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* * * * *
Home Life in
COLONIAL
DAYS
Written by
ALICE MORSE EARLE
in the year 1898
THE BERKSHIRE TRAVELLER PRESS
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
_THIS BOOK IS BEGUN
AS IT IS ENDED
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER_
_Foreword_
_The illustrations for this book are in every case from real articles
and scenes, usually from those still in existence--rare relics of past
days. The pictures are the symbols of years of careful search, patient
investigation, and constant watchfulness. Many a curious article as
nameless and incomprehensible as the totem of an extinct Indian tribe
has been studied, compared, inquired and written about, and finally
triumphantly named and placed in the list of obsolete domestic
appurtenances. From the lofts of woodsheds, under attic eaves, in dairy
cellars, out of old trunks and sea-chests from mouldering warehouses,
have strangely shaped bits and combinations of wood, stuff, and metal
been rescued and recognized. The treasure stores of Deerfield Memorial
Hall, of the Bostonian Society, of the American Antiquarian Society, and
many State Historical Societies have been freely searched; and to the
officers of these societies I give cordial thanks for their cooeperation
and assistance in my work._
_The artistic and correct photographic representation of many of these
objects I owe to Mr. William F. Halliday of Boston, Massachusetts, Mr.
George F. Cook of Richmond, Virginia, and the Misses Allen of Deerfield,
Massachusetts. To many friends, and many strangers, who have secured for
me single articles or single photographs, I here repeat the thanks
already given for their kindness._
_There were two constant obstacles in the path: An article would be
found and a name given by old-time country folk, but no dictionary
contained the word, no printed description of its use or purpose could
be obtained, though a century ago it was in every household. Again, some
curiously shaped utensil or tool might be displayed and its use
indicated; but it was nameless, and it took long inquiry and
deduction,--the faculty of "taking a hint,"--to christen it. It is plain
that different vocations and occupations had not only implements but a
vocabulary of their own, and all have become almost obsolete; to the
various terms, phrases, and names, once in general application and use
in spinning, weaving, and kindred occupations, and now half forgotten,
might be given the descriptive title, a "homespun vocabulary." By
definite explanation of these terms many a good old English word and
phrase has been rescued from disuse._
_ALICE MORSE EARLE._
Contents
Page
I. Homes of the Colonists 1
II. The Light of Other Days 32
III. The Kitchen Fireside 52
IV. The Serving of Meals 76
V. Food from Forest and Sea 108
VI. Indian Corn 126
VII. Meat and Drink 142
VIII. Flax Culture and Spinning 166
IX. Wool Culture and Spinning, with a Postscript on Cotton 187
X. Hand-Weaving 212
XI. Girls' Occupations 252
XII. Dress of the Colonists 281
XIII. Jack-knife Industries 300
XIV. Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 325
XV. Sunday in the Colonies 364
XVI. Colonial Neighborliness 388
XVII. Old-time Flower Gardens 421
Home Life in Colonial Days
CHAPTER I
HOMES OF THE COLONISTS
When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in
finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost
unbearable. The colonists found a land magnificent with forest trees of
every size and variety, but they had no sawmills, and few saws to cut
boards; there was plenty of clay and ample limestone on every side, yet
they could have no brick and no mortar; grand boulders of granite and
rock were everywhere, yet there was not a single facility for cutting,
drawing, or using stone. These homeless men, so sorely in need of
immediate shelter, were baffled by pioneer conditions, and had to turn
to many poor expedients, and be satisfied with rude covering. In
Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and, possibly, other states, some
reverted to an ancient form of shelter: they became cave-dwellers; caves
were dug in the side of a hill, and lived in till the settlers could
have time to chop down and cut up trees for log houses. Cornelis Van
Tienhoven, Secretary of the Province of New Netherland, gives a
description of these cave-dwellings, and says that "the wealthy and
principal men in New England lived in this fashion for two reasons:
first, not to waste time building; second, not to discourage poorer
laboring people." It is to be doubted whether wealthy men ever lived in
them in New England, but Johnson, in his _Wonder-working Providence_,
written in 1645, tells of the occasional use of these "smoaky homes."
