The Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 47

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Excerpt from The Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 47: 1911But these marshes were valuable to the settlers not only for fodder, but for the long thatch which was used to cover the rude dwellings of that time, for in spite of the fact that as early as 1631, Governor Dudley forbade any man building a wooden chimney or thatching his roof, up to 1690 one-story houses were nearly all thatched. It was usual for towns to set aside certain lots lying between the salt marsh and low water mark, where thatch grew, for the purpose of supplying the roofs of the cottages, and up to the year 1660 the dwellings were largely of this sort, with catted wooden chimneys. These wooden chim neys were lined with clay, daubed to the very top, though the labor of claying the top was quite difficult. This combination of wooden chimney and thatched roof did not promise well for a community without ample fire protection, and the result was that in 1642 some towns made a law that all houses of this construction should have a ladder in readiness, in case of fire. It was not uncommon for the splinters at the top of the chimneys to catch fire and the sparks to drop on to the thatch and then of course the ¿ames would soon destroy the house. In the Court Records appears the case of a woman servant at Ipswich accused of setting fire to one of these dwell ings, and in answering the charge she said that being at home alone, and the cows having got into the corn, she took hold of the thatch to pull herself up to look around to locate them, and in doing so she upset her pipe and the thatch caught fire.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.