364 Percy Wells Bidwell 



probably in all except the newest settlements replaced the wooden 

 shutters and oiled paper of earlier times, was practically the only 

 material brought from any distance. The furniture, such as bed- 

 steads, chairs, settles, and tables, could easily be produced by the 

 local cabinet-maker, or even by a skilful carpenter. Besides making 

 the homespun sheets and blankets, quilts and comforters, the women 

 of the family made mattresses and pillows stuffed with the feathers 

 of home-raised geese. ^ An inventory of table-ware and kitchen 

 utensils brings to light only a few "boughten" articles and these were 

 carefully treasured and handed down from parents to children. Wood 

 was the material most used, in fact wherever possible; of it were made 

 trenchers, drinking-cups and tankards, and even spoons. Pewter 

 was also used for these articles to some extent; but china, porcelain, 

 glass or silverware were rarely seen. In the kitchen, wooden and 

 earthenware vessels predominated, pots of iron, brass or copper being 

 comparatively rare.^ 



In his Statistical Account of Middlesex County (Conn.), Field 

 states that not only clothing and furniture but also agricultural 

 implements were, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made 

 by the farmers for themselves.^ Wood was here again the principal 

 material employed. The tools used by a farmer in Concord, New 

 Hampshire, are thus described: "His plows were mainly of wood, 

 the soles and coulters only being of iron, though the mould-boards 

 were usually plated with sheets of that metal. 



"The village blacksmith made his nails, his axes, his chains, as 

 also his clumsy pitchforks, and flat-tined manure forks. . . . His 



^ Woman's work, it would seem, was truly endless at this time. Besides the 

 tasks already enumerated, and such by-industries as the making of soap and candles, 

 they often had the care of poultry or bees, milked cows and did light outdoor 

 work, such as weeding gardens and gathering fruit and vegetables. Combined 

 with the bearing and rearing of large families of children, these unremitting labors 

 shortened the duration of life of the sex very considerably. In frontier settle- 

 ments extreme illustrations of this fact, were found, such as that cited by Kendall, 

 Travels, III. 130. Near Bath, Maine, he saw a burying-ground in which were the 

 graves of ten married women, eight of whom had died between the ages of twenty- 

 two and thirty years. The "consumption" to which he attributes their early 

 deaths, was, if it existed, no doubt brought on by overwork. 



2 See Earle, Home Life, Chs. III. and IV. Bishop, American Manufactures, 

 I. 488, remarks upon the scarcity of iron utensils at this time. Iron pots, not 

 generally more than one or two, were considered sufficiently valuable to be in- 

 cluded in the inventories of estates. 



3 Op. cit., p. 17. 