They were speedily abandoned, and no records remain of permanent
cave-homes in New England. In Pennsylvania caves were used by newcomers
as homes for a long time, certainly half a century. They generally were
formed by digging into the ground about four feet in depth on the banks
or low cliffs near the river front. The walls were then built up of sods
or earth laid on poles or brush; thus half only of the chamber was
really under ground. If dug into a side hill, the earth formed at least
two walls. The roofs were layers of tree limbs covered over with sod, or
bark, or rushes and bark. The chimneys were laid of cobblestone or
sticks of wood mortared with clay and grass. The settlers were thankful
even for these poor shelters, and declared that they found them
comfortable. By 1685 many families were still living in caves in
Pennsylvania, for the Governor's Council then ordered the caves to be
destroyed and filled in. Sometimes the settler used the cave for a
cellar for the wooden house which he built over it.
These cave-dwellings were perhaps the poorest houses ever known by any
Americans, yet pioneers, or poor, or degraded folk have used them for
homes in America until far more recent days. In one of these miserable
habitations of earth and sod in the town of Rutland, Massachusetts, were
passed some of the early years of the girlhood of Madame Jumel, whose
beautiful house on Washington Heights, New York, still stands to show
the contrasts that can come in a single life.
The homes of the Indians were copied by the English, being ready
adaptations of natural and plentiful resources. Wigwams in the South
were of plaited rush or grass mats; of deerskins pinned on a frame; of
tree boughs rudely piled into a cover, and in the far South, of layers
of palmetto leaves. In the mild climate of the Middle and Southern
states a "half-faced camp," of the Indian form, with one open side,
which served for windows and door, and where the fire was built, made a
good temporary home. In such for a time, in his youth, lived Abraham
Lincoln. Bark wigwams were the most easily made of all; they could be
quickly pinned together on a light frame. In 1626 there were thirty
home-buildings of Europeans on the island of Manhattan, now New York,
and all but one of them were of bark.
Though the settler had no sawmills, brick kilns, or stone-cutters, he
had one noble friend,--a firm rock to stand upon,--his broad-axe. With
his axe, and his own strong and willing arms, he could take a long step
in advance in architecture; he could build a log cabin. These good,
comfortable, and substantial houses have ever been built by American
pioneers, not only in colonial days, but in our Western and Southern
states to the present time. A typical one like many now standing and
occupied in the mountains of North Carolina is here shown. Round logs
were halved together at the corners, and roofed with logs, or with bark
and thatch on poles; this made a comfortable shelter, especially when
the cracks between the logs were "chinked" with wedges of wood, and
"daubed" with clay. Many cabins had at first no chinking or daubing; one
settler while sleeping was scratched on the head by the sharp teeth of a
hungry wolf, who thrust his nose into the space between the logs of the
cabin. Doors were hung on wooden hinges or straps of hide.
A favorite form of a log house for a settler to build in his first "cut
down" in the virgin forest, was to dig a square trench about two feet
deep, of dimensions as large as he wished the ground floor of his house,
then to set upright all around this trench (leaving a space for a
fireplace, window, and door), a closely placed row of logs all the same
length, usually fourteen feet long for a single story; if there was a
loft, eighteen feet long. The earth was filled in solidly around these
logs, and kept them firmly upright; a horizontal band of puncheons,
which were split logs smoothed off on the face with the axe, was
sometimes pinned around within the log walls, to keep them from caving
in. Over this was placed a bark roof, made of squares of chestnut bark,
or shingles of overlapping birch-bark. A bark or log shutter was hung at
the window, and a bark door hung on withe hinges, or, if very luxurious,
on leather straps, completed the quickly made home. This was called
rolling-up a house, and the house was called a puncheon and bark house.
A rough puncheon floor, hewed flat with an axe or adze, was truly a
luxury. One settler's wife pleaded that the house might be rolled up
around a splendid flat stump; thus she had a good, firm table. A small
platform placed about two feet high alongside one wall, and supported at
the outer edge with strong posts, formed a bedstead. Sometimes hemlock
boughs were the only bed. The frontier saying was, "A hard day's work
makes a soft bed." The tired pioneers slept well even on hemlock boughs.
