In the assessment of sixty room-by-room inventories, the following categories were assigned by which to assess each inventory as it was examined: - (a) Those detailed enough to draw a conjectural house plan, and appear to have been hall and parlor houses. These formed 48% of the full sample of sixty, but 71% (29/41) of the forty-one inventories which comprise (a) and (b) below.
| 1633 | Will Wright | | 1641 | Nathaniel Tilden | | 1644 | John Jenney | | 1649 | Thomas Lapham | | 1652 | James Lindale | | 1653 | Henry Andrews | | 1654 | William Hodges | | 1658 | Ralph Partrig | | 1661 | Samuel House | | 1661 | William Parker | | 1664 | Joseph Pecke*(1) | | 1665 | Thomas Howes | | 1666 | Timothy Hatherley | | 1670 | Joseph Tilden | | 1670 | Capt. William Hedge | | 1670 | William Lumpkin | | 1671 | John Barnes | | 1672 | Joseph Biddle | | 1673 | John Howland | | 1673 | Thomas Prence | | 1676 | John Wood | | 1676 | John Holmes | | 1676 | Timothy Williamson | | 1676 | John Damon | | 1676 | Thomas Howes, Capt. | | 1678 | John Rickard, Sr. | | 1682 | James Cudworth* | | 1683 | Sarah Howes,
widow of Capt. Thomas Howes | | 1685 | Ephraim Tincombe, Sr. | | | (For total of 29) |
- (b) Those which were somewhat ambiguous. These formed 20% of the full sample of sixty, but two-thirds (8/12) appear to have been an initial hall and parlor which had been extended in different ways, and so overall there appears to have been a dominant hall and parlor house form in the colony. Four could have been single units, one over one (Hurst, Ensigne, Winslow and Brook).
| 1641 | William Kempe | | 1644 | John Atwood | | 1657 | William Bradford | | 1657 | James Hurst | | 1664 | Thomas Ensigne | | 1667 | Anthony Thatcher | | 1670 | Alice Bradford | | 1673 | John Dicksey | | 1674 | Josiah Winslow | | 1675 | Nathaniell Thomas | | 1682 | William Brook* | | 1684 | Thomas Hatch | | | (For a total of 12) |
- (c) Those which were considered but deemed unusable, 32% of the sample, as there was insufficient data either to get a sense of the design of the house or to be able to attribute household goods to any of the rooms mentioned. These were removed from the initial sample sixty inventories.
| 1639 | Thomas Pryor | | 1649 | Ephraim Hicks | | 1651 | Love Brewster | | 1657 | John Gilbert | | 1658 | William Carpenter | | 1661 | Nathaniel Mayo | | 1662 | John Browne, Sr. | | 1669 | John Woodfield | | 1670 | Henry Howland | | 1673 | Richard Tayler | | 1674 | James & Dorothy Browne | | 1675 | Jacob Cooke, Sr. | | 1676 | Jonathan Winslow | | 1676 | Isacke Chettenden | | 1678 | Thomas Walley | | 1678 | Noah Newman | | 1678 | Nicholas Baker | | 1682 | Benjamin Pratt | | 1685 | Gyles Rickard, Sr. | | | (For a total of 19) |
Final list of 38 room-by-room inventories A final list of 38 room-by-room inventories used for data extraction and analysis is given below. It was divided into two time periods, 1633-1669 and 1670-85, for comparative purposes. The break dividing the time frames was at fifty years after the initial colonization of Plymouth in 1620, a period which would have seen the first generation of native born New Englanders, influence the cultural landscape of their new home outside the direct influences of the regions in England from which the first settlers came to the New World. There was ongoing emigration, peaking in the 1640s, as well as a certain amount of contact with England, but Plymouth Colony had a relatively poor economy, which did not encourage voyages to and from the mother country, and which, in fact, was in large measure responsible for the colony losing its initial charter, and being incorporated into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691. 1633-1669 | 1633 | Will Wright | | 1641 | Nathaniel Tilden | | 1641 | William Kempe | | 1644 | John Atwood | | 1644 | John Jenney | | 1649 | Thomas Lapham | | 1652 | James Lindale | | 1653 | Henry Andrews | | 1654 | William Hodges | | 1657 | William Bradford | | 1657 | James Hurst | | 1658 | Ralph Partrig | | 1661 | Samuel House | | 1661 | William Parker | | 1664 | Thomas Ensigne | | 1665 | Thomas Howes | | 1666 | Timothy Hatherley | | 1667 | Anthony Thacher |
1670-1685 | 1670 | Alice Bradford | | 1670 | Joseph Tilden | | 1670 | Capt. William Hedge | | 1670 | William Lumpkin | | 1671 | John Barnes | | 1672 | Joseph Biddle | | 1673 | John Howland | | 1673 | Thomas Prence | | 1673 | John Dicksey | | 1674 | Josiah Winslow | | 1675 | Nathaniell Thomas | | 1676 | John Wood | | 1676 | John Holmes | | 1676 | Timothy Williamson | | 1676 | John Damon | | 1676 | Thomas Howes, Capt. | | 1678 | John Rickard, Sr. | | 1683 | Sarah Howes, widow of
Capt. Thomas Howes | | 1684 | Thomas Hatch | | 1685 | Ephraim Tincombe, Sr. | | | (For a total of 38) |
1. Decedents with an asterisk after their name had sufficient rooms named by the appraisers for the inventories to be used in the analysis of house plans, but the attribution of household goods to specific rooms was not considered conclusive enough for them to be incorporated into the final list of thirty-eight inventories given below.
Go to:
Vernacular House Forms in Seventeenth Century Plymouth Colony
Appendix B: Lean-tos in the Plymouth Colony Probate Inventories
Appendix C: Emic Room Names used by Appraisers
Appendix D: Emic Room Names Classified under Etic Categories
Appendix E: Room Percentage Values
Appendix F: Room/Activity Matrix Charts
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