Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/192

 night-caps. In the room opposite to the stairway, there were thirty-two books, a saddle and bridle, two pounds of powder and sixteen pounds of shot, a yoke, ring, and sickle. The chamber over the parlor contained a limbeck of copper, a pewter still and bottom, a bedstead, a saddle, and an iron chain. In the kitchen, there were two iron pots, three pairs of pothooks, one spit, one flesh-hook, a frying-pan, fourteen milk-trays, one brass kettle, two brass skillets, one brass and one iron mortar, eight pewter dishes, a sugar basin and flagon, fourteen ordinary and two pie plates, two porringers, a quart and a half-pint pot, a salt-cellar, a mustard-pot, two saucers, three old pails, a churn, one churn-press, one joint stool, one cider hogshead, one window frame, a broadaxe, a saw and grindstone, and three hides.

Such in general were the household goods, independently of clothing, of the Virginian planter of the seventeenth century who possessed the average amount of property. The inventories of the personal estates of members of this class varied only slightly in their details, the articles in use being confined, as a rule, to those which were considered necessary for substantial comfort. Descending in the scale, it will be interesting to inquire as to the household goods of persons in narrower circumstances. In 1678, the inventory of William Gibburd of York was presented in court. It showed that he had in his lifetime owned the following articles in addition to live stock and clothing: two beds and bolsters, two rugs, two blankets, two pillows, a hammock, an iron pestle, a saddle and bridle, an iron pot and pothooks, a skillet, a frying-pan, a smoothing-iron and heaters, a pewter chamber-pot, six pewter dishes, ten trays, two pewter drinking-cups, two porringers, a saucepan, two tin pans, eight spoons, a box, six glass bottles,