The chinks of the logs were filled with moss and mud, and in the autumn
banked up outside with earth for warmth.
These log houses did not satisfy English men and women. They longed to
have what Roger Williams called English houses, which were, however,
scarcely different in ground-plan. A single room on the ground, called
in many old wills the fire-room, had a vast chimney at one end. A
so-called staircase, usually but a narrow ladder, led to a sleeping-loft
above. Some of those houses were still made of whole logs, but with
clapboards nailed over the chinks and cracks. Others were of a lighter
frame covered with clapboards, or in Delaware with boards pinned on
perpendicularly. Soon this house was doubled in size and comfort by
having a room on either side of the chimney.
Each settlement often followed in general outline as well as detail the
houses to which the owners had become accustomed in Europe, with, of
course, such variations as were necessary from the new surroundings, new
climate, and new limitations. New York was settled by the Dutch, and
therefore naturally the first permanent houses were Dutch in shape, such
as may be seen in Holland to-day. In the large towns in New Netherland
the houses were certainly very pretty, as all visitors stated who wrote
accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in 1704, and wrote
of the houses,--I will give her own words, in her own spelling and
grammar, which were not very good, though she was the teacher of
Benjamin Franklin, and the friend of Cotton Mather:--
"The Buildings are Brick Generaly very stately and high: the Bricks
in some of the houses are of divers Coullers, and laid in Checkers,
being glazed, look very agreable. The inside of the houses is neat
to admiration, the wooden work; for only the walls are plaster'd;
and the Sumers and Gist are planed and kept very white scour'd as
so is all the partitions if made of Bords."
The "sumers and gist" were the heavy timbers of the frame, the
summer-pieces and joists. The summer-piece was the large middle beam in
the middle from end to end of the ceiling; the joists were cross-beams.
These were not covered with plaster as nowadays, but showed in every
ceiling; and in old houses are sometimes set so curiously and fitted so
ingeniously, that they are always an entertaining study. Another
traveller says that New York houses had patterns of colored brick set in
the front, and also bore the date of building. The Governor's house at
Albany had two black brick-hearts. Dutch houses were set close to the
sidewalk with the gable-end to the street; and had the roof notched like
steps,--corbel-roof was the name; and these ends were often of brick,
while the rest of the walls were of wood. The roofs were high in
proportion to the side walls, and hence steep; they were surmounted
usually in Holland fashion with weather-vanes in the shape of horses,
lions, geese, sloops, or fish; a rooster was a favorite Dutch
weather-vane. There were metal gutters sticking out from every roof
almost to the middle of the street; this was most annoying to passers-by
in rainy weather, who were deluged with water from the roofs. The cellar
windows had small loop-holes with shutters. The windows were always
small; some had only sliding shutters, others had but two panes or
quarels of glass, as they were called, which were only six or eight
inches square. The front doors were cut across horizontally in the
middle into two parts, and in early days were hung on leather hinges
instead of iron.
In the upper half of the door were two round bull's-eyes of heavy
greenish glass, which let faint rays of light enter the hall. The door
opened with a latch, and often had also a knocker. Every house had a
porch or "stoep" flanked with benches, which were constantly occupied in
the summer time; and every evening, in city and village alike, an
incessant visiting was kept up from stoop to stoop. The Dutch farmhouses
were a single straight story, with two more stories in the high,
in-curving roof. They had doors and stoops like the town houses, and all
the windows had heavy board shutters. The cellar and the garret were the
most useful rooms in the house; they were store-rooms for all kinds of
substantial food. In the cellar were great bins of apples, potatoes,
turnips, beets, and parsnips. There were hogsheads of corned beef,
barrels of salt pork, tubs of hams being salted in brine, tonnekens of
salt shad and mackerel, firkins of butter, kegs of pigs' feet, tubs of
souse, kilderkins of lard. On a long swing-shelf were tumblers of spiced
fruits, and "rolliches," head-cheese, and strings of sausages--all Dutch
delicacies.
In strong racks were barrels of cider and vinegar, and often of beer.
