USA > Connecticut > Colonial Days And Ways: As Gathered from Family Papers > Part 4
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Probably it was for the accommodation of fire that the parlor was usually the guest bedroom, and we find that the entire parlor furniture of the wealthy Mr. Whiting, including " bed-stead, bed, stools, a clock [perhaps the only one in the colony], a safe [probably an iron or steel chest like those preserved in some European museums], a cradle, cob irons," etc., is altogether valued at only £17 3s.
Mr. Smith's tables, chairs, stools, cushions, and " other things belonging " are altogether valued at £3 15s., while "cob irons, trammels & other fire irons" were valued at {2 8s., and " brasse, iron potts, pewter & such like " were ap- praised at {15. The two classes of goods last
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mentioned, which at that date must have been im- ported, would naturally cost more than the tables and stools, which, however roughly, could be made here. Probably there were not more than two or three chairs, and these would have been brought from England. Table and other linen and a " car- pett" (that is, a table-cover) were valued at {14 10s.
After 1650 the variety and value of the personal property mentioned in the inventories rapidly in- creased, while the number of inventories does not keep pace with the number of wills probated or of estates administered upon, the wealthier and more intelligent members of the community pre- ferring probably to keep such information within the privacy of the family circle, not having pre- vision of how eagerly all such information would be welcomed by that posterity for which they prayed and toiled and hoped, dimly feeling all the while that this great new land had been set apart for great uses in the days which were to follow their own.
A glimpse of the relation which then existed be- tween a Puritan pastor and his flock may be gained from the following, which is the closing paragraph of Mr. Smith's will :
"And I desire the Church whose seruant I now am, to take the care and ouersight of my family that they may be brovght vp in the trve feare of God, and to see that this my Will be faithfully prformed. In witnesse whereof I haue svbscribed my name the 8th day of May, 1648."
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CHAPTER IV
A PIONEER HOME IN CONNECTICUT
CHAPTER IV.
A PIONEER HOME IN CONNECTICUT.
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The Coming of Mrs. Mar- garet Lake and the Family of Captain John Gallup. Voyage of the Abigail. The First Homesteads of the Second Generation. Household Labor. A Bride's Furnishings.
A MONG the many slow-sailing craft of petty tonnage which followed in the wake of the Mayflower, there were not a few which brought men and women of high future importance to the infant colonies of New England; but probably few had a more notable passenger list than that of the little ship Abigail, which, after a ten weeks' voyage, reached Boston in November, 1635. Of its two hundred and twenty passengers some bore names which were already noted in old England, and the names of others were afterward to become distinguished in the New. Among the latter was the second John Winthrop, the founder of Ips- wich, Massachusetts, and afterward the honored governor of Connecticut Colony for many succes- sive terms. With him came his second wife, then newly wed, and her elder sister, Mrs. Margaret Lake, with her two young daughters. It is with Mrs. Lake, rather than with any of the more dis- tinguished members of this notable ship's com- pany, that our present chapter is concerned.
Not until twelve years after the arrival of the
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Abigail do we again hear of Mrs. Lake. This time it is as the first white woman to set foot in what is now New London County, where - and a very unusual thing it was at that time -she is named as one of the original grantees, sharing in all the grants and divisions of land. Mrs. Lake probably never took up her residence in New London, appearing to have shared the home of her sister, Mrs. Winthrop, until the latter's hus- band became the governor of Connecticut Colony, after which period Mrs. Lake continued to reside in Ipswich, perhaps in the house which had be- longed to the Winthrops. It was on the portion of land which had been assigned to Mrs. Lake in New London County that her daughter Hannah, when, in 1643, she had become the wife of the second Captain John Gallup, lived for the first few years of her wedded life.
