Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

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 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 wort25 fell down and spilt the boiling liquid over four of his children who were 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.

The brick oven was a feature of every chimney. Sometimes 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 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.

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, peas, 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 came through the woods to Salem in his cart bringing twelve bushels of rye. He 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.

In "the hall," usually upon open shelves, but sometimes upon a dresser, was displayed the pride of the housewife – the dress of pewter and latten 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 wooden ware and pewter that were commonly used. When Lionel Chute died in 1645 he bequeathed his silver spoon to his son James.26 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 9½ 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 washbench, 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, 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.

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 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 wainscot, 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 or cords. In the parlor stood 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 £2,000.27 He owned a negro slave and his house was large and well 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 stockcards, 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."28

Early in the eighteenth century the walls of rooms in some Massachusetts houses began to be covered with "painted paper" hangings imported from England. These papier paints were first introduced into England, from France, about 1634, and probably were brought into New England by Governor Andros and his followers. Michael Perry, a Boston bookseller, who died in 1700, had in his stock "7 quires of painted paper and three reams of painted paper." His successor, Daniel Henchman, dealt in painted papers as appears from his account books commencing in 1712. In 1713 two quires of painted paper cost four shillings, and two quires of blue paper, three shillings. In 1714, Isaac Thomas of Pembroke paid £2. 10. 0 for "6 Rowls Paint'd Pap'r & 2 Q'r Paper."

When Peter Sergeant of Boston died in 1714, the inventory of his estate disclosed "one large gilt looking glass, in the cedar room, £5. One suit of Imagery Tapestry hanging, £20. One suit of red china £5." Two years later the house was purchased by the Provincial Government for a governor's residence and in 1741 we find the Provincial Treasurer paying Daniel Henchman £5. 8. 0. for four rolls of painted paper and shortly another bill was presented for "New Tacking the paper hanging above in the chamber & new papering one roome below stairs."

In 1734, John Maverick, shopkeeper, bought of Henchman, four quires and five sheets of painted paper for £1. 3. 9. In 1736, Colonel Estes Hatch bought 10 rolls painted paper for £16. 5. 0. which was probably used in his mansion in Dorchester, bought after the Revolution by Colonel James Swan.

The painted paper of the eighteenth century was sold at first in sheets, 22 by 32 inches, called elephant size. Later these were pasted together to make 12 yard lengths. In the earlier stages of manufacture the designs were colored by hand. Stencils of pasteboard were used, and in the last half of the eighteenth century blocks of pear and sycamore wood were used, as in calico printing. One who painted coats of arms and other things pertaining to heraldry, as well as one who painted or stained linen cloth, was known as a "painter stainer." So, also, those who stained colored or stamped paper for hangings were known as "paper stainers."

When Thomas Hancock built his house on Beacon Hill he desired painted paper for some of his rooms. Extracts from his letter to John Rowe, stationer, London, explain his wants:

"Sir: Inclosed you have the Dimensions of a Room for a shaded Hanging to be Done after the same Pattern I have sent per Capt. Tanner. The pattern is all that was left of a Room lately come over here, and it takes much in ye Town and will be the only paper-hanging for sale here which am of opinion may Answer well… If they can make it more beautiful by adding more Birds flying here and there, with some Landskips at the Bottom, Should like it well. Let the Ground be the same colour of the Pattern. At the top and bottom was a narrow Border of about 2 inches wide which would have to mine…

"A hanging done much handsomer sent over three or four years previous was made by Dunbar in Aldermanbury…

"In other of these Hangings are great variety of different Sorts of Birds, Peacocks, Macoys, Squirrill, Monkys, Fruit and Flowers, etc… I think they are handsomer and better than Painted hangings done in Oyle so I beg your particular Care in procuring this for me and that the patterns may be taken care off and Return'd with my Goods." —Letter of Thomas Hancock to John Rowe, Stationer, in London, Jan. 23, 1737/8.

