THE EARLY HOMES OF THE PURITANS. [A paper read, March 6, 1897, before the Local History Class of the Essex Institute.] BY THOMAS FRANKLIN WATERS. came. THE HOUSES. PECULIAR pathos attaches to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, when winter was already abroad, their hasty building of their humble homes, and the prolonged suffering from cold, scant food, and sickness until summer But the settlement of the towns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Salem, Ipswich, and the rest, presents no such pitiful picture. To these points came an orderly migration of gentle folk and artisans, direct from their comfortable English homes, with much of their belongings, no doubt. The arrival of the ships that bore them was timed so well that they came upon our coast when the air was sweet with flowers and the fragrance of the wild strawberries. The long days of summer afforded them opportunity for building comfortable homes, and settling themselves into their new life, before the ordeal of winter came. In our thoughtlessness we banish hardship and suffering from the annals of this fortunate colony. We are encouraged in this rosy dream of the first days by the reputed antiquity of many houses still remaining, wearing an air of comfort still, with their low, broad roofs, their huge chimney-stacks, suggestive of generous fire-places within, their small windows, planned to admit a sufficiency of light and a modicum of cold, and their ample size. These ancient mansions, we are told, date from the very earliest years of the settlement, perchance even from the year of the founding of the town, and accepting the date with confiding credulity, straightway we build many similar edifices in our imagination, and house the daring pioneers very luxuriously. The striking incongruity of such mansions as these, and the rough pioneer life in the unbroken wilderness, should be enough to make us skeptical. Any careful study of the historic data will effectually disprove the truth of this claim of age. No less than five ancient dwellings in old Ipswich have been declared by many to date from 1633 or 1634. I have made diligent research in our Town Records and at the Registry of Deeds and Wills, and have come to the conclusion that two of them were built about 1700, the third about 1670-1680, and in the case of the two others the disproval of the reputed ownership removes the presumption of an antiquity which is not suggested by their architecture. We shall make much nearer approach to the truth in our ideal, we may presume, if we remember always that our forefathers were invading a wilderness, and that of necessity their first houses were small, rude, and quickly built, so that they might give their first summer chiefly to clearing the land of forest, and raising some crop to furnish their food for the long, cold winter. Edward Johnson, in his "Wonder Working Providence," portrays the experiences that he had known personally, incident to these settlements. "After they have found out a place of aboad," he writes, "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter, under some hill side, casting the earth aloft upon timber; they make a smoaky fire against the earth at the highest side, and thus these poor servants of Christ provide shelter for themselves, their wives and little ones, keeping off the short showers from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrate through to their grate disturbance in the night season, yet in these poor wigwams they sing Psalms, pray, and praise their God, till they can provide them homes, which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the Earth, by the Lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and little ones." Such a tale of woe may seem incredible to us. The skilled woodsman can build a summer camp impervious to rain, and full of comfort, in a few hours, with no other tool than his axe. I have a pleasant acquaintance with a Rangeley guide of long experience, who always amazes me with stories of the facility with which a warm and comfortable camp can be fashioned in the deep snow in the thick forests, when the cold is intense, and of the palatial comfort of the log-camp, chinked with moss, covered deeply with snow and warmed with a roaring fire. But these ancient Puritans were not woodsmen. They were gentlemen in part, and weavers, tailors, blacksmiths, coopers, brickmakers, carpenters and farmers. What knew they of the cunning art of woodcraft? So, I trow, that not only their dug-out in the hill-side, but often their humble cabin, was not sufficient for comfortable warmth. Such was the experience of the Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley, who wrote from Cambridge in 1630. "I thought fit to commit to memory our present condition, and what hath befallen us since our arrival here, which I will do shortly, after my usual manner, and must do rudely, having yet no table, nor other room to write in than by the fireside, upon my knee, in this sharp winter, to which my family must have leave to resort though they break good manners, and make me many times forget what I would say, and say what I would not.” If there was such scant comfort in the homes of their gentry, what was the lot of the poorest? Rough, simple houses, they must have been. There were no mills to saw their lumber. Every board was sawed by the tedious toil of two sawyers, one working in a saw pit. Every joist was hewed four square with the axe, every nail, bolt, hinge and latch, was hammered out by the blacksmith on his anvil. Brick chimneys and shingled roofs were rare. Our surmise as to the style of their dwelling is confirmed by indubitable record. Matthew Whipple lived on the corner of the present County and Summer streets, in Ipswich, near Miss Sarah Caldwell's present residence. In the inventory of his estate made in 1645, his dwelling house, barn and four acres of land, were appraised at £36, and six bullocks were valued at the same figure. His executors sold the dwelling with an acre of ground on the corner, in 1648, to Robert Whitman for £5. Whitman sold this property, and another house and lot, to William Duglass, cooper, for £22, in 1652. John Anniball, or Annable, bought the dwelling, barn, and two acres of land, on the eastern corner of Market and Summer streets, then called Annable's Lane, for £39, in 1647. Joseph Morse was a man of wealth and social standing. His inventory in 1646 mentions a house, land, etc., valued at £9, and another old house with barn and eight acres of land valued at £8, 10s. and one cow and a heifer, estimated at £6, 10s. Thomas Firman was a leading citizen. His house was appraised in the inventory at £15, and the house he had bought of John Proctor, with three acres of land, was estimated to be worth £18, 10s. Proctor's house was near the lower falls on County street, and his land included the estate now owned by Mr. Warren Boynton, Mr. Samuel N. Baker and others. Few deeds of sale or inventories mention houses of any considerable value in these earlier years. Richard Scofield sold a house and two acres of land to Robert Roberts, in 1643, for £11, 17s. In 1649 John West sold John Woodman, for £13, a house and an acre of land, and another half acre near the Meeting House. Robert Whitman sold John Woodman a house near the Meeting House, for £7. In 1652, Richard Scofield, leather dresser, sold Moses Pengry, yeoman, a house and land, for £17, and Solomon Martin sold Thomas Lovell, currier, a house and lot near the present "Dodge's Corner," for £16. Rarely in these opening years, the appraised value of an estate mounted to £100. In 1646, this was the valuation of John Shatswell's. It included a "house, homestead, barn, cow house, orchard, yard, etc." Six oxen were appraised at £36, and five cows at £25, Os. The average price received from the actual sale of houses was less than £25. Mr. John Whittingham had a house on High street containing kitchen and parlor, and chambers over the kitchen and parlor, sumptuously furnished, as the inventory records in 1648, and valued with the barn, cow house and forty-four acres of land, at £100. The established value of a bullock seems to have been £6, and cows were appraised at about £5. A day's work of a team in drawing timber for the watch house, in 1645, was reckoned at 8 shillings, and in 1646, the inventory of the estate of Joseph Morse reveals the market prices of various commodities. 20 bushels of Indian corn were rated at £2, 10s. 6 small cheeses, 20 lbs. butter, 2 2 10 These prices fix the purchasing power of money at that period and make it certain that houses, that were quoted at £25 and less, were very simple and primitive. Often, we may presume, they were log-houses. |