Many contained barrels of rum and a pipe of Madeira. What a storehouse
of plenty and thrift! What an emblem of Dutch character! In the attic
by the chimney was the smoke-house, filled with hams, bacon, smoked
beef, and sausages.
In Virginia and Maryland, where people did not gather into towns, but
built their houses farther apart, there were at first few sawmills, and
the houses were universally built of undressed logs. Nails were costly,
as were all articles manufactured of iron, hence many houses were built
without iron; wooden pins and pegs were driven in holes cut to receive
them; hinges were of leather; the shingles on the roof were sometimes
pinned, or were held in place by "weight-timbers." The doors had latches
with strings hanging outside; by pulling in the string within-doors the
house was securely locked. This form of latch was used in all the
colonies. When persons were leaving houses, they sometimes set them on
fire in order to gather up the nails from the ashes. To prevent this
destruction of buildings, the government of Virginia gave to each
planter who was leaving his house as many nails as the house was
estimated to have in its frame, provided the owner would not burn the
house down.
Some years later, when boards could be readily obtained, the favorite
dwelling-place in the South was a framed building with a great stone or
log-and-clay chimney at either end. The house was usually set on sills
resting on the ground. The partitions were sometimes covered with a
thick layer of mud which dried into a sort of plaster and was
whitewashed. The roofs were covered with cypress shingles.
Hammond wrote of these houses in 1656, in his _Leah and Rachel_,
"Pleasant in their building, and contrived delightfull; the rooms large,
daubed and whitelimed, glazed and flowered; and if not glazed windows,
shutters made pretty and convenient."
When prosperity and wealth came through the speedily profitable crops of
tobacco, the houses improved. The home-lot or yard of the Southern
planters showed a pleasant group of buildings, which would seem the most
cheerful home of the colonies, only that all dearly earned homes are
cheerful to their owners. There was not only the spacious mansion house
for the planter with its pleasant porch, but separate buildings in which
were a kitchen, cabins for the negro servants and the overseer, a
stable, barn, coach-house, hen-house, smoke-house, dove-cote, and
milk-room. In many yards a tall pole with a toy house at top was
erected; in this bird-house bee-martins built their nests, and by
bravely disconcerting the attacks of hawks and crows, and noisily
notifying the family and servants of the approach of the enemy, thus
served as a guardian for the domestic poultry, whose home stood close
under this protection. There was seldom an ice-house. The only means for
the preservation of meats in hot weather was by water constantly pouring
into and through a box house erected over the spring that flowed near
the house. Sometimes a brew-house was also found in the yard, for making
home-brewed beer, and a tool-house for storing tools and farm
implements. Some farms had a cider-mill, but this was not in the house
yard. Often there was a spinning-house where servants could spin flax
and wool. This usually had one room containing a hand-loom on which
coarse bagging could be woven, and homespun for the use of the negroes.
A very beautiful example of a splendid and comfortable Southern mansion
such as was built by wealthy planters in the middle of the eighteenth
century has been preserved for us at Mount Vernon, the home of George
Washington.
Mount Vernon was not so fine nor so costly a house as many others built
earlier in the century, such as Lower Brandon--two centuries and a half
old--and Upper Brandon, the homes of the Harrisons; Westover, the home
of the Byrds; Shirley, built in 1650, the home of the Carters; Sabin
Hall, another Carter home, is still standing on the Rappahannock with
its various and many quarters and outbuildings, and is a splendid
example of colonial architecture.
As the traveller came north from Virginia through Pennsylvania, "the
Jerseys," and Delaware, the negro cabins and detached kitchen
disappeared, and many of the houses were of stone and mortar. A clay
oven stood by each house. In the cities stone and brick were much used,
and by 1700 nearly all Philadelphia houses had balconies running the
entire length of the second story. The stoop before the door was
universal.
