For heat the house had a central chimney with two fireplaces. Iron stoves replaced fireplaces early on as local bog iron and its technology became known. They are a vastly more efficient heat source. In Taunton an iron foundry was established in 1655. One began in Pembroke as early as 1648. Carver had bog iron deposits. The stoves were considered of enough value to be listed in early inventories of estate. Later in Plymouth, the Plymouth Iron Foundry on Water Street began making stoves in the 1860’s. There have been some conclusions about certain aspects of family life pointed out by John Demos in his fascinating studies in _A Little Commonwealth_ that throw light on practices observed in the continuity of such families as the Churchills, Richmonds, Wrights and Burgesses. He explains that the average number of children per couple of eight or nine apiece was quite standard in the seventeenth century. It seems to me it continued probably in a not greatly different way one hundred years later. A basic conviction was that the purpose of marriage was procreation, even if other considerations were not openly emphasized. Children could ultimately bring economic benefits to the family as a whole, not forgetting the more important benefits to the quality of life such as mutual love and affection, care, security in old age, barriers against loneliness and the like. There was no birth control as we know it. The fact that all babies were generally breast fed naturally provided a two year interval between births. In contrast with today’s average of mothers having their last baby at age 26, couples in the Colony might have a full-grown son or daughter about to marry and an infant at the mother’s breast all under the same roof. This fact gave a gradualness to the lives of siblings along the way and a chance to absorb family culture and to come of age by gradual stages. The mortality rate between birth and maturity is suggested by the evidence as 25% or possibly less. This is very high by comparison with our own one percent, producing obvious sorrows. As for life expectancy, for example, a male of 21 years could expect to reach an age of 69.2 years and a female of 62.4 years, indicating the losses for women in childbirth, estimating that one birth in thirty resulted in the death of the mother. _A Little Commonwealth_, p. 66. Yet we must realize the perpetual pregnancies for some women were a hard fact of life. So we can see some of the reasons why, although the families we speak about had large numbers in each generation, they were able to provide for them. They were able to bring the children to maturity in part because of the opportunities that lay at hand, in the accessibility of new lands, inheritance, farming, and a type of life that required self-sufficiency. The possibility of “growth” was a part of the spirit of the times.