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PURITAN VILLAGE
PATTERNS
The distinctive layout of the traditional
seventeenth-century New England
village--with its central, grassed common
and its meetinghouse surrounded by
homes built close together--can be traced
to the needs and customs of the earliest
settlers. Houses were grouped around the
common (where all residents could graze
their cattle) for, among other reasons,
mutual protection against the Indians and
because this was how villages were laid out
in rural England. Outside the village itself,
strips were allotted for cultivating crops,
the larger strips often going to the more
affluent residents. Although most early
New England villages were laid out this
way, the practice was largely abandoned
after the American Revolution as the region
became more densely settled.
Forested |
Cemetery |
Pasture |
Meetinghouse |
Communal Lots |
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Private lots with house |
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Example of one farmer's holdings |
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(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Most of the early towns of New England were laid out using patterns from the towns of England and modified for the needs of the New World. For most of them, the houses were clustered together and mostly in sight of each other, useful for both defense and social control. The lots were long and narrow. In an ideal circumstance, lots like this gave farmers a portion of the rich bottomland near the water, a portion of intermediate land, and a portion of wooded upland. Failing that, narrow strips were allocated in those different environments: bottomland for farming some crops; intermediate for others; and the woodland for lumber and wood for cooking. The commons initially was used for pastureland and grazing, not, as many believe, for mustering the militia: that use was much later and rarely done.
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Puritan Village patterns from "Historical Atlas of Massachusetts"
publisher University of Massachusetts Press |
author Richard W. Wilkie |
author Jack Tager |
date 1991 |
location Amherst, Massachusetts |
width 16.0" |
height 12.25" |
process/materials printed paper, ink |
item type Books/Book |
accession # #L01.119 |
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