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All rights reserved - no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1898. Reprinted December, 1922; December, 1923; March, November, 1925; November, 1926; December, 1927; December, 1928; February, 1930; April, 1931; Decembr, 1932 " March, December, 1937; January, 1937; November, 1937; July, x939; November, i94I. Printed in the United States of America THIS BOOK IS BEGUN AS IT IS ENDED IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER i o, 4e .| �7 Foreword The illustrations for this book are in every case from real articles and scenes, usually from those still in existence -rare relics of past days. The pictures are the symbols of years of careful search, patient in- vestigation, and constant watchfulness. Many a curi- ous article as nameless and incomprehensible as the totem of an extinct Indian tribe has been studied, com- pared, inquired and written about, and finally trium- phantly named and placed in the list of obsolete domestic appurtenances. From the lofts of woodsheds, under attic eaves, in dairy cellars, out of old trunks and sea- chests from mouldering warehouses, have strangely shaped bits and combinations of wood, stuf, and metal been rescued and recognized. The treasure stores of Deerfield Memorial Hall, of the Bostonian Society, of the American Antiquarian Society, and many State Historical Societies have been freely searched; and to the officers of these societies I give cordial thanks for their cooperaticn and assistance in my work. The artistic and correct photographic representation f many of these objects I owe to Mr. William F. Vi Foreword Halliday of Boston, Massachusetts, Mr. George F. Cook of Richmond, Virginia, and the Misses Allen of Deerfield, Massachusetts. To many friends, and many strangers, who have secured for me single articles or single photographs, I here repeat the thanks already given for their kindness. There were two constant obstacles in the path : An article would be found and a name given by old-time country folk, but no dictionary contained the word, no printed description of its use or purpose could be ob- tained, though a century ago it was in every household. Again, some curiously shaped utensil or tool might be displayed and its use indicated; but it was nameless, and it took long inquiry and deduction, - the faculty of " taking a hint," - to christen it. It is plain that diferent vocations and occupations had not only imple- ments but a vocabulary of their own, and all have become almost obsolete; to the various terms, phrases, and names, once in general application and use in spin- ning, weaving, and kindred occupations, and now half forgotten, might be given the descriptive title, a "home- spun vocabulary." By definite explanation of these terms many a good old English word and phrase has been rescued from disuse. ALICE MORSE EARLE. viii Contents Page I. Homes of the Colonists . . II. The Light of Other Days . .. 3 z III. The Kitchen Fireside . . .. 52 IV. The Serving of Meals . . . . 76 V. Food from Forest and Sea . . . o8 VI. Indian Corn . . . . . . 26 VII. Meat and Drink . . . .. 42 VIII. Flax Culture and Spinning . . . . 166 IX. Wool Culture and Spinning, with a Postscript on Cotton . . . . . 187 X. Hand-Weaving . . . . 21 z XI. Girls' Occupations . . . . 2z5 XII. Dress of the Colonists . . . . z8 XIII. Jack-knife Industries . . . 300 XIV. Travel, Transportation, and Taverns . . . 325 XV. Sunday in the Colonies . . . 364 XVI. Colonial Neighborliness . . . . 388 XVII. Old-time Flower Gardens . . . . 421 ix List of Illustrations Page Fairbanks House, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636 . Frontispiece Log Cabin . . . . . . . . 4 Suydam House, Bushwick, Long Island, 1700. . . 7 Sabin Hall, Virginia . . . . . 13 Slave Quarters, Upper Brandon . . * . . 14 Fire-buckets . . . .. Fireman's Certificate, 8oo . . 17 First Fire Engine in Brooklyn, 1785 . . . . 18 White-Ellery House, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1707 . 20 Boardman-Hill House, North Saugus, Massachusetts, 165o 2 z Birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams . . 22 Pierce Garrison House . . . z6 Knocker from John Hancock House . . . 28 Knocker from Winslow House, Marshfield, Massachusetts . 29 King-Hooper House, Danvers, Massachusetts . 30 Candle-dipping . . . . . 36 Candle-moulds . . . 37 Hanging Candle-box . 38 Silver Snuffers and Tray . . . .. 43 Betty-lamps . . . * * 44 Bull's-eye Lamp . . . . 45 Old Pewter Lamps . . . . 0 xii List of Illustrations Page Old Glass Lamps . . . . . 47 Tinder-box . . . . . . 48 Tinder-wheel, Flint, and Tinder . . . .. 49 Fireplace of Slave-kitchen . . . . . . 54 Iron Potato-boiler . . . . . 57 Old Tin Ware . . . . . . . 58 Iron Skillet, Rabbit-broiler, and Brazier . . . . 59 Toasting-forks . . . . . . . 6o Waffle-irons . . . 61 Old Gridirons . . . . . . . . 6 Plate-warmer . . . . . . .63 Bake-kettle, Clock-jack, Dutch-oven, and Dye-tub . . 64 Roasting-kitchens . . . 66 Smoking-tongs . . . . . . 69 Warming-pan . . . . . 72 Kitchen Fireplace of Whittier's Home . . 74 Harvard Standing Salt . . . 78 Wooden Trenchers, Spoons, Noggin, Caster, and Dishes . 82 Wooden Tankard 83 Carved Wooden Tankard . . . 84 " The porringers that in a row Hung high and made a glittering show" . . 86 Pewter Spoon and Spoon-mould . . . . . 88 Five Types of Spoons .. . 89 Dutch Silver Tankard . 9 Colonial Glass Bottles . 93 Old Spanish and English Glasses, Iron Loggerheads, and Wooden Toddy-sticks . . . 94 List of Illustrations Page Black Jacks . . . . . 95 Silver-mounted Cocoanut Drinking-cup . 97 Winthrop Jug . . . . . . . 98 Georgius Rex Jug . . . . 99 Maple-sugar Camp . . . . . . I 4 John Winthrop's Mill . . . . . . . 133 Old-time Corn-sheller . . . . . . 140 Making Thanksgiving Pies . . . . . 46 Upright Churns. 149 Revolving Churn . . . . . . .15 Cheese-basket, Cheese-ladder, Cheese-press . . 151 Sausage-gun . . . . . . . . 154 Sugar-cutters . . . 156 Spice-mortars and Spice-mill. . . . . . 157 Old Cider-mill . . . . . . . . 16z Flax-brake . . . . . . . . 170 Swingling-block and Swingling-knives . . 17 I Flax, Flax-basket, Flax-hetchels . . . . 73 Clock-reel . . . * . . . . 174 Flax-spinning . . . . . . . . 186 Carding Wool . . . . . . . . 195 Wool-spinning . . . . . 197 Triple Reel . . . . . 199 " Niddy-noddy, two heads and one body " . . . Wool-cards . . . . . zo4 Swifts . . . . . . zI Skarne . . . . . . 217 Sley . . . . . 220 List of Illustrations Loom-temples . . . . . Loom-shuttles . . Tape-loom . . . . . Silk Braid- loom . Quilling-wheels . Loom-basket and Bobbins . Garter-loom . Weaving Rag Carpet .. Hand Stamps for Calico Printing Orange Peel, Blazing Star, Chariot Wheels and Windows, Bachelor's Fancy Hand-woven Bed Coverlet . . . Making Soap . . . . . . Goose Basket . . . . . . Knitted Bags . . . . . . Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler .. . Embroidered Coat of Arms . . . Colonial Embroidery, Old South Church, Boston Net Footing and Lace .. . Collars, Caps, Laces, and " Modesty-piece" . Cut-paper Picture . . . . . Eighteenth-century Stays . . . Child's Suit worn in 1784 . . . Calash, 1780 . . . . . . Pumpkin Hood, 8oo 800 . . Colonial Fattens . . . . Eighteenth-century Spectacles . . . Birch Splint Broom . . . . . Page . . 223 . . 225 S . 226 . . 226 . . 229 S . 233 . . 236 . . 238 S . 240 Church . . 243 . . 245 . . 254 . . 258 . . 264 S . 266 . . 266 S . 268 S . 270 S . 271 . . 279 S . 286 . . 288 . . 289 . . 291 S 295 . . 298 . . 304 xiv List of Illustrations Barlow Jack-knives . . . Old Gourd Dishes . . Goose-yoke and Pig-yoke . . Mayflower Scythe-snathe, Pitchfork, Scythe, Flail Swingle, and Bill-hook. .. . Old-time Axes and Riven Laths . Indian Knot-bowls and Mortar . A Gundalow at the Landing . Wire Ferry on the Connecticut . Conestoga Wagon . . . . . " American Stage-wagon," 1795 * * * Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Massachusetts Old Pigskin and Deerskin Travelling-trunks . . Old-time Bandboxes . . . . . . Wolfe Tavern, Newburyport, Massachusetts Old-time Rocky Mountain Mail-coach Brother Jonathan's Chaise . Campbell Coach . . . . . Dutch Sleigh in New York ... Tap-room and Bar, Wayside Inn . Swing-sign from Grosvenor Inn, Pomfret, Connecticut Sign-board, John Nash's Tavern, Amherst, Massachusetts The " Old Ship," Hingham, Massachusetts, 168o The Old South Church, Boston . . . . . Rocky Hill Meeting-house, Salisbury, Massachusetts, 1785 Plan bfor Seating the Meeting-house . . . Foot-stove . . . . . . . . Bass-viol, Psalm-book, and Pitch-pipe . . . . 307 . 309 . 310 and * 313 . 314 . 319 . 328 � 330 . 340 * 343 . 345 * 347 . 348 . 350 . 35z . 352 . 354 . 355 . 358 358 360 365 366 370 37I 375 377 List of Illustrations Pages of Old Psalm-book printed in Boston, 1690 Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburgh, Virginia Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia Dutch Reformed Church, Bushwick, Long Island Starting to break out the Roads . . . A Chebobbin . . . . . . Crown Imperial . . Flower Garden, Mount Vernon . . . Abigail Adams' Garden, Quincy, Massachusetts Old Garden, Ellenville, New York . . Old Well-sweep * * . . Fraxinella * * * * * Page S . 