Position:Home>History> Question about Revolutionary-war era homes?

Depends largely on where!. Southern homes, due to the heat, were a lot different than New England homes!.

As for names, the names of English royalty (male and female) were the most common: George, Mary, Anne, Elizabeth, William, etc!.!. In New England biblical names were very common, including some really horrible ones by our standards: Adonijah, Ahinoam, Adoniram, etc!.!. An extremely popular biblical name for boys in both the north and the south was Micajah (mih-KYE-yah)!. Women were often named for the traditional virtues (Purity, Chastity, Faith, Obedience, Mercy, etc!.)!.
As for surnames, mostly English of course, though with some from other nations!. A lot of Germans and Dutch tended to Anglicize their names when they came here, so that Johannsen became Johnson or (in my family) von Kolb became Culp or Geiss became Geese, etc!.!.

The links below are about houses!. General rule of thumb is that in southern homes, where summers were the most miserable time, the rooms had high ceilings, were built off the ground (i!.e!. steps up to a porch with crawl space or more underneath for air circulation) and a few large rooms, all to cool it, while in New England where winters were the miserable time, the house might be the same size in terms of square footage but would have several small rooms instead of a few large ones and with lower ceilings as they were easier to heat!. (There are accounts from New England of winters so cold that food on a table across the room from the fireplace froze!.)

Too bad you aren't here in person as I've got a whole library of floorplans you could look at, but as you're not google these terms:

"folk architecture" or "vernacular architecture"
"hall and parlor houses"
"Federal I style houses"
"New England colonial architecture"
add in floorplans if interested!.

PS- Meant to add- frame houses (i!.e!. boards) were common in both New England and the South, but in general the richer people in the north lived in houses made of field stone (particularly in Pennsylvania) while the richer in the South tended to prefer either frame (because wood breathes better- again, a constant battle against the heat) or brick!. The brick was usually bought by the tons from ships which used them for ballast (weight) when they were sailing empty and unloaded them to take on their products!.
Richest Southern cities: Charleston and Savannah (both of which have many restored colonial homes)
Richest Northern cities: Philadelphia and New York (though Boston is older and has the "really old" architecture of the 17th century)
Googling any of these cities and "house museums" will get you websites, though these are usually the homes of the rich of course!.
Another thing to remember about houses of this era is that people did not have the same notions of privacy we had!. It wasn't uncommon even for a well to do family to have 10 children at home and only 3 bedrooms- 5 to a room wasn't at all uncommon!. Most houses with large families also had beds in every room including the dining room and parlor unless the family was rich, and children tended to sleep in the room with their parents until they were weaned!. (There was a superstition, completely false, that a woman can't get pregnant while she's nursing, which was partly why!.)Www@QuestionHome@Com

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