Making Clapboards

It is true indeed that there is very much work to be done. First comes the planting and tending of the crops. Then there is the fishing and the hunting that we may have meat. Lastly is the making of clapboards, which task was begun soon after the seed had been put in the ground, for Governor Bradford believed we should make enough with which to load the first vessel that came to us from England.

It was all we could do, just then, in the way of getting together that which might be sold to the people in the old country, and father said the men of Plymouth must be earning money in some other way than by trying to gather furs, for already were the animals growing more timid and scarce.

It is not easy work, this clapboard-making, and I cannot wonder that the men complain at being forced to continue it day after day. First an oak tree is cut by saws into the length necessary for clapboards, which, so father tells me, should be about four feet long. Then a tool called a "frow" is used to split the trunk of the tree into slabs, or clapboards, making them thin at one edge and half an inch or more thick at the other.

This "frow" is shaped something like a butcher's cleaver, and a wooden mallet is used to drive it into the log until the splint is forced off.

Our people made many clapboards during the time between planting and harvest, so that we had enormous stacks under the trees ready to put on board the first vessel that should sail for England.