378 S . 381 . 383 S . 386 . . 4I 2 . .416 S 425 . 432 . 435 . 440 * 444 * * 449 xvi Home Life in Colonial Days Home Life in Colonial Days CHAPTER I HOMES OF THE COLONISTS WHEN the first settlers landed on Ameri can shores, the difficulties in finding o making shelter must have seemed ironi- cal' as well as almost unbearable. The colonists found a land magnificent with forest trees of every size and variety, but they had no sawmills, and few saws to cut boards; there was plenty of clay and ample limestone on every side, yet they could have no brick and no mortar; grand boulders of granite and rock were everywhere, yet there was not a single facility for cutting, drawing, or using stone. These homeless men, so sorely in need of immedi- ate shelter, were baffled by pioneer conditions, and had to turn to many poor expedients, and be satis- fied with rude covering. In Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and, possibly, other states, some reverted to an ancient form of shelter: they became cave-dwellers;. caves were dug in the side Home Life in Colonial Days of a hill, and lived in till the settlers could have time to chop down and cut up trees for log houses. Cornelis Van Tienhoven, Secretary of the Province of New Netherland, gives a description of these cave-dwellings, and says that "the wealthy and principal men in New England lived in this fashion for two reasons: first, not to waste time building; second, not to discourage poorer laboring people." It is to be doubted.whether wealthy men ever lived in them in New England, but Johnson, in his Won- der-working Providence, written in I645, tells of the occasional use of these " smoaky homes." They were speedily abandoned, and no records remain of permanent cave-homes in New England. In Penn- sylvania caves were used by newcomers as homes for a long time, certainly half a century. They generally were formed by digging into the ground about four feet in depth on the banks or low cliffs near the river front. The walls were then built up of sods or earth laid on poles or brush; thus half only of the chamber was really under ground. If dug into a side hill, the earth formed at least two walls. The roofs were layers of tree limbs covered over with sod, or bark, or rushes and bark. The chimneys were laid of cobblestone or sticks of wood mortared with clay and grass. The settlers were thankful even for these poor shelters, and Homes of the Colonists declared that they fovund them comfortable. By 1685 many families were still living in caves in Pennsylvania, for the Governor's Council then ordered the caves to be destroyed and filled in. Sometimes the settler used the cave for a cellar for the wooden house which he built over it. These cave-dwellings were perhaps the poorest houses ever known by any Americans, yet pioneers, or poor, or degraded folk have used them for homes in America until far more recent days. In one of these miserable habitations of earth and sod in the town of Rutland, Massachusetts, were passed some of the early years of the girlhood of Madame Jumel, whose beautiful house on Washington Heights, New York, still stands to show the contrasts that can come in a single life. The homes of the Indians were copied by the English, being ready adaptations of natural and plentiful resources. Wigwams in the South were of plaited rush or grass mats; of deerskins pinned on a frame; of tree boughs rudely piled into a cover, and in the far South, of layers of palmetto leaves. In the mild climate of the Middle and Southern states a "half-faced camp," of the Indian form, with one open side, which served for windows and door, and where the fire was built, made a good temporary home. In such for a time, in his youth, lived Abra Home Life in Colonial Days ham Lincoln. Bark wigwams were the most easily made of all ; they could be quickly pinned together on a light frame. In 1626 there were thirty home- buildings of Europeans on the island of Manhattan, now New York, and all but one of them were of bark. Though the settler had no sawmills, brick kilns, or stone-cutters, he had one noble friend,--a firm Log Cabin rock to stand upon,-his broad-axe. With his axe, and his own strong and willing arms, he could take a long step in advance in architecture; he could build a log cabin. These good, comfortable, and sub- Homes of the Colonists stantial houses have ever been built by American pioneers, not only in colonial days, but in our Western and Southern states to the present time. A typical one like many now standing and occupied in the mountains of North Carolina is here shown. Round logs were halved together at the corners, and roofed with logs, or with bark and thatch on poles; this made a comfortable shelter, especially when the cracks between the logs were "chinked " with wedges of wood, and "daubed" with clay. Many cabins had at first no chinking or daubing; one settler while sleeping was scratched on the head by the sharp teeth of a hungry wolf, who thrust his nose into the space between the logs of the cabin. Doors were hung on wooden hinges or straps of :hide. A favorite form of a log house for a settler to build in his first "cut down" in the virgin forest, was to dig a square trench about two feet deep, of dimensions as large as he wished the ground floor of his house, then to set upright all around this trench (leaving a space for a fireplace, window, and door), a closely placed row of logs all the same length, usually fourteen feet long for a single story; if there was a loft, eighteen feet long. The earth was filled in solidly around these logs, and kept them firmly upright; a horizontal band of punch- Home Life in Colonial Days eons, which were split logs smoothed off on the face with the axe, was sometimes pinned around within the log walls, to keep them from caving in. Over this was placed a bark roof, made of squares of chestnut bark, or shingles of overlapping birch- bark. A bark or log shutter was hung at the window, and a bark door hung on withe hinges, or, if very luxurious, on leather straps, completed the quickly made home. This was called rolling-up a house, and the house was called a puncheon and bark house. A rough puncheon floor, hewed flat with an axe or adze, was truly a luxury. One settler's wife pleaded that the house might be rolled up around a splendid flat stump; thus she had a good, firm table. A small platform placed about two feet high alongside one wall, and supported at the outer edge with strong posts, formed a bedstead. Sometimes hemlock boughs were the only bed. The frontier saying was, "A hard day's work makes a soft bed." The tired pioneers slept well even on hemlock boughs. The chinks of the logs were filled with moss and mud, and in the autumn banked up outside with earth for warmth. These log houses did not satisfy English men and women. They longed to have what Roger Williams called English houses, which were, how- Homes of the Colonists ever, scarcely different in ground-plan. A single room on the ground, called in many old wills the fire-room, had a vast chimney at one end. A so-called staircase, usually but a narrow ladder, led to a sleeping-loft above. Some of those houses were still made of whole logs, but with clapboards nailed over the chinks and cracks. Others were of a lighter frame covered with clapboards, or in Dela- ware with boards pinned on perpendicularly. Soon this house was doubled in size and comfort by hav- ing a room on either side of the chimney. Each settlement often followed in general outline as well as detail the houses to which the owners had become accustomed in Europe, with, of course, such variations as were necessary from the new surround- ings, new climate, and new limitations. New York was settled by the Dutch, and therefore naturally the first permanent houses were Dutch in shape, such as may be seen in Holland to-day. In the large towns in New Netherland the houses were certainly very pretty, as all visitors stated who wrote accounts at that day. Madam Knights visited New York in 1704, and wrote of the houses,-- I will give her own words, in her own spelling and grammar, which were not very good, though she was the teacher of Benjamin Franklin, and the friend of Cotton Mather:- Home Life in Colonial Days Suydam House, Bushwick, Long Island, 1700. From an old print " The Buildings are Brick Generaly very stately and high: the Bricks in some of the houses are of divers Coullers, and laid in Checkers, being glazed, look very agreable. The inside of the houses is neat to admiration, the wooden work; for only the walls are plaster'd; and the Sumers and Gist are planed and kept very white scour'd as so is all the partitions if made of Bords." The " sumers and gist " were the heavy timbers of the frame, the summer-pieces and joists. The summer-piece was the large middle beam in the middle from end to end of the ceiling; the joists were cross-beams. These were not covered with plaster as nowadays, but showed in every ceiling; Homes of the Colonists and in old houses are sometimes set so curiously and fitted so ingeniously, that they are always an entertaining study. Another traveller says that New York houses had patterns of colored brick set in the front, and