"_Estate that deceased had with his wife Elizabeth in marriage (now left to her)._"
"One round table; bed with furnishings; chest of drawers; two trunks; a box; books; earthenware; glasses; pewter platters; plates; bason; porringers; cups; spoons; tinware; a fork; trenchers; four chairs; nine pounds in silver money; table-cloths; napkins; towels; a looking-glass; a chest; a silver salt; porringer; wine-cup and spoon; a brass pot; an iron pot; two brass skillets and hooks."
The following extract from a will drawn in 1759 by a man eighty years old shows the Friend's point of view as to whom the household stuff belonged. He wills to his wife as long as she liveth, unless she marries again (she was seventy years old at the time),
"two good feather beds and full furniture, and all my negro bedding; and all my grain, either growing or cut, or in store at the time of my decease; and all my flax and wool, and yarn and new cloth and cattle hides, leather, and soap, and meat, and all other provisions which I have in store in my house, either meat or drink, and all my negro men and one of my negro women, such of them as she shall choose, and my negro girl named Priss; and if I should chance to dye when I have cattle a-fatting my wife shall have them for the provision of herself and family, at my wife's disposal."
No doubt the feather beds and "negro bedding," as well as the "new cloth," had been made by the patient fingers of this wife of fifty years' standing; but she must forfeit all this fruit of her labour should she marry again. The Dutch system seems preferable.
In another inventory, that of Charles Mott, also a Long Island Quaker, dated 1740, the eldest son has the house and homestead, "together with the negro boy Jack and one feather bed." The sole provision for his wife was "four pounds a year" to be paid to her by the eldest son "so long as she remains my widow." He seems to have put a premium on her filling his place, and that quickly.
Possibly our Dutch settlers were more notable house wives than their sisters in New England or the South. In the latter region the mistress did not contribute with her own hands to the cleanliness of her home, but she had onerous duties in overlooking the work of sometimes over a hundred negroes, seeing to their food, clothes, and shelter. Our New England wives were still suffering from Indian depredations, and the young housewives whose doors were driven thick with nails to repel the deadly tomahawk, as Mistress David Chapin's was at Chicopee in 1705, would probably not have risked her "goods" out of doors, as did the Dutch housewives at Albany.