For half a century nearly all New England houses were cottages. Many had
thatched roofs. Seaside towns set aside for public use certain reedy
lots between salt-marsh and low-water mark, where thatch could be freely
cut. The catted chimneys were of logs plastered with clay, or platted,
that is, made of reeds and mortar; and as wood and hay were stacked in
the streets, all the early towns suffered much from fires, and soon laws
were passed forbidding the building of these unsafe chimneys; as brick
was imported and made, and stone was quarried, there was certainly no
need to use such danger-filled materials. Fire-wardens were appointed
who peered around in all the kitchens, hunting for what they called foul
chimney hearts, and they ordered flag-roofs and wooden chimneys to be
removed, and replaced with stone or brick ones. In Boston every
housekeeper had to own a fire-ladder; and ladders and buckets were kept
in the church. Salem kept its "fire-buckets and hook'd poles" in the
town-house. Soon in all towns each family owned fire-buckets made of
heavy leather and marked with the owner's name or initials. The entire
town constituted the fire company, and the method of using the
fire-buckets was this. As soon as an alarm of fire was given by shouts
or bell-ringing, every one ran at once towards the scene of the fire.
All who owned buckets carried them, and if any person was delayed even
for a few minutes, he flung his fire-buckets from the window into the
street, where some one in the running crowd seized them and carried them
on. On reaching the fire, a double line called lanes of persons was made
from the fire to the river or pond, or a well. A very good
representation of these lanes is given in this fireman's certificate of
the year 1800.
The buckets, filled with water, were passed from hand to hand, up one
line of persons to the fire, while the empty ones went down the other
line. Boys were stationed on the _dry lane_. Thus a constant supply of
water was carried to the fire. If any person attempted to pass through
the line, or hinder the work, he promptly got a bucketful or two of
water poured over him. When the fire was over, the fire-warden took
charge of the buckets; some hours later the owners appeared, each picked
out his own buckets from the pile, carried them home, and hung them up
by the front door, ready to be seized again for use at the next alarm of
fire.
Many of these old fire-buckets are still preserved, and deservedly are
cherished heirlooms, for they represent the dignity and importance due
a house-holding ancestor. They were a valued possession at the time of
their use, and a costly one, being, made of the best leather. They were
often painted not only with the name of the owner, but with family
mottoes, crests, or appropriate inscriptions, sometimes in Latin. The
leather hand-buckets of the Donnison family of Boston are here shown;
those of the Quincy family bear the legend _Impavadi Flammarium_; those
of the Oliver family, _Friend and Public_. In these fire-buckets were
often kept, tightly rolled, strong canvas bags, in which valuables
could be thrust and carried from the burning building.
The first fire-engine made in this country was for the town of Boston,
and was made about 1650 by Joseph Jencks, the famous old iron-worker in
Lynn. It was doubtless very simple in shape, as were its successors
until well into this century. The first fire-engine used in Brooklyn,
New York, is here shown. It was made in 1785 by Jacob Boome. Relays of
men at both handles worked the clumsy pump. The water supply for this
engine was still only through the lanes of fire-buckets, except in rare
cases.
By the year 1670 wooden chimneys and log houses of the Plymouth and Bay
colonies were replaced by more sightly houses of two stories, which were
frequently built with the second story jutting out a foot or two over
the first, and sometimes with the attic story still further extending
over the second story. A few of these are still standing: The
White-Ellery House, at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1707, is here
shown. This "overhang" is popularly supposed to have been built for the
purpose of affording a convenient shooting-place from which to repel the
Indians. This is, however, an historic fable. The overhanging second
story was a common form of building in England in the time of Queen
Elizabeth, and the Massachusetts and Rhode Island settlers simply and
naturally copied their old homes.
The roofs of many of these new houses were steep, and were shingled with
hand-riven shingles. The walls between the rooms were of clay mixed with
chopped straw. Sometimes the walls were whitened with a wash made of
powdered clam-shells. The ground floors were occasionally of earth, but
puncheon floors were common in the better houses. The well-smoothed
timbers were sanded in careful designs with cleanly beach sand.
By 1676 the Royal Commissioners wrote of Boston that the streets were
crooked, and the houses usually wooden, with a few of brick and stone.
