I did an interesting “art project” or “history project” with my seventh grade, working in concert with our fifth and second grades. We assembled a little museum exhibit of things borrowed from around school and from parents of all the objects listed in the inventory of Mr. John Alden, Mayflower passenger and Plimouth colonist.
We didn’t manage to get the sheep, cattle, or horses… and we lacked a saddle, and some of the tools (what does a mortising adze look like?), but we did create a pretty good little exhibit. The kids are going to see it later this morning, but I felt like sharing a picture…
The Inventory of John Alden, died 1689
John Alden was one of the Pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower. He married a woman named Priscilla Mullins in Plymouth, and together they had ten children. He was the last of the Mayflower men to die, but he didn’t own very much when he died — his estate was worth £ 50 — about $10,000 in today’s money.
John Alden’s family may have been poor, but some of his descendants became important in America — Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, actors Orson Welles and Marilyn Monroe, and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
| L | s | d | ||
| Herd of Cattle, Sheep, pigs & one horse | 13 | |||
| one Table, one formal chest, one carpet, one cupboard and cupboard cloth (cover) | 15 | |||
| 2 Wooden Chairs | 3 | |||
| 2 bedsteads, 2 Chests & 5 boxes | 15 | |||
| Andirons, pot hooks, and hangers | 8 | 6 | ||
| 2 cooking pots, Tongs one quart kettle | 10 | |||
| brassware: candlesticks | 1 | 11 | ||
| 1 adze and 3 saws | 8 | 6 | ||
| Augur and 3 Chisels | 5 | |||
| wedges and cooper’s drawknife | 1 | 7 | ||
| Carpenter’s tools | 1 | 6 | ||
| 12 Cart bolts (large iron bolts) | 13 | |||
| dripping pan & gridirons | 5 | |||
| pewter dishes and bowls
old Iron bowls |
1 | 15 | ||
| 2 old guns | 11 | |||
| Table linen & other linen | 1 | 12 | ||
| bedding | 5 | 12 | ||
| one Spit & various bags 2s | 3 | 6 | ||
| one mortising axe | 1 | |||
| marking Iron
a case of plates with other things |
7 | |||
| Wooden ox-yoke and washtub | 2 | 6 | ||
| one gown and a bit of linen cloth | 7 | |||
| one horse bridle & Saddle gear,
Cash and wearing Clothes |
18 | 9 | ||
| other old lumber | 15 |
CONVERTING TO MODERN MATERIALS
In the list on the other side of this page, 1 L, or £ 1, is worth about $200. There were 12 shillings (s) to the pound ( £ ), and 20 pennies (d) to the shilling (or 240 pennies to the pound).
For our purposes, this means that 1 shilling is about $16.00 of value, and a penny of John Alden’s money is worth about ninety cents — so the items listed for six pennies in the inventory cost about $5.00 apiece.
THE INVENTORY
When a man in the Plymouth Colony died, his friends and relatives put together a list of his property and possessions. It was the custom that when a woman died, her property passed to her husband if she was married, or her father or brother if she was not.
[…] Mullins: “Speak for yourself, John”). So with the help of parents and older students, we assembled a set of objects representative of the objects listed in John Alden’s Will into a… It was pretty cool, and there’s a short video… but it took so long to assemble that we […]
[…] TieandJeans remembered this exercise I’d done a while back, where I asked a group of students in my 7th grade history classes to assemble a group of artifacts that approximated the death-inventory taken as part of the settlement of the estate of John Alden of […]
[…] parents (actually, mostly the teachers, but some parents) put together a display of all the things that John Alden owned. I made a little video of the display, but next year, I think I’ll ask the students to […]
[…] out three acres of land. It was the culmination of our Inventory of John Alden project, since Mr. Alden had owned about three acres at his […]
[…] out three acres of land. It was the culmination of our Inventory of John Alden project, since Mr. Alden had owned about three acres at his […]
[…] a short video of the stack of stuff we put out for John Alden’s inventory. It’s about three minutes discussion of how we went about assembling the inventory, and […]
p.s. I aspire to his level of wealth. He basically had what he needed, and no more. That’s what I want.
I’m reminded on the phrase, “a ten dollar horse, and a forty dollar saddle…”
Did he not own a house, or land?
He almost certainly did own a horse, a house and land. Why they aren’t listed in the inventory is a question of some debate. There’s some issues about what he owned. There’s a lot of legal records about Alden transferring land and goods and interests in mines or timberland to sons and other relatives. Apparently estate taxes were already an issue, and Alden wanted to avoid paying them. So what he owned at his death is really only what he had in retirement. And it may be that his land and house was already transferred, but in documents that don’t survive.
Alden himself, it must be remembered, probably was born about the same time that Shakespeare died. So this is a way of linking the Northern Renaissance to American colonization, as well.