"I think to make it a girt howse will make it more chargeable then neede; however, the side bearers for the second story being to be loaden with corne, etc., must not be pinned on, but rather eyther lett in to the studds, or borne vp with false studds, and soe tenented in at the ends; I leave it to you and the carpenters. In this story over the first, I would have a particion, whether in the middest or over the particion vnder I leave it. In the garrett, noe particion, but let there be one or two lucome1 windowes, if two, both on one side." "I desire to have the sparrs reach doune pretty deep at the eves to preserve the walls the better from the wether. I would have it sellered all over, and soe the frame of the howse accordeingly from the bottom. I would have the howse stronge in timber, though plaine & well brased. I would have it covered with very good oake-hart inch board, for the present, to be tacked on onely for the present as you tould me.” "Let the frame begin from the bottom of the seller, and soe in the ordinary way upright; for I can hereafter (to save the timber within grounde) run vp a thin brick worke without. I think it best to have the walls without to be all clapboarded besides the clay walls. It were not amisse to leave a doreway or two within the seller, that soe hereafter one may make comings in from without and let them be both vpon that side which the lucome1 window or windowes be." As Mr. Symonds desired that it be built as speedily as possible it may have been erected that same year. This was certainly a comfortable home. The west end of the ancient house now owned by the Historical Society was framed in precisely this fashion, and was built probably by John Fawn, before his removal about the year 1638.2 No other house of this period exists today in our community. 1 Lutheran? 2 Publications of the Ipswich Hist. Society, No. X. CHAPTER III. HOMES AND DRESS. Our surmise as to the common style of their dwellings is confirmed by indubitable record. Matthew Whipple lived on the corner of the present County and Summer streets, near Miss Sarah P. 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 North Main 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 amounted 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, but the contents of a single chamber were appraised at £82 15s. The established value of a bullock seems to have been £6, and cowes 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 £25 and less, were very simple and primitive. presume, they were log-houses. were quoted at Often, we may Thomas Lechford, in his Note Book, preserves an interesting contract, made by John Davys, joiner, to build a house for William Rix, in 1640; it was to be "16 foot long and 14 feet wide, w'th a chamber floare finish't summer and joysts, a cellar floare with joysts finish't, the roofe and walls clapboarded on the out syde, the chimney framed without daubing, to be done with hewan timber." The price was to be £21. Houses of this dimension were common, as late as 1665. In that year such inroads had been made upon the oaks and other valuable trees, that the Town of Ipswich ordered the Selectmen to issue a permit before a tree could be cut. The certificates issued possess a curious interest. Edmund Bridges was allowed timber" to make up his cellar," in 1667. In 1670, Joseph Goodhue received permit for a house 18 feet square, and Ephraim Fellows for a house 16 feet square. In 1671, Thomas Burnam's new house was 20 feet square, that of Obadiah Bridges 18 feet square, and Deacon Goodhue built one 16 feet square. In 1657, Alexander Knight, a helpless pauper, was provided with a house at the Town's expense, and the vote provided that it should be 16 feet long, 12 feet wide, 7 or 8 feet stud, with thatched roof, for which £6 was appropriated. Within, these homes were for the most part very plain and simple. Governor Dudley's house in Cambridge was reputed to be over-elegant, so that Governor Winthrop wrote him: "He did not well to bestow such cost about wainscotting and adorning his house, in the beginning of a plantation, both in regard to the expense and the example." But Dudley was able to reply, that "it was for the warmth of his house, and the charge was but little, being but clap-boards, nailed to the wall in the form of wainscot." The common finish of the rooms of houses of the better sort was a coating of clay, over the frame timbers and the bricks which filled the spaces between the studs. The ceilings were frequently, if not universally, left unfinished, and the rough, unpainted beams and floor joists, and the flooring of the room above, blackened with the smoke and grimy with dust, were a sombre contrast to the white ceilings of the modern home. Nevertheless, I incline to believe that if we could turn back the wheels of time and enter an early Ipswich home, we should find that it was not only habitable, but comfortable, and the furnishings much beyond our anticipation. For these yeomen and carpenters and weavers very likely had transported some of their furniture across the sea, and they reproduced here in the wilderness the living rooms of their old English homes. Happily our curiosity may be gratified in very large degree by the numerous inventories that remain, and we may in imagination undertake a tour of calls in the old town, and see for ourselves what those houses contained. There were but two rooms on the main floor, the "hall" and the parlor, and entrance to them was made from the entry in the middle of the house. The "hall" of the old Puritan house, was the "kitchen" of the next century. Indeed, these two words are used of the same apartment from the earliest record. It was the living room, the room where they cooked and ate and wrought and sat; in one home at least, that of Joseph Morse, a well-to-do settler, the room where his bed was set up, wherein he died in 1646. The chief object in this family room was always the fireplace, with its broad and generous hearth and chimney, ample enough to allow boys bent on mischief to drop a live calf from the roof, as they did one night, into poor old Mark Quilter's kitchen. As brick chimneys were not the rule at first, safety could be secured only by building their wooden chimneys, daubed with clay, abnormally large. No wonder the worthy folk who wrote these inventories invariably began with the fireplace and its appurtenances. Piled high with logs, roaring and snapping, it sent forth most comfortable heat, and cast a warm glow over the plainest interior, and beautified the humblest home. "Here is good living for those that love good fires," Pastor Higginson wrote. Bare walls, rough, unfinished ceilings, floors without carpets or rugs, all took on an humble grace; privation and loneliness and homesickness could be forgotten, in the rich glow of the evening firelight. Several pairs of andirons or cobirons were frequently used to support logs of different lengths. In one hall, at least, two pairs of cobirons, and a third pair ornamented with brasses are mentioned. Within easy reach, were the bellows and tongs, the fire-pan for carrying hot coals, the "fire-fork" and "fire- iron, for use about the hearth, we presume. Over the fire hung the trammel or coltrell, as it is called in one inventory. Pot hooks were suspended from the wooden or iron bar within the chimney that was supplanted by the crane in later times, and from them hung pots and kettles of copper, brass or iron, and of sizes, various. Some of these kettles must have been of prodigious size. Matthew Whipple had three brass pots that weighed sixty-eight pounds, and a copper that weighed forty pounds. The rich John Whittingham's kitchen, in his High street home, boasted a copper that was worth £3 10s, and Mr. Nelson of Rowley had a "great copper" that was |