also bore the date of building. The Governor's house at Albany had two black brick-hearts. Dutch houses were set close to the sidewalk with the gable-end to the street; and had the roof notched like steps, --corbel-roof was the name; and these ends were often of brick, while the rest of the walls were of wood. The roofs were high in proportion to the side walls, and hence steep; they were surmounted usually in Holland fashion with weather-vanes in the shape of horses, lions, geese, sloops, or fish; a rooster was a favorite Dutch weather-vane. There were metal gutters sticking out from every roof almost to the middle of the street; this was most annoying to passers-by in rainy weather, who were deluged with water from the roofs. The cellar windows had small loop-holes with shutters. The windows were always small; some had only sliding shutters, others had but two panes or quarels of glass, as they were called, which were only six or eight inches square. The front doors were cut across horizontally in the mid- dle into two parts, and in early days were hung on Leather hinges instead of iron. I O Home Life in Colonial Days In the upper half of the door were two round bull's-eyes of heavy greenish glass, which let faint rays of light enter the hall. The door opened with a latch, and often had also a knocker. Every house had a porch or "stoep" flanked with benches, which were constantly occupied in the summer time; and every evening, in city and village alike, an incessant visiting 'was kept up from stoop to stoop. The Dutch farmhouses were a single straight story, with two more stories in the high, in-curving roof. They had doors and stoops like the town houses, and all the windows had heavy board shutters. The cellar and the garret were the most useful rooms in the house; they were store- rooms for all kinds of substantial food. In the cellar were great bins of apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, and parsnips. There were hogsheads of corned beef, barrels of salt pork, tubs of hams being salted in brine, tonnekens of salt shad and mackerel, firkins of butter, kegs of pigs' feet, tubs of souse, kilderkins of lard. On a long swing-shelf were tumblers of spiced fruits, and "rolliches," head-cheese, and strings of sausages - all Dutch delicacies. In strong racks were barrels of cider and vinegar, and often of beer. Many contained barrels of rum and a pipe of Madeira. What a storehouse of Homes of the Colonists plenty and thrift! What an emblem of Dutch character ! In the attic by the chimney was the smoke-house, filled with hams, bacon, smoked beef, and sausages. In Virginia and Maryland, where people did not gather into towns, but built their houses farther apart, there were at first few sawmills, and the houses were universally built of undressed logs. Nails were costly, as were all articles manufactured of iron, hence many houses were built without iron; wooden pins and pegs were driven in holes cut to receive them; hinges were of leather; the shingles on the roof were sometimes pinned, or were held in place by "weight-timbers." The doors had latches with strings hanging outside; by pulling in the string within-doors the house was securely locked. This form of latch was used in all the colonies. When persons were leaving houses, they sometimes set them on fire in order to gather up the nails from the ashes. To prevent this destruction of buildings, the government of Virginia gave to each planter who was leaving his house as many nails as the house was estimated to have in its frame, pro- vided the owner would not burn the house down. Some years later, when boards could be readily obtained, the favorite dwelling-place in the South was a framed building with a great stone or log-and- II Home Life in Colonial Days clay chimney at either end. The house was usually set on sills resting on the ground. The partitions were sometimes covered with a thick layer of mud which dried into a sort of plaster and was white- washed. The roofs were covered with cypress shingles. Hammond wrote of these houses in I656, in his Leab and Rachel, " Pleasant in their building, and contrived delightfull; the rooms large, daubed and whitelimed, glazed and flowered; and if not glazed windows, shutters made pretty and convenient." When prosperity and wealth came through the speedily profitable crops of tobacco, the houses im- proved. The home-lot or yard of the Southern planters showed a pleasant group of buildings, which would seem the most cheerful home of the colonies, only that all dearly earned homes are cheerful to their owners. There was not only the spacious mansion house for the planter with its pleasant porch, but separate buildings in which were a kitchen, cabins for the negro servants and the over- seer, a stable, barn, coach-house, hen-house, smoke- house, dove-cote, and milk-room. In many yards a tall pole with a toy house at top was erected; in this bird-house bee-martins built their nests, and by bravely disconcerting the attacks of hawks and crows, and noisily notifying the family and servants 12 Homes of the Colonists of the approach of the enemy, thus served as a guardian for the domestic poultry, whose home stood close under this protection. There was sel- dom an ice-house. The only means for the pres- ervation of meats in hot weather was by water constantly pouring into and through a box house erected over the spring that flowed near the house. Sometimes a brew-house was also found in the yard, for making home-brewed beer, and a tool-house for storing tools and farm implements. Some farms had a cider-mill, but this was not in the house yard. Often there was a spinning-house where servants could spin flax and wool. This usually had one room containing a hand-loom on which coarse bag- Sabin Hall Home Life in Colonial Days Slave Quarters, Upper Brandon ging could be woven, and homespun for the use of the negroes. A very beautiful example of a splendid and comfortable Southern mansion such as was built by wealthy planters in the middle of the eighteenth century has been preserved for us at Mount Ver- non, the home of George Washington. Mount Vernon was not so fine nor so costly a house as many others built earlier in the century, such as Lower Brandon - two centuries and a half old-and Upper Brandon, the homes of the Har- risons; Westover, the home of the Byrds; Shirley, built in i65o, the home of the Carters; Sabin Hall, another Carter home, is still standing on the Rap- pahannock with its various and many quarters and Homes of the Colonists outbuildings, and is a splendid example of colonial architecture. As the traveller came north from Virginia through Pennsylvania, "the Jerseys," and Delaware, the negro cabins and detached kitchen disappeared, and many of the houses were of stone and mortar. A clay oven stood by each house. In the cities stone and brick were much used, and by 1700 nearly all Philadelphia houses had balconies running the entire length of the second story. The stoop before the door was universal. For half a century nearly all New England houses were cottages. Many had thatched roofs. Seaside towns set aside for public use certain reedy lots be- tween salt-marsh and low-water mark, where thatch could be freely cut. The catted chimneys were of logs plastered with clay, or platted, that is, made of reeds and mortar; and as wood and hay were stacked in the streets, all the early towns suffered much from fires, and soon laws were passed for- bidding the building of these unsafe chimneys; as brick was imported and made, and stone was quar- ried, there was certainly no need to use such danger- filled materials. Fire-wardens were appointed who peered around in all the kitchens, hunting for what they called foul chimney hearts, and they ordered flag-roofs and wooden chimneys to be removed, and I5 Home Life in Colonial Days replaced with stone or brick ones. In Boston every housekeeper had to own a fire-ladder; and ladders and buckets were kept in the church. Salem kept its "fire-buckets and hook'd poles" in the town- house. Soon in all towns each family owned fire- buckets made of heavy leather and marked with the owner's name or initials. The entire town constituted the fire company, and the method of using the fire-buckets was this. SAs soon as an alarm of fire was given by Fire-buckets shouts or bell-ringing, every one ran at once towards the scene of the fire. All who owned buckets carried them, and if any person was delayed even for a few minutes, he flung his fire-buckets from the window into the street, where some one in the running crowd seized them and carried them on. On reaching the fire, a double line called lanes of persons was made from the fire to the river or pond, or a well. A very good representa- tion of these lanes is given in this fireman's certifi- cate of the year 1800. Homes of the Colonists 17 Fireman's Certificate, 1800 The buckets, filled with water, were passed from hand to hand, up one line of persons to the fire, while the empty ones went down the other line. Boys were stationed on the dry lane. Thus a con- stant supply of water was carried to the fire. If any person attempted to pass through the line, or hinder the work, he