Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dow George Francis
furniture. The parlor was also used as a bedroom, a practice which was common everywhere in the seventeenth century. It had two bedsteads valued at £1. 6. 8.; a cupboard, 10s.; a sea chest, 10s.; two "joyned Chaires," 5s.; a round table, 7s.; a deske, 4s.; and a band box, 2s. There was also a large nest of boxes valued £2. and a small nest of boxes worth only three shillings. The feather beds, boulsters, and pillows on each bed were valued at about twice as much as a bedstead and the coverlets averaged about £1. a piece. There were flaxen sheets for Mrs. Dillingham's bed and coarse sheets for the beds of the maid and the indentured servant. A warming pan bears silent testimony to the cold of the winter season. Another bedstead valued at only three shillings may have been in the garret and occupied by Ann Towle, the maid. A chest stood in the kitchen – more generally spoken of at that time as "the hall," in accordance with the English usage – and two boxes, probably used for storage and also for seats. That was all the furniture listed in the kitchen that was considered of any value. The tables, stools, benches, shelving, or other furnishings seemingly necessary to housekeeping at that time either did not exist or were so crude in construction as to have little or no value in estimating the estate. We find five cushions, however, valued at fifteen shillings.
Mrs. Dillingham died possessed of a few really fine furnishings – possibly treasured ancestral pieces – for she bequeathed a silver bowl to the wife of Richard Saltonstall, and to the wife of John Appleton she gave a silver porringer. It would be extremely interesting today to know what has become of these two pieces of Colonial silver. No other silver is mentioned but on shelving in the kitchen rested 40½ pounds of pewter valued at £2. 14. 0. As a pewter plate of the time weighs nearly two pounds and a platter much more the supply of pewter for the table was not large. Wooden plates, trenchers, and bowls are not mentioned, but there were twenty-five pewter saucers, six porringers, seven spoons, and five shillings worth of knives. As for table forks, they were practically unknown in the Colony at that time. Governor Winthrop brought over a fork in 1630, carefully preserved in a case, which is supposed to be the first and only table fork in the Colony in the earliest days of the settlements. Knives, spoons, and fingers, with plenty of napery, met the demands of table manners in the seventeenth century.
The large fireplace in the kitchen had its usual equipment of pot-hooks, fire shovel and tongs, gridiron, trivet, and bellows, and beside it was an old dark lantern valued at only two shillings. There were iron pots, kettles, skillets and ladles; a brass pot and a mortar. There was a frying-pan with a hole in it and in a box were kept "bullets, hinges and other smale things." Two beer vessels were listed; a case of bottles, two jugs, three pans, a tray, and two baskets. Such was the simple equipment of the Dillingham kitchen. There were plenty of table-cloths and napkins but no curtains at any of the windows. If a broom were used it probably was made of birch twigs bound together around a long handle. Candlesticks do not appear in the inventory and the only store of food mentioned (aside from twenty-one new cheeses valued at £2. 16. 0.) was seven bushels of rye, two firkins and a half of butter, a half bushel of malt, six pounds of raisins, and some spice. Our ancestors had a highly developed appreciation of the value of condiments. In a Salem inventory at a somewhat later date appear salt, pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmegs, and allspice.
Mrs. Dillingham's wearing apparel unfortunately is not listed item by item, but given a total value of £5. 8. 4. Her linen amounted to an almost equal sum. Some of her deceased husband's clothing is included in the inventory, such as a coat with silver buttons, a red waistcoat, a suit of serge and a black suit of serge unmade, a jacket of cloth, and an old suit and cloak. Little Sara Dillingham, the orphaned child, when sent to school to goodwife Symonds was supplied with "a stuffe petticoat & waskote" and four "shifts with shewes"; also a gown that cost £2. 10s. Perhaps after a time she may have been able to read and fully appreciate the books formerly in her loving father's chest. They were: "Perkins works in 3 volumes, Seaven Treatises bound in 2 volumes, the Spowse Royall, the bruised reade, & a little new testiment."
