Life
In the early years of the colony, life could be quite difficult. Many colonists lived in fairly crude structures, including dugouts, wigwams, and dirt-floor huts made using wattle and daub construction. In later years construction methods improved, and houses began to be sheathed in clapboard, with thatch or plank roofs and wooden chimneys. Wealthier individuals would extend their house by adding a leanto on the back, which allowed for a larger kitchen (possibly with a brick or stone chimney including an oven), additional rooms, and a sleeping loft. These houses were the precursors to what is now called the saltbox style of architecture. Interiors became more elaborate in later years, with plaster walls, wainscoting, and potentially expensive turned woodwork in the most expensive homes.
A town that was well laid out would have a fairly compact town center, with a tavern, school, possibly some small shops, and a meeting house that was used for civic and religious functions. The meeting house would be the center of the town's political and religious life. Church services might be held for several hours on Wednesday and all day Sunday. Puritans did not observe holidays, especially Christmas, which they said had pagan roots. Annual town meetings would be held at the meeting house, generally in May, to elect the town's representatives to the general court and to transact other community business. Towns often had a village green, used for outdoor celebrations and activities like military exercises of the town's trainband or militia.
Read more about this topic: Massachusetts Bay Colony
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To approach a city ... as if it were [an] ... architectural problem ... is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life.... The results ... are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)