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The North Carolina Department of Transportation Presents
The Eden House Site: An Early Albemarle Settlement on the Chowan River
Window Leads

      Colonial architecture in Virginia has been described as "impermanent", with most of the small earthfast homes lasting only twenty to twenty-five years. Based on archaeological work in North Carolina, it is safe to conclude that houses in early North Carolina looked much the same as Virginia dwellings. Colonists did not consider it practical to build a large or fancy house when they first settled an area. They were more interested in getting rich growing tobacco, so they put their spare money instead into acquiring land and labor for growing the crops. As time passed, the wealthy began to build nicer, longer-lasting homes. Brick and stone became more commonly used as building materials, as did tile or slate roofs, glass windows, and plastered interior walls.
 

      Some of the earliest glass windows on colonial American
Window Leads
Window Leads
sites were what is known as casement windows. It was very difficult to make large pieces of glass in the seventeenth century, so these windows have small squares or diamonds of glass held together by strips of lead. The window pane glass was mounted in these grooved strips of lead, which in turn were set into iron frames. These frames were then nailed into wooden window frames.

      Turned leads like the examples from Structures 1 and 2 at the Eden House site can be important finds because they can sometimes provide good dating information. Recorded in many strips of the lead are the name, date, and town of the manufacturer of the vise tool used to shape the strips of lead. Archaeologists can use dated window leads to help them date the buildings on their site.