In the eighteenth-century Boston newspapers may be found numerous items showing the use of wall paper and the fact that it frequently was imported from England. But while it is true that it could be purchased in the shops in Boston it does not follow that rooms in every house were papered. Nor is it likely that the rooms of houses in the country had papered walls save when the owner was a wealthy man. London fashions would first be found transplanted into the seaport towns and later would be adopted by the country. Undoubtedly the home of the Governor, or of some well-to-do sea captain, was the first house to be so decorated. On September 22, 1762, died Daniel Starr of Boston, "who has been for many years employed in Papering Rooms." This item appears in the news items of the Boston News-Letter. Eight years later the same newspaper prints the following advertisement:

"George Killcup, jun. Informs the Gentlemen and Ladies in Town and Country That he Paints Carpets & other Articles, and Paper Rooms in the neatest manner. He will take English or West India Goods as Pay.

"Said Killcup is ready to pay those he is indebted to, in Painting or Papering Rooms." —Boston News-Letter, March 17, 1768.

"Roll Paper for Rooms," with "most sorts of Stationary Ware" were advertised for sale by John Parker, over against the shop of Mr. Dolbeare, Brazier, at the Head of the Town Dock, Boston. —Boston News-Letter, June 3-10, 1736.

J. Boydell, the printer of the Boston Gazette, advertised in November, 1736, a house in Boston, to be sold, in which two chambers in the first story were "hung with Scotch Tapestry, the other Green Cheny."

John Phillips, bookseller, advertised "Stampt Paper in Rolls for to Paper Rooms," in the October 26, 1730, issue of the New England Journal.

"Sundry sorts of Painted Paper for Rooms" were to be sold at public vendue at the Exchange Tavern in King Street, with other importations. —New-England Journal, August 29, 1738.

"Flowered Paper, or Paper Hangings for Rooms, to be Sold; Inquire of the Printer." —Boston Gazette, February 2, 1742.

"Beautiful Arras-Hangings for a Room" to be sold at vendue.29—Boston News-Letter, August 22, 1745.

Against the earlier background of whitewashed walls hung few decorations. Between 1635 and 1681 there were 960 estates probated in Essex County, Massachusetts. The county had several seaport towns and its inhabitants were more prosperous than many other parts of the Colony. In the inventories of these 960 estates, pictures are listed but eight times and maps were found in but three homes. William Hollingsworth, the shipbuilder and merchant of Salem, possessed seven framed pictures. They are the only framed pictures mentioned. Hilliard Veren of Salem, who died in 1668, had three pictures in his hall chamber and Robert Gray of the same town had in his parlor a large looking-glass with some earthen dishes and a picture, the whole valued at £2. The Rev. Nathaniel Rogers of Ipswich, had two pictures in his parlor and Thomas Wells of Ipswich, bequeathed to his son Thomas, the new pictures of the King and Queen and the one of the "five sencces." He also possessed maps and paper pictures.

Fifty years later John Smibert, the portrait painter, had his shop "at his House in Queen Street, between the Town House and the Orange Tree, Boston," where he sold "all sorts of Colours, dry or ground with Oyls and Brushes, Fans of several sorts, the best Mezotints, Italian, French, Dutch and English Prints, in Frames and Glasses or without, by Wholesale or Retail, at Reasonable Rates." About the same time the "Royal Waxwork" was to be seen at the House of Mr. Thomas Brooks, shopkeeper, near the Draw Bridge, and Thomas White, the engraver, was living in a house not far away.

Here are a few advertisements from early newspapers bearing on furnishing the house:

Bed Hangings. To be sold by Mrs. Susanna Condy, near the Old North Meeting House, a fine Fustian Suit of Curtains, with a Cornish and Base Mouldings of a beautiful Figure, drawn in London, on Frame full already worked; as also enough of the same for half a dozen Chairs. N.B. The Bed may be had by itself. —Boston Gazette, May 24-31, 1736.

Bed-Screws. Mr. John Barnard of Boston, having some time since Lent a Pair of large Bed-screws. These are desiring the Borrower to return them again to the owner, as he desires to Borrow again, to avoid the Curse due to the Wicked, that Borrow but never Pay. —Boston News-Letter, Oct. 22-29, 1716.

Bedstead. A Coach-head Bed and Bedstead with its Curtains and Vallents, &c., as it stands, being a blew China. To be disposed off. Inquire of the Printer. —Boston Gazette, June 16-23, 1735.