CHAPTER XXIX.
MODE OF LIFE IN OUR FOREFATHERS’ DAYS.
We have followed with as much detail as our limits would permit, the history of Rhode Island through the various phases of her colonial life. Before we enter upon the story of her development as a member of a great Union, we propose to bring together a few facts from the imperfect record of her social and domestic life, and endeavor to form for ourselves some idea of what manner of men and women our fathers and mothers were, and what kind of lives they led. Incomplete as our materials for such a picture are, there is still enough to be found in those sources from which history loves to draw to bring us very near to the life of those days.
And to begin with the soil; the inland in the beginning of English colonization was a vast forest, dotted with ponds of fresh water and watered by numerous rivers. In this forest the natives themselves had begun the work of clearing, and drawn between it and the sea a belt of arable land from eight to ten miles in depth, on which they planted their favorite food—the nutritious maize. The waters abounded with fish, the woods with game. The animals most to be feared were the wild-cat and the wolf—the most sought after by the hunter, the deer. In the earliest commercial intercourse of Indian and white man, the medium was maize.
There were no carriages nor carriage roads. All traveling was on foot or horseback, and when the first English settlement began, in almost every twenty miles you would find an Indian village.
As the soil came under more skillful cultivation and the colonist took the place of the Indian in field work, the harvests became more abundant, and the rich grasses which grew as high as the tops of the fences, became very valuable as butter and cheese. Thus farming was carried on on a large scale, and dairy farms gave employment to many hands. The Stanton farm was four miles long by two miles wide, and was cultivated by forty horses and forty slaves. The Champlin farm was a tract of a thousand acres, feeding thirty-five horses, fifty-five cows, from six to seven hundred sheep, and slaves enough to tend and utilize them all. Robert Hazard owned sixteen hundred acres on Boston Neck, and several thousand on the west side of the Pettaquamscot River. On one of these farms grazed a hundred and ten cows, two hundred loads of hay were cut, thirteen thousand pounds of cheese were made, and from seventy to eighty pounds of butter. The products on which all this labor was bestowed, were corn, tobacco, cheese and wool. The work was done by slaves and Indians. The cheese resembled in flavor and color the rich Cheshire cheese of England. Some attention was also given to fattening bullocks and raising horses, and cutting hay and grain for the West Indies.
On Isaac P. Hazard’s farm twelve negro women were employed in making cheese, each woman having a girl under her and making from twelve to twenty-four cheeses a day. So rich and luxuriant was the grass that his hundred and fifty cows gave double the quantity of milk that cows give on the same farms now. Four thousand sheep furnished the materials for the woolen cloths of his numerous household, and extensive hemp fields the linen, both being woven in his own looms. This Hazard, when years came upon him, gave over the management of his estate into the hands of his children, and congratulated himself that he thenceforth had only seventy mouths to provide for between parlor and kitchen.
Traveling, as I have already stated, was on horseback, and a servant well mounted always went with the master to open the gates. The roads were mere driftways. A generous hospitality left the inns to justices’ courts, town councils and tipplers. The guest chamber was seldom empty, and the fireside all the more cheerful for the face of a stranger.
Public provisions for education were insufficient. Their place was supplied for boys by private tutors, or by board in the family of a learned clergyman to prepare them for college. The girls were sometimes sent to Boston to study accomplishments. They loved reading, each generation having its favorite in verse and in prose. Of those nearest to us Pope was the poet. Private libraries were numerous and well selected, though not large.