promptly got a bucketful or two of water poured over him. When the fire was over, the fire-warden took charge of the buckets; some hours later the owners appeared, each picked out his own buckets from the pile, carried them home, and hung them up by the front door; ready to be seized again for use at the next alarm of fire. Many of these old fire-buckets are still preserved, and deservedly are cherished heirlooms, for they C Home Life in Colonial Days represent the dignity and importance due a house- holding ancestor. They were a valued possession at the time of their use, and a costly one, being made of the best leather. They were often painted not only with the name of the owner, but with family mottoes, crests, or appropriate inscriptions, sometimes in Latin. The leather hand-buckets of the Donnison family of Boston are here shown; those of the Quincy family bear the legend Impavadi Flammarium ; those of the Oliver family, Friend and Public. In these fire-buckets were often kept, tightly First Fire-engine used in Brooklyn, 1785 Homes of the Colonists rolled, strong canvas bags, in which valuables could be thrust and carried from the burning building. The first fire-engine made in this country was for the town of Boston, and was made about I65o by Joseph Jencks, the famous old iron-worker in Lynn. It was doubtless very simple in shape, as were its successors until well into this century. The first fire- engine used in Brooklyn, New York, is here shown. It was made in 1785 by Jacob Boome. Relays of men at both handles worked the clumsy pump. The water supply for this engine was still only through the lanes of fire-buckets, except in rare cases. By the year 1670 wooden chimneys and log houses of the Plymouth and Bay colonies were replaced by more sightly houses of two stories, which were frequently built with the second story jutting out a foot or two over the first, and some- times with the attic story still further extending over the second story. A few of these are still standing: The White-Ellery House, at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1707, is here shown. This "over- hang" is popularly supposed to have been built for the purpose of affording a convenient shooting- place from which to repel the Indians. This is, however, an historic fable. The overhanging second story was a common form of building in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and the Massachu- 19 20 Home Life in Colonial Days White-Ellery House, Gloucester; Massachusetts, 1707 setts and Rhode Island settlers simply and naturally copied their old homes. The roofs of many of these new houses were steep, and were shingled with hand-riven shingles. The walls between the rooms were of clay mixed with chopped straw. Sometimes the walls were whitened with a wash made of powdered clamshells. The ground floors were occasionally of earth, but puncheon floors were common in the better houses. The well-smoothed timbers were sanded in careful designs with cleanly beach sand. Homes of the Colonists By 1676 the Royal Commissioners wrote of Bos- ton that the streets were crooked, and the houses usually wooden, with a few of brick and stone. It is a favorite tradition of brick houses in all the col- onies that the brick for them was brought from England. As excellent brick was made here, I can- not believe all these tales that are told. Occasion- ally a house, such as the splendid Warner Mansion, still standing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is proved to be of imported brick by the bills which are still existing for the purchase and transportation of the brick. A later form of many houses was Boardman Hill House, North Saugus, Massachusetts, 1650 two stories or two stories and a half in front, with a peaked roof that sloped down nearly to the ground in the back over an ell covering the kitchen, 22 Home Life in Colonial Days added in the shape known as a lean-to, or, as it was called by country folk, the linter. This slop- ing roof gave the one element of unconscious pict- uresqueness which redeemed the prosaic ugliness of these bare-walled houses. Many lean-to houses are still standing in New England. The Boardman Birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams Hill House, built at North Saugus, Massachusetts, two centuries and a half ago, and the two houses of lean-to form, the birthplaces of President John Adams and of President John Quincy Adams, are typical examples. The next roof-form, built from early colonial days, and popular a century ago, was what was known as the gambrel roof. This resembled, on Homes of the Colonists two sides, the mansard roof of France in the seven- teenth century, but was also gabled at two ends. The gambrel roof had a certain grace of outline, espe- cially when joined with lean-tos and other additions. The house partly built in 1636 in Dedham, Massa- chusetts, by my far-away grandfather, and known as the Fairbanks House, is the oldest gambrel-roofed house now standing. It is still occupied by one of his descendants in the eighth generation. The rear view of it, here given,* shows the picturesqueness of roof outlines and the quaintness which comes simply from variety. The front of the main building, with its eight windows, all of different sizes and set at different heights, shows equal diversity. Within, the boards in the wall-panelling vary from two to twenty-five inches in width. The windows of the first houses had oiled paper to admit light. A colonist wrote back to England to a friend who was soon to follow, " Bring oiled paper for your windows." The minister, Higgin- son, sent promptly in I629 for glass for windows. This glass was set in the windows with nails; the sashes were often narrow and oblong, of diamond- shaped panes set in lead, and opening up and down the middle on hinges. Long after the large towns and cities had glass windows, frontier settlements still had heavy wooden shutters. They were a safer * Frortisoiece. 23 Home Life in Colonial Days protection against Indian assault, as well as cheaper. It is asserted that in the province of Kennebec, which is now the state of Maine, there was not, even as late as 1745, a house that had a square of glass in it. Oiled paper was used until this century in pioneer houses for windows wherever it was diffi- cult to transport glass. Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen. A Salem citizen, just pre- vious to the Revolution, had the woodwork of one of the rooms of his house painted. One of a group of friends, discussing this extravagance a few days later, said: "Well! Archer has set us a fine exam- ple of expense, - he has laid one of his rooms in oil." This sentence shows both the wording and ideas of the times. There was one external and suggestive adjunct of the earliest pioneer's home which was found in nearly all the settlements which were built in the midst of threatening Indians. Some strong houses were always surrounded by a stockade, or "pali- sado," of heavy, well-fitted logs, which thus formed a garrison, or neighborhood resort, in time of danger. In the valley of Virginia each settlement was formed of houses set in a square, connected from 24 Homes of the Colonists end to end of the outside walls by stockades with gates; thus forming a close front. On the James River, on Manhattan Island, were stockades. The whole town plot of Milford, Connecticut, was enclosed in 1645, and the Indians taunted the set- tlers by shouting out, "White men all same like pigs." At one time in Massachusetts, twenty towns proposed an all-surrounding palisade. The progress and condition of our settlements can be traced in our fences. As Indians disappeared or succumbed, the solid row of pales gave place to a log-fence, which served well to keep out depreda- tory animals. When dangers from Indians or wild animals entirely disappeared, boards were still not over-plenty, and the strength of the owner could not be over-spent on unnecessary fencing. Then came the double-rail fence; two rails, held in place one above the other, at each joining, by four crossed sticks. It was a boundary, and would keep in cattle. It was said that every fence should be horse-high, bull-proof, and pig-tight. Then came stone walls, showing a thorough clearing and taming of the land. The succeeding " half-high" stone wall --a foot or two high, with a single rail on top - showed that stones were not as plentiful in the fields as in early days. The "snake-fence," or "Virginia fence," so common in the Southern 25 Home Life in Colonial Days states, utilized the second growth of forest trees. The split-rail fence, four or five rails in height, was set at intervals with posts, pierced with holes to hold the ends of the rails. These were used to some extent in the East ; but our Western states were Pierce Garrison House, Newburyport fenced throughout with rails split by sturdy pioneer rail-splitters, among them young Abraham Lincoln, Board fences showed the day of the sawmill and its plentiful supply; the wire fences of to-day equally prove the decrease of our forests and our wood, and the growth of our mineral supplies and Homes of the Colonists manufactures of metals. Thus even our fences might be