CHAPTER IV.

EDUCATION, ENTERPRISE AND IMPROVEMENTS.

1701-1731

     WHEN we consider the state of society, and especially the farming class in England, only a hundred years before the settlement began in Derby, we must conclude that here great progress was made during the first hundred years, although without the comparison we might judge otherwise.  We are told that during the fifteenth and considerable part of the sixteenth century, the comfort of the farmers there was not equal to America during its first century.
    "The cottages of the peasantry usually consisted of but two rooms on the ground floor, the outer for the servants, the inner for the master and his family, and they were thatched with straw or sedge; while the dwelling of the substantial farmer was distributed into several rooms; above and beneath was coated with white lime or cement, and was very neatly roofed with reed; hence, Tusser, speaking of the farm house, gives the following directions for repairing and preserving its thatch in the month of May:

" 'Where houses be needed (as houses have need)
Now pare of the mosse, and go beat in the reed:
The juster ye drive it, the smoother and plaine
More handsome ye make it, to shut off the raine.'"¹

     "A few years before the era of which we are treating, (that is, the first half of the sixteenth century) the venerable Hugh Latimer,² describing in one of his impressive sermons the economy of a farmer in his time, tells us that his father, who was a yeoman, had no land of his own, but only 'a farm of three or four pounds by the year at the most; and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men.'  Land let at this period at about a shilling per acre; but in the reign of Elizabeth (from
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     ¹ This was printed in 1744, when much progress had been made in farmers' houses.
     ² Born in 1472.

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Pg. 107 - NEED OF WRITING

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Pg. 109 - CAMP'S MORTGAGE

     "Mr. Moss, the minister, shall have a right in all future divisions to the proportion of a one hundred pound estate.  The drawing for these lots took place on twelfth of March, 1702, by drawing the numbers from a box or hat.

Pg. 111 - AN HOUR GLASS.

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Pg. 113 - MR. JAMES DISMISSED.

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Page 117 - SEATING THE MEETING-HOUSE.

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Page 119 - PROGRESS IN DERBY.

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Page 121 - TURKEY HILLS.

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Page 123 - ANCIENT DWELLINGS.

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Page 125 - A NEW MEETING HOUSE.

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held about the same estimation in the public mind at that time as tobacco does at the present; that is, it was supposed to be harmless to all if moderately used, and of great good to many; and it would be difficult to judge which opinion is most wise or most unwise and injurious, the old or the new.

     This meeting-house was built in the years 1721 and 1722, but it was not seated until after the following vote: "Jan. 28, 1722-3, voted that the meeting house shall be seated by such rules as followeth: Col. Ebenezer Johnson, Ens. Samuel Riggs and John Tibbals, Stephen Pierson, Ens., shall sit in the first seat next the pulpit; Doctor Durand, Mr. Samuel Bowers and Jeremiah Johnson shall sit in the second seat of the square next the pulpit; John Pringle, Sergent Brinsmade, John Chatfield, senre., shall sit in a short eat by Mr. Moss' pew."  At the same time it was voted "we will seat all that remain according to the list."
     They had previously directed (Feb. 5, 1721-2) "that Mr. Moss have liberty to build a pew six feet square joining to the pulpit stairs, for his wife and family."

Page 127 - EXEMPT FROM RATES.

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THE NEGRO PEW.

     "Again the town order the said committee to build a convenient seat for the negroes on the beams over the front gallery, and stairs to go up on the town's charge."
     The posts of that house were twenty feet high, which gave room for a second gallery, or this seat "over the front gallery."
     These distinctions of class and caste were much, if not wholly, indebted to slavery, for their existence.  At the first settlement and the beginning of the first church, it was not so, but when slavery had existed some yeasr, not only were the slaves reduced to a position of degradation, but every other man and his family in the community, not on the basis of color, but that of money, they were seated in church in accordance with the amount of money they were worth or held in possession.

SABADAY HOUSES.

     In 1725, the following record was made, showing that the people began to think something about comfort on Sunday or First Day, as then called, or yet more strictly, it may be said that recorders frequently wrote second day, third day, and fourth day.  "The town granted liberty to the inhabitants to

Page 129 - FIRST SCHOOL-HOUSE

THE LIST OF ESTATES IN DERBY IN 1718, BY AUTHORITY OF THE TOWN.

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ARRANGEMENTS OF FENCE ON THE RIVER IN 1720.

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THE PROPRIETORS OF SENTINEL HILL FIELD.

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