Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

488 GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES.
Perhaps it is true ; but considering the second Andrew Hallett as
a representative man, and that his history is the history of hundreds
of others, I am induced to particularize, and perhaps repeat some
things, because I happen to know more of him than I do of those
equally deserving, whose biography I omit.
The house which he bought of Gyles Hopkins in 1642, was
probably the same that Mr. Stephen Hopkins built in the summer
of 1638, and if so, was the first house built by the English on
Cape Cod below Sandwich. It was small and poorly constructed,
and was occupied as a dwelling not many years. As the first
house built by the whites, .it has an historical interest. It stood
on the eastern declivity of the hill, about seventy-five yards northwesterly
from the present dwelling-house of Mr. Joseph Hale. A
depression in the ground and a rock in the wall, mark the place of
its location. An excavation was made into the side of the hill to
level the ground, and the stone and cob work chimney was built
against the bank, and outside of the frame of the house. It
probably contained at first only one room. The excavation into
the hill, and the chimney, covered nearly the whole of the west
side, and the other three sidtjs were covered with hand-sawed or
hewn planks, and the roof with thach. The walls were not shingled
on the outside, or plastered on the in. The seams in the
boarding were filled or "daubed" with clay. Oiled paper supplied
the place of glass. The sills were hewn from large logs,
and projected into the room, forming low seats on three sides.
The floor was fastened to sleepers laid on the ground, and even
with the lower edge of the sills. A ladder to the chamber and a
elect door with a wooden latch and string, completed the fixtures
of the house.
In this rudely built shanty, two of the children of Gyles
Hopkins, who came over in the Mayflower, were born, and here
resided a number of years the moat opulent man of Yarmouth.
Nearly all the houses of our ancestors were of this description.
The memorandum of the contract for building the house of the
elder Mr. Hallett, preserved in the deed of Dr. Starr, proves that
his house was of the same description. Gov. Hinckley resided in
a house of similar construction many years. De Rassier's description
of Plymouth in 1627, shows that the walls of the houses
in that town were covered with hewn or hand-sawed planks, and
unshingled. As late as 1717 it was not common to plaster the inside
walls. The seams between the boards on the Meeting House
built that year on Cobb's Hill were filled with morter, or "daubed"
precisely in the same manner as practiced by the first settlers.
That boards were used in the construction of their dwellings, by
the first settlers, is also shown by the agreement made June 19,
1641, between the inhabitants of Barnstable and the Indian chief
Nepaiton, to build the latter a house. A part of the contract was