Topographical Terms in the Seventeenth-Century Records of Connecticut and Rhode Island

Abstract

ACURSORY inspection of the seventeenth-century records of a New England town would incline one to the belief that the language used by the early settlers in this country was exceedingly unlike that which we speak to-day. On closer examination, however, it would be seen that the unfamiliar appearance of the pages is due largely to the erratic use of capital letters, unusual division of syllables, and -most importantto the spelling of the words. In an age when there was no uniform orthography even for the highly educated, it is not surprising to find that for those people who had little claim to advanced scholarship, spelling was wholly a matter of ingenuity. The majority of the New England town clerks of the seventeenth century would come under the heading of second-rate scholars, and as such they often distinguished themselves by the variety of ways in which they spelled the same word. But though the spelling of the words is unfamiliar, the words themselves are on the whole perfectly intelligible to the twentieth-century reader. Only a very small number have dropped out of general use, and of these many are retained in local English dialects. In addition to furnishing us with examples of words that are obsolete to-day, the New England records pro-