It is a favorite tradition of brick houses in all the colonies that the
brick for them was brought from England. As excellent brick was made
here, I cannot believe all these tales that are told. Occasionally a
house, such as the splendid Warner Mansion, still standing in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is proved to be of imported brick by the
bills which are still existing for the purchase and transportation of
the brick. A later form of many houses was two stories or two stories
and a half in front, with a peaked roof that sloped down nearly to the
ground in the back over an ell covering the kitchen, added in the shape
known as a lean-to, or, as it was called by country folk, the linter.
This sloping roof gave the one element of unconscious picturesqueness
which redeemed the prosaic ugliness of these bare-walled houses. Many
lean-to houses are still standing in New England. The Boardman Hill
House, built at North Saugus, Massachusetts, two centuries and a half
ago, and the two houses of lean-to form, the birthplaces of President
John Adams and of President John Quincy Adams, are typical examples.
The next roof-form, built from early colonial days, and popular a
century ago, was what was known as the gambrel roof. This resembled, on
two sides, the mansard roof of France in the seventeenth century, but
was also gabled at two ends. The gambrel roof had a certain grace of
outline, especially when joined with lean-tos and other additions. The
house partly built in 1636 in Dedham, Massachusetts, by my far-away
grandfather, and known as the Fairbanks House, is the oldest
gambrel-roofed house now standing. It is still occupied by one of his
descendants in the eighth generation. The rear view of it, here given,
shows the picturesqueness of roof outlines and the quaintness which
comes simply from variety. The front of the main building, with its
eight windows, all of different sizes and set at different heights,
shows equal diversity. Within, the boards in the wall-panelling vary
from two to twenty-five inches in width.
The windows of the first houses had oiled paper to admit light. A
colonist wrote back to England to a friend who was soon to follow,
"Bring oiled paper for your windows." The minister, Higginson, sent
promptly in 1629 for glass for windows. This glass was set in the
windows with nails; the sashes were often narrow and oblong, of
diamond-shaped panes set in lead, and opening up and down the middle on
hinges. Long after the large towns and cities had glass windows,
frontier settlements still had heavy wooden shutters. They were a safer
protection against Indian assault, as well as cheaper. It is asserted
that in the province of Kennebec, which is now the state of Maine, there
was not, even as late as 1745, a house that had a square of glass in it.
Oiled paper was used until this century in pioneer houses for windows
wherever it was difficult to transport glass.
Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it
was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of
the early lists of workmen. A Salem citizen, just previous to the
Revolution, had the woodwork of one of the rooms of his house painted.
One of a group of friends, discussing this extravagance a few days
later, said: "Well! Archer has set us a fine example of expense,--he has
laid one of his rooms in oil." This sentence shows both the wording and
ideas of the times.
There was one external and suggestive adjunct of the earliest pioneer's
home which was found in nearly all the settlements which were built in
the midst of threatening Indians. Some strong houses were always
surrounded by a stockade, or "palisado," of heavy, well-fitted logs,
which thus formed a garrison, or neighborhood resort, in time of danger.
In the valley of Virginia each settlement was formed of houses set in a
square, connected from end to end of the outside walls by stockades
with gates; thus forming a close front. On the James River, on Manhattan
Island, were stockades. The whole town plot of Milford, Connecticut, was
enclosed in 1645, and the Indians taunted the settlers by shouting out,
"White men all same like pigs." At one time in Massachusetts, twenty
towns proposed an all-surrounding palisade. The progress and condition
of our settlements can be traced in our fences. As Indians disappeared
or succumbed, the solid row of pales gave place to a log-fence, which
served well to keep out depredatory animals. When dangers from Indians
or wild animals entirely disappeared, boards were still not over-plenty,
and the strength of the owner could not be over-spent on unnecessary
fencing. Then came the double-rail fence; two rails, held in place one
above the other, at each joining, by four crossed sticks. It was a
boundary, and would keep in cattle. It was said that every fence should
be horse-high, bull-proof, and pig-tight. Then came stone walls, showing
a thorough clearing and taming of the land. The succeeding "half-high"
stone wall--a foot or two high, with a single rail on top--showed that
stones were not as plentiful in the fields as in early days. The
"snake-fence," or "Virginia fence," so common in the Southern states,
utilized the second growth of forest trees. The split-rail fence, four
or five rails in height, was set at intervals with posts, pierced with
holes to hold the ends of the rails. These were used to some extent in
the East; but our Western states were fenced throughout with rails split
by sturdy pioneer rail-splitters, among them young Abraham Lincoln.
