Alden House Education Programs

Alden House Outreach Program

This Outreach Program is designed for use in pre-school and early grades, and was developed by Alden Kindred President Linda Osborne. It is available for schools and youth groups in the Alden House Historic Site area, in southeastern Massachusetts. It includes an introduction to ealy home life with a show-and-tell session featuring actual historic artifacts. For information about the program's availability, please email aldenhouse@comcast.net or call 781-934-9092.

The Alden family came to Duxbury over 350 years ago. John and Priscilla met on the Mayflower in 1620 and were married in Plymouth. About 1630 they built a new farm near where the Alden House is today. There were ten children—six girls and four boys—in the Alden family.

They all worked on the farm to feed and clothe themselves. There were no stores here in those days. They had horses to ride, cows for milk, sheep for wool and pigs and chickens for meat and eggs.

Father John Alden and the boys worked in the fields to raise corn and rye for bread, and hay for the animals. Mother Priscilla Alden and the girls tended the gardens around the house for vegetables and herbs, took care of the chickens, fed the pigs, and milked the cows. They also spun flax and wool to make cloth.

There was little time for play. Children helped their parents on the farm, bringing water in buckets from the well and wood from the pile for the fireplace. When their chores were done, they played games such as hide and seek, stoolball (which was a little like baseball) and explored the nearby woods and fields. Sunday was the one day when they did not work so hard, but they did go to church in both the morning and the afternoon.

Men in Duxbury also had part-time “trades” or skilled jobs. Some were blacksmiths who made iron tools, horseshoes and nails. Others were potters who made cups and jugs out of clay. Father John was a “cooper”, which is a man who makes barrels out of wood. The men got together to build houses, boats and churches. Some went to sea to catch fish or to import those things such as fine cloth, glass, brassware and spices that they could not make for themselves.

As John and Priscilla grew old, most of their children moved out to have homes and families of their own. The Alden parents went to live with their son Jonathan and his wife Abigail in a new house a little distance away from their old farmhouse.

This house is the one you can visit today at the Alden House Historic Site. This house was made bigger by John and Priscilla’s grandson, Colonel John Alden. Colonel John was and officer in the local militia, which was like our modern army. He was also much richer than his parents and grandparents. He was able to buy many nice things for his house, such as fancy furniture, glass mirrors and windows, fine clothes and silver spoons. His wife and daughters still had to spin thread and yarn, and weave cloth on the great wooden loom.

The Alden family lived in this house for generations. However, they never had many of the things we take for granted. They cooked in and heated their rooms with great brick fireplaces until Aunt Polly Alden got a woodstove many years later. They always got water from a well, and had no bathroom in their house. They never had electricity and used candles and oil lamps to light their house. They had no refrigerator so they had to preserve their food with salt or keep it in their cool, dark cellar.

As no one had the modern conveniences we depend on, the Aldens did not miss them. They were happy to wash in the great wooden tub, sew their own clothes, grow their own food and play music at home on a fiddle. They made their beds with curtains to keep out the cold, used mattresses filled with feathers from geese and made woolen blankets and coverlets on their loom. The house had many “chambers” (what we call “bedrooms”) and two great sitting rooms, and the children learned their lessons at home before the first Duxbury school was built in 1683.