That Certain Articles Of Household Furniture, Whether Now Existent Or
Not, Were Included In The Ship's Cargo, Is Attested By
The inventories of
the small estates of those first deceased, and, by mention or
implication, in the narratives of Bradford,
Winslow, Morton, and other
contemporaries, as were also many utensils and articles of domestic use.
There were also beyond question many not so mentioned, which may be
safely named as having very certainly been comprised in the ship's
lading, either because in themselves indispensable to the colonists, or
because from the evidence in hand we know them to have been inseparable
from the character, social status, daily habits, home life, or
ascertained deeds of the Pilgrims. When it is remembered that
furnishings, however simple, were speedily required for no less than
nineteen "cottages" and their households, the sum total called for was not
inconsiderable.
[Bradford, in Mourt's Relation (p. 68), shows that the colonists
were divided up into "nineteen families," that "so we might build
fewer houses." Winslow, writing to George Morton, December 11/21,
1621, says: "We have built seven dwelling-houses and four for the
use of the plantation." Bradford (Historie, Mass. ed. p. 110)
calls the houses "small cottages."]
Among the furniture for these "cottages" brought on the Pilgrim ship may
be enumerated: chairs, table-chairs, stools and forms (benches), tables
of several sizes and shapes (mostly small), table-boards and "cloathes,"
trestles, beds; bedding and bed-clothing, cradles, "buffets," cupboards
and "cabinets," chests and chests of drawers, boxes of several kinds and
"trunks," andirons, "iron dogs," "cob-irons," fire-tongs and "slices"
(shovels), cushions, rugs, and "blanckets," spinning wheels, hand-looms,
etc., etc.
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