THE FIRST HOMES. I 59 



The joists and rafters and posts and plates were readily 

 hewed from small trees, by trimming them to a square 

 form. 



The tools in use were some that came from England 

 with the first settlers and some that were made by Cham- 

 berlin, the blacksmith in Hingham. Their nails, what few 

 they used, were all hammered out by the patient smith. 

 Their bricks were made of the native mud and sand, 

 baked not very well nor moulded very evenly. Lime was 

 too scarce to be used for cementing the bricks, so they 

 made mortar of mud. 



Theirs was the age of colossal chimneys when hospi- 

 tality and comfort were estimated by the size of their fire- 

 places. 



Backlogs and firewood grew in limitless quantities in 

 every neighborhood, so that no economy of fuel was 

 necessary. Indeed, the necessity was to be lavish, for 

 those huge chimney throats gulped up the greater part of 

 the heat, so that only a small fraction was radiated into 

 the chilly rooms. 



But the early Cohasset settlers were the poorer ones 

 from the poor settlement of Hingham, venturing here for 

 a start in life. Their houses were very small, and the 

 chimneys must have been meager samples of masonry com- 

 pared with the huge piles that characterized certain other 

 communities at that time, and this community at a later 

 time.* There is no chimney standing to-day in the town 

 that dates earlier than the year 1700 a.d. But there were 

 homes here for more than twenty years previous to 1700, 

 and we have some authentic records that prove the extreme 

 meagerness of some of these homes. 



The exact date of the first migration of families to live 



* In the home of Robert T. Burbank, now standing on the west side of King 

 Street, can be seen a good sample of a cliimney of last century. 



Fireplaces are built for each room about the central chimney, not only upon the 

 ground floor, but in the second story also. 



