Home Life in Colonial Days | Page 7

always surrounded by a stockade, or "palisado," of heavy, well-fitted logs, which thus formed a garrison, or neighborhood resort, in time of danger. In the valley of Virginia each settlement was formed of houses set in a square, connected from end to end of the outside walls by stockades with gates; thus forming a close front. On the James River, on Manhattan Island, were stockades. The whole town plot of Milford, Connecticut, was enclosed in 1645, and the Indians taunted the settlers by shouting out, "White men all same like pigs." At one time in Massachusetts, twenty towns proposed an all-surrounding palisade. The progress and condition of our settlements can be traced in our fences. As Indians disappeared or succumbed, the solid row of pales gave place to a log-fence, which served well to keep out depredatory animals. When dangers from Indians or wild animals entirely disappeared, boards were still not over-plenty, and the strength of the owner could not be over-spent on unnecessary fencing. Then came the double-rail fence; two rails, held in place one above the other, at each joining, by four crossed sticks. It was a boundary, and would keep in cattle. It was said that every fence should be horse-high, bull-proof, and pig-tight. Then came stone walls, showing a thorough clearing and taming of the land. The succeeding "half-high" stone wall--a foot or two high, with a single rail on top--showed that stones were not as plentiful in the fields as in early days. The "snake-fence," or "Virginia fence," so common in the Southern states, utilized the second growth of forest trees. The split-rail fence, four or five rails in height, was set at intervals with posts, pierced with holes to hold the ends of the rails. These were used to some extent in the East; but our Western states were fenced throughout with rails split by sturdy pioneer rail-splitters, among them young Abraham Lincoln. Board fences showed the day of the sawmill and its plentiful supply; the wire fences of to-day equally prove the decrease of our forests and our wood, and the growth of our mineral supplies and manufactures of metals. Thus even our fences might be called historical monuments.
A few of the old block-houses, or garrison houses, the "defensible houses," which were surrounded by these stockades, are still standing. The most interesting are the old Garrison at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, built in 1670; it has walls of solid oak, and brick a foot and a half thick; the Saltonstall House at Ipswich, built in 1633; Cradock Old Fort in Medford, Massachusetts, built in 1634 of brick made on the spot; an old fort at York, Maine; and the Whitefield Garrison House, built in 1639 at Guilford, Connecticut. The one at Newburyport is the most picturesque and beautiful of them all.
As social life in Boston took on a little aspect of court life in the circle gathered around the royal governors, the pride of the wealthy found expression in handsome and stately houses. These were copied and added to by men of wealth and social standing in other towns. The Province House, built in 1679, the Frankland House in 1735, and the Hancock House, all in Boston; the Shirley House in Roxbury, the Wentworth Mansion in New Hampshire, are good examples. They were dignified and simple in form, and have borne the test of centuries,--they wear well. They never erred in over-ornamentation, being scant of interior decoration, save in two or three principal rooms and the hall and staircase. The panelled step ends and soffits, the graceful newels and balusters, of those old staircases hold sway as models to this day.
The same taste which made the staircase the centre of decoration within, made the front door the sole point of ornamentation without; and equal beauty is there focused. Worthy of study and reproduction, many of the old-time front doors are with their fine panels, graceful, leaded side windows, elaborate and pretty fan-lights, and slight but appropriate carving. The prettiest leaded windows I ever saw in an American home were in a thereby glorified hen-house. They had been taken from the discarded front door of a remodelled old Falmouth house. The hens and their owner were not of antiquarian tastes, and relinquished the windows for a machine-made sash more suited to their plebeian tastes and occupations. Many colonial doors had door-latches or knobs of heavy brass; nearly all had a knocker of wrought iron or polished brass, a cheerful ornament that ever seems to resound a welcome to the visitor as well as a notification to the visited.
The knocker from the John Hancock House in Boston and that from the Winslow House in Marshfield are here shown; both are now in the custody of the Bostonian Society, and may be seen at the Old State