Although the conditions of life were necessarily of the hardest all through the early days in all the colonies, and there is no doubt that they were hardest of all in sterile New England, it must not be imagined that there were no degrees in the styles of living. In spite of the leveling effect of common sentiments, circumstances, privations, and dangers, and of the fact that men of gentle birth and cultivated minds were forced by the first law of nature to become measurably skilled in all sorts of handicraft, class distinctions were for sev- eral generations as rigorously maintained in the
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New England as in the Old. It was said by Daniel Neal, writing in 1720: "In their Dress, Tables and Conversation, they [the colonists] affect to be as English as possible. . . . The only difference between an Old and a New English Man is in his Religion." Hence it is plain that, at least after the first two or three years in any given settlement, to describe the home of a family belonging to one social class is by no means to describe that of a family belonging to another class at the same, much less at another, period.
The wills of the respective ancestors of John and of Hannah Lake Gallup prove them to have been men of considerable substance and local im- portance in old England. In the New World their family alliances were equally respectable, so it may be supposed that their dwelling and home belongings were fairly representative of those of the best of the pioneer families of their time.
But before the nest-building must have come the mating, with all its preliminaries, as sweet here in the wilderness as if the actors in the little love-drama had been walking beneath the haw- thorn hedges on one of their ancestral manors across the sea. Between the dust-dry lines of the dim old records we imagine that we catch a glimpse of what may have been a very charming and beautiful romance; for John Gallup and Hannah Lake, as boy and girl, probably about fourteen and twelve years of age, were fellow-pas-
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sengers on the ship Abigail during the long cross- ing of the stormy Atlantic. When, as in this case, more than two hundred passengers were packed closely together for ten or more tedious and sometimes fearful weeks, there is no doubt that the foundations were laid for many long- enduring friendships, and sometimes, alas! for equally durable dislikes; and if these, why may not love also have been born in these confined and tempestuous quarters ? At least, it is a pleas- ant thought, with some warrant of tradition and probability, that the manly boy, tall, handsome, and bold as he must have been, if in this case the boy was the father of the man, and the bright- faced girl who became a brave, high-spirited, and loving matron, may have begun their mutual life- long trust and love upon this wave-tossed little vessel, smaller than many a fishing-schooner of to-day. There must certainly have been many opportunities to make their respective faults and virtues known to each other.
The conditions of such a voyage are vividly painted in the elder Governor Winthrop's journal of his own voyage five years preceding that of the Abigail. He makes no complaints, but it is easy to see that the noble spirit of the adventurer for conscience' sake had much to triumph over. On the four vessels of which the bark which bore him was one, he records that there were three deaths and three births during the voyage. Surely those
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were brave women who accompanied their hus- bands, venturing so much at such a time! One advantage that the elder Winthrop's company had, and which probably they of the younger did not have, has a picnicky sound that is droll enough to modern ears.
When " off the banks of New Foundland the Arabella stopped to fish," and "all the passengers who were so minded" seem to have enjoyed the sport of replenishing their scanty larder. A little later we find that they were picking strawberries on Cape Ann.
The Abigail's weary voyage was not ended until in November, much too late for any such diver- sions. It is at least to be hoped that her passen- gers did not, like those of a ship which immediately followed the Arabella, "arrive nearly starved," but it is certain that they had on board a most unwelcome companion in the smallpox. At that time even inoculation had not become known, and we can now but faintly imagine the well-justified terrors of those exposed to the disease.
Though the young couple were not married until eight years after their arrival in this country, it is probable that their earliest dwelling was built of logs, as were most of the houses of this date and vicinity. If so, it was soon superseded by the permanent homestead, which was not taken down until the latter part of the eighteenth century. I have talked about this house with a man who had
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heard it described by his mother, the daughter of a farm-laborer who had lived in it until her marriage at the age of eighteen years. Soon after that time it ceased to be used as a dwelling, and before this it had long been occupied only as a tenement- house for farm-laborers, a finer residence having been erected for their own homestead by the de- scendants of the builders of the first. The second permanent home of the Gallups was fine for its days and must have been intended to fill, in a degree, the place of one of the old manor-houses, of which the builders of the first had probably transmitted vivid memory-pictures ; but the dwell- ing which immediately succeeded the log house was erected with a view to meeting the needs of the new country.
