1 A house reflects one way of organizing space to achieve an acceptable social and cultural fit in essentially two ways — (1) in its relationship to the larger architectural landscape of community, town, or city, and more specifically to the farmstead or homestead, and (2) the way it assists the inhabitants of a house in the routines of daily life within the confines of the domestic interior.1 "Vernacular architecture, which by definition is built according to ethnic and regional traditions, is the product of a particular group's need for efficiently usable space."2 Vernacular houses change slowly, following perceived shifts in community and domestic living habits. "Consequently, when architectural alterations do occur they usually first appear on the exterior and are cosmetic."3 However, changes in floor plans, spatial alterations and other interior renovations affecting personal interactions and the placement and arrangement of household furnishings occur more slowly. The domestic setting with its interrelationships between objects, people and space is called proxemics and these relationships remain one of the most conservative elements of any household and community. Changes within these proxemic patterns reflect transformations within the family and by extension the society itself.

2 The term "Lunenburg German" is used throughout this paper to refer specifically to that group of "foreign Protestants" from Germany and Switzerland who established the town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1753, and who created one of the most recognizable subcultures and material folk traditions in the Maritimes. The word often connotes a particular body of utensils, furniture and accessories, which implies a regional definition for objects decorated with particular motifs and designs. Although these designs may appear elsewhere in Nova Scotia, the use of certain benchmark motifs such as the flower-in-pot, the heart, the diamond and compass star, and the star do suggest direct and in-direct Germanic influences, which must be verified by looking at provenance data, particularly county of origin, and other evidence such as the maker/owners name.

3 In a similar manner the term "Pennsylvania German" refers to the material aspects of one of the most long-lived subcultures in the United States, relating specifically to the period between 1770 to 1840; this makes the Lunenburg and Pennsylvania Germans comparable in terms of not only similar material folk traditions, but temporal parameters and overlapping European origins.

4 The term "Germanic" is used to describe recognizable patterns of material folk culture reflecting origins within this ethnic decorative tradition: those described as "English" reflect the predominate pervasive culture in Nova Scotia and are not as easily identified in terms of specific ethnic parameters.

5 The study of how the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Lunenburg Germans arranged and furnished the interiors of their houses "a study that could be termed historical proxemics"4 is the focus of this article and the basis for my thesis research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We learn about these proxemic patterns through estate inventories, surviving house structures and furniture, account and day books, newspaper advertisements and present-day households and their furnishing arrangements. Fortunately the estate inventories for Lunenburg County are numerous and detailed.5

6 The town of Lunenburg was settled between the years 1753 and 1755 and was established on a hillside rising steeply from a narrow but well-protected harbour and waterfront. Lunenburg was laid out on a grid system of streets running more or less parallel with the waterfront, and cross streets running at right angles straight up the hillside slopes.6

7 According to Bell in the standard reference work on the immigration and settlement of the "foreign Protestants" to Nova Scotia7 some of the first dwellings erected in Lunenburg were pole houses made of "small trees cleaned of branches and set up vertically in rows close together, and then fastened with strips of board nailed on, afterwards roofed and covered in thus forming small wooden cottages."8 Bell felt that the existence of this type of house was confirmed in several instances during the repair or demolition of houses where pickets with the bark still intact were uncovered.9

8 However, most Lunenburgers built what Colonel Lawrence, the leader of the expedition to settle the "foreign Protestants" in Lunenburg, referred to as "good framed houses."10 DesBrisay11 describing one such house in 1870 but built in 1757 gives its dimensions as 26 by 14 feet with walls in the lower rooms only 6 feet in height. The inside walls were constructed of boards or planks running between the corner and intermediate posts set every 6 to 9 feet apart. These posts were vertically grooved so the inside wall boards could fit into these grooves one atop the other. Nails were seldom used in this construction, apparently because of their scarcity, and wooden pegs and pins substituted. These "Cape Cod" type dwellings usually had between two and four rooms on the ground floor with a sleeping loft in the halfstory upstairs, and a large central hearth for heating and cooking.

9 By 1775 two-story Georgian Cape style houses were being built in Lunenburg. The Solomon house is one such example of many still surviving, with two massive chimneys serving eight fireplace/hearths on the first two floors and additional bake oven in the basement.

