Home Life in Colonial Days. ... Illustrated, etc

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Home Life in Colonial Days •'^"'•'■"•'•'""'•'"^••i"i»Hi^«Hi«i»H.^»H [HOME LIFE- IN! (COLONIAL DAYS! Written by j -ALICEMORSEEARLEin the year MDCCCXCVm Illustrated by Photographs, Gathered by the Author, of Real Things, Works and Happenings of Olden Times. NewYorK The Macmillan Company London: Macmillan &TCo..Ltd. 1898 All rights reserved. •ian>i,i^^nt«HiriiM»in^^HiwH>iti^BBi«iaK>ii Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company. Norwood Press J. S. Cusbing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. THIS BOOK IS BEGUN JS IT IS ENDED IN MEMORT OF MT 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 in vestigation, and constant watchfulness.

Many a curious article as nameless and incomprehensible as the totem of an extinct Indian tribe has been studied, com pared, inquired and written about, and finally trium phantly 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 cooperation and assistance in my work. The artistic and correct photographic representation of many of these objects I owe to Mr. William F. Foreword VIII 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 hints — 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 spin ning, 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.

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 immedi ate 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 B I of a hill, and lived in till the settlers could have time to chop down and cut up trees for log houses.

Cornells 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 Log Cabin 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 sub- 'stantial 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 Dela ware with boards pinned on perpendicularly. Soon this house was doubled in size and comfort by hav ing 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 surround ings, 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: — Suydam House, Bushwick, Long Island, 1700. From an old print " 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, pro vided 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-andclay 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 white washed.

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 im proved. 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 over seer, 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 sel dom 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 bag- Sabin Hall Slave Quarters, Upper Brandon ging 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 Ver non, 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 Har risons ; 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 Rap pahannock 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 be tween 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 for bidding the building of these unsafe chimneys ; as brick was imported and made, and stone was quar ried, 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 Fire-buckets 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 representa tion of these lanes is given in this fireman's certificate of the year 1 800. Fireman's Certificate, 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 con stant 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 c 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 Ouincy family bear the legend Impauadi Flammarium ; those of the Oliver family, Friend and Public. In these fire-buckets were often kept, tightly First Fire-engine used in Brooklyn, 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 some times 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 "over hang " 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 Oueen Elizabeth, and the Massachu- White-Ellery House, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1707 setts 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 awash made of powdered clamshells. 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 Bos ton 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 can not believe all these tales that are told. Occasion ally 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 Boardman Hill House, North Sau 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 slop ing roof gave the one element of unconscious pict uresqueness which redeemed the prosaic ugliness of these bare-walled houses.

Many lean-to houses are still standing in New England. The Boardman Birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams 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 Fairbanks House, Dedham, Massachusett: 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, Massa chusetts, 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, Higgin son, 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 pre vious 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 exam ple 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 " pali sado," 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 depreda tory 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.