fifty-three pounds of tobacco; in the buttery, at a thousand and sixty-four; in the chamber, at six hundred and fifty; and in the closet, at ninety-six. This was near the middle of the century, when that commodity had begun to maintain a general average of about two pence a pound.[1] Corbin Griffin, a planter of Middlesex who was in possession of a large amount of property, bequeathed to his widow one hundred pounds sterling, with which to furnish presumably her chamber.[2]
The articles in use in the hall or dining-room, which was sometimes called the “great room,” were comparatively few; among them were several varieties of tables, the most common of which were the short and the long framed, with benches or forms in proportion to their lengths, for seats. In addition, there were the folding, the falling, the Spanish, the Dutch oval, and the sideboard table. Some of these pieces of furniture were made of black walnut and some of cedar. The chairs found in this apartment were of the same character as those belonging to the chamber. An ordinary feature of this room was the cupboard, in which the plates and dishes were kept. The tablecloths were manufactured of cotton, oznaburg, dowlas, holland and damask, the damask table-cloth being of the finest texture, and therefore probably only used on special occasions. Among the articles included in the inventory of Mrs. Elizabeth Digges of York, presented in court in 1699,[3] were nine table-cloths of this material. The quantity of table linen in English and Virginian homes of the seventeenth century
- ↑ Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1646-1651, f. p. 35.
- ↑ Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1698-1713, p. 108. The chamber furniture of Mrs. William Basset was valued at twenty pounds sterling. Records of General Court, p. 121.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1690-1694, p. 214, Va. State Library.