10 In 1753 Lot 1, Letter Q, of the Creighton Division was granted to Adam Wambolt, one of the first German settlers to Lunenburg who probably accompanied Lawrence. According to early deeds a "first Winter" house existed on the lot, perhaps a pole house. Wambolt sold the property and house to Henry Koch, Sr., in 1775 and Koch built or had built the present two-story Georgian Cape still standing. In 1779, Koch and his wife sold the property "with all improvements, houses and buildings thereon" to Christopher Rudolf for £225.12 It is known as the Solomon house after Judge George T. Solomon who bought it in 1849 and who was a contemporary of Richard J. Uniacke.

11 By 1775, less than one generation and only twenty-two years after it was founded, some residents of Lunenburg were in a financial position to build or have built houses as substantial as the Solomon dwelling. Still standing in the town were probably two other types of houses, Cape Cod and pole structures; however, only the two types of Capes could be considered permanent dwellings.

12 Knowing the features of the most common eighteenth-century Lunenburg-German houses facilitates the understanding of the Lunenburg household inventories. The estate inventories, usually taken by court-appointed neighbours of the deceased, are the most valuable historical sources for the study of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century domestic life. Fortunately the records for Lunenburg are intact and readily available at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia on microfilm. The extant records are a reliable sampling of white males of all classes and occupations. A small percentage of widow's and spinster's documents do survive, but these would only represent a small percentage of the total female population and certainly not all classes.

13 Because of the number of different inventory takers the documents vary widely in detail and consistency. However, the framework for the inventory remained little changed over many generations from the eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. Usually the two or three individuals assigned the task of compiling the inventory listed in varying detail the movable effects making up the personal property of the deceased with an estimated value of each item or group of items including cash, notes in hand, clothing, livestock, tools, household furnishings and accessories, real estate, bonds and book debts. One other listing, unique to maritime communities, were quarter, half or full shares in various sailing vessels. This method of inventory taking remained the same regardless of the class, occupation or sex of the deceased.

14 Because the Lunenburg County material is remarkably intact, the estate inventory is often accompanied by the actual will of the deceased and in many cases by the auction of documents; the movable effects were frequently sold to satisfy outstanding debts. It is therefore possible to compare the value of objects estimated by the inventory takers with the price the same items brought in public auction. This comparison often reveals that the names of those purchasing items at an auction were related to the deceased; in some instances if the will dictated that household furnishings be sold at public auction it meant that even the deceased's wife had to bid to obtain certain household furnishings.13 In particular beds, stoves, German Bibles, prayer books and psalm books went much higher at auction than the estimated inventory value. Even in the eighteenth century something was worth whatever someone was willing to pay for it.

15 In examining the Lunenburg estate inventories and wills, I have found few written in German; those documents that were usually accompanied by an English translation probably made to satisfy local authorities. In fact, the court required the inventory takers to record the personal property in English regardless of the language of the deceased. It is obvious from the Anglicization of many of the German surnames and places of origin that a majority of the inventory takers and court officials could not understand or spell in German.

16 Although one could use many inventories to illustrate the range of material possessions of the Lunenburg-Germans, and their location and functional interrelationship within the domestic interior, I have selected one example in particular on which to focus this article. While atypical in that the Casper Wollenhaupt inventory presents the goods of a prosperous merchant, it does indicate what goods and services were available to the residents of Lunenburg in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and is representative of the material wealth of the merchant class of Lunenburg only two generations after the settlement of the town.14

17 The Wollenhaupt inventory was taken by three court-appointed inventory takers between July 18 and 20, 1809, and was finally completed on January 5, 1810. The inventory was filed in the Lunenburg Probate Office on January 12, 1810. Casper Wollenhaupt refers to himself in his will15 as a merchant. Bell lists in his section on Lunenburg "foreign Protestant" family names and their origins the name Wollenhaupt or Woolenhoft as a surname on the manifests from northern Germany, particularly Hesse, one of the small landgraviates north of Frankfurt.16

18 Casper Wollenhaupt was indeed a wealthy Lunenburg merchant at the time of his death. The total valuation of personal property was £1008 12 s.7¼d (pounds, shillings, pence) which was made up of £419 1s. 5d. for household furnishings and accessories, £499 11s. 2¼d. in shop goods and £90 in cash. Wollenhaupt also had a large number of real estate holdings which are not included in this total.

