CHAPTER IX. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



IT is the reputation of New Englanders to be good 

 home-makers. But such homes as the first settlers in 

 Cohasset could have built in the last quarter of the seven- 

 teenth century are not the basis for so good a reputation. 

 Crude and humble were the first boxes set up in our town 

 for the habitation of families ; and yet it is fairly certain 

 that none were so crude as a log hut. 



For a half-century it had been the means of livelihood 

 for some Hinghamites to make boards and timber out of 

 their forest trees, to ship to Boston and to other places 

 where wooden houses were rapidly being needed. Labo- 

 rious sawing it was for a man on the top of a log, and 

 another in a pit beneath the log, to rub the teeth of a long 

 saw up and down, up and down, against the wood until 

 the whole length of the log was sawed through ; and then 

 to repeat it until several planks were thus rived out of 

 each log. 



When Ralph Smith, February i, 1638-39, bargained to 

 give "five hundred merchantable cedar boards delivered 

 out of the swamp for three acres of planting ground,"* he 

 evidently had to work for his land. But thirty-three years 

 had passed since then, and boards were probably much 

 more in vogue for the floors and walls of houses. 



Shingles, split from short bolts of cedar logs or of white 

 pine and then shaved by a large drawknife to a thin edge 

 at one end, were made during many a winter before houses 

 at Cohasset were wanted. 



* See p. 113, Cliapter VI. 



158 