called historical monuments. A few of the old block-houses, or garrison houses, the " defensible houses," which were sur- rounded by these stockades, are still standing. The most interesting are the old Garrison at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, built in I670; it has walls of solid oak, and brick a foot and a half thick; the Saltonstall House at Ipswich, built in 1633; Cradock Old Fort in Medford, Massachusetts, built in 1634 of brick made on the spot; an old fort at York, Maine; and the Whitefield Garrison House, built in 1639 at Guilford, Connecticut. The one at Newburyport is the most picturesque and beautiful of them all. As social life in Boston took on a little aspect of court life in the circle gathered around the royal governors, the pride of the wealthy found expres- sion in handsome and stately houses. These were copied and added to by men of wealth and social standing in other towns. The Province House, built in I679, the Frankland House in 1735, and the Hancock House, all in Boston; the Shirley House in Roxbury, the Wentworth Mansion in New Hampshire, are good examples. They were dignified and simple in form, and have borne the test of centuries, --they wear well. They never 27 Home Life in Colonial Days erred in over-ornamentation, being scant of interior decoration, save in two or three principal rooms and the hall and staircase. The panelled step ends and soffits, the graceful newels and balusters, of those old staircases hold sway as models to this day. Knocker, John Hancock House The same taste which made the staircase the centre of decoration within, made the front door the sole point of ornamentation without; and equal beauty is there focussed. Worthy of study and re- Homes of the Colonists production, many of the old-time front doors are with their fine panels, graceful, leaded side win- dows, elaborate and pretty fan-lights, and slight but appropriate carving. The prettiest leaded windows I ever saw in an Amer- ican home were in a thereby glorified hen- house. They had been taken from the discarded front door of a remodelled old Falmouth house. The hens and their owner were not of antiqua- rian tastes, and relin- quished the windows for a machine-made sash more suited to their plebeian tastes and occupations. Many colonial doors had door-latches or knobs of heavy brass ; Knocker, Winslow House, Marshfield, y >Massachusetts nearly all had a knocker of wrought iron or polished brass, a cheerful ornament that ever seems to resound a welcome to the visitor as well as a notification to the visited. 30 Home Life in Colonial Days King-Hooper House, Danvers, Massachusetts The knocker from the John Hancock House in Boston and that from the Winslow House in Marsh- field are here shown; both are now in the custody of the Bostonian Society, and may be seen at the Old State House in Boston. The latter was given to the society by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The "King-Hooper" House, still standing in Danvers, Massachusetts, closely resembled the Han- cock House. This house, built by Robert Hooper in 1754, was for a time the refuge of the royal governor of Massachusetts - Governor Gage; and hence is sometimes called General Gage's Head- quarters. When the minute-men marched past Homes of the Colonists the house to Lexington on April I8, 1775, they stripped the lead from the gate-posts. " King Hooper" angrily denounced them, and a minute- man fired at him as he entered the house. The bullet passed through the panel of the door, and the rent may still be seen. Hence the house has been often called The House of the Front Door with the Bullet-Hole. The present owner and occupier of the house, Francis Peabody, Esq., has appropri- ately named it The Lindens, from the stately linden trees that grace its gardens and lawns. In riding through those portions of our states that were the early settled colonies, it is pleasant to note where any old houses are still standing, or where the sites of early colonial houses are known, the good taste usually shown by the colonists in the places chosen to build their houses. They dearly loved a "sightly location." An old writer said: " My consayte is such; I had rather not to builde a mansyon or a house than to builde one without a good prospect in it, to it, and from it." In Virginia the houses were set on the river slope, where every passing boat might see them. The New England colonists painfully climbed long, tedious hills, that they might have homes from whence could be had a beautiful view, and this was for the double reason, as the old writer said, that in their new homes they might both see and be seen. 31 CHAPTER II THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS T HE first and most natural way of light- ing the houses of the American colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest plenty in the forests. Governor John Winthrop the younger, in nis communication to the English Royal Society in 1662, said this candle-wood was much used for domestic illumination in Virginia, New York, and New England. It was doubtless gathered every- where in new settlements, as it has been in pioneer homes till our own day. In Maine, New Hamp- shire, and Vermont it was used till this century. In the Southern states the pine-knots are still burned in humble households for lighting purposes, and a very good light they furnish. The historian Wood wrote in I642, in his New England's Prospect :-- "Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is much spoke of, which may serve as a shift among poore as The Light of Other Days folks, but I cannot commend it for singular good, because it droppeth a pitchy kind of substance where it stands." That pitchy kind of substance was tar, which was one of the most valuable trade products of the colonists. So much tar was made by burning the pines on the banks of the Connecticut, that as early as I65o the towns had to prohibit the using of can- dlewood for tar-making if gathered within six miles of the Connecticut River, though it could be gath- ered by families for illumination and fuel. Rev. Mr. Higginson, writing in 1633, said of these pine-knots:-- "They are such candles as the Indians commonly use, having no other, and they are nothing else but the wood of the pine tree, cloven in two little slices, something thin, which are so full of the moysture of turpentine and pitch that they burne as cleere as a torch." To avoid having smoke in the room, and on account of the pitchy droppings, the candle-wood was usually burned in a corner of the fireplace, on a flat stone. The knots were sometimes called pine- torches. One old Massachusetts minister boasted at the end of his life that every sermon of the hun- dreds he had written, had been copied by the light of these tciches. Rev. Mr. Newman, of Rehoboth, is said to have compiled his vast concordance of the 33 Home Life in Colonial Days Bible whol,'y by the dancing light of this candie- wood. Livhting was an important item of expense in any household of so small an income as that of a Puritan minister; and the single candle was often frugally extinguished during the long family prayers each evening. Every family laid in a good supply of this lignt wood for winter use, and it was said that a prudent New England farmer would as soon start the winter without hay in his barn as without candle-wooa in his woodshed. Mr. Higginson wrote in 1630: "Though New England has no tallow to make candles of, yet by abundance of fish thereof it can afford oil for lamps." This oil was apparently wholly neglected, though there were few, or no domestic animals to furnish tallow; but when cattle increased, every ounce of tallow was saved as a precious and useful treasure; and as they became plentiful it was one of the house- hold riches of New England, which was of value to our own day. When Governor Winthrop arrived in Massachusetts, he promptly wrote over to his wife to bring candles with her from England when she came. And in 1634 he sent over for a large quantity of wicks and tallow. Candles cost four- pence apiece, which made them costly luxuries for the thrifty colonists. Wicks were made of loosely spun hemp or tow 34 The Light of Other Days or of cotton; from the milkweed which grows so plentifully in our fields and roads to-day the chil- dren gathered in late summer the silver " silk- down " which was " spun grossly into candle wicke." Sometimes the wicks were dipped into saltpetre. Thomas Tusser wrote in England in the six- teenth century in his Directions to Housewifes: - " Wife, make thine own candle, Spare penny to handle. Provide for thy tallow ere frost cometh in, And make thine own candle ere winter begin." Every thrifty housewife in America saved her penny as in England. The making of the winter's stock of candles was the special autumnal house- hold duty, and a hard one too, for the great kettles were tiresome and heavy to handle. An early hour found the work well under way. A good fire was started in the kitchen fireplace under two vast kettles, each two feet, perhaps, in diameter, which were hung on trammels from the lug-pole or crane, and half filled with boiling water and melted tallow, which had had