American Centuries

Pocumtuck Valley
Memorial Association

American Centuries > Lessons > Curriculum: Everyday Life in a New England Town > The Puritans – Part 2: The Common and the Meetinghouse: Exploring the Outside Environment

The Puritans – Part 2: The Common and the Meetinghouse: Exploring the Outside Environment

Details

Author
Mary Gene Devlin, Bette Schmitt
Topic/Subject Area
Architecture, Buildings; Religion, Church, Meetings & Revivals; Land, Environment, Geography
Historical Era
Colonial settlement, 1620–1762
Grade Level
Elementary (K–5), Middle School (6–8)
Creation Date
2000
Last Revision Date
2024

Related items

About This Lesson

Summary and Objective

Unit Central Questions:

What do primary and secondary sources teach us about the characteristics of “everyday life” of individuals living in Deerfield at the three turns of the centuries? What do these characteristics reveal about changes in the town since its beginning as an English settlement?

Key Content Ideas

Typical of the English in New England, the community of Deerfield was united by religious beliefs and practices. The selectmen ran the business of the town in the same meetinghouse in which the church met. The building was used for both religious and secular purposes.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Understandings:

Students will understand:

  1. How religion was the foundation of daily life for the English settlers. 
Skills:

Students will be able to:

  1. Read and extract information from background reading materials.
  2. Read transcriptions of primary source materials (documents) from the period.

Materials & Resources

Primary and Secondary Sources:
  1. Essay: The Common and the Meeting House
  2. Modern-day photographs of the Deerfield Common area, including the common, the buildings surrounding it (in the area once contained in the palisade), and Meeting House Hill, the sycamore, and the area represented in the Barber woodcut
  3. Photograph of Brick Church
  4. The Street of Old Deerfield in 1704 (Modern map), with stockade indicated
  5. John Warner Barber woodcut of Deerfield, from Cities and Towns of Massachusetts, published in 1839
  6. Drawing from memory by Deacon Nathaniel Hitchcock (1812-1900), of the Fourth Meeting House (1729), in PVMA Collection
  7. Woodbridge drawing of Deerfield, 1728, in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
  8. Image of the current Deerfield Post Office designed to look like the second Meetinghouse.
  9. Lot Survey of Deerfield
Other:
  1. Social Studies notebooks

Teaching Plan

In Preparation for Teaching
  1. Read The Common and the Meetinghouse
  2. Copy or print and assemble documents and photographs for all students.
Activities
  1. Distribute copies of present-day photographs of the common, the Brick Church, and the modern map of Old Deerfield in 1704.
  2. Instruct students to orient themselves to the map using the pictures, and to find the various buildings on the map. This is what they would see if they stood on Meeting House Hill today. The sycamore tree and the road are the only things left from the time of the first English settlers. Locate the sycamore tree on the map.
  3. Instruct students to look at the modern map, and identify the center of town, and the common.
  4. Lead students in a discussion of the word “common” and what might have existed there. (Teacher note: the “common” was land in the center of town, owned by all the people “in common.” It was used for pasturing animals. No house lots were allowed on the common.)
  5. Distribute copies of the Barber woodcut, and instruct students to examine it, noticing what they can recognize from the photographs and map of today. This picture was done in 1839. The church is the same “Brick Church” (called the meetinghouse back then) as the one we see today. It was built in 1824, the fifth meetinghouse to be built in Deerfield. The artist chose not to picture the bricks.
  6. Distribute copies of the Hitchcock drawing. This meetinghouse was built in 1729 and taken down in 1824, when the present-day one was built. It was built on “Meeting House Hill,” a little to the south of the present-day Brick Church. The section with the steeple was not there in 1729, but was added at a later date. Ask the students to cover up the steeple section and describe what the building looks like without it. You can see how much the building resembles an ordinary house, even though it is much larger. Refer to the teacher background essay to discuss the importance of the bell and the clock. Discuss the implications of this drawing having been made from memory.
  7. Introduce the purposes of the meetinghouse in community life (see teacher background essay).
  8. Distribute (or direct students to take out) copies from the lesson titled Original Layout of the Town of Deerfield, of the 1728 Woodbridge drawing and the photo of the current Deerfield Post Office, which was built to resemble the 3rd meetinghouse. In the Woodbridge drawing, instruct students to notice at least two meetinghouses, which may indicate that old ones were often kept even after new ones were built. Compare all four meetinghouse renditions. Notice how each building looked at first like a house, but over time, it began to look like a church. Discuss how the buildings are alike and different.
  9. Instruct the students to use the Woodbridge drawing to identify some of the structures and activities in or bordering on the common area, such as the cow, half-houses, road, and the person with the horse.
  10. Distribute (or direct students to take out) copies from the lesson titled Original Layout of the Town of Deerfield) of the 1671 map fragment. Help them recall which parts of Deerfield are shown. (Lead them to see that the map stops just about where later maps show the common starting. Only the north end of the town can be seen.)
  11. Instruct the students to reexamine the modern map with the stockade outlined. Inform them that the stockade (or palisade) was built in 1690, as protection from a possible attack by Indigenous warriors. Some families with houses outside the stockade built little houses within it for safety. Discuss with students what the stockade represented in daily life of the period.
Homework Assignment
  1. Starting in class after the discussion, instruct students to use their social studies notebooks to list each of the photographs, pictures, or maps they were given.
  2. Ask them to write three things they notice about each item.
  3. Unfinished class work can be completed for homework.
Follow-Up:
  1. Instruct students to review their homework assignments. Discuss whether any of the questions listed on the poster at the end of Activity 1 have been answered. Make a note of any that have been answered. Then ask for and add any new questions they might have.
  2. Instruct students to write these answers in their social studies notebooks in the question section from Activity 1 and to continue to add to the question page in their notebooks.
Assessments

social studies notebook entries