furniture makers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, although the
Shakers and the Amish continued to fashion more austere, less English
styles to express their religious faiths. In poorer houses, particularly on the
frontier, furniture was made of split logs; only gradually, as sawed lumber
became available, chairs and tables resembling ours came into common
use. Beds, however, long remained a luxury. Most people slept on straw-
filled bags or on the rushes that covered the tamped-down earth floor.
Houses were without insulation, and walls and roofs let in the cold and
damp. Such heat as could be provided came from open fireplaces, which
used prodigious amounts of wood. Even a small cabin would consume each
winter at least twenty cords or a pile 160 feet long, 4 feet high, and 4 feet
wide. A medium-size house would use more than double that amount. But
no matter how much wood was burned, fireplaces threw out little warmth.
Without dampers, flues not only carried up the chimney most of the heat
the fire produced but also sucked streams of cold air through cracks or
windows and doors. Water would freeze just a few feet away from a roaring
fire, as I learned in my house in Harvard when the newly installed furnace
broke down one winter day.
That man of all talents, Benjamin Franklin, rushed into the American
breach in 1740, when he came out with a new stove. Inspired by European
models, he tinkered with them until he had a stove that was more efficient,
was cheaper, and could be manufactured in the colonies. He had a proto-
type made, tested it, and then published an advertisement listing all its
advantages. As revolutionary in its time as air-conditioning in ours,
Franklin’s “New-Invented Pennsylvania Fire-Places” quickly spread from
city to city.
Housing was more rudimentary along the frontier than along the coast.
Out of necessity, rooms were built small. An average ground floor, usually a
single room which served as parlor, bedroom, kitchen, and dining room,
was determined by the length of locally available tree trunks; it was seldom
more than about 24 by 18 feet. When families grew too large for the one
room, as they quickly did, a duplicate of the first house would be built
nearby and connected by what was called a “dog run.” Only the richer peo-
ple built a second story. As late as the first half of the nineteenth century,
even prosperous families lived in these “double log cabins.” The Harding
The Growth of the Colonies 147