Home Sweet Home

When the first settlers came to America, there were no homes waiting for them. In order to survive, the newcomers quickly constructed rough shelters, which would serve until more permanent homes could be built. A site was usually selected near a pond or stream since water was so necessary for drinking, cooking, and washing; for feeding the livestock, watering crops, and – in some cases – turning waterwheels to provide power. Some of the first temporary homes of the early settlers were no more than covered holes dug in the ground, or roughly made huts of piled logs and bark. But as settlers continued to arrive in the New World, real houses began to appear.

The early houses were not designed by architects, nor built by contractors! Everything – including planning, clearing the land, cutting the lumber, gathering the stones, and construction itself – was done by the owner-to-be with help from his neighbors. American climate and materials were often unlike those of the settler’s homeland, and tools were hard to come by. Settlers really had to start from scratch.

At first, logs were either used whole, or boards were made by hand-splitting logs into planks, using wedges and a very large, heavy wooden mallet. Where trees were plentiful, log cabins, Fig. 1, were built, using only an ax and handsaw. (The advantage of the log cabin was that it could be constructed quickly by a single man. On the Plains, where there were no trees, the settlers chopped the hard earth into sod “bricks,” and used the sod like bricks for building.)

HELD TOGETHER WITH MUD

Without nails, the settlers used clay and mud to fasten wood together, and posts were held to beams by carefully fitted wooden pegs. Depending on the climate, roofs were made flat, for easy construction, or steeply pitched to shed the winter snow. Because cut-wood roof shingles needed to age before they could be put up, temporary roofs, made of tree bark or thatched with straw, were erected. Some home builders tried to hurry the process, believing the superstition that newly cut shingles put on in the moonlight would not curl as the wood dried.

Houses were not constructed all at once, but gradually completed and improved as time and resources allowed. As a family grew or acquired wealth, the family home became larger, more elaborate, frequently reflecting the architectural styles of the settler’s homeland. Depending on the materials available, the English built what we now call colonial, cape, and saltbox style wooden homes, similar in style to the homes of rural England, Fig. 2. The Dutch built “stepped roof” colonial homes of brick, Fig. 3. Many of the German and Swedish colonists constructed their houses from stones cleared from their farmlands, Fig. 4, and the French and Spanish had their “old country” styles as well.

Machines, too, helped the American home to grow. By the middle of the 1800’s sawmills operating near large cities produced ready-cut “dimension lumber” like the “two-by-fours” (2х4) we use today. Machines were also developed to produce nails. Dimension lumber and nails meant that houses were easier to build, but at first there was concern that a strong wind might blow these largely wooden homes clear off the ground, “like a balloon.”

However, these early “balloon frame” houses, as they were properly called, proved to be sturdy. We still build houses in that way today.

Whatever the building material or style, nearly all Early American homes – the basic American home – followed the same interior plan: one large room with a single central fireplace or two fireplaces, one at either end of the house. The fireplace was the focal point of the house. It provided heat for cooking, warmth from the cold, and some light during the evening hours. The fireplace room was used as the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and also the bedroom. The fire was so important – and so difficult to re-light if it went out – that it was kept going day and night, summer and winter. Around the fireplace hung gadgets galore. Not only pots, pans, and cooking implements, but homemade devices for cracking nuts, washing clothes, warming cold beds, and many things that look today like abstract sculpture, so difficult is it to recognize their function.

SIMPLE DIRT FLOORS

Inside walls in the very early homes were bare structure or structure covered with boards. In the fancier homes the boards were covered with a type of plaster made from ground up seashells, sand, and water. Paint was scarce and used only as decoration. There was no plumbing or running water, so all water used for cooking, drinking, and washing had to be hauled in buckets to the house from a nearby stream or a hand-dug water well.

Before a wooden floor was laid – which might be postponed for years in favor of other more important tasks – the plain dirt floor was pounded hard and swept each day. The dirt floor was especially suitable for scratching out games and drawing plans. When company was expected, fancy designs and patterns were scratched in the floor to make a “dirt carpet,” Fig. 5.

At first windows were only open holes in the walls that could be closed with shutters. Some window holes were covered with oiled paper. The oil made the paper translucent so that some light would pass through, and the paper kept out the wind and rain. Before sheet glass became available, some families made “glass” windows by piling up glass bottles in the window hole, Fig.6. Even the glass windows that were available were full of sags and bubbles that made things seen through them appear ripply and distorted. And only ten pieces of glass were allowed in a home before a special tax had to be paid. Glass was so valuable in Early America that when a family moved they took their glass windows with them.

Sometimes a loft or second-floor level was built in the house to make extra room. The loft was accessible by a ladder and was where the children often slept. The loft was a snug, safe-feeling place, and the warmest spot in the house due to the rising heat from the fireplace.

ADDING ON BUILDINGS

The house was built first, but it didn’t stand alone for long. Barns were built to keep livestock and provide a working space. Corncribs, mounted off the ground to keep the mice away, stored the corn harvest until it was used, Fig. 7. The smokehouse – which frequently burned down and was, therefore, kept a good distance from the main house – was used to cure meats and give them a good flavor as well as to preserve the meat from spoilage. The cellar of a house was the place to store food. It kept food cool in the summer and from freezing in the winter. The cellar, however, was not necessarily under the house, but beside it – a pit or room-in-the-ground on the sunless north side. Depending on any other trades the farmer was skilled at, he might have a forge barn for shaping iron, a grist mill for grinding grain, or possibly even a ropewalk. And, of course, an outhouse – an outdoor toilet. Even in Early America, and especially at public buildings, there were sometimes separate outhouses for men and women. The alf-moon symbol or “luna” meant the outhouse was for women and the sun symbol or “sol” meant it was for men, Fig. 8. In the colder New England climates the outbuildings were attached to the main house. (It is interesting to note that some New England homes built by the sea had a small fenced-in platform perched atop the highest point of the roof called “a captain’s walk” or a “widow’s walk.” The walk was reached through a trapdoor in the ceiling and provided a sea captain, or the wife of a ship’s captain who was at sea, with a view of the harbor and all incoming ships, Fig. 9.)

Our homes today still reflect the styles of the Early American builders. Much of the building technology has changed over the years, however. We still use dimension lumber, but we also have the convenience of poured concrete, aluminum siding, plaster wallboard, smooth clear glass, central heating and air conditioning systems, indoor plumbing, and, of course, a slew of electrical conveniences.

The fireplace is no longer a necessity in most homes, but we still like to build them into our homes for the warmth and atmosphere they create. Gone are most of the outbuildings – barns, smokehouses, and so on – because we now buy most of the things we need rather than produce them ourselves. As our life-styles change, so do our houses change to reflect our new habits and ways of life. What will our houses be like in the future? Think about energy, recreation, food production, and safety, and try to imagine your house twenty-five years from now.

A house, once constructed, becomes a valuable family asset. Unless it has deteriorated beyond repair due to damage or neglect, it is rarely torn down, but rather improved, enlarged, and made more modern, in keeping with newer life-styles and conveniences. Many homes built by the settlers and colonists over two or three hundred years ago have been refurbished and modernized, and are still comfortably lived in today.