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Audiobook edition · 11 h 47 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does it take to build everyday life where there are no ready towns, no mills and few roads?
In Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, George Francis Dow turns from governors and wars to the settlers’ daily needs. Houses, meals, clothes and work take centre stage. Small, crowded homes offer shelter, while food and clothing depend on household labour. Even a bed, a pot or a length of cloth carries weight.
Dow draws on court papers, town records, wills, household inventories, letters and journals to explore the colony’s first decades. He follows life from the home to the meetinghouse, where worship and public life meet. Alongside farming, trades take shape: carpenters, blacksmiths, coopers and others serve towns whose people must make, preserve and repair what they need.
What you’ll discover
- Homes built for shelter Step into the small, hurried dwellings that shelter settlers while they plan something better.
- Food through the seasons Explore meals shaped by land, sea and the need to keep food through winter.
- Clothes and household labour Discover the daily work behind clothing and the value of ordinary household goods.
- Worship, law and punishment See how church and law shape public life, with the meetinghouse at its centre.
- Lives in the records Encounter ordinary people through the wills, letters and court papers that preserve their concerns.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you love old diaries, household objects, family history, courtroom stories, recipes and remedies, or the small daily facts that bring early New England to life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Survival begins before the voyage
- Rough shelters come before English houses
- Inventories reveal what families really owned
- One fire gathers the household
- Fashion outlasts rules about dress
- Farm households make what they need
- Strict faith leaves room for pleasure
- Trade finds ways around scarce money
- Ordinary records correct familiar legends
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Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
by George Francis Dow · 1935
A ship's passage takes sixty-eight days, a settler sleeps in a cask, and a maid's pipe ash burns a house down.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Remember death”
In short
A settler steps onto the deck of the Talbot with a Monmouth cap, a long gun and eight bushels of meal. Sixty-eight days after leaving Gravesend he reaches Salem.
Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 40 min5 h 15 min fast, 7 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 94,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1935by George Francis Dow
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Settlers packed everything before sailing
The Reverend Francis Higginson warned emigrants that no markets or fairs waited across the ocean. His list for each person covered eight bushels of meal, cloth, leather, tools, iron for nails, glass for windows and a full set of armor. He even named the year's supply of peas, oatmeal, vinegar and butter.
The Talbot carried about one hundred passengers and thirty sailors. Its food was meant for three months, yet the crossing takes sixty-eight days. Two people die of smallpox, and a dog falls overboard. Between decks a tall man cannot stand upright, and in a storm the hatches stay shut.
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Details
- First published
- 1935
- Language
- English
- Level
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Cite this edition
Dow, George Francis. Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/every-day-life-in-the-massachusetts-bay-colony.
Dow, G. F. (2026). Every day life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/every-day-life-in-the-massachusetts-bay-colony (Original work published 1935)
Dow, George Francis. Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/every-day-life-in-the-massachusetts-bay-colony.
@book{dow2026every,
author = {Dow, George Francis},
title = {Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/every-day-life-in-the-massachusetts-bay-colony},
note = {First published 1935}
}
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What is Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony about?
It describes how early New England settlers lived, from the sea voyage and first shelters to houses, furniture, clothing, food, farm work, trade, money, medicine and crime, using original records such as wills, court files and newspaper notices.
Did the Puritans really live in log cabins?
Dow argues that early evidence does not support it. The settlers built plank and frame houses like those in England, used huts and dugouts at first, and kept log construction mainly for garrison houses.
What are the long lists in the book?
They are inventories, shop stock lists, fabric names, trade advertisements and recipes taken from original records. Each list shows what people owned, bought, wore and used, and many come with a short note or story.
The author
George Francis Dow
1868–1936 · American historian
George Francis Dow (1868–1936) was an American historian who lived in Massachusetts. He worked at the Essex Institute in Salem. He wrote Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, published in 1935, and co-wrote The Pirates of the New England Coast (1630–1730) with John Henry Edmonds, published in 1923.
“Remember death”
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