Six years later, in 1642, there died in the same town, Richard Lumpkin, who had emigrated from Boxted, in Essex, and became an influential citizen in the new town in the new county of Essex. He was elected a representative to the Great and General Court and was deacon of the Ipswich church at the time of his death. He left an estate valued at £300. In the hall of his house stood a long table, with two forms and a stool beside it, having a total value of only fifteen shillings. The hall also contained three chairs and six cushions valued at four shillings. That was all the furniture in the room that was of any value. There were books, however, valued at £2. 10. 0., a musket and a fowling piece and other small furnishings. In the parlor was a table with six joined stools, three chairs and eight cushions, a bedstead, and a trundle bed with curtains, and a chest, the latter valued at only four shillings. In the chamber over the parlor was a bedstead with its trundle bed, a table valued at three shillings, four chests and two boxes; not a chair or stool is named in connection with the room. The kitchen was in the leanto and while it contained a good supply of brass and iron pots and kettles and also pewter dishes, the table, bench, stools and wooden plates, etc., that must have been in the room were of so little value that they do not appear in the inventory.
It is when we meet with joined and wainscot chests and court, livery, and standing cupboards that we find pieces that may have been brought from overseas. When Mr. Thomas Millard of Newbury (note the title of honor), died in 1653, he possessed a wainscot cupboard, table, chairs and stools. He also left behind him three silver spoons, a silver cup, and a silver salt seller, and among the kitchen utensils were tinned pudding pans, a brazen chaffing dish and a lanthorn and lamp made of latin ware.
The widow of the Rev. Jose Glover married, in 1641, Henry Dunster, President of Harvard College. Among the furnishings of her house were "eleven featherbeds or downe … one of them haveing philop and Cheny curtaines in graine with a deep silke fringe on the vallance, and a smaller on the Curtaines, and a Coverlett sutable to it, made of Red Kersie, and laced with a greene lace, round the sides and 2 downe the middle, also … an outlandish quilt, also to another a blue serdge suite very rich and costly, curtaines and valances laced, and fringe, and a blue Rug to the bed, also a greene sute in the same manner, also another red wrought suite, with a sheet and all things Compleate, also a Canopie bed, with Curtenes, a Chest of Drawers of part of this Chest was filled with rich lenen a dammeske suite seuerall diepere suits a fine hollen[d] suit with a stech: with abundance of flaxen linen for Common use, in another parte of the chest of drawers tape, tafety for Chaire and Stooles … also 29 siluer spones a very faire salt with 3 full knops on the top of it22 3 other siluer salts of lesser sorts a great siluer trunke with 4 knop to stand on the table and with suger: 6 porrengers, one small one: 3 bere boules 4 wine cups a siluer grate with a Couer on it: 6 siluer trencher plates: also blankets and Coverletts and Rugs euery[way] Compleat to furnish so many beds."23
By way of contrast let us glance at the inventory of the possessions of William Googe of Lynn, who died in 1646, ten years after Mrs. Dillingham had willed that her body be "decently buyried" and her child "religiously educated if God give it life." Googe left a house and twelve acres of land and the total value of his possessions amounted to but £28. 11. 7, with debts of £4. 9. 7. He left a widow and three small children, and though dying in very lowly circumstances he may have known better times, for John Mascoll, the servant of Mr. Googe of Lynn, was fined in 1643, for neglecting the watch. The title of honor, "Mr.," was used but sparingly in those early days and usually indicated a degree of social standing in the community.
Googe had been a soldier, for among his personal belongings at death were a sword and belt, a musket and bandoleers, and also gunpowder. One cow and four hogs comprised his entire livestock, and five bushels of wheat, ten bushels of Indian corn, and flax in the bundle lay in the garret of his house, which was frugally furnished with a chest, a chair, an old chair, a stool, and a trunk. The family probably slept on pallet beds made up on the floor, for bedding is listed but no bedsteads. They had a frying pan, a gridiron, a skillet, a posnet, an earthen pot, six spoons, and the following woodenware, viz.: "3 wood trayes & 3 wood boules & 3 wood dishes, 1s. 9d.; one runlitt, 1s.; paieles & tubs, 3s." Two bags valued at two shillings bring to a close the list of the earthly possessions of William Googe of Lynn. When the inventory was brought into court it very properly gave the goods to the widow "for the bringing up of her three small children." So
This large salt is now owned by Harvard College.