What was it really like in the earliest days of Windham? For one thing, it wasn’t called Windham. The little section in the southern part of town was called New Marblehead, since many of the “proprietors” or land owners came from Marblehead, Mass.

In 1743, five years after Thomas Chute brought his family here, by way of Portland, and tied his boat up on the shore of the Presumpscot, there were eight other families including the first minister, Rev. Wight. This was New Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Twenty years later, when Rev. Smith arrived, it was the town of Windham, District of Maine (still part of Massachusetts). There were 39 families – many of the names still familiar in Windham, nearly 300 years later.

How did our ancestors live?

The first dwellings were of logs since there was no sawmill at that time. They built small, one-story, one-room houses with roofs covered with birch bark over which they laid strips of wood called shingles. Rooms were separated by quilts and blankets hung up from beam to beam. The floors were dirt and there was a pit dug in the ground where food was stored to keep it from freezing. A large fireplace provided heat and a place to cook. In old histories, a reference to a “dubble house” or double house, means it had two rooms, and usually two families lived in such a house.

Each family had a garden, often among tree stumps, where they grew corn, peas, beans, barley, rye and such. Potatoes were not common. One early Windham settler said a bushel of potatoes would last his family of seven, all winter. All the meat came from the nearby forest and fish from the brooks and rivers. Chickens and pigs roamed freely and what the wolves and bears didn’t get, eventually ended up as food for the family. Flocks of sheep were common, for their wool was needed to make clothing.

Clothing was made by the women from cloth made after their spinning wheel produced the threads and yarns to make the cloth. Many houses had a large loom where cloth was woven. One can only imagine the work that went into dying this rough material, using dyes made from weeds and plants found nearby.

Women kept herb gardens next to doorsteps. These herbs made the plain food a little more palatable. Outside the kitchen area was a pit where refuse was thrown.

In later days, archeologists would dig in these kitchen pits and find broken pottery and other remnants of early days. Reports of such finds, from the area near Windham’s first settlement, are in the archives of Windham Historical Society.