by an emigrant to the Colony; he restricted the articles which would be needed to a feather-bed, bolster, and rug, a pair of blankets and three pairs of sheets.[1]
In examining the inventories of the seventeenth century, it is soon discovered that the overwhelming majority of planters who left personal estates were possessed of a far larger quantity of household goods than were found in these meagre enumerations. The English descent of the householders was shown in every particular of their residences. I shall begin with a description of the furniture and take the bedroom as a starting-point. The variety of beds in the possession of the planters was the same as in English homes of the same period; there were the large bed, the sea-bed,[2] the flock-bed, and the trundle-bed, which was rolled under the large bed during the day. The bedtick was generally made of canvas and was stuffed with the feathers of wild or domestic fowls, or with hair or straw.[3] One of the materials most commonly employed for this purpose in the homes of the smaller planters was the flower of a plant that was found in all the marshes and ponds of the Colony and which is still known as the cat-tail. This stuff had the softness of feathers. It was entirely a local expedient. The large bed of the chamber was surrounded by curtains which were upheld by a rod, some of these hangings being red, some white, and some green. The material of which they were made consisted of prints, linsey-woolsey, or kidder-
- ↑ Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications; Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, pp. 109-111.
- ↑ Among the orders of court recorded in York County is the following: “John Thomas ordered to pay Mathew Page a good sea-bed.” Vol. 1657-1662, p. 176, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Colonel Norwood mentions that when he arrived at the house of Jenkin Price in Accomac, he lay down on a bed of fresh straw. Norwood’s Voyage to Virginia, p. 48, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
