Home Life in Colonial Days | Page 3

in solidly around these logs, and kept
them firmly upright; a horizontal band of puncheons, which were split
logs smoothed off on the face with the axe, was sometimes pinned
around within the log walls, to keep them from caving in. Over this was
placed a bark roof, made of squares of chestnut bark, or shingles of

overlapping birch-bark. A bark or log shutter was hung at the window,
and a bark door hung on withe hinges, or, if very luxurious, on leather
straps, completed the quickly made home. This was called rolling-up a
house, and the house was called a puncheon and bark house. A rough
puncheon floor, hewed flat with an axe or adze, was truly a luxury. One
settler's wife pleaded that the house might be rolled up around a
splendid flat stump; thus she had a good, firm table. A small platform
placed about two feet high alongside one wall, and supported at the
outer edge with strong posts, formed a bedstead. Sometimes hemlock
boughs were the only bed. The frontier saying was, "A hard day's work
makes a soft bed." The tired pioneers slept well even on hemlock
boughs. The chinks of the logs were filled with moss and mud, and in
the autumn banked up outside with earth for warmth.
These log houses did not satisfy English men and women. They longed
to have what Roger Williams called English houses, which were,
however, scarcely different in ground-plan. A single room on the
ground, called in many old wills the fire-room, had a vast chimney at
one end. A so-called staircase, usually but a narrow ladder, led to a
sleeping-loft above. Some of those houses were still made of whole
logs, but with clapboards nailed over the chinks and cracks. Others
were of a lighter frame covered with clapboards, or in Delaware with
boards pinned on perpendicularly. Soon this house was doubled in size
and comfort by having a room on either side of the chimney.
Each settlement often followed in general outline as well as detail the
houses to which the owners had become accustomed in Europe, with,
of course, such variations as were necessary from the new surroundings,
new climate, and new limitations. New York was settled by the Dutch,
and therefore naturally the first permanent houses were Dutch in shape,
such as may be seen in Holland to-day. In the large towns in New
Netherland the houses were certainly very pretty, as all visitors stated
who wrote accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in
1704, and wrote of the houses,--I will give her own words, in her own
spelling and grammar, which were not very good, though she was the
teacher of Benjamin Franklin, and the friend of Cotton Mather:--

"The Buildings are Brick Generaly very stately and high: the Bricks in
some of the houses are of divers Coullers, and laid in Checkers, being
glazed, look very agreable. The inside of the houses is neat to
admiration, the wooden work; for only the walls are plaster'd; and the
Sumers and Gist are planed and kept very white scour'd as so is all the
partitions if made of Bords."
The "sumers and gist" were the heavy timbers of the frame, the
summer-pieces and joists. The summer-piece was the large middle
beam in the middle from end to end of the ceiling; the joists were
cross-beams. These were not covered with plaster as nowadays, but
showed in every ceiling; and in old houses are sometimes set so
curiously and fitted so ingeniously, that they are always an entertaining
study. Another traveller says that New York houses had patterns of
colored brick set in the front, and also bore the date of building. The
Governor's house at Albany had two black brick-hearts. Dutch houses
were set close to the sidewalk with the gable-end to the street; and had
the roof notched like steps,--corbel-roof was the name; and these ends
were often of brick, while the rest of the walls were of wood. The roofs
were high in proportion to the side walls, and hence steep; they were
surmounted usually in Holland fashion with weather-vanes in the shape
of horses, lions, geese, sloops, or fish; a rooster was a favorite Dutch
weather-vane. There were metal gutters sticking out from every roof
almost to the middle of the street; this was most annoying to passers-by
in rainy weather, who were deluged with water from the roofs. The
cellar windows had small loop-holes with shutters. The windows were
always small; some had only sliding shutters, others had but two panes
or quarels of glass, as they were called, which were only six or eight
inches square. The front doors were cut across horizontally in the
middle into two parts, and in early days were hung on