Duxbury, Plymouth County, Massachusetts in the 1670s

Work

Fields, marsh, and bay

The main work is agriculture and fishing¹, supported by livestock, shellfish, fish, and salt hay from Duxbury Marsh¹. Grain may pass through the Duck Hill River gristmill¹, while small vessels are built on farms¹ rather than in shipyards.

Faith

Meeting house at the center

The church is not a side matter: the meeting house by the burial ground^1,2 is both a religious and civic center. Ralph Partridge’s ministry² links the town to Plymouth Colony’s older Separatist church world.

Law & power

Freemen and town rule

Political power rests with approved men: freemen held voting and office-holding rights⁴ in Plymouth Colony. In wartime, local commissioned officers can order watches, garrisons, scouts, arms, and ammunition³.

What people feared

War comes close

The decade is marked by King Philip’s War, when Duxbury prepared daytime wards and night watches³. For Native families, danger also came from colonial policy: Mattakeesett men and boys were forced to Clark’s Island⁵.

Home & table

Scattered wooden houses

Homes stand apart in a dispersed pattern, with South Duxbury, Island Creek, Captain’s Nook, Millbrook, and bayside houses¹ rather than one dense village. Buildings are modest seventeenth-century wood houses¹, but ordinary interiors are not clearly described in accessible local sources.

Who lived here

English and Native ground

This is not an empty English frontier: Native use of the shore, ponds, and shellfish places¹ long predates the town. The English population was small; Old Duxbury counted about 400 inhabitants in 1643¹.

Roads & news

Roads to Plymouth and Boston

News and officials move by road and water: the north-south Plymouth-to-Massachusetts Bay route¹ crosses the town, and the Nook was part of a shore-and-bay landscape¹ directly tied to Plymouth. Local movement follows the scattered settlement pattern¹ more than a single street.

Money

Prices hard to recover

For Duxbury itself, no reliable 1670s wage or price table was found online in this quick search. The visible economy is therefore clearer in kind than in coin: fields, livestock, fish, shellfish, and marsh hay¹.

Year by year

1. 1671Plymouth Colony law tightened the qualifications for freemen, making religious orthodoxy part of political standing. nearby⁴
2. 1672Additional land dealings between Duxbury colonists and Native people took place in the years just before the war. here
3. 1673Plymouth Colony authorized colony-wide support for formal public schooling, though Duxbury’s first separate schoolhouses came later. nearby¹
4. 1675King Philip’s War began, and Duxbury organized guards, watches, garrisons, scouts, and arms. here³
5. 1675Native people of the Mattakeesett community were forcibly removed to Clark’s Island during the war years. here⁵
6. 1676Metacom, called King Philip by the English, was killed, and the main fighting of King Philip’s War in southern New England ended. the country
7. 1677English colonial governments and Native captives lived with the consequences of the war, including executions, enslavement, displacement, and land loss across southern New England. the country
8. 1678The Treaty of Nijmegen ended a major European war between France and the Dutch Republic, news that Atlantic merchants and colonial officials could have heard after delay. the world

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Before and during English settlement, the Duxbury shore and inland ponds were used by Native people, with shell middens reported around Powder Point and High Pines and probable Mattakeesett concentration around the Pembroke Ponds area. from the sources¹
• English Duxbury began as an offshoot of Plymouth; early settlers farmed across Duxbury Bay before the town was incorporated on June 17, 1637. inferred²
• In 1643, “Old Duxbury,” which then included later Pembroke, had about 400 inhabitants. from the sources¹
• The first Duxbury meeting house stood by the first burial ground on Chestnut Street, with the first building dated by local church tradition to about 1638. from the sources^1,2
• Ralph Partridge was Duxbury’s first ordained minister, officially leading the church from 1638. inferred²
• By the later seventeenth century, settlement was dispersed, with a South Duxbury node, Island Creek, Captain’s Nook, Millbrook, and scattered homes along Duxbury and Kingston Bays. from the sources¹
• A main north-south route between Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay passed through Duxbury, later documented along the Summer Street or Route 53 corridor. from the sources¹
• Agriculture and fishing were the primary occupations of English settlers, with cattle, sheep, swine, fresh and saltwater fish, shellfish, and salt hay from Duxbury Marsh all part of the local economy. from the sources¹
• Duxbury had a gristmill on Duck Hill River from 1639, while grain had previously been ground at Plymouth. from the sources¹
• Shipbuilding existed only occasionally in the seventeenth-century town, with small vessels built on farms and no formal shipyard yet. from the sources¹
• In Plymouth Colony, adult men in good standing could become freemen by vote, and freemen held the colony’s core voting and office-holding rights. from the sources⁴
• During King Philip’s War, Duxbury officers were empowered to set daytime wards, night watches, garrisons, scouts, and supervision of the town’s arms and ammunition. from the sources³
• During King Philip’s War in 1675 and 1676, colonial authorities forcibly removed Native people, including men and boys of the Mattakeesett community, to internment on Clark’s Island in Duxbury Bay. inferred⁵
• The town’s seventeenth-century houses were modest wood structures, and surviving early examples include center-chimney and two-story houses associated with the First Settlement period. from the sources¹
• No local online source found in this quick search gives a reliable 1670s Duxbury wage list or market price table. not known
• No local online source found in this quick search describes the interior furnishings of ordinary Duxbury houses in the 1670s. not known
• The town’s first separate schoolhouses were not built until 1714 and 1715, so schooling in the 1670s was not yet housed in those later district school buildings. from the sources¹

Sources

1. MHC Reconnaissance Survey Town Report: Duxbury. Massachusetts Historical Commission, 1981
2. A Brief History of First Parish Church. First Parish Church Duxbury, 1995
3. History of the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Justin Winsor, 1849
4. Leadership & Governance in Plymouth Colony. Pilgrim Hall Museum
5. Mattakeesett: Native History of the Duxbury Shore. Duxbury Uncommon

Duxbury in other decades

Nearby, about the same time