THE FIRST HOMES. 165 



barrel with a piece of flint held in the jaws of a spring 

 hammer. Possibly these were of the same pattern as the 

 fowling pieces first brought to the colony, the barrels of 

 which were five and a half feet long. But the customary 

 way of bagging game was by traps, so that a great deal of 

 leisure at short range might be practised in dispatching 

 the captured animals with these old flintlocks. 



The hoe and the spade mentioned in the inventory are 

 evidences of the more peaceful toil that compelled the 

 soil to furnish food. The corn which grew was no doubt 

 cut by that hook-nosed heavy knife called the "billhook," 

 and the two frying pans that cooked the corncakes made 

 scanty luxury. 



Those " wooden dishes " were probably shaped by the 

 cooper from some good pieces of Cohasset trees ; added 

 to the four chairs, they amounted to seven shillings' worth. 

 Think of a Cohasset household to-day possessed of only 

 four chairs ! Probably these four were for the " best 

 room," while benches and settles were used in the kitchen, 

 and were not worth enough to enumerate. 



But those days of poverty and simplicity deserve some- 

 thing better at our hands than a touch of disdain ; for those 

 early home-builders made part of our present comfort, and 

 despite the meagerness of their lives, their struggle for 

 existence in the face of such great odds reveals, as well as 

 ours may, the fundamental heroism, of living. 



Among the earliest scattered homes of Cohasset was 

 that of Daniel Lincoln, who is the first one to be found in 

 the Hingham records designated as a Cohasset resident. 



"Daniel Lincoln of Conohasset " was mentioned in the 

 year 1685, when Main Street was being laid out. He was 

 thirty-two years of age at that time, and the little family 

 included his wife Elizabeth and his two little boys, Oba- 

 diah, aged six years, and Hezekiah, four. 



Through these and a younger daughter, Elizabeth, who 

 married Nathaniel Nichols of Jerusalem Road (1710-11), a 