two scaldings and skimmings. At the end of the kitchen or in an adjoining and cooler room, sometimes in the lean-to, two long poles were laid from chair to chair or stool to stool. Across these poles were placed at regular intervals, like the 36 Home Life in Colonial Days rounds of a ladder, smaller sticks about fifteen or eighteen inches long, called candle-rods. These poles and rods were kept from year to year, either in the garret or up on the kitchen beams. To each candle-rod was attached about six or eight carefully straightened candle-wicks. The wicking was twisted strongly one way; then doubled; then the loop was slipped over the can- dle-rod, when the two ends, of course, twisted the other way around each other, making a firm wick. A rod, with its row of wicks, was dipped in the melted tallow in the pot, and returned to its place across the poles. Each row was thus dipped in regular turn; each had time to cool and harden between the dips, and thus grew steadily in size. If allowed to cool fast, they of course grew quickly, but were brittle, and often cracked. Hence a good worker dipped slowly, but if the room was fairly cool, could make two hundred candles for a day's work. Some could dip two rods at a time. The tallow was constantly replenished, as the heavy kettles were used alternately to keep the tallow constantly melted, and were swung off and on the fire. Boards or sheets of paper were placed under the rods to protect the snowy, scoured floors. Candles were also run in moulds which were groups of metal cylinders, usually made of tin or Candie-dipping The Light of Other Days Candle-moulds pewter. Itinerant candle-makers went from house to house, taking charge of candle-making in the household, and carrying large candle-moulds with them. One of the larger size, making two dozen candles, is here shown; but its companion, the smaller mould, making six candles, is such as were more commonly seen. Each wick was attached to a wire or a nail placed across the open top of the cylinder, and hung down in the centre of each indi- vidual mould. The melted tallow was poured in carefully around the wicks. Wax candles also were made. They were often Home Life in Colonial Days shaped by hand, by pressing bits of heated wax around a wick. Farmers kept hives of bees as much for the wax as for the honey, which was of much demand for sweetening, when " loaves" of sugar were so high-priced. Deer suet, moose fat, bear's grease, all were saved in frontier settlements, and carefully tried into tallow for candles. Every particle of grease rescued from pot liquor, or fat from meat, was utilized for candle-making. Rushlights were made by stripping part of the outer bark from common rushes, thus leaving the pith bare, then dipping them in tallow or grease, and letting them harden. The precious candles thus tediously made were taken good care of. They were carefully packed in Hanging Candle-box candle-boxes with compartments ; were covered over, and set in a dark closet, where they would not dis- color and turn yellow. A metal candle-box, hung TI'he Light of Other Days 39 on the edge of the kitchen mantel-shelf, always held two or three candles to replenish those which burnt out in the candlesticks. A natural, and apparently inexhaustible, material for candles was found in all the colonies in the waxy berries of the bayberry bush, which still grows in large quantities on our coasts. In the year 1748 a Swedish naturalist, Professor Kalm, came to America, ard he wrote an account of the bayberry wax which I will quote in full:- " There is a plant here from the berries of which they make a kind of wax or tallow, and for that reason the Swedes call it the tallow-shrub. The English call the same tree the candle-berry tree or bayberry bush; it grows abundantly in a wet soil, and seems to thrive particularly well in the neighborhood of the sea. The berries look as if flour had been strewed on them. They are gathered late in Autumn, being ripe about that time, and are thrown into a kettle or pot full of boiling water; by this means their fat melts out, floats at the top of the water, and may be skimmed off into a vessel; with the skimming they go on till there is no tallow left. The tallow, as soon as it is congealed, looks like common tallow or wax, but has a dirty green color. By being melted over and refined it acquires a fine and transparent green color. This tallow is dearer than common tallow, but cheaper than wax. Candles of this do not easily bend, nor melt in summer as common candles do; they burn better and slower, nor do they cause any 40 Home Life in Colonial Days smoke, but. yield rather an agreeable smell when they are extinquished. In Carolina they not only make candles out of the wax of the berries, but likewise sealing-wax." Beverley, the historian of Virginia, wrote of the smell of burning bayberry tallow-- " If an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff." Bayberry wax was not only a useful home-product, but an article of traffic till this century, and was constantly advertised in the newspapers. In I712, in a letter written to John Winthrop, F.R.S., I find:- " I am now to beg one favour of you,- that you secure for me all the bayberry wax you can possibly put your hands on. You must take a care they do not put too much tallow among it, being a custom and cheat they have got." Bayberries were of enough importance to have some laws made about them. Everywhere on Long Island grew the stunted bushes, and every- where they were valued. The town of Brook- haven, in 1687, forbade the gathering of the berries before September I5, under penalty of fifteen shillings' fine. The pungent and unique scent of the bayberry, The Light of Other Days equally strong in leaf and berry, is to me one of the elements of the purity and sweetness of the air of our New England coast fields in autumn. It grows everywhere, green and cheerful, in sun-with- ered shore pastures, in poor bits of earth on our rocky coast, where it has few fellow field-tenants to crowd the ground. It is said that the highest efforts of memory are stimulated through our sense of smell, by the association of ideas with scents. That of bayberry, whenever I pass it, seems to awaken in me an hereditary memory, to recall a life of two centuries ago. I recall the autumns of trial and of promise in our early history, and the bay- berry fields are peopled with children in Puritan garb, industriously gathering the tiny waxen fruit. Equally full of sentiment is the scent of my burn- ing bayberry candles, which were made last autumn in an old colony town. The history )f whale-fishing in New England is the history of one of the most fascinating commer- cial industries the world has ever known. It is a story with every element of intense interest, show- ing infinite romance, adventure, skill, -ourage, and fortitude. It brought vast wealth to the commu- nities that carried on the fishing, and great indepen- dence and comfort to the fami'es of the whalers To the whalemen themselves it brought incredible 41 Home Life in Colonial Days hardships and dangers, yet they loved the life with a love which is strange to view and hard to under- stand. In the oil made from these "royal fish" the colonists found a vast and cheap supply for their metal and glass lamps; while the toothed whales had stored in their blunt heads a valuable material which was at once used for making candles; it is termed, in the most ancient reference I have found to it in New England records, Sperma-Coeti. It was asserted that one of these spermaceti can- dles gave out more light than three tallow candles, and had four times as big a flame. Soon their manufacture and sale amounted to large numbers, and materially improved domestic illumination. All candles, whatever their material, were care- fully used by the economical colonists to the last bit by a little wire frame of pins and rings called a save-all. Candlesticks of various metals and shapes were found in every house; and often sconces, which were also called candle-arms, or prongs. Candle-beams were rude chandeliers, a metal or wooden hoop with candle-holders. Snut- fers were always seen, with which to trim the candles, and snuffers trays. These were some- times exceedingly richly ornamented, and were often of silver: extinguishers often accompanied the snuffers. The Light of Other Days Silver Snuffers and Tray Though lamps occasionally appear on early inventories and lists of sales, and though there was plenty of whale and fish oil to burn, lamps were not extensively used in America for many years. "Betty-lamps," shaped much like antique Roman lamps, were the earliest form. They were small, shallow receptacles, two or three inches in diameter and about an inch in depth; either rectangular, oval, round, or triangular in shape, with a project- ing nose or spout an inch or two long. They usu- ally had a hook and chain by which they could be hung on a nail in the wall, or on the round in the back of a chair; sometimes there was also a smaller hook for cleaning out the nose of the lamp. They were filled w:tn tallow, grease, or oil, while a piece of cotton rag or coarse wick was so placed that, when lighted, the end