What a time that must have been in the wilderness household—the little indentured English maids scurrying about with wooden pails of steaming water, perhaps, and the curtains all drawn about the great bed, and John Mottrom pacing the floor no doubt like any modern father-to-be!
Frances Mottrom, for thus she was christened, may have been the first white baby to have been born in the Northern Neck.
The neighbors doubtless came to Coan Hall for a christening for it is a matter of record that Colonel William Presley's wife was named as the child's godmother. There must have been great cheer at the manor on that occasion, and many toasts drunk from the same tankard. Maybe a whole horn of metheglin was passed around in true medieval fashion to "speed the parting guests."
Frances probably lay in a wooden cradle with high paneled sides to keep out draughts. Its logical place was near the fireplace where she would be warm. She was doubtless clothed in white linen exquisitely embroidered and made. Perhaps her six-year-old sister Anne rocked the cradle now and then as she played around the floor, and little John Mottrom may have peered into its shadows to look at her face.
Among the first sounds that Frances knew were no doubt the ringing of the axes in the forest from sunrise until sunset in winter, and at night the howling of the wolves in the forest. The first light that she remembered was probably the firelight and the light from pine-knot or candle, or daylight filtered through diamond-paned windows of greenish glass or oiled paper.
One of the first familiar faces may have been that of her father's friend, Marshvwap, King of Chickacoan.
Frances must have been a sturdy baby to have survived the cold, heat, fevers, and all the other hazards to child-life in the seventeenth century.
When Frances was old enough to toddle about, Anne and John may have played a game with her called "honey-pots," in which they carried her about in a "chair" made by crossing hands, while they chanted:
"Carry your honey-pot safe and sound
Or it will fall upon the ground."
A little later they may have jumped a hop-scotch, but if so, they called it "scotch-hoppers." They probably played tag, ball, prisoner's base, asked riddles and blew soap-bubbles, as these simple amusements dated from medieval days.