Among the Puritan 'emigrants to New England money was very scarce, and, under Winthrop, carpenters and bricklayers, whose services were in great demand, and had a monopoly price, were forbidden to accept over 12d., and afterwards, in 1630, 2s. per day, the penalty being los. to giver and taker. The bricklayers were also the stone-masons; they ranked under the first head, but a much larger amount of building was done in wood and in stone than in brick in those times.
The earliest settlementin this country in which brickmakers are recorded as being part of the population was the colony of New Haven. In this industrious and inventive little company it is probable that the first brick made in this country were burned in 165o. They had no rich backers willing to foot the bills for costly brick buildings, as the Dutch West India Com pany had done for Governor Van Twiller in his building opera tions at Manhattan, or New Amsterdam, as it was called at a later period. They had made several attempts to produce brick at earlier times, but had failed, and it is not probable that the very few which they did succeed in burning were of a very superior quality. But, like the building of their ship, which sailed from their ice-bound shore and was never again heard of, though faulty in many respects, their production was an evidence of great energy, and it is the inheritance of this same quality that has made all that section of country a great manufacturing and inventive district.
The Virginia colonists possessed clay of a far superior qual ity for brick-making ; but they do not seem to have made any attempt to utilize it. A few brick were brought from England and used in the furnaces of an iron foundry and a glass-house, both of which were destroyed during the great massacre of March, 1622, and appear to have comprised the entire manu factures of the colony.
Brick has been a choice material for building purposes in the State of Pennsylvania from its primitive days. In a letter from William Penn to his agent, J. Harrison, as Pennsbury, written in 1685, in speaking of a lady who had purchased land and in tended to emigrate, he said : " She wants a house of brick, like Hannah Psalter's, in Burlington, and she will give sterling in money and as much more in goods. It must have four rooms below, about 18x36 feet large, the rooms 9 feet high, and two stories height." Some idea of the great purchasing power of money in those days, as well as the price and value of buildings, can be seen from the above.
In 1705 the price of bricklayer's labor in Philadelphia was 3s. 6d. per day, and the price of brick 22s. per thousand. One of the oldest public buildings in this country constructed of brick was the old court-house in the city of Philadelphia, com menced in the fall of 1705, and to these Pilgrim Fathers the erection of this building was a great undertaking and their largest endeavor. Gifts, fines, assessments, and forfeitures were
all combined to give it the amplitude of a " Great Towne House" or " Guild Hall," as it was sometimes called when first built. To modern ideas this building was small and ignoble ; but in those days it was grand and imposing in the eyes of all the populace. The total expense of the structure was £6i6, the brick costing 29s. 6d. per thousand, and the bricklaying costing 14s. per thousand. This primitive building was erected in the middle of High, or as it is now called, Market Street, at the corner of Second, and after being used for various purposes for one hundred and thirty years, it was demolished in the spring of 1837. For about twenty-eight years it was used as a court-house ; but its use for that purpose was superseded by the erection of "the new State-House," or "Independence Hall," as it is now called, which was built of brick, in 1733. Another primitive brick building in that city was the " Great Meeting-house" of Friends, at the south of the " Great Towne House," on the corner of Second ana High streets. This build ing and the surrounding brick walls which inclosed it were erected in 1695, the ground being given for that purpose by George Fox, for " truth's and Friends' sake." Early in 1719 brick came into use for foot pavements in Philadelphia, and the great demand for them made the material very expensive.
Brick do not appear to have been much used in the early buildings of Boston, as wood seems to have been the favorite material for building purposes with the Puritan emigrants, stone being sometimes employed. The first "Towne House" erected in Boston was constructed of wood ; it was built about 1657, and stood at the head of State street, and was consumed in the great fire of 1711. Its successor was a brick edifice, erected in 1712, on the same spot, which in turn was destroyed in the fire of 1747. The " old State-House" was built the next year, 1748, and as late as 1791 it was described as " an elegant brick building, IIo feet in length and 38 in breadth." The first Episcopal church in Boston was erected in 1689, of wood, at a cost of £a84, and was at the corner of Tremont and School streets. The "Triangular Warehouse," which stood at the head of the " towne dock," was one of the earliest brick build ings erected in Boston ; it was built by London merchants about 1700. Its foundation was of stone and its walls of brick, which were of a larger size than the brick of the country in later times.