Part 15

"To all gentlemen and others: There is lately arrived in Boston by way of Pennsylvania a Clock maker. If any person or persons hath any occasions for new Clocks or to have Old Ones turn'd into Pendulums, or any other thing either in making or mending, they can go to the Sign of the Clock and Dial on the South Side of the Town House."

In 1712, in November, appeared in the News Letter the advertisement of a man who "performed all sorts of New Clocks and Watch works, viz: 30 hour Clocks, Week Clocks, Month Clocks, Spring Table Clocks, Chime Clocks, quarter Clocks, quarter Chime Clocks, Church Clocks, Terret Clocks;" and on April 16, 1716, this notice appeared: "Lately come from London. A Parcel of very Fine Clocks. They go a week and repeat the hour when Pull'd. In Japan Cases or Wall Nutt."

By this time, in the inventory or "enroulment" of the estate of any person of note, we always find a clock mentioned. Increase Mather left to his son Cotton "one Pendilum Clock." Soon appear Japann'd clocks and Pullup Clocks. In the New England Weekly Journal of October, 1732, the fourth prize in the Newport lottery was announced to be a clock worth L65. "A Handsome new Eight day Clock which shows the Moons Age, Strikes the Quarters on Six very Tunable Bells & is in a Good Japann'd Case in Imitation of Tortoise Shell & Gold."

This advertisement of Edmund Entwisle, in the Boston News Letter of November 18, 1742, proves, I think, that they had some very handsome clocks in those days:

"A Fine Clock. It goes 8 or 9 days with once winding up. And repeats the Hour it struck last when you pull it. The Dial is 13 inches on the Square & Arched with a SemiCircle on the Top round which is a strong Plate with this Motto (Time shews the Way of Lifes Decay) well engraved & silver'd, within the Motto Ring it shews from behind two Semispheres the Moons Increase & Decrease by two curious Painted Faces ornamented with Golden Stars between on a Blue Ground, and a white Circle on the Outside divided into Days figured at every Third, in which Divisions is shewn the Age by a fix't Index from the Top, as they pass by the great Circle is divided into three Concentrick Collums on the outmost of which it shews the Minute of each Hour and the Middlemost the Hours &c. the innermost is divided into 31 equal parts figur'd at every other on which is shewn the Day of the Month by a Hand from the Dial Plate as the Hour & Minute is, it also shews the Seconds as common & is ornamented with curious Engravings in a Most Fashionable Manner. The case is made of very Good Mohogony with Quarter Collums in the Body, broke in the Surface with Raised Pannels with Quarter Rounds burs Bands & Strings. The head is ornamented with Gilded Capitalls Bases & Frise with New fashion'd Balls compos'd of Mohogony with Gilt Leaves & Flowers."

I do not quite understand this description, and I know I could never have told the correct time by this clock, but surely it must have been very elegant and costly.

The earliest and most natural, as well as most plentiful, illuminating medium for the colonists was found in pine-knots. Wood says:

"Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is so much spoke of which may serve as a shift among poore folks but I cannot commend it for Singular good because it is something sluttish dropping a pitchy kind of substance where it stands."

Higginson wrote in 1630, "Though New England has no tallow to make candles of yet by abundance of fish thereof it can afford oil for lamps."

Though lamps and "lamp yearne," or wicks, appear in many an early invoice, I cannot think that they were extensively used. Betty lamps were the earliest form. They were a shallow receptacle, usually of pewter, iron, or brass, circular or oval in shape, and occasionally triangular, and about two or three inches in diameter, with a projecting nose an inch or two long. When in use they were filled with tallow or grease, and a wick or piece of twisted rag was placed so that the lighted end could hang on the nose. Specimens can be seen at Deerfield Memorial Hall. I have one with a hook and chain by which to hang it up, and a handled hook attached with which to clean out the grease. These lamps were sometimes called "brown-bettys," or "kials," or "cruiseys." A phbe lamp resembled a betty lamp, but had a shallow cup underneath to catch the dripping grease.

Soon candles were made by being run in moulds, or by a tedious process of dipping. The fragrant bayberry furnished a pale green wax, which Robert Beverly thus described in 1705:

"A pale brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles which are never greasy to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff."

The Abbe Robin and other travellers gave similar testimony. Bayberry wax was a standard farm production wherever bayberries grew, and was advertised in New England papers until this century. I entered within a year a single-storied house a few miles from Plymouth Rock, where an aged descendant of the Pilgrims earns her scanty spending-money by making "bayberry taller," and bought a cake and candles of the wax, made in precisely the method of her ancestors; and I too can add my evidence as to the pure, spicy perfume of this New England incense.

The growth of the whaling trade, and consequent use of spermaceti, of course increased the facilities for, and the possibilities of, house illumination. In 1686 Governor Andros petitioned for a commission for a voyage after "Sperma-Coeti Whales," but not till the middle of the following century did spermaceti become of common enough use to bring forth such notices as this, in the Boston Independent Advertiser of January, 1749:

"Sperma-Ceti Candles, exceeding all others for Beauty Sweetness of Scent when Extinguished. Duration being more than Double with Tallow Candles of Equal Size. Dimensions of Flame near 4 Times more. Emitting a Soft easy Expanding Light, bringing the object close to the Sight, rather than causing the Eye to trace after them, as all Tallow Candles do, from a Constant Dimnes which they produce. One of these Candles serves the use and purpose of 3 Tallow Candles, and upon the Whole are much pleasanter and cheaper."