19 The entire inventory reveals that the residents of Lunenburg and vicinity had an extensive variety of goods to choose from. The selection of textiles, printed cottons and silks listed in the Wollenhaupt shop inventory indicates that almost every type of material was available for purchase: garment cloth; household linen for tables, towelling, ticking and other bedding; textiles suitable for bed and window curtains, upholstery, slipcovers, and table and chest covers; and floor coverings.17 For example, the inventory lists next to entry number 127 "8 yds swansdown" which is a waistcoat material. "Swansdown and toilinets were fancy woolen textiles, or cotton and wool, developed in the early nineteenth century. Samples of pink, salmon, scarlet, light blue, and apple-green swansdown yarns are in William Gott's pattern book begun in 1815. 'Both (Swansdown and toilinet) were popular for waistcoats for many years, especially with horsy men — grooms, huntsmen and coachmen'."18 The fact that both swansdown and yellow toilinett [sic] (entry number 126) are listed indicates that Lunenburg consumers were able to purchase the latest in fashionable clothing materials, and that since the Wollenhaupt inventory dates 1809-1810 this type of waistcoat fabric was perhaps available in North America at an earlier date than previously expected.19

20 This inventory of shop goods would also suggest that merchants such as Casper Wollenhaupt served as agents of change and even Anglicization for the Lunenburg-German culture by making available the latest in fashion and style, thereby not only affecting what the consumers of Lunenburg were able to purchase, but also helping indirectly to dictate ideas about fashion and taste to the craftsmen of the community.

21 The richness of the Wollenhaupt shop and house inventories must be kept in perspective. The vast majority of the inventories of the Lunenburg-German farmers and craftsmen dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reveal that they had sparsely furnished homes. However, two qualifications to this statement must be considered.

22 First, the Lunenburg Germans following the patterns of the Pennsylvania-German households, and by extension the traditions of their homeland, tended to have more built-in furniture forms than did English houses.20 This is certainly evident in the house interiors of Lunenburg County homes where built-in flat-to-the-wall corner cupboards are commonly found in the first floor main kitchen/ hearth room and the adjacent parlour of early Capes. The cupboard in the kitchen is usually built in facing the hearth, often of massive proportions, and scalloped on one or both ends with an open front and two doors and between two and four drawers in the base. This cupboard was used to store and display objects such as plates, pewter and other kitchen accessories used in the everyday preparation, serving and consumption of food. The parlour cupboard was smaller and usually more ornate, often reflecting the architectural detail of the parlour hearth mantle, and contained fine china and other objects used for decoration and entertaining.

23 Second, the inventories were only one part of the records of the deceased. The accompanying wills often reveal that many household movables were given to the wife and children. The wife was often given one room with furnishings (including bed and bedding and table) in the house where she was residing at the time of her husband's death, or in the home of a son if the family house was to be sold to satisfy the deceased's debts. Kitchen privileges were often included and set amounts of food such as grain and meat were allotted yearly to the wife, usually from one or more of her sons' harvests.21 Daughters are usually singled out in wills to receive a cow, featherbed and spinning wheel.22

24 The inventory of "Goods and Chattles" of John James Bezanson23 made on March 9, 1804, by several of his neighbours is more typical. Describing his occupation as "yeoman" in his will, the Bezanson inventory follows, excepting farm animals and implements.

25 The most valuable items listed in the inventory are the iron stove and the four beds and blankets indicating the importance of these objects in the household. And although Bezanson describes himself as a yeoman in his will, the presence often planes and a compass and square in the inventory would suggest he had some carpentry skills, perhaps enough to make some of his furnishings.

26 Until well into the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Lunenburg-German households were lacking in many of the furnishings, particularly in the homes of the yeoman/farmers. Those who described themselves as "esquite," "gentlemen" or listed some type of trade or craft as an occupation usually had inventories listing more furnishings and accessories such as in the Wollenhaupt document. The houses of yeoman were filled with farm and kitchen tools, saddles, grain, and a variety of containers for storage, including crocks and wooden tubs of varying sizes, rather than furniture and accessories.24

27 What both the Pennsylvania- and Lunenburg-German farmer had in common was a passion for "notes in hand" and real estate.25 It is not unusual to find that many yeoman both owed and lent money to neighbours and family members, and that they often purchased farm land and town lots that were passed on in wills to wife and children or sold to satisfy outstanding debts.

28 Based on both estate and auction inventory/sales records, certain types of furniture and accessories remained very important in the Lunenburg-German households. The premier furniture forms in terms of both economic and traditional values include the iron stove, bed and beddings, and to varying degrees, chests, desks, and German Bibles and books. In many cases these items can account for most of the total evaluation of an estate inventory of personal effects and movable property.

