Although architectural styles succeeded one another over the year, the basic constructional methods of the frame house remained unchanged for more than two centuries. Strong and durable oak gave the colonists their principle framing material. Trees were generally cut at the building site, where large timbers were hewn with a broadaxe, smoothed with an adze, and framed. However, early examples of “prefabrication” were not entirely uncommon: in 1630 John Winthrop “ordered his house to be cut and framed in Charlestown” but moved to Boston shortly thereafter, “wither also the frame of the Governor’s house... was also carried” in separate sections. In the early days of settlement two-man pitsawing operations produced smaller planks and boards, but within a few decades this slow and inefficient process was made obsolete by water-powered sawmills. A new house required weeks, even months of preparation for digging a cellar, erecting a chimney stack, and laying a wooden sill above the foundation.
Since massive framing timbers were too heavy for one family to maneuver, community aid of the sort described in a 1728 New England Journal was required: “on Monday last... our beloved Pastor had Ninety Men at Work for him, who cut and hew’d all the Timber needful for the Building his House; which we hope will be a motive to other Towns.” At a typical house raising, wall frames were assembled on the ground and secured with mortise and tenon (an extension of one piece of wood fitted into the socket of another). Then men using metal-tipped pike poles pushed each “broadside” to an upright position. Finally, side beams were locked into the front and rear walls by agile persons precariously perched on corner posts. House raisings usually ended with food, rum, and some inevitable hell-raising. The custom continued long after 1774, when a new homeowner smugly reported that “no notice {was} given until the Night before for feare of a hears of grog brusers, not a man but invited.”