These candles were placed in candle-beams--rude chandeliers of crossed sticks of wood or strips of metal with sockets; in sliding stands, in sconces, which were also called prongs or candle-arms. The latter appeared in the inventories of all genteel folk, and decorated the walls of all genteel parlors.

Candlesticks and snuffers were found in every house; the latter were called by various names, the word snit or snite being the most curious. It is from the old English snyten, to blow, and was originally a verb--to snite the candle, or put it out. In the inventory of property of John Gager, of Norwich, in 1703, appears "One Snit."

Snuffer-boats or slices were snuffer-trays. Another curious illuminating appurtenance was called a save-all or candle-wedge. It was a little frame of rings or cups with pins, by which our frugal ancestors held up the last dying bit of burning candle. They were sometimes of pewter with iron pins, sometimes wholly of brass or iron. They have nearly all disappeared since new and more extravagant methods of illumination prevail.

The argand lamps of Jefferson's invention and the various illuminating and heating contrivances of Count Rumford must have been welcome to the colonists.

The discomfort of a colonial house in winter-time has been ably set forth by Charles Francis Adams in his "Three Episodes of Massachusetts History." Down the great chimneys blew the icy blasts so fiercely that Cotton Mather noted on a January Sabbath, in 1697, as he shivered before "a great Fire, that the Juices forced out at the end of short billets of wood by the heat of the flame on which they were laid, yett froze into Ice on their coming out." Judge Sewall wrote, twenty years later, "An Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Bread was frozen at Lords Table.... Though 'twas so Cold yet John Tuckerman was baptized. At six oclock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my Wives Chamber"--and the pious man adds (we hope with truth) "Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting." Cotton Mather tells, in his pompous fashion, of a cold winter's day four years later. "Tis Dreadful cold, my ink glass in my standish is froze and splitt in my very stove. My ink in my pen suffers a congelation." If sitting-rooms were such refrigerators, we cannot wonder that the chilled colonists wished to sleep in beds close curtained with heavy woollen stuffs, or in slaw-bank beds by the kitchen fire.

The settlers builded as well as they knew to keep their houses warm; and while the vast and virgin forests supplied abundant and accessible wood for fuel, Governor Eaton's nineteen great fireplaces and Parson Davenport's thirteen, could be well filled; but by 1744 Franklin could write of these big chimneys as the "fireplace of our fathers;" for the forests had all disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, and the chimneys had shrunk in size. Sadly did the early settlers need warmer houses, for, as all antiquarian students have noted, in olden days the cold was more piercing, began to nip and pinch earlier in November, and lingered further into spring; winter rushed upon the settlers with heavier blasts and fiercer storms than we now have to endure. And, above all, they felt with sadder force "the dreary monotony of a New England winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he longed to hibernate like a dormouse from autumn to spring.

As the forests disappeared, sea-coal was brought over in small quantities, and stoves appeared for town use. By 1695 and 1700 we find Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall speaking of stoves and stove-rooms, and of chambers warmed by stoves. Ere that one John Clark had patented an invention for "saving and warming rooms," but we know nothing definite of its shape.

Dutch stoves and china stoves were the first to be advertised in New England papers; then "Philadelphia Fire Stoves"--what we now term Franklin grates. Wood was burned in these grates. We find clergymen, until after Revolutionary times, having sixty or eighty cords of hardwood given to them annually by the parish.

Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home. The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge, or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets and trivets, peels and slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and settles. Above--on the clavel-piece--were festooned strings of dried apples, pumpkins, and peppers.

The lug-pole, though made of green wood, sometimes became brittle or charred by too long use over the fire and careless neglect of replacement, and broke under its weighty burden of food and metal; hence accidents became so frequent, to the detriment of precious cooking utensils, and even to the destruction of human safety and life, that a Yankee invention of an iron crane brought convenience and simplicity, and added a new grace to the kitchen hearth.

The andirons added to the fireplace their homely charm. Fire-dogs appear in the earliest inventories under many names of various spelling, and were of many metals--copper, steel, iron, and brass. Sometimes a fireplace had three sets of andirons of different sizes, to hold logs at different heights. Cob irons had hooks to hold a spit and dripping-pan. Sometimes the "Handirons" also had brackets. Creepers were low irons placed between the great fire-dogs. They are mentioned in many early wills and lists of possessions among items of fireplace furnishings, as, for instance, the list of Captain Tyng's furniture, made in Boston in 1653. The andirons were sometimes very elaborate, with claw feet, or cast in the figure of a negro, a soldier, or a dog.

In the Deerfield Memorial Hall there lives in perfection of detail one of these old fireplaces--a delight to the soul of the antiquary. Every homely utensil and piece of furniture, every domestic convenience and inconvenience, every home-made makeshift, every cumbrous and clumsy contrivance of the old-time kitchen here may be found, and they show to us, as in a living photograph, the home life of those olden days.

TABLE PLENISHINGS