Notions of Comfort in the Early Colonial Chesapeake
Paper Presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in York, England.
In previous papers we have sought to use archaeological data to rethink some of the reigning assumptions about life in colonial Chesapeake, and move toward a new vision of an early colonial Virginia “frontier.” Our work has focused principally on a few sites in the Virginia tidewater and along the upper reaches of the Rappahannock spanning the years between 1640 and 1760. Last year, for example, we used the artifactual and architectural data from a circa 1690 Rappahannock plantation to argue that the existing models of the “frontier” informed by Frederick Jackson Turner and Emmanuel Wallerstien do not account for the combinations of housing and assemblages we are beginning to see on these sites.
Today we will examine a corollary theme, that the Virginia colonial hinterlands were rough, reduced versions of the heartland. This de facto Core-Periphery model suggests as one moved away from the heartland, isolation, impoverishment, and cultural and material simplicity took hold. Users of this model frequently suggest the frontier was a land of make-do, where colonists cobbled together limited resources and lived simply life regardless of their social station or wealth. Relying mostly on probate data, these scholars have argued that rich and poor alike shared what Aubrey Land called a “rude simplicity” which leveled material class distinctions and meant that differences between rich from poor were marked by the amount of simple possessions people owned, and not the quality of what they owned. This vision of material Virginia has been most recently restated in John Crowley’s The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America, which explored how modern concepts of comfort took shape in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.
In this paper we use eleven sites complied funded
by the National Endowment for the Humanities to look
at how some of the key indicators of comfort (as described
by Crowley) played out in Virginia and Maryland. Comparing
these eleven sites suggests that like England and
New England, Chesapeake settlers had real architectural
and material choices over how their homes should look
and function. Rather than lagging behind other parts
of the Atlantic World as Crowley and others have suggested,
Chesapeake planters incorporate many of the elements
of comfort, including forms of domestic heating, security,
illumination, protection from fire, pest-control,
privacy, aesthetics, and hygienic living. We argue
that this ability to partake of these metropolitan
trends places Chesapeake planters of many socio-economic
groups solidly in the then- current Atlantic World
mainstream. Planters were able to, and did, employ
a range of material embellishment based on their particular
desires. The vast majority of these embellishments
do not show up in probate inventories or other historical
records; we see them only through archaeological excavation.
Comparative site study reveals the regional spread
and social depth of these domestic trends. We have
divided our eleven sites into four categories defined
by the social ranking of their interpreted owners.
At the bottom of this truncated hierarchy are sites
occupied by tenants, servants, and slaves. Just above
them are poor to middling planters followed by county-level
elites, and at the top are colonial-level elites.
Members of each of these groups appear in varying
degrees in the Comparative Chesapeake Project’s collected
sites. The rest of our time today we will devote to
discussing the eleven sites hierarchically and outlying
how the site’s features and assemblages reveal seventeenth-century
settlers participating in the elements of comfort.
The homes of the seventeenth century’s meanest sort
are notoriously tricky to identify archaeologically,
and consequently are often overlooked. Thus, this
largest of demographic groups is poorly represented
in the overall data set. The Comparative Chesapeake
project has only a few of these homes mostly located
near elite dwellings. The only solitary example of
a tenant/indentured servant’s house is a wooden post-in-ground
structure located along Virginia’s James River at
Carter’s Grove. The principal structure’s ground floor
contained 384 square feet of space, divided into two
rooms. Tacked onto a gable end was a lean-to shed
addition. The building’s regular appearance suggests
it was carpenter built. This structure’s roof was
wooden, its floor earthen, its walls unplastered riven
clapboard and offered direct outside access into living
spaces. No mortared bricks were found on this site.
Large quantities of burned daub indicate the dwelling
sported a wattle and daub fireplace which was the
only source of heat and interior lighting. Unglazed
windows offered sunlight during the day, but allowed
rain, heat, and cold inside the house. Candle related
paraphernalia and mirror glass were absent, meaning
the fireplace served as the only source of artificial
illumination. Security came in the form of a gun and
a sword, but no locks on the doors. There may have
been some concerns about internal security as two
furniture locks were recovered from this house.
Ten miles upriver, Rich Neck plantation’s owners used three post-in-ground structures to house their slaves. The ground floor square footage for these buildings was 256, 360, and 720 respectively. No evidence of hearths, fireplaces, daub, or wooden floors was present. The two smaller structures contained only a single room on the ground floor. The largest structure probably contained three ground floor rooms. All three buildings featured direct outside entrance into the dwellings and used windows to allow in air and light. Missing artifacts included mirror glass, locks and keys, and candle-related accoutrements. Window glass and lead cames found around the two smaller structures may have originally been associated with the plantation’s kitchen located nearby.
