Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. George Francis Dow
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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 wort[25] 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