ONE of the most valuable pieces of furniture in the household of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the bedstead with its belongings. Bedsteads and beds occupy a large space in inventories, and their valuation was often far more than that of any other article in the inventory, sometimes more than all the others. In spite of the great value placed upon them, none have survived to show us exactly what was meant by the “oak Marlbrough bedstead” or the “half-headed bedstead” in early inventories. About the bedstead up to 1750 we know only what these inventories tell us, but the inference is that bedsteads similar to those in England at that time were also in use in the colonies. The greater portion of the value of the bedstead lay in its furnishings,—the hangings, feather bed, bolster, quilts, blankets, and coverlid,—the bedstead proper, when inventoried separately, being placed at so low a sum that one concludes it must have been extremely plain. [Illustration: Illus. 51.—Wicker Cradle, 1620.] Several cradles made in the seventeenth century are still in existence. Illustration 51 shows one which is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, and which is said to have sheltered Peregrine White, the first child born in this country to the Pilgrims. It is of wicker and of Oriental manufacture, having been brought from Holland upon the _Mayflower_, with the Pilgrims. [Illustration: Illus. 52.—Oak Cradle, 1680.] The cradle in Illustration 52 is of more substantial build. It is of oak, and was made for John Coffin, who was born in Newbury, January 8, 1680. Sergeant Stephen Jaques, “who built the meeting house with great needles and little needles pointing downward,” fashioned this cradle, whose worn rockers bear witness to the many generations of babies who have slept within its sturdy frame. It is now in the rooms of the Newburyport Historical Society. Another wooden cradle is in Pilgrim Hall, made of oak and very similar, with the turned spindles at the sides of its wooden hood, to a cradle dated 1691, in the South Kensington Museum. [Illustration: Illus. 53.—Bedstead and Commode, 1750.] “Cupboard bedsteads” and “presse bedsteads” are mentioned in the inventories. They were probably the same as the Dutch “slaw-bank,” and when not in use they were fastened up against the wall in a closet made to fit the bed, and the closet doors were closed or curtains were drawn over the bedstead. There is a slaw-bank in the old Sumner house in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, built in 1797. [Illustration: Illus. 54.—Field Bedstead, 1760-1770.]