pots of the kitchen; the churns, cheese-presses, and pails of the dairy, had been purchased in the same shops in which the English householder had bought his supplies of a similar nature. The Virginian residence, however, was in its framework the product of local skill and labor. The plank, the mortar, the brick, and the stone entering into its composition had been obtained in the Colony, and had been put together there. The tastes of the owner, even if he desired to erect a dwelling-house which in general appearance should resemble some one of those belonging to the rural gentry of England, must have remained ungratified on account of the great costliness of securing both the materials and the mechanical skill which were required. There had not been sufficient accumulation of wealth in Virginia in the seventeenth century to permit of large expenditure in building houses. The outlay attending the importation from the mother country of highly trained workmen and of special materials, would have imposed a burden difficult for even the most affluent members of the planting class to bear.[1]
So far as information is to be derived from records, there was no residence in the Colony in the seventeenth century which could make any pretensions to beauty of design. The homes even of the most prominent planters were simple and plain. Brick seems to have entered only to a limited extent into the construction of the dwellings. It would appear that all bricks used in Virginia in this century were manufactured there. As this material
- ↑ So far as I have been able to discover, the first building materials of any kind brought into Virginia from England in the course of the seventeenth century were imported in 1607 for the use of George Percy. In memoranda of the Ninth Earl of Northumberland, the following entry is found: “To Mr. Melshewe for many necessaries, which he delivered to Mr. Percy toward building of a house in Virginia, 14s.” See Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 178.
