Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay ColonyDow, George Francis
History
Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
Dow, George Francis
Massachusetts -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
Household implements for a family of six persons, viz.:
Plough share 2 11
1 iron pot 0 7 0
1 great copper kettle 2 0 0
1 small kettle 10 0
1 lesser kettle 6 0
1 large frying pan 2 6
1 small frying pan 1 8
1 brass mortar 0 3 0
1 spit 2 0
1 grid iron 1 0
2 skillets 5 0
Platters, dishes and
spoons of wood 4 0
The above prices are estimated costs in England and the freight on
the same would be reckoned at the rate of half a ton per person.
The vessels which carried the great emigration to New England
between 1630 and 1640 were of small tonnage and the passenger
accommodations on board were limited in space and barren of creature
comforts. Small wonder that the health of many of the first
settlers, shaken by the passage at sea, paid toll to the severity of
the New England climate--the biting cold of the winter and the heat
of the summer days to which they were unaccustomed.
"It was not because the Country was unhealthful, but because their
bodies were corrupted with sea-diet, which was naught, their Beefe
and Porke being tainted, their Butter and Cheese corrupted, their
Fish rotten, and voyage long, by reason of crosse Windes, so
that winter approaching before they could get warme houses, and
the searching sharpnes of that purer Climate, creeping in at the
crannies of their crazed bodies, caused death and sickness."[9]
[9] Wood, _New-Englands Prospect_, London, 1634.
The ship _Talbot_, on which Mr. Higginson sailed, brought over
one hundred passengers and thirty seamen. She measured nearly
eighty-six feet in length and had a depth of hold of eleven feet.
By present-day measurement she was about two hundred tons burden.
The space between decks, where the passengers slept and spent much
time during the dreary voyage, was so low that a tall man could not
stand erect, and whenever a severe storm arose, so that the ports
and hatches must be kept closed, the air below deck in time must
have become intolerable. Such a storm arose when the _Talbot_ was
thirty-three days out and "ye wind blew mightily, ye sea roared and
ye waves tossed us horribly; besides it was fearfull darke and ye
mariners made us afraid with their running here and there and lowd
crying one to another to pull at this and y^t rope."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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