How People Lived in Southampton in Colonial Times

by Mrs. Edward P. White | circa 1932

HOUSES—The people who first came to Southampton came from England, and the houses they built were English homes. The old Halsey house standing in the South End (the last old house on the right before you come to the beach) was probably built by Thomas Halsey, the pioneer, about 1660. The stairs go up a few steps and turn to the left twice before you reach the top. There is a huge chimney in the middle of the house with a big fireplace in the south room, also one in the north room, and another in the kitchen at the back. The south room in the old days was probably the “parlor” or the best room, a place nicely furnished with mahogany chairs and a large sofa. But it was rarely opened except for weddings and funerals. The north room was perhaps the parents’ bedroom. In it would be a great mahogany bed, large chests of drawers, a highboy, and a trundle bed which could be pushed under the big one by day.

THE KITCHEN—The kitchen was the place where the people really lived—a great big room—a large fireplace on one side and small windows on the other. Here the cooking was done over the open fire, the bread was baked in the brick oven built into the chimney, the meat was roasted on the spit that was kept turning in front of the glowing coals. The floor was covered with white sea sand, pushed into patterns with a home-made broom. A long table stood in the center of the room, around it stood wooden chairs painted yellow. A Big arm chair stood by the fireplace, and bright pewter platters and blue china dishes stood on the big dresser in the corner.

THE TRUNDLE BED—Beside the fireplace stood a heavy wooden cradle. In this all the babies of the family were rocked to sleep in their turn. If the fireplace was big enough (and it was), there was a little seat or settle inside it where the children could creep on wintry nights and by the hickory log blaze read in the Children’s Primer until Mother lighted the candle to put them to bed in the cold trundle bed in the next room. It was not so cold though, for there was a goose feather bed to sleep on and wool patchwork quilts to sleep under, and between the homespun linen sheets, she would place the warming pan for a few minutes. The warming pan, you know, was a copper bowl with a long wooden handle. Inside the bowl, Mother placed live coals from the hearth. Their warmth made the trundle bed as warm and cozy as the settle in the kitchen had been. The trundle bed fitted under the big bed only by day, at night it was pulled into the room and there little brother and sister slept “like tops” until morning.

The older children slept in what was called “up chamber.” This was often an attic finished with only a partition. In an old diary we read of a night when the girls “darst not sleep up chamber but came down stairs and slept by the fire. There was a great wind and hail with frightful gusts, we have hardly a dry place in the house.”

If you want to see one of these old houses kept just as it was in the old days, go to Home Sweet Home in East Hampton. It was built in 1684, and was later the home of John Howard Payne who wrote the song we love so well—

            “Mid pleasures and palaces tho’ we may roam—

            Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.”

FARM LIFE—There was plenty to do in those days for girls and boys as well as men and women. Everything that people wore or ate had to be raised on the farm. A man might be a weaver, a magistrate, a minister, a doctor, a teacher, a tanner, a shoemaker, or a fisherman, he was first and always a farmer. The crops must be sown and cultivated and harvested, the cows must be fed and milked and butchered to provide food for his family. The flax must be sown and reaped to make linen, the sheep must be cared for and shorn to make wool for clothes. The cattle must be grown and butchered to make leather for shoes. This is what Judge Henry P. Hedges says about these old days, “From his head to his feet the farmer stood in clothes of his own and his wife’s make. The leather of his shoes came from hides of his won cattle; the lien and woolen were from produce he raised. The wife and daughters braided and sewed the straw hats on their heads. The fur cap was made from fox or chipmunk he had shot, and the feathers that filled the beds and pillow were plucked from his own geese. The pillowcases, sheets, and blankets, the quilts and the towels and the tablecloths were all homemade. The harness and the lines the farmer cut from hides grown on his own farm. Everything about his ox yoke except the staple and ring, he made. His whip, his oxgoad, his flail, ax, hoe, and fork handles were his own work.

The shoemaker came once a year to make the family’s shoes. The children went bare foot in summer time, and woe betide them when winter came if they did not have shoes left over from last year, for there were many families to visit, and sometimes the shoemaker was late in the season getting around to his customers. The stockings were all knitted by the women and girls of the family. A little girl of six was taught to knit and had her daily “stint” to finish at her grandmother’s side before she might go out to play. She usually began by knitting garters for her father, long narrow strips to hold up his woolen stockings, which he wore inside his boots.

OCCUPATIONS—There were many occupations which are forgotten today. Tallow dipping was a yearly task, when all the candles had to be made at home from the mutton tallow or the bayberries. When whale oil lamps were invented, it was a great help to the women of the household. An old saying runs:

            “Provide for thy tallow ere frost cometh in,

            And make think own candles ere winter begin.”

GIRLS’ WORK—The feather beds had to be stuffed from plucked goose feathers. Every girl had her feather beds and pillows to take to her new home when she married, also thirteen patchwork quilts she had pieced. The thirteenth was called “the bride’s quilt,” and when it was finished this was the announcement of her engagement. Spinning and weaving, too, were done by the women and girls. Often they took their spinning wheels with them when they visited. The weaving was done by the old girls and women, and must of course be done at home. There was all the cloth for men’s and women’s clothes as well as the table and bed linen for the household, and the beautiful woolen coverlids which each girl must have when she married.

BOYS’ WORK—The boys had all the tasks of the farm to learn from driving the cows to curing the beef for winter, from sowing the wheat to thrashing it and taking it to the watermill to be ground into flour, from cutting down the trees in the forest to fashioning the wood into his dwelling in the town.

PLAY—Although they worked hard, girls and boys had time for play. Old games like hop scotch, prisoner’s base, and tag come down to us from the early days. In old attics we find old skates that speak of jolly winter days on the ice and old sleigh bells that ring as clearly as every, though the merry straw-riders have long since gone their ways. Quilting bees and husking bees were times when whole neighborhoods came together, and barn raisings were signals for friends from other towns to “hitch up” and come over to Southampton and lend a hand. In the woods at Millstone Brook the oldest beech trees are still covered with initials of boys and girls who came to the church picnics there one hundred years ago. The greatest day of all was Town Meeting Day but the story of Town Meeting Day will have to be told in a chapter all its own.

Courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center.