hung out on the nose. From this wick, dripping dirty grease, rose a dull, smoky, ill-smelling flame. Home Life in Colonial Days Betty Lamps Phcebe-lamps were similar in shape; though some had double wicks, that is, a nose at either side. Three betty-lamps are shown in the illustration: all came from old colonial houses. The iron lamp, solid with the accumulated grease of centuries, was found in a Virginia cabin ; the rectangular brass lamp came from a Dutch farmhouse; and the graceful oval brass lamp from a New England homestead. Pewter was a favorite material for lamps, as it was for all other domestic utensils. It was specially The Light of Other Days in favor for the iamps for whale oil and the " Port- er's fluid," that preceded our present illuminating medium, petroleum. A rare form is the pewter lamp here shown. It is in the collection of ancient lamps, lanterns, can- dlesticks, etc., owned by Mrs. Samuel Bowne Duryea, of Brooklyn. It came from a Salem home, where it was used as a house-lantern. With its clear bull's-eyes of unusually pure glass, it gave what was truly a bril- liant light for the century of its use. A group of old Bull's-Eye Lamp pewter lamps, of the shapes commonly used in the homes of our ancestors a century or so ago, is also given; chosen, not because they were unusual or beautiful, but because they were universal in their use. Home Life in Colonial Days The lamps of Count Rumford's invention were doubtless a great luxury, with their clear steady light; but they were too costly to be commonly seen in our grandfathers' homes. Nor were Argand burners ever universal. Glass lamps of many simple shapes shared popularity for a long time with the pewter lamps; and as pewter gradually disappeared from household use, these glass lamps Old Pewter Lamps monopolized the field. They were rarely of cut or colored glass, but were pressed glass of common- place form and quality. A group of them is here The Light of Other Days Old Glass Lamps given which were all used in old New England houses in the early part of this century. For many years the methods of striking a light were very primitive, just as they were in Europe; many families possessed no adequate means, or very imperfect ones. If by ill fortune the fire in the fireplace became wholly extinguished through Home Life in Colonial Days Tinder-box carelessness at night, some one, usually a small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor, bearing a shovel or covered pan, or perhaps a broad strip of green bark, on which to bring back coals for relighting the fire. Nearly all families had some form of a flint and steel, - a method of obtain- ing fire which has been used from time immemorial by both civilized and uncivilized nations. This always required a flint, a steel, and a tinder of some vegetable matter to catch the spark struck by the concussion of flint and steel. This spark was then blown into a flame. Among the colonists scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; and till this century all the old cambric hand- kerchiefs, linen underwear, and worn sheets of a household were carefully saved for this purpose. The Light of Other Day, The flint, steel, and tinder were usually kept to- gether in a circular tinder-box, such as is shown in the accompanying illustration; it was a shape uni- versal in England and America. This had an inner flat cover with a ring, a flint, a horseshoe-shaped steel, and an upper lid with a place to set a candle- .nd in, to carry the newly acquired light. Though I have tried hundreds of times with this tinder-box, I have never yet succeeded in striking a light. The sparks fly, but then the operation ceases in modern hands. Charles Dickens said if you had good luck, you could get a light in half an hour. Soon there Tinder-wheel, Flint, and Tinder was an improvement on this tinder-box, by which sparks were obtained by spinning a steel wheel with a piece of cord, somewhat like spinning a humming 50 Home Life in Colonial Days top, and making the wheel strike a flint fixed in the side of a little trough full of tinder. This was an infinite advance in convenience on tinder-box No. i. This box was called in the South a mill; one is here shown. Then some person invented strips of wood dipped in sulphur and called "spunks." These readily caught fire, and retained it, and were handy to carry light to a candle or pile of chips. Another way of starting a fire was by flashing a little powder in the pan of an old-fashioned gun; sometimes this fired a twist of tow, which in turn started a heap of shavings. Down to the time )f our grandfathers, and in some country homes of our fathers, lights were started with these crude elements, - flint, steel, tin- der,-and transferred by the sulphur splint; for fifty years ago matches were neither cheap nor common. Though various processes for lighting in which sulphur was used in a match shape, were brought before the public at the beginning of this century, they were complicated, expensive, and rarely seen. The first practical friction matches were "Con- greves," made in England in 1827. They were thin strips of wood or cardboard coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of mucilage, chlorate of potash, and sulphide of antimony. Eighty-four of them were sold in a box for twenty-five cents, with The Light of Other Days a piece of "glass-paper" through which the match could be drawn. There has been a long step this last fifty years between the tinder-box used so pa- tiently for two centuries, and the John Jex Long match-making machine of our times, which turns o~t seventeen million matches a day. UMERSITY OF ILLINOIs URBANA SI CHAPTER III THE KITCHEN FIRESIDE HE kitchen in all the farmhouses of all the colonies was the most cheerful, homelike, and picturesque room in the house; indeed, it was in town houses as well. The walls were often bare, the rafters dingy; the windows were small, the furniture meagre; but the kitchen had a warm, glow- ing heart that spread ;ght and welcome, and made the poor room a home. In the houses of the first settlers the chimneys and fireplaces were vast in size, sometimes so big that the fore-logs and back- logs for the fire had to be dragged in by a horse and a long chain; or a hand-sled was kept for the pur- pose. Often there were seats within the chimney on either side. At night children could sit on these seats and there watch the sparks fly upward and join the stars which could plainly be seen up the great chimney-throat. But as the forests disappeared under the waste of burning for tar, for potash, and through wanton clearing, the fireplaces shrank in size; and Benjamin 52 The Kitchen Fireside Franklin, even in his day, could write of " the fire- places of our fathers." The inflammable catted chimney of logs and clay, hurriedly and readily built by the first settlers, soon gave place in all houses to vast chimneys of stone, built with projecting inner ledges, on which rested a bar about six or seven or even eight feet from the floor, called a lug-pole (lug meaning to carry) or a back-bar; this was made of green wood, and thus charred slowly - but it charred surely in the gen- erous flames of the great chimney heart. Many annoying, and some fatal accidents came from the collapsing of these wooden back-bars. The destruc- tion of a dinner sometimes was attended with the loss of a life. Later the back-bars were made of iron. On them were hung iron hooks or chains with hooks of various lengths called pothooks, trammels, hakes, pot- hangers, pot-claws, pot-clips, pot-brakes, pot-crooks. Mr. Arnold Talbot, of Providence, Rhode Island, has folding trammels, nine feet long, which were found in an old Narragansett chimney heart. Gib- crokes and recons were local and less frequent names, and the folks who in their dialect called the lug-pole a gallows-balke called the pothooks gal- lows-crooks. On these hooks pots and kettles could be hung at varying heights over the fire. The iron swinging-crane was a Yankee invention of a century 53 Home Life in Colonial Days after the first settlement, and it proved a convenient and graceful substitute for the back-bar. Some Dutch houses had an adaptation of a South- ern method of housekeeping in the use of a detached house called a slave-kitchen, where the meals of the negro house and farm servants were cooked and served. The slave-kitchen of the old Bergen home- stead stood unaltered till within a few years on Third Avenue in Brooklyn. It still exists in a dismantled condition. Its picture plainly shows the stone ledges within the fireplace, the curved iron lug-pole, and hanging pothooks and trammels. With ample fire of hickory logs burning on the hearthstone, and the varied array of primitive cooking-vessels steaming with savory fare, a circle of laughing, black faces shining with the glowing firelight and hungry antici- pation, would make a " Dutch interior " of American form and shaping as picturesque and artistic as any of Holland. The fireplace itself sometimes went by the old English name, clavell-piece, as shown by the letters of John Wynter, written from Maine in 1634 to his English home. "The Chimney is large, with an oven at each end of him: he is