29 The inventories for Lunenburg County dating between 1788 and 1822 reveal that most yeoman/farmers had the following furnishings in their household in varying degrees: 1-4 beds with bedding, (featherbeds, beds with curtains and bed with canopy; blankets, sheets, bed covets, and pillows); 1-4 tables; 2-6 chairs; 1-2 chests; 1-3 spinning wheels; 1 iron stove (single and double); 1-2 candlesticks (brass or tin); textiles (tablecloths, beddings etc.); pewterware; tinware; earthenware and china; iron pots and kettles; 1-2 looking glasses; 1-4 benches; wooden tubs or firkins for storage; various knives and forks; 1-2 pair of andirons; hearth equipment (cranes, trammels ere); trunks; clothing; books (usually in German including Bibles, prayer books and Psalms).26

30 The parallel between this basic inventory and the inventories of Pennsylvania-German households from Berks and Lancaster counties for the one-story stone or log cabins is strikingly similar.27 The inventories accompanied by wills where the occupation of the deceased is given as yeoman or farmer probably represent the furnishings of the simple Cape Cod type dwelling so common to Lunenburg County.

31 There are differences, however, between the Pennsylvania-German and Lunenburg-German household inventories. For example, benches are very common to Lunenburg households, probably replacing chairs in some instances as seating for most daily activities. Swank does not list benches as a household item in the Berks and Lancaster County inventories of Pennsylvania.28 On the other hand, clocks are rare in Lunenburg but a highly prised possession among the Pennsylvania Germans. According to Swank, "Clocks, beds and clothespresses (wardrobes) were the premier furniture forms among eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans. All three were traditional and highly expressive Germanic symbols, and all were expensive, but they were not confined to wealthy households."29 Clocks are rare objects in Lunenburg County, even the Wollenhaupt inventory lists only one eight-day clock at a very high ten pounds. Although we have remarked on the importance of beds and bedding, clothespresses or wardrobes (the Kas or Schrank) have yet to be mentioned in the inventories of the Lunenburg Germans dating between 1788 and 1840. The closets or cupboards that are listed probably refer to built-in forms as opposed to free standing wardrobes as the accompanying wills often refer to the crockery and books in the closets or cupboards and not clothing or linens. For example in the Weist inventory (Table 2) in the furnishings listing of the "Lower room," there is an entry for "1 closet containing earthenware."

32 The same way that floor plans and furniture forms can indicate the ethnic or cultural origins of the owner and residents, the woods and colour schemes of the interior decor of houses and furnishings often help to signal the same information.30 Lunenburg-German inventories list pine, birch, and mahogany as the dominant furniture woods, with pine and birch being the local woods available, while mahogany was imported. With the town of Lunenburg an important shipbuilding seaport, and Halifax only fifty miles away, logs and planks of mahogany are found listed in the estate inventories.31

33 The interior colour of houses and the decoration and colour of furniture are seldom listed in the Lunenburg documents, but it appears from early surviving furniture that four basic colours, red, blue-green, blue and black, were the most common. For example the Wollenhaupt inventory lists at entry 285 "a drawer containing 13 ¼ pounds of fig blue," possibly a raw colouring pigment. In addition, entry 394 lists "a box with old colours"; entry 399, "a blue chest"; entry 403, "a cagg (keg) with some red ocre" (ochre); entry 413, "a black birch table," which could refer to the type of birch and not the colour of the table, and entry 550, "4 black basketts." Even today painted baskets are not uncommon in Lunenburg homes.

34 The paint that survives on the interior woodwork of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century houses in Lunenburg County suggests that the dominant colour schemes used were red, blue, blue-green and sometimes mustard-yellow. The Huntington house in Blockhouse, about fifteen miles from Lunenburg, retains its original painted interior on the woodwork and built-in cupboards, mantles, and fireboards. This Cape Cod style house, which dates circa 1800, had four coats of paint or. its woodwork and built-in furnishings in the first floor parlour and in the impressive hearth room/kitchen. One of these first two colours was a brown; the second is more difficult to determine but was probably a green. The third colour is a now highly patinaed red and the last coat a blueberry blue, now much worn revealing the third layer of paint creating an interesting two-tone colour scheme. The parlour room in the house seems to only ever have been painted in a blue-green-gray-putty and is completely original. The built-in furniture and colour schemes of the Huntington house are probably indicative of the interior decor of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Lunenburg one-and-a-half-story Cape Cod.

35 In Lunenburg, the Knaut/Rhuland house has original decorated woodwork under an existing overpaint, which reveals that the woodwork was first painted to simulate more exotic woods with a fine-combed technique. This house is a two-story Georgian Cape similar to the Solomon dwelling and probably was originally the home of a merchant or wealthy seaman.32

36 Now that we have established the type of permanent house structures found in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Lunenburg, the types of furnishings and accessories found in these households, and the probable interior decor, we can finally turn our attention to the placement of objects within these domestic interiors.

