That certain articles of household furniture, whether now existent or not, were included in the ship’s cargo, is attested by the inventories of the small estates of those first deceased, and, by mention or implication, in the narratives of Bradford, Winslow, Morton, and other contemporaries, as were also many utensils and articles of domestic use.  There were also beyond question many not so mentioned, which may be safely named as having very certainly been comprised in the ship’s lading, either because in themselves indispensable to the colonists, or because from the evidence in hand we know them to have been inseparable from the character, social status, daily habits, home life, or ascertained deeds of the Pilgrims.  When it is remembered that furnishings, however simple, were speedily required for no less than nineteen “cottages” and their households, the sum total called for was not inconsiderable.

[Bradford, in Mourt’s Relation (p. 68), shows that the colonists were divided up into “nineteen families,” that “so we might build fewer houses.”  Winslow, writing to George Morton, December 11/21, 1621, says:  “We have built seven dwelling-houses and four for the use of the plantation.”  Bradford (Historie, Mass. ed. p. 110) calls the houses “small cottages.”]

Among the furniture for these “cottages” brought on the Pilgrim ship may be enumerated:  chairs, table-chairs, stools and forms (benches), tables of several sizes and shapes (mostly small), table-boards and “cloathes,” trestles, beds; bedding and bed-clothing, cradles, “buffets,” cupboards and “cabinets,” chests and chests of drawers, boxes of several kinds and “trunks,” andirons, “iron dogs,” “cob-irons,” fire-tongs and “slices” (shovels), cushions, rugs, and “blanckets,” spinning wheels, hand-looms, etc., etc.  Among household utensils were “spits,” “bake-kettles,” pots and kettles (iron, brass, and copper), frying-pans, “mortars” and pestles (iron, brass, and “belle-mettle"), sconces, lamps (oil “bettys"), candlesticks, snuffers, buckets, tubs, “runlets,” pails and baskets, “steel yards,” measures, hour-glasses and sun-dials, pewter-ware (platters, plates, mugs, porringers, etc.), wooden trenchers, trays, “noggins,” “bottles,” cups, and “lossets.”  Earthen ware, “fatten” ware (mugs, “jugs,” and “crocks “), leather ware (bottles, “noggins,” and cups), table-ware (salt “sellars,” spoons, knives, etc), etc.  All of the foregoing, with numerous lesser articles, have received mention in the early literature of the Pilgrim exodus, and were undeniably part of the may-FLOWER’S lading.