no bells. Each person had a seat carefully assigned to him, or
her, in the meeting-house. Sometimes the boys sat with the
soldiers near the door. We read later in the records that at one
time the children in the galleries were so restless during the
long sermons, that "tithing-men" were appointed "to take a stick
or wand and smite such as are of uncomely behavior in the meeting
and acquaint their parents." On week-days the children went to
school in a schoolhouse which was built on the Green.

The town of New Haven was soon noted for its large and fine
houses, Eaton's having nineteen fireplaces according to
tradition, and Davenport's, thirteen. But at first any kind of
shelter was used for protection. The people met under an oak tree
for service on the first Sunday after landing and Reverend John
Davenport preached a sermon to them on the "Temptation of the
Wilderness," so it is said. During the first winter some of them
slept in cellars dug out in the banks of one of the creeks and
covered with earth. A boy named Michael Wigglesworth, who came to
New Haven with his parents in October, 1638, when he was nine
years old, lived in one of these cellars. When he grew up he
wrote his autobiography and in it he says, "I remember that one
great rain brake in upon us and drenched me so in my bed, being
asleep, that I fell sick upon it, but the Lord in mercy spared my
life and restored my health."

When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it was soon
called, had been there a little more than a year, they met in
Robert Newman's barn "to consult about settling civil government"
and also about establishing a church. Up to this time they had
lived under what was known as the "Plantation Covenant," which