There was little disparity of wealth, and even the richest among the townsfolk still typically worked their own land, possibly with the assistance of a few servants.
[3] The harvest failed three times in the decade preceding Dedham's founding and the plague was sweeping across the country.
[3] Poverty was rampant in England and society could not support the sheer numbers of poor and orphaned subjects.
[5] Early settlers to New England also began sending back propaganda to the mother country encouraging others to emigrate.
[9] By 1639, however, Bartlett had stopped performing the work, for which he was not paid, and a year later he sold his holdings in Dedham and left town.
[9] Each man received tiny houselots in the village with additional strips of arable land, meadow, and woods.
[10] The common field method brought men into regular contact with one another and prevented farms from being established far from the village center.
[12][13][14][10][15] Lands were also awarded in return for service to the church and the community,[14][11][10] a practice that had long been established by the General Court.
[17][10] Finally, it was thought that men who were engaged in a trade other than farming should have the materials needed to work and those who were able to improve more land should have that fact taken into account.
[18] It was not a huge farmstead, but it afforded a degree of security to each family and allowed the next generation, including younger sons, to inherit enough land to have a successful farm of their own.
[12] A common tillage field of 200 acres was laid out in 1643 and each man was assigned a specific length of fence to build to enclose it.
[12] On what was then called Dedham Island (today Riverdale) and along East Street were common feeding lands, or herd walks, for cattle, goats, and pigs.
[23] Because of the low geographic mobility, the town became "a self-contained social unit, almost hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world.
[24] By 1681, residents were supposed to inform the selectmen of any worker who was expected to stay in town for more than two weeks, though the law was largely ignored.
[30][31] Shortly after the town was incorporated, in November 1636, a loophole was closed to ensure that those who were not committed to the same ideals were not admitted as townsmen.
[33][34][32][17] As colonial law required all homes to be located close to one another, the town needed time to determine where new residents could be accommodated.
[38] When 22 townsmen felt they had not received a fair number of rights, an arbitration committee awarded them an additional 25, which were added to the original 447.
[42] Though he had received "better than average" dividends of land,[43] he led a group of dissatisfied settlers in a rare public complaint.
[44][43][45] He brought his complaint before the General Court, which was an action even more rare in a community whose covenant called for disputes to be resolved by local mediation.
[48][49] Timothy Dalton moved to Hampton to become the teaching officer in the church and he was soon followed by his brother, Philemon, along with Francis Austin, John Huggen, and Jeffery Mingey.
Abraham Shaw intended to move before his death, and his son Joseph did after selling off the remaining land holdings.
[22] With a small population, a simple and agrarian economy, and the free distribution of large tracts of land, there was very little disparity in wealth.
[55] Like in the English countryside, they were largely subsistence farmers who grew enough for their families[55] but did not specialize in any cash crops or particular animals.
[57] Single people, including adult children of residents, were not allowed to live alone unless they had sufficient resources to set up their own household with servants.
[58] The practice was intended to both keep up the family labor system that underpinned the local economy, and was to prevent the "sin and iniquity ... [that] are the companions and consequences of a solitary life.
[59] Records show that children in Massachusetts Bay Colony whose fathers died early, leaving them an inheritance and thus the means to start their own households, married sooner than those whose parents lived longer.
[60] A 1693 colonial law allowed for outside labor to come into towns without their employers having to post prohibitively expensive bonds for them.
[63][65] When the selectmen ordered them to go, Thomas Clap was forced to post his saw mill as security in case either of his maid servants should pose a charge to the town.
[65] White orphans of New England birth were cheaper because they could typically be expected to return to their home communities and families.
[61] Native children and those of African descent were likely to be enslaved, and thus to remain in town as adults, and thus higher bonds were required.