an enclosed portion. "Turn pillar cuberds," painted and carved
cupboards, were found. The item of cupboard in any inventory was usually
accompanied by that of a cupboard cloth. This latter seemed to be the
most elegant and luxurious article in the whole house. Cupboard cloths
of holland, "laced," "pantado," "cambrick," "kalliko," "green wrought
with silk fringe"--all are named. Cushions also, "to set upon a cubberds
head," are frequently named. They were made of damask, needlework,
velvet or cloth. A corner cupboard was apparently a small affair; a
japanned one is named. What we now call a corner cupboard was then known
as a beaufet.
The hall was naturally on one side of the entry and opening into it. On
the other side, in large houses, was the parlor; this room was sometimes
used as a dining-room, sometimes as a state bedroom. It frequently held,
in addition to furniture like that of the hall, a chest or chests of
drawers to hold the family linen, and also that family idol--the best
bed.
Of the exact shape and height of the bedsteads used by the early
colonists, I find no accurate nor very suggestive descriptions. The
terms used in wills, inventories, and letters seem too vague and curt to
give us a correct picture. What was the "half-headed bedstead" left with
"Curtaince & Valance of Dornix" by will by Simon Eire in Boston in 1658?
Or, to give a fuller description of a similar one in the sale of
furniture of the King's Arms in Boston, in 1651, "one half-headed
Bedsted with Blew Pillars." I fancy they were bedsteads with moderately
high headboards. It is easy enough to obtain full items of the bed
itself and the bed-furniture, its coverings and hangings. We read of
"ffether beds," "flocke beds," "downe bedds," "wool beds," and even
"charf beds," the latter worth but three shillings apiece, all of
importance enough to be named in wills and left with as much dignity of
bequest as Shakespeare's famous "second-best bed." Even so influential a
man as Thomas Dudley did not disdain to leave by specification to his
daughter Pacy a "ffeather beed & boulster." In 1666 Nicholas Upsall, of
Boston, left a "Bedstead fitted with a Rope Matt & Curtains to it." In
March, 1687, Sewall wrote to London for "White Fustian Drawn enough for
curtains, vallen counterpaine for a bed & half a duz chaires with four
threeded green worsted to work it." In 1691 we find him writing for
"Fringe for the Fustian bed & half a duz Chairs. Six yards and a half
for the vallons, fifteen yards for 6 chairs two Inches deep; 12 yards
half inch deep." This wrought fustian bed was certainly handsome.
By revolutionary times we read such items as these: "Neet sette bed,"
"Very genteel red and white copperplate Cottonbed with Squab and Window
Curtains Fring'd and made in the Newest Taste," "Sacken' & Corded Beds
and a Pallat Bed," "Very Handsome Flower'd Crimson worsted damask carv'd
and rais'd Teaster Bed & Curtains compleat," "A Four Post Bedstead of
Mahogany on Casters with Carved Foot Posts, Callico Curtains to Ditto &
Window Curtains to Match, and a Green Harrateen Cornish Bed." Harrateen,
a strong, stiff woollen material, formed the most universal bed hanging.
Trundle-beds or truckle-beds were used from the earliest days. So there
was variety in plenty.
A form of bedstead called a slawbank was common enough in New York, New
Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania until this century. They were more
rarely found in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and as I do not know what
they were called in New England, we will give them the Dutch name
slawbank, from _sloap-bancke_, a sleeping-bench. A slawbank was the
prototype of our modern folding-bed. It was an oblong frame with a
network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall with
heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and
the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted
into sockets in the frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against
the wall, and doors like closet doors were closed over it, or curtains
were drawn over it to conceal it. It was usually placed in the kitchen,
and upon it slept goodman and goodwife. I know of several slawbanks
still in old Narragansett, and one in a colonial house in Shrewsbury,
Mass. A similar one may be seen at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It is hung
around with blue serge curtains. I have seen no advertisements of
slawbanks under any name in New England newspapers, unless the "bedstead
in a painted press" in the _Boston Gazette_ of November, 1750, may be
one.
The bed furniture was of much importance in olden days, and the coverlet
was frequently mentioned separately. Margaret Lake, of Ipswich, in 1662,
so named a "Tapestry coverlet" worth £4. Susannah Compton had at about
the same date a "Yearne Courlead." "Strieked couerlids" appear, and Adam
Hunt, of Ipswich, had in 1671 "an embroadured couerled."
"Happgings"--coarse common coverlets--are also named. In 1716, on
September 24th, in the _Boston News Letter_, the word counterpane first
appears. "India counterpins" often were advertised, and cheney,
harrataen, and camlet coverlets or counterpanes were made to match the
bed-hangings.
A pair of sheets was furnished in 1628 to each Massachusetts Bay
colonist. This was a small allowance, but quite as full as the average
possession of sheets by other colonists. Cotton sheets were not
plentiful; flaxen or "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan"
sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his
note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and
may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially
explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy
citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning
became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun
sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable
householders. "Twenty and one pair" was no unusual number to appear in
an inventory.
There were plenty of "ffether boulsters," "shafe boulsters," "wool
bolsters;" and John Walker had in 1659 a "Thurlinge Boulster," and each
household had many pillows. The word bear was universally used to denote
a pillow-case. It was spelled ber, beer, beir, beare and berr. In 1689
the value of a "peler-beare" in an inventory was given at three
shillings. In 1664 Susannah Compton had linen "pillow coates." Pillow
covers also were named, and pillow clothes, but pillow bear was the term
most commonly applied.