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Archaeological Perspectives: Archaeology of an 18th-Century Family in North Branford 
The Household Economy of Lydia Goodsell: by Ross Harper
On a winter day in 1752 a small group of probate appraisers walked through the house of Lydia Goodsell of Branford. The men carefully itemized each of her deceased husband’s possessions, room by room, and assigned a value to each object, which was meticulously recorded. Lydia’s husband, Samuel Goodsell, had been “killed by a log at a sawmill” the previous November (1751) at the age of 41.
For her widow’s share of the estate, Lydia received two and a half acres of land “whereupon ye house stands,” ten acres and 50 rods of land “on the west side of the young orchard,” a right in the “new house,” a third part of “ye barn, south bay” and one-third interest in the sawmill. Lydia also received a share of various household goods and farm tools, including a cider mill, a barrel churn, the livestock, one “old great [spinning] wheel,” a harrow, a large hatchet, an old scythe, two broad hoes, a horse plow, a dung shovel, a pitchfork and other tools. For cooking there was a large iron kettle, a trammel and a “flesh fork,” and for the table were pewter plates and spoons, an “earthen mug,” a salt mortar and pestle and two “China plates.” Little is mentioned of food beyond one barrel of “apple beer.” The remainder of her husband’s estate was divided among the six children, including Samuel Jr., who received some farm land, part of the orchard, and the “old house.”
Lydia never remarried and remained in her house until her death in 1797. By the next year her heirs had dismantled both houses and filled in the cellar holes and well with household debris, chimney and foundation stones, field cobbles and soil. The remains were thereafter hidden under an agricultural field and Lydia and her family were eventually forgotten. Only a few documents have survived to indicate that the family had ever lived in this part of Branford, which became North Branford in 1831.
During a routine archaeological survey for the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) by the Public Archaeology Survey Team (PAST), the lost remains of the Goodsell house and farmstead were discovered several feet under a cornfield. In all, two rectangular stone-lined cellar holes—corresponding to the “old house” and the “new house” mentioned in Samuel’s 1752 probate—a fireplace base and a stone-lined well were discovered, along with 30,787 artifacts. The diversity and preservation of the artifacts is remarkable, which to a great extent can be attributed to their having been long buried and protected from weather, plowing and relic hunters.
Lydia’s “new house” seems to have been of the simple one-room end chimney type, an early-period starter house that often had rooms added later. Its remains included a 16' x 13' cellar with a dirt floor, dry-laid stone walls, and a mortared-stone fireplace base. The house footprint is estimated to be about 16' x 28'; it had a south-facing yard and a well 50 feet away. Middens, or trash refuse areas, were concentrated to the east of the house and out of sight of the road. Recovered artifacts indicate that the house had simple iron hinges and latches with leaded windows of green and blue-green glass panes. A small number of red brick fragments suggest the fieldstone chimney had been “topped-off” with brick only above the roof.
As the excavations progressed, the site offered an unprecedented opportunity to learn more about how women lived on their own in 18th-century Connecticut. Colonial women typically did not own property outright, thus few probate records were compiled for them; and few diaries or journals written by women have survived.
The archaeology and documentary data indicate that the Goodsells raised Old World grains including oats, wheat and rye, along with maize, beans and squash that colonists adopted from Native Americans. From the family’s orchards, apples were made into cider with their cider mill (likely horse-powered), and a bee hive provided honey and wax and aided pollination of the fruit-tree blossoms. Milk from the family’s cows was placed in large earthenware pans and the separated cream was converted into butter and cheese. Beef and pork were preserved by salting and packing into barrels; these barrels, along with cider and butter, were secured in the cellar. Geese and chickens were raised for meat, eggs, and down. Other meat was obtained through hunting and trapping; the excavations found the bones of deer, squirrels, land turtles, waterfowl, and the now extinct passenger pigeon, which were taken in the family’s “pigeon net.” Bones of freshwater sucker were also found; these fish spawn in rivers in great numbers in the spring. The abundance of shellfish at the site, including oyster, quahog and whelk, were harvested on the shore with the “cockle riddle” [sieve] and “oyster tongs,” mentioned in the probate. Charred remains of butternut, hazelnut and hickory and seeds from huckleberry, blackberry/raspberry, black cherry and grapes were also found. These simple but nutritious and hardy foods were prepared by boiling, roasting, frying and baking, which the Goodsells did in flat redware and yellow slipware dishes. Typical New England meals included roasts, chowder, succotash, “sauce” (root vegetables) and various pies, puddings, and cakes.
The Goodsell women were also involved in every stage of textile production. They grew flax and raised sheep, they processed the flax and wool with their hatchel and cards and then spun it into yarn using linen and woolen wheels before weaving it into cloth on their loom. Scissor fragments, needles and straight pins indicate they made and repaired their own clothing. The discovery of a small child’s thimble at the site shows how these activities began with girls at an early age.
Like others of the middling sort in 18th-century Connecticut, Lydia Goodsell and her family combined farming and craft production, but they were not living at a mere subsistence level. Indeed, the excavations found that they drank tea with sets of imported bowls, saucers and tea pots, ate from matching ceramic plates, used table knives and forks, and drank from fluted and etched tumblers and stemware. Many of the fine ceramics discovered postdate Samuel’s probate inventory in 1752, so we know they were purchased by Lydia herself.
The archaeology also showed that the Goodsells were practical, frugal and resourceful. Lydia continued to use older-style vessels, such a dot-decorated yellow slipware posset pot. Its two handles allowed it to be passed around the table for all to drink from. Lydia repaired her broken dishes by drilling pairs of holes along a break and lashing the sides together; simple scraping tools were improvised from pieces of broken glass; strike-a-lights for fire-making were obtained by breaking up European flint cobbles, probably collected from coastal ballast dumps; and she reworked scraps of lead, iron and brass into various objects such as fishing weights.
In The American Frugal Housewife (1844), Lydia Child emphasized this important and reoccurring theme among New Englanders: The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time, as well as materials. Nothing should be thrown away so long as it is possible to make any use of it, however trifling that use may be; and whatever be the size of a family, every member should be employed either in earning or saving money. Indeed, Lydia Goodsell seems to have personified the “steady habits” and “make-do” character which defined Connecticut Yankee culture. Ross Harper is a senior archaeologist with the Public Archaeology Survey Team, headquartered in Storrs.
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