Artifactual evidence from these sites suggests that there was no attempt on the part of the builder to use architecture to limit the impact of a fire, increase privacy, or improve hygiene for indentured servants, tenants, and slaves. These issues would have been of little concern to property owners-niceties not to be wasted on servants and tenants.
The size and types of structures in this group are often thought of as the typical seventeenth-century Chesapeake dwellings. Their small dimensions, lack of specialized space, deficiency of amenities, and direct outdoor entrance match many scholars mental image of the typical Chesapeake house. But even some of these houses contained unexpected amenities. For example, the tenant/indentured servant house possessed a chimney. The presence of fireplaces in the entire sample of English occupied houses calls into question the prevailing notion that hearths laid directly on the ground were common in Virginia and Maryland after the 1620s.
The data also challenges the notion that Chesapeake
freemen typically lived in single roomed houses. The
tenant/indentured servant house, while slighter smaller
than the ordinary planter houses in the study, contained
two ground floor rooms. The variability in the size
of slave housing may have more to do with number of
occupants forced to live in them than any significant
social meaning.
One step above tenants, indentured servants, and slave
were ordinary planters. This group greatly outnumbered
its more genteel counterparts in seventeenth century
Chesapeake. Typically they worked their fields with
their families or a small bound labor force growing
tobacco and corn, raising livestock, and establishing
orchards and kitchen gardens.
The two ordinary planter houses in the study are similar in many ways to servant housing. Larger in size (600 and 500 square feet compared to 461 square feet for the servant dwelling), these post in ground structures employ wooden roofs, and exterior wattle and daub chimneys on the gable end. Both allowed visitors to enter directly into living space from outside.
Differences include the development of specialized space and flooring materials. Both structures in this group had two main ground rooms with one featuring a small closet and the other a large unlined cellar. Both had wooden floors on the ground floor—one in just one room, the other in both rooms. Both structure featured glazed windows allowing light in without the weather. One dwelling underwent a major renovation that involved the demolition of the wattle and daub chimney in favor of a stone and brick fireplace.
This group did not employ very many architectural niceties in the houses. There is no evidence that mirrors or candles were used to create artificial lighting. When darkness arrived these planters either used the fireplaces for light or went to sleep. The houses were roofed with wooden shingles and no evidence of plastering exists. Decorative items such as delft tiles are missing, but one house used metal rings to display textiles. Door locks and keys and guns increased security at these sites.
Increased size and number of rooms, wooden floors, specialized spaces, glazed windows, and security efforts separated the ordinary planters from servants. These attributes reflect the initial stirrings of a quest for comfort on part of the men. None of these features would have appeared in probate inventories and thus are lost to historians searching for distinctions between the Chesapeake’s two lower castes.
The next group of dwellings belongs to county-level elites comprising planters holding county offices like sheriff or justice of the peace, to more established planters who may have honorific titles, lead militias, or serve in representative assemblies. Many of these men controlled large amounts of land and became quite wealthy. Our sample includes the homes of such members of the lower gentry as a lawyer, a merchant, a Ship’s Captain, and a county surveyor.
For the first time in this study, this group could
choose between wood frame and brick houses. Three
chose earthfast with brick elements and one chose
to build a crossplan brick house. Interestingly, the
planter who chose brick built his house before his
rise in power and prestige. The houses are larger
(684, 800, 900, 1152 square feet) and in addition
to the traditional hall and parlor contain small ground
floor rooms including sheds, closets, and towers.
One structure contained 6 cellars, another contained
an 800 square foot finished brick cellar. The structures
contained between three and four ground floor rooms,
featured brick chimneys and two had wooden floors.
Also for the first time, specialized space was used
to limit visitor access from the outside in one of
the houses. The others had direct access from outside
to at least some rooms.
All of the houses made use of window glass and mirror
glass. Three had at least some portion of the structure
plastered and employed curtain rings. The brick house
employed specialty brick and ceramic roofing tiles.
None of the houses boasted decorative delft tiles
and only one used yellow fireplace bricks. Door locks
as well as guns provided security at these houses.