That so few of the houses of the early settlers were built of the excellent stone which is over- abundant in New England was not due to the groundless prejudice against that material which arose among their great-grandchildren, but to the fact that haste - such haste as was possible in those slow days - was of the utmost consequence. No man wished to spend the best years of his life in a cabin of logs and clay while waiting for a stone house to grow, as ordinarily it must under the tedious methods of the period, layer by layer, the lower tiers almost having time to gather moss before the roof-beams could be raised.
The larger part of the best of the early houses
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of New England were probably much like this first permanent homestead of the Gallups. Both the external walls and those of the partitions were of heavy timbers, roughly squared by the ax, chinked with moss, and lined with hewn planks two inches in thickness. In later days coats of plaster were put on over the planks, but during the first years the walls were made warm as well as picturesque by hangings of bear, deer, otter, wild- cat, and fox skins, whenever these could be spared from more pressing uses. The exterior walls were about two feet in thickness, which tells of the size of the forest trees which had been cut down to make them. The high-placed and deep-seated windows were scant in number, heavily barred and narrow. (The Pequots and Narragansetts were near, numerous, and crafty.) It is doubtful if the first of the windows were glazed. Even in old England it was only the wealthy who at this time could afford the luxury of glass. Oiled paper was the usual substitute. To exclude the cold were heavy and close wooden shutters both outside and inside. During the coldest weather it must have been necessary to depend for light, even in the daytime, upon open fires, pine-knots, and candles, for at least the first decade or two in each new settlement.
In the center of the house rose the great stone chimney, with wide-throated fireplaces opening into three large rooms on the first story, and into
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four upon the second story. The unplastered and paintless ceilings were low, but higher than was usual, for John Gallup is said to have stood six feet four inches in his gray knit hose, and had to bow his stately head to enter any doorway save his own. The second story on the two longer sides projected considerably beyond the lower. In view of the constant danger from Indians, it is probable that this house was intended to be used as a fortress in case of necessity, and this projection may have been made for the sake of affording a coign of vantage to its inmates if attacked by savages, although, as this method of construction was a common one in nearly all parts of Europe at the time, this is not a necessary supposition. The third story was but a big garret with windows in each end. Beneath all were deep cellars for the storage of winter supplies, and for the manufacture and ripening of home-brewed beer, made after recipes brought from the mother-country. At first cider had no place in those cellars, but after the orchards had grown, there was found room for the barrels of hard cider which were made from them, and which finally quite displaced the hea- vier and perhaps more wholesome, certainly less stimulating, beer. In the cellars were also kept, even from the first, the casks of metheg- lin, made from the plentiful honey of the wild bee, which in the autumn filled the place with the sound of its working like the swarming of armies
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of bees - a sound which was said to be reproduced in the befuddled heads of those who were not extremely moderate in their draughts of this too potent liquor.
In the broad and high-peaked garret were set the heavy looms at which, during all the long summer days, either men or women, as the case might be, were diligently weaving the coarse stuff which must serve young and old, master and man, mistress and maid, for all the rougher occasions of pioneer life.
Very different are the social standards of differ- ing times. In early New England, and in all the colonies, for that matter, it was only a specially wealthy family which could afford to own a loom, at least until they could be made here. Weaving was heavy work, and was mostly done by weavers who went from house to house, or by the poorer neighbors, who were paid in cloth or in other needed supplies. It seems certain that, during the first two or three decades at least, much of the spin- ning must have been done with the distaff, for comparatively few wheels are mentioned in the inventories of those years. Whether with distaff or wheel, spinning was winter's lighter task, and performed by both mistress and maids; but, as with the weaving, it was only the well-to-do who had the materials. It was many years before suffi- cient wool or flax could be grown in this country to make them plentiful.
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Long before cloth-weaving factories were estab- lished here, yet not until the early part of the eighteenth century, a few fulling-mills were set up; at these the woolen cloths were dyed, fulled, sheared, and pressed. A web of cloth which had passed through the fuller's processes was an object of envy to those - and they were in the majority - who could not afford to pay for his services.