Board fences showed the day of the sawmill and its plentiful supply; the
wire fences of to-day equally prove the decrease of our forests and our
wood, and the growth of our mineral supplies and manufactures of
metals. Thus even our fences might be called historical monuments.
A few of the old block-houses, or garrison houses, the "defensible
houses," which were surrounded by these stockades, are still standing.
The most interesting are the old Garrison at East Haverhill,
Massachusetts, built in 1670; it has walls of solid oak, and brick a
foot and a half thick; the Saltonstall House at Ipswich, built in 1633;
Cradock Old Fort in Medford, Massachusetts, built in 1634 of brick made
on the spot; an old fort at York, Maine; and the Whitefield Garrison
House, built in 1639 at Guilford, Connecticut. The one at Newburyport is
the most picturesque and beautiful of them all.
As social life in Boston took on a little aspect of court life in the
circle gathered around the royal governors, the pride of the wealthy
found expression in handsome and stately houses. These were copied and
added to by men of wealth and social standing in other towns. The
Province House, built in 1679, the Frankland House in 1735, and the
Hancock House, all in Boston; the Shirley House in Roxbury, the
Wentworth Mansion in New Hampshire, are good examples. They were
dignified and simple in form, and have borne the test of
centuries,--they wear well. They never erred in over-ornamentation,
being scant of interior decoration, save in two or three principal rooms
and the hall and staircase. The panelled step ends and soffits, the
graceful newels and balusters, of those old staircases hold sway as
models to this day.
The same taste which made the staircase the centre of decoration within,
made the front door the sole point of ornamentation without; and equal
beauty is there focused. Worthy of study and reproduction, many of the
old-time front doors are with their fine panels, graceful, leaded side
windows, elaborate and pretty fan-lights, and slight but appropriate
carving. The prettiest leaded windows I ever saw in an American home
were in a thereby glorified hen-house. They had been taken from the
discarded front door of a remodelled old Falmouth house. The hens and
their owner were not of antiquarian tastes, and relinquished the windows
for a machine-made sash more suited to their plebeian tastes and
occupations. Many colonial doors had door-latches or knobs of heavy
brass; nearly all had a knocker of wrought iron or polished brass, a
cheerful ornament that ever seems to resound a welcome to the visitor as
well as a notification to the visited.
The knocker from the John Hancock House in Boston and that from the
Winslow House in Marshfield are here shown; both are now in the custody
of the Bostonian Society, and may be seen at the Old State House in
Boston. The latter was given to the society by Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes.
The "King-Hooper" House, still standing in Danvers, Massachusetts,
closely resembled the Hancock House. This house, built by Robert Hooper
in 1754, was for a time the refuge of the royal governor of
Massachusetts--Governor Gage; and hence is sometimes called General
Gage's Headquarters. When the minute-men marched past the house to
Lexington on April 18, 1775, they stripped the lead from the gate-posts.
"King Hooper" angrily denounced them, and a minute-man fired at him as
he entered the house. The bullet passed through the panel of the door,
and the rent may still be seen. Hence the house has been often called
The House of the Front Door with the Bullet-Hole. The present owner and
occupier of the house, Francis Peabody, Esq., has appropriately named it
The Lindens, from the stately linden trees that grace its gardens and
lawns.
In riding through those portions of our states that were the early
settled colonies, it is pleasant to note where any old houses are still
standing, or where the sites of early colonial houses are known, the
good taste usually shown by the colonists in the places chosen to build
their houses. They dearly loved a "sightly location." An old writer
said: "My consayte is such; I had rather not to builde a mansyon or a
house than to builde one without a good prospect in it, to it, and from
it." In Virginia the houses were set on the river slope, where every
passing boat might see them. The New England colonists painfully climbed
long, tedious hills, that they might have homes from whence could be had
a beautiful view, and this was for the double reason, as the old writer
said, that in their new homes they might both see and be seen.