37 The location of furniture can be discussed with some certainty based on occasional estate inventories that give a room-by-room listing of objects. According to Swank, "German inventories... reflect a hierarchy of values, and appraisers began with the most personal possessions. Kitchen items were usually listed just above the enumeration of farm tools."33 This same pattern of values is evident in the majority of Lunenburg-German inventories where appraisers usually started with a listing of objects in the barn/stable and yard, then moved into the house beginning in the kitchen and ending with bedroom furnishings.

38 In spite of the many problems in determining the placement of furniture in the interior of Lunenburg-German households, several room-by-room inventories do exist that provide us with some reliable documentation.

39 Three such documents will be examined — the Wollenhaupt inventory already discussed, the inventory dated November 15, 1811, of Wendle Weist, who lists his occupation as blacksmith in his will, and the inventory dated October 7 and 8, 1817, of John Lennox, who lists himself as an innkeeper in his will.34 The Lennox inventory not only includes a shop listing of many textiles goods similar to the Wollenhaupt, but also lists the furnishings in a tavern and bar. Before discussing the objects included in these room-by-room inventories, the types of rooms involved must be considered. Table 1 lists the room function according to the description in each document. Table 2 is a partial compilation of the furnishings listed in each of the rooms.

40 These three inventories provide extensive information on not only the personal property of the deceased and room-by-room proxemic relationships of the furnishings within these households, but also some idea as to what goods and services were available to the community. In the case of the Lennox inventory, documentation is provided on the owner of an inn/tavern in the town of Lunenburg. This particular inventory reveals that Lennox ran a small inn of three bedrooms containing a total of five beds and bedsteads all with two pairs of sheets and two blankets apiece which could supply a night's lodging. Perhaps some or all of his four daughters helped in the inn along with his wife or son. As well one could order food and drink in the tavern/bar and sit at any of his three tables on benches probably near the stove. His inventory shows that visitors and townspeople alike could buy various textiles and china from his shop.

41 All three of these inventories indicate a mixing of German-English proxemic patterns.35 According to Swank "Pennsylvania-Germans in the eighteenth century adhered to traditional proxemic patterns. In a three room plan the Kuche (kitchen) and its outbuildings held the dresser, dough trough, meal chest, worktable, old chairs, and a large assortment of tubs, crocks, and kitchen vessels and utensils. The Kammer (chamber) held the best bedstead and perhaps a second bed or cradle, clothespress if the family possessed one, and at least one chest. The Stube (parlour-stove room) held the five-, six-, or ten-plate stove, clock, best table, benches, best chairs, spinning wheels, and the family bookshelf or a hanging cupboard.36

42 Although this general inventory listing is not completely applicable to Lunenburg-German households because it refers to a different variation in house structure, it does show what furnishing arrangements one might look for in the documents that would suggest German and not English interior patterns. The Lunenburg-German inventories that list furnishings room-by-room indicate a high degree of assimilation with English proxemic patterns; however, certain aspects of these inventories do reveal traditional Germanic room function and placement of objects within the domestic interior.37

43 For example, it has been noted that beds and bedsteads and to a minor degree clocks were important furniture forms to the Lunenburg Germans, and that benches are common to many of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century inventories. In addition, the placement of a "bed & stead complete with sheets and blankets" in the furniture listing for the front parlour in the Wollenhaupt inventory indicates that the parlour was not the English type but used for sleeping.38

44 It is difficult to determine from the three room-by-room inventories presented whether any of the furnishings were distinctively German in form or decoration beyond those types already discussed such as the eight-day clock in the Wollenhaupt document. The Lennox and Wollenhaupt inventories reveal that the garrett was used to store old furnishings that were either damaged (Lennox — "22 old broken chairs") or maybe out of style (Wollenhaupt — "single iron stove").

45 Perhaps several of the furnishings that are listed in the garrett in these two inventories represent older furniture forms and accessories that might reveal the Germanic heritage of their owners. One can only wonder what the "3 old chairs" and "blue chest" in the Wollenhaupt garrett and the "2 tables" and "old bench and bed bench" in the Lennox inventory looked like. One cannot help thinking that they were moved into storage to make way for more English furniture styles, which would slowly alter the function of the rooms and the placement of objects in the domestic interiors of the Lunenburg-German households.39