All of the homeowners in this group used artificial lighting to fend off the night. For the first time ceramic roofing tiles are employed to lessen the likelihood of a catastrophic fire. Large sections of the house were plastered in order to increase cleanliness. While most houses in this group did not employ many decorative architectural elements, the cross plan house contained specialty bricks, floor tiles, roofing tiles, and even a brick cartouche. The finished cellar’s Flemish bond brickwork was struck to give it a finished appearance. A large portion of the cellar was used to house wine and as a place for gentlemen to withdraw and drink. Also for the first time, architecture is used to create privacy. At two of the houses privacy was enhanced either thru the use of back rooms, or a small entranceway that controlled visitor access to the house.
Colonial elites, as their name infers, administered the colony. These were the men at the top of the colonial social pyramid. This study’s sample a few sites occupied by members of this group including a Secretary of the Colony, a colonial Governor, a wealthy lawyer and merchant among others.
The choice of building material for this group is reverse of the provincial elites, that is, three out of the four selected brick over wood. These houses are largest in the colony with the first floor featuring 1400 to 1760 square feet of space. The number of first floor rooms ranged from three to six rooms. All featured glazed windows and brick fireplaces decorated with delft tiles. At least two of the structures attempted to control visitor behavior by creating separate entranceways where visitors were greeted. All featured some wooden flooring and some plaster work, specialty brick, and ceramic tile roofs including the post-in-ground structure. Mirror glass and curtain rings were recovered from two of the four, and candle accoutrement from three of the four. Door locks and guns provided security at these houses. One house featured unglazed ceramic tiles that may have been used as window seats; another contained ornamental plasterwork.
Two architectural niceties are exclusive to this group—specialized spaces and architectural elements that were purely decorative. Rich Neck plantation features a one room addition with a full brick lined cellar that can be accessed only from the exterior of the house. This room appears to have been an office and may be where the colonial records kept for safekeeping after Nathaniel Bacon burned Jamestown. This attempt at privacy and security is remarkable, but the planter’s efforts to offer privacy to the plantation’s women is by constructing a series of rooms located in the back half of the house is not.
Decorative delft tiles embellished the fireplaces of all of the houses in this group. Together with decorative plaster and ceramic tiles shows these owners are clearly using their architecture to communicate with the peers and subordinates.
One other trend appeared when particular artifacts are compared from these sites—the elites from Virginia chose more amenities for their houses than their Maryland counterparts at both the provincial and the Cosmopolitan levels. Fifteen types of housing and furnishing related artifacts were compiled for all elite sites. Scores were calculated for each site by counting the number of artifact types that were present on each site. For example—sites in the study with no yellow brick would score zero for that artifact type. Sites with yellow brick would score a one for the presence of yellow brick. If there were more than a single site in a category the total numbers were averaged.
Using this system Virginian Cosmopolitans scored a 14 out of a possible 15. Their Maryland counterparts scored a 9.5. Virginian provincials scored a nine with their Maryland complement scoring a 6.5. That Virginian provincials scored almost as high as Maryland Cosmopolitans is surprising. Maryland elites either chose not to embellish their architecture as much as Virginias or were unable to. It would be interesting to expand the artifact categories to see if non-architectural artifact classes reflect a similar pattern, but that is another paper.
What emerges from this comparison is a picture of a region in which colonists were able to and did participate in larger Atlantic World trends. The spread of comfortable living, as manifested in archeologically-identifiable items like windows, finished fireplaces, and other domestic accoutrement is one of many metropolitan trends which we increasingly see played out along the Chesapeake’s riverways. These developments were neither universal nor monolithic. From what we can see archaeologically, colonists participated in comfort’s material dimensions idiosyncratically, employing what they could where they could. Nevertheless, we see in these sites that crucial elements of comfortable living were available, at least in piecemeal fashion, to planters at all levels of the social hierarchy. We suggest that what typified life in the Chesapeake was not a universal material poverty, but rather, an uneven penetration of the material components of larger Atlantic World developments, like the rise of comfort.
This paper challenges the notion advanced by some scholars that most of the Chesapeake’s free population lived in small single room houses and that the Chesapeake’s substantial planters chose not to build “faire houses” like their New England and English counterparts. It also casts doubt on the well-accepted argument that all despite their station in life, all colonials owned the same goods. Architecturally this is just not accurate—there was considerable variation between classes—and colonists of different social groups were able and willing to pay for a variety of items with which to improve their homes. We have been seeing these trends at work on our sites for some time now, but the Chesapeake Comparative Project has enabled the types of detailed inter-site comparisons which can meaningfully add substance to otherwise potentially isolated observations.