488 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
December, 1909 
Colonial Fireplaces and Fire-Irons 
By Mary H. Northend 
With Photographs by the Author 
<3 ARE and unattractive as were many of the 
ES 
(ASG rough homes constructed by the early 
se settlers in this country, nevertheless, they 
possessed, almost without exception, one 
feature of comfort and cheeriness which 
is sadly lacking in modern homes. ‘This 
characteristic feature was the enormous 
open fireplace with its huge logs and high-backed wooden 
settles around which the family life of the sturdy pioneers 
centered. 
In those primitive days, when coal and stoves were alike 
unknown, the open fire was relied on not only to heat the 
house, but to cook the food as well. The fireplace was gen- 
erally located in the main apartment, which served as 
kitchen, dining-room and parlor combined, and sometimes 
also as a sleeping-room. Through lack of other material, 
or of sufficient means to purchase it, they were often built 
of roughly hewn rock or field-stones found not far from 
the cabin. These stones were piled up wall-fashion and 
chinked with mud and clay in place of mortar. 
In size, some of these old Colonial fireplaces were veri- 
table caverns, for it required a tremendous fire during the 
cold, stormy winter months to warm one of those roughly 
built houses with the chill wind penetrating between the 
logs and around the ill-fitting doors and windows. ‘Then, 
too, there must be room for the big kettles and pots, in 
which the cooking was done, to hang from the stout stick 
of green wood or the iron crane that was arranged for that 
purpose. 
Such open fires as warmed those hearths would be ex- 
travagant luxuries in these days of high-priced fuel, but at 
that time there was an abundance of wood to be had for 
the chopping. Huge back-logs, sometimes measuring ten 
feet in length and two in diameter, occupied the back of the 
fireplace, serving to throw the warmth out into the room and 
at the same time to prevent the stonework from becoming 
too hot. A smaller log, known as the fore-stick, was placed 
at the front, raised a few inches from the hearth by fire- 
dogs. Smaller sticks were then piled in between and the 
kindlings of dry pine and shavings were lighted by means 
of flint, steel and tinderbox, or coals brought from a neigh- 
bor’s hearth. Once kindled, the fire was rarely allowed to 
Colonial fireplace in the house of Ross S, Turner, at Wilton, New Hampshire 