The making of the plainest linens was probably all done at home, either with or without the aid of the itinerant weaver, whose services were some- times bespoken months in advance, so greatly was he in demand. Even after his labors were done the fabric was not ready for use. In my dear mother's girlhood flax-spinning was still consid- ered as an essential accomplishment for young ladies, at least among the descendants of the Huguenots. I have heard her say that to bring the fine linen for shirts to the required degree of snowiness no less than thirty and sometimes even forty bleachings were necessary. The first few bleachings were of the thread. The colonists were never sparing of their labor, yet it is probable that they were not so dainty as to the shade of white- ness in the overfilled days of the seventeenth cen- tury. With their best diligence, the time required from the sowing of the flax to the end of the last bleaching could never be less than sixteen months.
Farm-laborers had come over in numbers, and there was a fair proportion of mechanics, but of
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maid-servants there was oftentimes a great lack. Though many a family, among the richer colo- nists, had brought several, the maid-servants were always fewer in number than the men-servants, and when they married, as most of them did very soon, there was no way of supplying their places. At the date when this old house was new there were few negroes in New England, and the half- tamed squaws who were sometimes employed made very poor substitutes for trained house- workers. As the Winthrops were sometimes most unhappily forced to make use of this very unsat- isfactory form of household service, it is probable that Mrs. Lake and her daughters were also com- pelled to accept of it in default of better.
Scanty enough, according to our standard, were then the plenishings of the wealthy houses of old England, and really pathetic was the scarcity here of what were even then esteemed to be essential comforts in the older land.
Not until well into the second half of the sev- enteenth century was furniture of any but the roughest sorts made in New England, and it is obviously impossible that much should have been imported in the tiny vessels then dignified by the name of ships. Their space was too important to be filled with furniture, their petty holds being always crowded with the literally indispensable articles, such as provisions, arms, ammunition, tools, seeds, and clothes, while their scanty deck-
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space was made still scantier by the presence of the live stock of which the colonists were in such pressing need.
In 1645 Mrs. Lake sent to a correspondent in England a list of things which she desired for the furnishing of the new house of her daughter, Mrs. Gallup. She asked for :
" A peare of brasse Andirons,
A brasse Kittell,
2 grate Chestes well made,
2 armed Cheares with fine rushe bottums,
A carven Caisse for Bottels wch my Cuzzen Cooke has of mine,
A Warmeing Pann,
A big iron Pott,
6 Pewter Plates,
2 Pewter Platters,
3 Pewter Porringeres,
A small stew Pann of Copper,
A peare of Brasse and a peare of Silver Candle- sticks (of goode Plate.)
A Drippe Panne,
A Bedsteede of carven Oake, (ye one in wch I sleept in my Father's house, wth ye Val- lances and Curtayns and Tapestry Cover- lid belongynge, & ye wch my Sister Bread- cale [?] hath in charge for Mee.)
3 Duzzen Nappekins of fine linen damasque & 2 Tabel cloathes of ye same. Alsoe 8
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fine Holland Pillowe Beeres & 4 ditto Sheetes,
A skellet,
A pestel & Mortar,
A few Needels of differnt sizes,
A Carpet [that is, a table-cover; the name was then universally thus applied], of goodley stuffe and colour, aboute 2 Ell longe.
6 Tabel Knifes of ye beste Steal wth such han- dels as may bee.
Alsoe, 3 large & 3 smal Silvern Spoones, & 6 of horne."
And this is all. Yet for the time and place it must have been considered a fine outfit, perhaps too much so for the wife of the frontier farmer, skipper, and fighter. At the same period in old England, in the wills of wealthy titled families, bedding, utensils of copper, and dishes of pewter were constantly named as articles of considerable value. The elder Governor Winthrop was known as one of the wealthiest of the early colonists, yet the inventory of his possessions, made in 1649, does not present a proportionately finer showing. Even a century later than this date a complete outfit of pewter plates, dishes, and spoons made a lordly wedding present, given by a grandson of Major-General Humphrey Atherton to his daugh- ter - a gift which, according to traditions, excited some heartburnings among relatives who had not
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been so favored. In the absence of pewter, wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins were consid- ered rather fine, while the carefully dried gourds and the deep, saucer-like shells of the immense quahogs, which were then so abundant, but have now left only degenerate descendants along the New England coasts, served an ever-useful pur- pose when the supply of better things was short. It is said that small clam-shells, set in split sticks for handles, were used as teaspoons until the early part of this century. The large and thin shells of a kind of scallop, which is still plentiful along the shores of Maine and Massachusetts, are sometimes used even now as skimmers - a curious survival of an old custom so long after the need for it has passed by !
