The Early American Classroom

Comfortable Warmth!

Be always sure you are right - then go ahead.
Davy Crockett (1786-1836) USA frontiersman, soldier, politician
In "Quotable Business," ed. Louis E. Boone, 1992.

    A descendant, nine generations removed, of an English captain who sailed into the New England port of Hull on May 30, 1630, commissioned this room. The kitchen-living room of the early colonists was chosen to portray the sturdy simplicity of life in American during the 1600s.

   The room's focus is a nine-foot fireplace with "fixings" of a log hook, heavy iron kettles, a spider, gridiron, longhandled waffle iron, bread shovel, skewers, ladles, and forks. A small recess in the brick wall served to bake bread. A tapered pole swings out from the end of the fireplace to be used for drying laundry or to hang a quilt to keep the cold draft from those gathered near the fire.

   Massive handhewn pine beams used in the seven-foot-high ceiling and the fireplace were collected after a careful search in Massachusetts. White pine is used for the heavy seminar table, benches, and chairs. all of the fireplace bricks are handmade. Wrought-iron candelabra are hinged with clasps to hold lighting tapers. Other light fixtures are of specially designed pierced tin. Decorative items include a collection of 17th- and 18th-century American coins and a hand-stitched sampler.

   The small closet between the blackboard and fireplace contains a secret panel. Once the concealed latch is discovered, its release causes the wall to swing open, revealing a hidden staircase to the upper loft, which has been furnished as a 19th-century bedroom.