Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dow George Francis
This house was one of the finest in the town of Boston and afterwards became the Province House, – the residence of the Governors of the Province. Another room in this house was also furnished with hangings. Arras hangings were advertised from time to time in the Boston newspapers and in 1736, Boydell, the printer of the Boston Gazette, advertised a house in which one chamber in the first story was "hung with Scotch Tapestry, the other with Green cheny." The large brick house of the late Isaac Gridley, situated near Fort Hill, in Boston, was sold in 1771. It contained thirteen rooms and three of the lower rooms were "genteelly furnished with Tapestry Hangings."
A three-story house was built in Boston about 1715 by William Clark, a wealthy merchant and member of the governor's council. His death in 1742, was attributed by some, to the loss of forty sail of vessels in the French War. In this house afterwards lived Sir Henry Frankland, Collector of the Port, who fell in love with Agnes Surriage, the beautiful sixteen-year-old maid-of-all-work at the Fountain Inn in Marblehead. Her romantic story is well-known. This house differed but little from the dozen or so of its type to be found in Boston at the time, save in its rich and elaborate decoration of the north parlor, at the right of the entrance hall. Here, the walls were divided into panels by fluted pilasters supporting an elaborate cornice, the whole heavily gilded, and each of the panels was embellished with a landscape or other decoration painted in oils. Painted arabesques and heraldic devices covered all other flat surfaces and the floor was laid in a mosaic of various colored woods. Every inch of the surface of this parlor was the product of the imagination and skill of the painter, gilder or carver. But while this magnificence actually existed in New England, by no means was it typically representative of its culture or artistic development. It merely exhibited the pride of wealth and was largely the product of European craftsmen.
The heavy strap hinges on the doors of the earlier houses and buildings were probably wrought by hand at the forge of the nearest blacksmith, but most of the hardware and iron work was imported from England. Before 1650 there was a slitting mill at the Saugus Iron Works, but the principal product of this forge was cast iron manufactures, such as pots and kettles. At a later date, Parliament, at the instigation of the English manufacturers, prohibited by law the setting up of slitting mills and trip hammers, and it naturally followed that the manufactured iron and brass required by the Colonies was brought overseas from Birmingham and Sheffield.
A word or two as to the varying types of house hardware may not be amiss at this time. At the outset wooden hinges and heavy strap hinges of wrought iron were in common use. These hinges were hung on gudgeons and their points varied in design but the spear-shaped point was most common. In the best houses, at an early date and continuing until the beginning of the eighteenth century, might be found the so-called "cock's head" hinge, an ornamental survival from Roman times. The butterfly hinge was also in use at that time – usually on cupboards and furniture doors. The H and HL hinges came into use in New England in the early 1700's and lasted until after the Revolution. These hinges were cut out of heavy sheet iron and were made in factories in England. This type of hinge was superseded by the cast-iron butt, still in use, which was invented in England in 1775, and adopted very generally in the United States at the close of the Revolution.
In some old houses that have been restored and in many modern constructions done in the manner of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the door hinges in painted rooms have been picked out in black making them most conspicuous. This is a modern conceit – an invention of the modern architect. It was not done in the old days, a fact easily established by carefully scraping through the various coats of paint on an old house. Our great-great-grandmothers had no itching desire for contrasts of that sort. They knew nothing of highboys, grandfather's clocks, low daddys, Lady Washington chairs, courting mirrors, fiddle back chairs or donkey-eared spindle backs. These names are inventions of collectors or antique dealers striving for the picturesque. The highboy, it is true, antedates the others, but in the early days this piece of furniture was called a high chest of drawers and the lowboy was called a low chest. Recently the common HL hinge has been described as the "Holy Land" hinge; certainly not referring to the English colonies where there were fully as many sinners as saints.
Wooden latches were used on both outside and inside doors in early days and the wooden latch persisted in the back country until comparatively recent times. The iron thumb latch was made by the country blacksmith but more and more it came to be imported from England. The earliest type has spear-point handles. The rounded end comes in after 1700 and is common about 1750. The Norfolk latch, in brass and iron, comes in after the Revolution and was replaced by the common cast-iron thumb latch, invented by Blake in 1840. In examining old hinges and all kinds of hardware always have in mind that the machine-made pointed screw was not invented until 1846.
A feature of this hardware trade with England, which is of much interest, is the catalogues that were sent over by the manufacturers in Birmingham. About the year 1770 they began to send out drawings of different pieces of hardware, tools, etc., and this soon developed into sheets of engravings on copper which were bound into books and sent to customers at a distance who then could visualize the goods and order accordingly; size, list price and discount were indicated. Seldom was there a title-page or even a label to indicate a source, but the handmade paper bears its watermark and generally the date when it was made. These catalogues are now difficult to find and the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, esteems them so highly that a descriptive catalogue of its collection has been published. Probably the largest collection of these catalogues in America is in the library of the Essex Institute at Salem.
CHAPTER III
How They Furnished Their Houses
It is a lamentable fact that the present generation possesses little accurate information on the every day life and surroundings of the early settlers in Massachusetts. Some of the finer pieces of furniture have been preserved together with a few portraits and pieces of silver and here and there an article of costume of special beauty or unusual association. The newly settled country had no artists to paint pictures of household interiors in the manner of the Dutch painters and the diarists and letter writers of that time when they used a quill pen, devoted little thought to the homely happenings of the household or to the costume and furniture with which every one was familiar. Judge Samuel Sewall's diary20 throws much light on New England life two centuries and more ago, but many are the questions we would like to ask. In August, 1702, he rode to Newbury to attend the funeral of his sister Mehitable and returned home by way of Andover where he found that the keeper of the ordinary was sick and so went to Mr. Woodman's daughters "and there din'd on Pork and Beans; afterward had Fowls rosted and dress'd very well." It would be interesting if we could know more about that dinner. Did the Judge eat in the same room in which the fowls were "rosted" and was the table furnished with woodenware or pewter, or both? Had the Woodmans begun to use two-tined forks or did the Judge hold the meat in one hand while he cut it up and conveyed it to his mouth with the knife? Was a roasting jack fastened over the fireplace? Was the dinner served on a table-board? Did all stand while "a blessing" was asked? What was served for dessert? Did the Judge wash his hands at the washbench in the kitchen and if not, where did he find the washbasin? What pictures were on the parlor walls and was there a bedstead in the corner and if so, how was it furnished and how made? A bedstead known to have been used in a New England house of 1702 is almost unknown today. If the Judge had only devoted five minutes, while writing up his diary, to a close description of that bedstead and its furnishings he would have settled many existing doubts.
It seems entirely reasonable that a distinguished guest in the house would not be required in the morning to go to the washbench in the kitchen and use the family basin. The dignity of Judge Sewall and the delicacy of Madam Belcher would rebel at the thought of an exhibition of disheveled attire before the serving maid and the numerous children of the family. In the humblest home, on occasion, it would be a simple matter to place in the chamber of a guest, on a table or even on a chair, a basin and a jug of water with a towel.
In the journal of the travels of Dr. Alexander Hamilton of Annapolis, Md., who rode through New England in 1744, may be found the description of the furnishings of a chamber in an inn. Doctor Hamilton was accompanied by a negro servant and on a Sunday morning at Marblehead he asked for his portmanteau. "I was told by my man Dromo