Much of the mortar in the early Colonial period was of poor quality and rapidly disintegrated. Lime, however, was soon to be had. In some cases it was imported, in others it was burned wherever limestone or oyster shells were to be had and the quality of the mortar was very generally improved throughout the Colonies. Some of it was exceptionally fine and to-day is as hard as the bricks or stone it binds together.
The oaken timbers for the framing of houses were riven and hewn into shape and dressed down with an adz. Rafters and joists were sometimes treated thus and in other cases were sawn. The great summer beams and oftentimes the studs, too, were finished with stopped chamfers along the edges. The spaces between the studs, as noted in Chapter III, were at first filled with “pugging” of stone or brick and clay mixed with chopped straw and then plastered over in the manner of the “black and white” or half timber work in England. Whether the wall spaces between the studs were ever stopped with “wattle and dab”—an old English filling of clay, plastered over a kind of loose basketwork of interwoven wattles or withes—the writer is unable to say with certainty. It is not at all improbable that the stud spaces were sometimes so filled and it is quite certain that some of the early Connecticut chimneys were constructed in this manner. The survival of “wattle and dab” work in New England in any form is an interesting instance of the persistence and continuity of craft traditions.
Clapboards were made chiefly of oak or pine and were nailed horizontally to the outside of the studs. They were usually feather edged and lapped, the upper over the lower. Although it is not impossible that there was some precedent in England for the use of clapboards nailed horizontally on the outside of the studding, it is highly probable that the practice of applying them in this manner in New England was first dictated by climatic necessity as a remedy and afterwards became incorporated as an essential part of frame construction. In some parts of New England, especially in Rhode Island and portions of Connecticut, studs between the posts were dispensed with and vertical boarding of oak or pine, usually more than an inch thick, was nailed to the cills and girts. This vertical boarding, for which, also, there seems to have been an English precedent, was generally, though not invariably, covered outside either with horizontal clapboards or with long shingles.
Shingles of pine were made both in the sizes common to-day and also of much larger dimensions, the latter being used for the outer sheathing of walls that had first been boarded. Roof shingles were sometimes laid on boarding, sometimes on “lathing” or small strips, nailed like purlins on the rafters. Shingles afforded the usual roofing material not only in New England but throughout the Colonies, although slate was not unknown and on some of the larger buildings copper and lead were occasionally used. In dry weather the danger to shingle roofs from sparking chimneys and the additional source of danger, at all times, from defective or uncleaned flues, led our forebears to adopt some rather curious and interesting methods of fire prevention. In early New England there were the chimney viewers whose duty it was to inspect the chimneys and compel the householders, by fines or other means, to keep their chimneys in repair and have them swept with sufficient frequency. This was a precaution of the utmost importance in communities where most of the houses were built of wood.
In Philadelphia, in Colonial times, the sight of a blazing chimney was enough to throw the whole community into an uproar and blazing chimneys were the subject of legislation by the Provincial Assembly of 1775, which enacted that “Every person whose Chimney shall take Fire and blaze out at the Top, not having been swept within one Calendar Month, shall forfeit and pay the sum of Twenty Shillings; but if swept within that Time and taking Fire and blazing out at the Top, the Person who swept the same, either by himself, his Servants or Negroes, shall forfeit and pay Twenty Shillings.”
Glass for windows in the beginning of the Colonial period was a luxury enjoyed by only a few of the more well-to-do settlers and even oiled paper was not always easy to come by so that oftentimes the humbler houses had only shutters to close window apertures and afford protection from the weather. Window glass, however, was imported at an early date and at an early date, also, glass in small panes was manufactured in the Colonies.
The earliest windows were filled with small diamond shaped panes leaded into the casements and the casement window was universally used. In the fore part of the eighteenth century, double or single hung sash windows became the fashion and were very generally substituted for the older casements by alterations made in the manner alluded to in Chapter III, although, quite frequently, particularly in the Middle and Southern Colonies, no change in the shape or dimensions of the window openings was considered desirable or necessary. The lights for the sashes were universally small and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that they increased appreciably in size. It should be remembered that a great deal of the charm and individuality of fenestration during both the early Colonial and Georgian periods was due to the manifold divisions of the lights—with lead in the first instance and with heavy muntins in the second. A good many of the old leaded casements that had endured, despite the favour of the new styles, till the outbreak of the Revolutionary War disappeared at that time, the lead being melted to make bullets. This is said to have been the fate of the original windows in the Church of St. David at Radnor.
Paint, in the first years of colonisation during the seventeenth century, though not unknown, was not in common use and it must be admitted that the old woodwork, whether oak or pine, took on a delightful tone in the course of a few years from the combined agency of the atmosphere and the smoke of wood fires. In Pennsylvania and the neighbourhood, paint both inside and out seems to have been used from the first. It should be remembered, particularly in this connexion, that paint for either exterior or interior use in the Colonial and Georgian periods was not invariably white. Colours were frequently used and specific reference has been made in Chapter VIII to the employment of paint of various colours for panelling and other interior woodwork.
The panelling in many of the old Colonial houses, and for that matter the same thing may be said with perfect truth of much of the panelling to be found in houses of the Georgian type, exhibits marked irregularities. Although the almost mediæval methods of the early craftsmen were gradually supplanted by other ways of treating the material, there was always a delightful personal element of originality and lack of symmetry in the panelling and woodwork generally. It is this very originality that gives it its charm and interest. It is precisely like the features of the human face. If all the features of any human face were absolutely symmetrical and regular, so that both sides were precisely alike in every measurement, the countenance would be truly imbecile in expression. It is the irregularity which causes the outward indications of character and gives whatever beauty or the opposite quality there may be. The early craftsmen had no compunction in making one panel deeper than another, being governed therein by expediency, the width of the piece they were using, or the distance to be covered. It was not that they did not do their work well and in a workmanlike manner, but they saw no reason why they should be tied down by a slavish exactitude in the exercise of their craft, and they accordingly took liberties for which we in our slavishly mechanical days may be truly thankful, and from which we may learn a valuable lesson if we will only use our eyes and not be afraid to act with a little independence.