A feather bed and furniture.
A flock bed, (being half feathers) & furniture.
A flock bed & furniture.
Five payre of sheets & an odd one.
Table linen.
Fower payre of pillow-beeres.
Twenty-two pieces of pewter.
For Iron pott, tongs, cottrell & pot-hooks.
Two muskets & a fowling-piece.
Sword, cutlass & bandaleeres.
Barrels, tubbs, trays, cheese-moates and pailes.
A Stand.
Bedsteads, cords & chayers.
Chests and wheels.
Various yards of stuffs and English cloth are also included, but nothing could well be more meager than this outfit, though doubtless it filled the narrow quarters of the early years. Whatever may have come over afterward, there were none of the heirlooms to be seen to-day, in the shape of family portraits, and plate, china or heavily carved mahogany or oak furniture. For the poorer houses, only panes of oiled paper admitted the light, and this want of sunshine was one cause of the terrible loss of life in fevers and various epidemics from which the first settlers suffered. Leaden sashes held the small panes of glass used by the better class, but for both the huge chimneys with their roaring fires did the chief work of ventilation and purification, while the family life centered about them in a fashion often described and long ago lost.
There is a theory that our grandmothers in these first days of the settlement worked with their own hands, with an energy never since equalled, and more and more departed from as the years go on. But all investigation of early records shows that, as far as practicable, all English habits remained in full force, and among such habits was that of ample service.
It is true that mistress and maid worked side by side, but the tasks performed now by any farmer's wife are as hard and more continuous than any labor of the early days, where many hands made light work. If spinning and weaving have passed out of the hands of women, the girls who once shared in the labor, and helped to make up the patriarchal households of early times, have followed, preferring the monotonous and wearing routine of mill-life, to the stigma resting upon all who consent to be classed as "help". If social divisions were actually sharper and more stringent in the beginning, there was a better relation between mistress and maid, for which we look in vain to-day.
In many cases, men and women secured their passage to America by selling their time for a certain number of years, and others whose fortunes were slightly better, found it well, until some means of living was secured, to enter the families of the more wealthy colonists, many of whom had taken their English households with them. So long as families centered in one spot, there was little difficulty in securing servants, but as new settlements were formed servants held back, naturally preferring the towns to the chances of Indian raids and the dangers from wild beasts. Necessity brought about a plan which has lasted until within a generation or so, and must come again, as the best solution of the servant problem. Roger Williams writes of his daughter that "she desires to spend some time in service & liked much Mrs. Brenton who wanted help." This word "help" applied itself to such cases, distinguishing them from those of the ordinary servant, and girls of the good families put themselves under notable housekeepers to learn the secrets of the profession—a form of cooking and household economy school, that we sigh for vainly to-day. The Bradstreets took their servants from Ipswich, but others in the new town were reduced to sore straits, in some cases being forced to depend on the Indian woman, who, fresh from the wigwam, looked in amazement on the superfluities of civilized life. Hugh Peters, the dogmatic and most unpleasant minister of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Sir, Mr Endecott & myself salute you in the Lord Jesus, &c. Wee have heard of a dividence of woman & children in the bay & would be glad of a share, viz: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke good." This was accomplished but failed to satisfy, for two years later Peters again writes: "My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayd, now at Charltowne, to know if shee would dwell with us, for truly wee are so destitute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do." This was a desperate state of things, on which Lowell comments: "Let any housewife of our day, who does not find the Keltic element in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with by signs, for its maid of all work, and take courage. Those were serious times indeed, when your cook might give warning by taking your scalp, or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it, into the woods."
Negro slavery was the first solution of these difficulties and one hard-headed member of the Colony, Emanual Downing, as early as 1645, saw in the Indian wars and the prisoners that were taken, a convenient means of securing the coveted negro, and wrote to Winthrop: "A war with the Narragansett is very considerable to this plantation, ffor I doubt whither it be not synne in us, having power in our hands, to suffer them to maynteyne the worship of the devill which their paw-wawes often doe; 2 lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily have men, woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pillage for us than wee conceive, for I do not see how we can thrive untill wee gett into a stock of slaves, sufficient to doe all our buisenes, for our children's children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one English servant."
The canny Puritan considered that Indian "devil-worship" fully balanced any slight wrong in exchanging them for, "Moores", and writes of it as calmly as he does of sundry other events, somewhat shocking to the modern mind. But, while slaves increased English servants became harder and harder to secure, and often revolted from the masters to whom their time had been sold. There is a certain relish in Winthrop's record of two disaffected ones, which is perhaps not unnatural even from him, and is in full harmony with the Puritan tendency to see a special Providence in any event according to their minds:
"Two men servants to one Moodye, of Roxbury, returning in a boat from the windmill, struck upon the oyster bank. They went out to gather oysters, and not making fast their boat, when the float came, it floated away and they were both drowned, although they might have waded out on either side, but it was an evident judgement of God upon them, for they were wicked persons. One of them, a little before, being reproved for his lewdness, and put in mind of hell, answered that if hell were ten times hotter, he had rather be there than he would serve his master, &c. The occasion was because he had bound himself for divers years, and saw that, if he had been at liberty, he might have had greater wages, though otherwise his master used him very well."
From whatever source the "Moores" were obtained, they were bought and sold during the first hundred years that Andover had existence. "Pomps' Pond" still preserves the memory of Pompey Lovejoy, servant to Captain William Lovejoy. Pompey's cabin stood there, and as election day approached, great store of election- cake and beer was manufactured for the hungry and thirsty voters, to whom it proved less demoralizing than the whiskey of to-day. There is a record of the death in 1683, of Jack, a negro servant of Captain Dudley Bradstreet's, who lost also, in 1693, by drowning, "Stacy, ye servant of Major Dudley Bradstreet, a mullatoe born in his house." Mistress Bradstreet had several, whose families grew up about her, their concerns being of quite as deep interest as those of her neighbors, and the Andover records hold many suggestions of the tragedies and comedies of slave life. Strong as attachments might sometimes be, the minister himself sold Candace, a negro girl who had grown up in his house, and five year old Dinah was sent from home and mother at Dunstable, to a new master in Andover, as witness the bill of sale, which has a curious flavor for a Massachusetts document:
"Received of Mr. John Abbott of Andover Fourteen pounds, thirteen shillings and seven pence, it being the full value of a negrow garl named Dinah about five years of age of a Healthy sound Constution, free from any Disease of Body and do hereby Deliver the same Girl to the said Abbott and promise to Defend him in the Improvement of her as his servant forever.