17th-Century Home Site Excavated in Massachusetts

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN—The site of the seventeenth-century home of John Doane, one of the first English families to settle in what is now the town of Eastham, Massachusetts, has been excavated by John Chenoweth of the University of Michigan-Dearborn and his colleagues, according to a report in The Provincetown Independent. Doane died in 1686 at the age of 94, after serving as the town’s deacon, constable, surveyor of highways, deputy to the colony court, and selectman. After his death, his daughter Abigail, who had been living with him, married and moved to Connecticut, likely taking the most valuable goods in the home with her. Thousands of chips from expensive imported bricks uncovered at the site suggest that the house had a hearth, cellar, chimney, and footings made of brick. Fragments of flat glass and X-shaped lead window framing indicate that the house had glass windows. “Glass is a real status symbol in seventeenth-century New England,” Chenoweth said, since it was so fragile and had to be transported from England. Yet poor-quality pieces of molten glass and several pieces of iron slag could reflect an attempt to repair or produce goods locally, he added. Few pieces of bottle glass and pipestems were unearthed, perhaps reflecting little consumption of alcohol or tobacco by Doane, who was remembered as “a man of wisdom, integrity, and deep piety,” according to a history of the region compiled in the mid-nineteenth century. To read about the recently uncovered eighteenth-century homestead of a prominent Black property owner in New England, go to "Around the World: Massachusetts."