More "Furnishings" of the Pilgrims

"The Physical Setting"

of

A Little Commonwealth

http://www.lilfordhall.com/American-History-Links.asp

Well, I've been off the subject for about a week. So, I thought that I would get back to this book, because I have three more books to tell you about waiting in the wings!

If you remember, previous posts talked about how the Pilgrims were not so bland as we may have thought. They had different structure styles of their houses, mainly size. However, because there were size difference, there was also interior differences. The wealth of the family determined the size, and it also determined their furnishings. 

"First, the inventories show a clear trend toward more ample and more diversified physical possessions... the whole community moved slowly toward greater material prosperity... No one at Plymouth possessed a large amount of personal property in the first decade or so of settlement; distinctions among different house-holds reflected only relative degrees of austerity."

"There was relatively little money circulating in the Old Colony, and there certainly were no banks in which to deposit savings. Thus wealth necessarily implied some tangible kind of investment. The possession of land was obviously desirable on this account, since the overall trend in land values was upward throughout the century. But another alternative, and perhaps an even safer one, was investment in some of the basic artifacts of domestic life." This was "a good investment, a sound way of preserving and demonstrating... personal wealth."

"Among the larger furnishings found in a typical hall the most important were the chests. Since none of these seventeenth-century houses had closets, portable chests (and "boxes" and "Trunks") provided the chief facilities for storage. Their importance was enhanced by the fact that they could also serve as seats or tables...[A] Bible box - that is a special container set on a table to hold a Bible or something else of particular value."

Again, I am listing excerpts for this book, and I highly suggest its purchase. Even though I have several weeks attributed here, there is so much more that I am not getting to!

Notes:

pages 39- 43