November 15, 1742-A son, Tisdale, is born to Salisbury Sherman & Abigail Tisdale in Dartmouth, Bristol,
Massachusetts.
(Tisdale Sherman is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Thomas Lawton & Elizabeth Salisbury.)
Life in New England
A majority of New England residents were small farmers. Within these small farm families, and
English families as well, a man had complete power over the property and his wife. When married, an English woman lost her maiden name and personal identity, meaning she could not own property, file lawsuits, or participate in political life, even when widowed. The role of wives was to raise and nurture healthy children and support their husbands. Most women carried out these duties.
During the
18th century, couples usually married between the ages of 20-24 and 6-8 children were typical of a family, with three on average surviving to adulthood. Farm women provided most of the materials needed by the rest of the family by spinning yarn from wool and knitting sweaters and stockings, making candles and soap from ashes, and churning milk into butter.
New England farming families generally lived in wooden houses because of the abundance of trees. A typical New England farmhouse was one-and-a-half stories tall and had a strong frame (usually made of large square timbers) that was covered by wooden clapboard siding. A large chimney stood in the middle of the house that provided cooking facilities and warmth during the winter. One side of the ground floor contained a hall, a general-purpose room where the family worked and ate meals. Adjacent to the hall was the parlor, a room used to entertain guests that contained the family's best furnishings and the parent's bed. Children slept in a loft above, while the kitchen was either part of the hall or was located in a shed along the back of the house. Because colonial families were large, these small dwellings had much activity and there was little privacy.
By the
mid-18th century in New England, shipbuilding was a staple, particularly as the North
American wilderness offered a seemingly endless supply of timber (by comparison,
Europe's forests had been depleted and most timber had to be purchased from Scandinavia) The British crown often turned to the cheap, yet strongly built American ships. There was a shipyard at the mouth of almost every river in New England.
By
1750, a variety of artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants provided services to the growing farming population.
Blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, and furniture makers set up shops in
rural villages. There they built and repaired goods needed by farm families. Stores selling English manufactures such as cloth, iron utensils, and window glass as well as
West Indian products like sugar and
molasses were set up by traders. The storekeepers of these shops sold their imported goods in exchange for crops and other local products including
roof shingles,
potash, and
barrel staves. These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the
Atlantic Coast. Enterprising men set up
stables and
taverns along wagon roads to service this transportation system.
After these products had been delivered to port towns such as
Boston and
Salem in Massachusetts,
New Haven in Connecticut, and
Newport and
Providence in
Rhode Island, merchants then exported them to the West Indies where they were traded for molasses, sugar, gold coins, and bills of exchange (credit slips). They carried the West Indian products to New England factories where the raw sugar was turned into granulated sugar and the molasses distilled into
rum. The gold and credit slips were sent to England where they were exchanged for manufactures, which were shipped back to the colonies and sold along with the sugar and rum to farmers.
Other New England merchants took advantage of the rich fishing areas along the Atlantic Coast and financed a large fishing fleet, transporting its catch of
mackerel and
cod to the West Indies and Europe. Some merchants exploited the vast amounts of timber along the coasts and rivers of
northern New England. They funded
sawmills that supplied cheap wood for houses and shipbuilding. Hundreds of New England shipwrights built oceangoing ships, which they sold to British and American merchants.
Many merchants became very wealthy by providing their goods to the agricultural population and ended up dominating the society of sea port cities. Unlike yeoman farmhouses, these merchants resembled the lifestyle of that of the upper class of England living in elegant
2 1⁄2-story houses designed the new Georgian style. These
Georgian houses had a symmetrical façade with equal numbers of windows on both sides of the central door. The interior consisted of a passageway down the middle of the house with specialized rooms such as a library, dining room, formal parlor, and master bedroom off the sides. Unlike the multi-purpose space of the yeoman houses, each of these rooms served a separate purpose. In a Georgian house, men mainly used certain rooms, such as the library, while women mostly used the kitchen. These houses contained bedrooms on the second floor that provided privacy to parents and children. -
Wikipedia
