It is all a matter of common sense reasoning which can be backed up by an examination of early records and also the furniture itself. Why pay a considerable value in money to transport, in an overcrowded ship, utilitarian pieces of furniture, that could be made in the newly settled colony, by workmen who were going over in the same ship? Timber could be had here for the cutting and until sufficient time had elapsed to permit the making of chairs, beds and other required furniture, one could sit on rudely made stools and boxes and sleep on pallet beds made up on the floor just as many of them would be obliged to sleep while on board ship. Some estimate of the culture of the New England people during the seventeenth century and of their appreciation of the refinements of life may be reached with a degree of accuracy through a study of the carefully itemized inventories of their estates made at time of death. During that period the Royal Governor from overseas, with his little court of officials and followers, had not introduced London fashions and furnishings to the extent that existed in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the wealth of the colonies had not grown to the point where the refinements of life were not only esteemed but demanded by loving spouses and by those who had taken ship for England or the Continent and there had observed how other people lived. Among the early settlements made in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay was one at Agawam, now the town of Ipswich. The news had reached Boston that the French were pushing their settlements westward along the coast, bringing with them "divers priests and Jesuits," which so alarmed the Governor and the Assistants that it was decided to forestall the French and hasten the planting of new towns north of Boston. The first move was to send the Governor's son John, with twelve others, to establish themselves at Agawam. There were no roads and so they sailed along the coast in a shallop and took possession of the town site in March, 1633. Their families and other settlers soon followed and the increase of population was such that in August, 1634, the Court of Assistants decreed that the place be called Ipswich, after old Ipswich in England, "in acknowledgment of the great honor and kindness done to our people, who took shipping there."