Mayflower Dirt: Real Estate at the Beginning

Pilgrims and Indians... "For Bradford [Governor of Plymouth Colony], land had been a way to create a community of Saints. For an increasing number of Pilgrims and especially for their children, land was a way to get rich."

That's Nathaniel Philbrick writing in his new book, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, about the different attitudes toward real estate of first and second generation English settlers.

After the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620, they allied themselves with Massasoit, a local tribal leader, who gave them the land for the original colony. And during the first several decades, the English and Indians lived together relatively peacefully.

But the English appetite for land and lumber was enormous. Each settler (and later his children) received from one to twenty acres, depending upon his social standing. And "even a modest house required at least twelve tons of wood" to build. Heating and cooking, of course, required even more.

"It's been estimated that the average seventeenth century New England house consumed fifteen cords, or 1,920 cubic feet, of wood per year, meaning that a town of two hundred homes depended upon the deforestation of as many as seventy-five acres per year." (Hey, did this start global warming?)

After the initial land gift, settlers paid the Indians, who prized European possessions. For example, the site of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, cost "thirty yards of cloth, eight moose skins, fifteen axes, fifteen hoes, fifteen pairs of shoes, one iron pot, and ten shillings' worth of assorted goods."

But over time, as the Indians ran out of land to sell and as the English population expanded, the bonds of trust evaporated and the two communities went to war. The son of Massasoit, known as King Philip, and the son of Governor Bradford, Major William Bradford, fought each other in the bloody King Philip's War (1675-76), which spread across all of New England.

So real estate development has always been part of the American historical saga. It's a fascinating story.

-- Peter Pike