Many years after the old Gallup house had been torn down, the dining-table which had served the family for at least one generation was preserved in an out-house, where my informant had seen it in his youth. It was simply what once had been the cover of a large packing-box, of smooth oak boards, supported by carefully squared legs. The box might have been used to bring the bedding and other things from Europe, for on the under side of the table's top still remained the inscription : " For Mrs. Margarette Lake, Ippsitch."
Chairs, when found at all in the houses of the earliest colonists, were reserved for the heads of families and their most honored guests, or for the
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infirm. When one remembers what uncomforta- ble things the most of those chairs were, one must profoundly pity the infirm! One may be per- mitted to hope that the comfortable " barrel chair," still sometimes found in the country houses, was the happy invention of this time, by some bene- factor of the ill and aged. Coopers were plentier than cabinet-makers in those days, and the barrel chair has an extremely primitive look. Even in England, until after the Restoration, backless benches and stools formed the usual seats, and we must suppose that they did so for many years later than that.
Closets or pantries were not often built in the houses which first succeeded the log cabins of the settlers, chests which might also be utilized as seats, and a small room with shelves not always overnicely smoothed, answering for the safe-keep- ing of most articles not in daily use. A cupboard was a possession indicating a good degree of pros- perity, while a "court cup-board," or a sideboard, was a mark of positive affluence, even at a much later date than this.
Scanty as was the wedding house-plenishing of Hannah Gallup, she was reasonably well provided with fine clothes. Indeed, all of the better class among the colonists seem to have had dispropor- tionately liberal supplies of " mantels " and " petty- cotes " of velvet or brocade, with other " garments to consort therewith "; but this was not due so
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much to vanity as to thrift, the best being liter- ally the cheapest in the days when the finer fabrics were so honestly made as to wear for decades, and the cost of carriage was the same for a coat of frieze as for one of velvet.
Of silverware there was some, but not frequent, mention in wills and inventories, and to jewelry still less reference is made, unless mourning-rings may be thus classed. Mrs. Lake bequeathed to one of her daughters an "enamailed " and to the other a " gould " ring. An item of curious interest in this will is the following:
" To my Daughter, Martha Harris, I give my tapestry coverlid and all my other apparell, which are not disposed of to others pticulerly, and I give unto her my mantel, and after her decease to all her children as their need is." (The italics are mine.)
Tradition runs that this " mantel " was of Russian sable, even then as costly as it was rare, and that it had been brought from the far East, perhaps China. Such a bequest brings many things to mind: long, tedious sledgings, when stalwart men took the place of horses or oxen and drew their wives or sisters through the windings of wintry forests, where the only track was an Indian trail, and where every step was shadowed by the ever-pres- ent dread of the approach of the stealthy foe. Or we see visions of night campings, made fearful by
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the howlings of the wolves; and, day or night, always the same benumbing cold. Often must the grandmother's fur "mantel " (worn, we may be sure, until the last hair was gone) have proved a veritable life-preserver in those bitter years.
In addition to the above-mentioned " mantel," Mrs. Lake seems to have left a wardrobe of con- siderable extent and richness, besides a goodly list of linens and other household treasures, with sev- eral carved chests to contain them; but no books are mentioned, save a " grate Byble " and " another Bible."
Of such homely comforts as could be made from the materials at hand the industrious and ingenious colonist might possess a rude abun- dance. Le Grand Monarque of the most luxurious country then existing might have a fine silken instead of a coarse linen slip for his bed, but it would be filled with feathers no better than those plucked from the wild water-fowl of the New England coast; while heavily lined curtains of coarse homespun wool or linen shut out the bitter winds as effectually as the bravest damask from the looms of Flanders. The absence of many things which we now deem to be essential was not felt as a privation, because the things were unknown, not only in this wilderness, but in the old country.
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