so large that wee can place our Cyttle within the Clavell-piece. Wee can brew and bake and boyl our Cyttle all at once in him." Often a large plate of iron, called the fire-back or fire-plate, was set at the back of the 54 Fireplace of Slave-kitchen The Kitchen Fireside chimney, where the constant and fierce fire crumbled brick and split stone. These iron backs were often cast in ? handsome design. In New York the chimneys and fireplaces were Dutch in shape; the description given by a woman traveller at the end of the seventeenth century ran thus : - " The chimney-places are very droll-like: they have no jambs nor lintell as we have, but a flat grate, and there pro- jects over it a lum in the form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or ruffled pawn around it." The " ruffled pawn " was a calico or linen valance which was hung on the edge of the mantel-shelf, a pretty and cheerful fashion seen in some English as well as Dutch homes. Another Dutch furnishing, the alcove bedstead, much like a closet, seen in many New York kitch- ens, was replaced in New England farm-kitchens by the " turn-up" bedstead. This was a strong frame filled with a network of rope which was fastened at the bed-head by hinges to the wall. By night the foot of the bed rested on two heavy legs; by day the frame with its bed furnishings was hooked up to the wall, and covered with homespun curtains or doors. This was the sleeping-place of the master and mistress of the house, chosen because the s5 56 Home Life in Colonial Days kitchen was the warmest room in the house. One of these "turn-up" bedsteads which was used in the Sheldon homestead until this century may be seen in Deerfield Memorial Hall. Over the fireplace and across the top of the room were long poles on which hung strings of peppers, dried apples, and rings of dried pumpkin. And the favorite resting-place for the old queen's-arm or fowling-piece was on hooks over the kitchen fireplace. On the pothooks and trammels hung what formed in some households the costliest house-furnishing, - the pots and kettles. The Indians wished' their brass kettles buried with them as a precious posses- sion, and the settlers equally valued them; often these kettles were worth three pounds apiece. In many inventories of the estates of the settlers the brass-ware formed an important item. Rev. Thomas Hooker of Hartford had brass-ware which, in the equalizing of values to-day, would be worth three or four hundred dollars. The great brass and cop- per kettles often held fifteen gallons. The vast iron pot - desired and beloved of every colonist -some- times weighed forty pounds, and lasted in daily use for many years. All the vegetables were boiled together in these great pots, unless some very par- ticular housewife had a wrought-iron potato-boiler The Kitchen Fireside to hold potatoes or any single vegetable in .place within the vast general pot. Iron Potato-boiler Chafing-dishes and skimmers of brass and copper were also cheerful discs to reflect the kitchen firelight. Home Life in Colonial Days Very little tin was seen, either for kitchen or table utensils. Governor Winthrop had a few tin plates, and some Southern planters had tin pans, others "tynnen covers." Tin pails were unknown; and the pails they did own, either of wood, brass, or other sheet metal, had no bails, but were carried by thrusting a stick through little ears on either side of the pail. Latten ware was used instead of tin; it was a kind of brass. A very good collection of century-old tinware is shown in the illustration. Old Tinware By a curious chance this tinware lay unpacked for over ninety years in the attic loft of a country ware- house, in the packing-box, just as it was delivered from an English ship at the close of the Revolu- tion. The pulling down of the warehouse disclosed the box, with its dated labels. The tin utensils are The Kitchen Fireside more gayly lacquered than modern ones, otherwise they differ little from the tinware of to-day. There was one distinct characteristic in the house- furnishing of olden times which is lacking to-day. It was a tendency for the main body of everything to set well up, on legs which were strong enough for adequate support of the weight, yet were slender in appearance. To-day bureaus, bedsteads, cabi- nets, desks, sideboards, come close to the floor; formerly chests of drawers, Chippendale sideboards, four-post bedsteads, dressing-cases, were set, often a foot high, in a tidy, cleanly fashion; thus they could all be thoroughly swept under. This same peculiarity of form extended to cooking-utensils. Pots and kettles had legs, as shown in those hang- Iron Skillet, Rabbit Broiler, and Brazier ing in the slave-kitchen fireplace; gridirons had legs, skillets had legs; and further appliances in the 6o Home Life in Colonial Days shape of trivets, which were movable frames, took the place of legs. The necessity for the stilting up of cooking-utensils was a very evident one; it was necessary to raise the body of the utensil above the ashes and coals of the open fireplace. If the bed of coals and burning logs were too deep for the skillet or pot-legs, then the utensil must be hung from above by the ever-ready trammel. Often in the corner of the fireplace there stood a group of trivets, or three-legged Toasting-forks stands, of varying heights, through which the exactly desired proximity to the coals could be obtained. Even toasting-forks, and similar frail utensils of wire or wrought iron, stood on tall, spindling legs, or were carefully shaped to be set up on trivets. They usually had, also, long, adjustable handles, which helped to make endurable the blazing heat of the great logs. All such irons as waffle-irons had far longer handles than are seen on any cooking- utensils in these days of stoves and ranges, where the flames are covered and the housewife shielded. The Kitchen Fireside Gridirons had long handles of wood or iron, which could be fastened to the shorter stationary handle.. Waffle-irons The two gridirons in the accompanying illustration are a century old. The circular one was the oldest form. The oblong ones, with groove to collect the gravy, did not vary in shape till our own day. Both have indications of fittings for long handles, but the handles have vanished. A long-handled frying-pan is seen hanging by the side of the slave-kitchen fire- place. An accompaniment of the kitchen fireplace, found, not in farmhouses, but among luxury-loving town-folk, was the plate-warmer. They are seldom named in inventories, and I know of but one of Revolutionary days, and it is here shown. Similar ones are manufactured to-day; the legs, perhaps, are shorter, but the general outline is the same. 62 Home Life in Colonial Days An important furnishing of every fireplace was the andirons. In kitchen fireplaces these were usu- ally of iron, and the shape known as goose-neck were common. Cob irons were the simplest form, and merely supported the spit; sometimes they Old Gridirons had hooks to hold a dripping-pan. A common name for the kitchen andirons was fire-dogs; and creepers were low, small andirons, usually used with the tall fire-dogs. The kitchen andirons were sim- ply for use to help hold the logs and cooking-uten- sils. But other fireplaces had handsome fire-dogs of copper, brass, or cut steel, cast or wrought in handsome devices. These were a pride and delight to the housewife. A primitive method of roasting a joint of meat of The Kitchen Fireside a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while Plate-warmer some one -usually an unwilling child - occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turn- 64 Home Life in Colonial Days spit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then twist a little again, and so on until the vibration ceased, when she again basted Bake-kettle, Clock-jack, Dutch Oven, and Dye Tub and started it. As the juices sometimes ran down in the roast and left the upper part too dry, a "double string-roaster" was invented, by which the equilibrium of the joint could be shifted. A jack was a convenient and magnified edition of the prim- The Kitchen Fireside tive string, being a metal suspensory machine. A still further glorification was the addition of a re- volving power which ran by clockwork and turned the roast with regularity; this was known as a clock-jack. The one here shown hangs in the fire- place in Deerfield Memorial Hall. A smoke-jack was run somewhat irregularly by the pressure of smoke and the current of hot air in the chimney. These were noisy and creaking and not regarded with favor by old-fashioned cooks. We are apt to think of the turnspit dog as a creature of European life, but we had them here in America - little low, bow-legged, patient souls, trained to run in a revolving cylinder and keep the roasting joint a-turn before the fire. Mine host Clark of the State House Inn in Philadelphia in the first half of the eighteenth century advertised in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette that he had for sale "several dogs and wheels, much preferable to any jacks for roasting any joints of meat." I hope neither he nor any one else had many of these little canine slaves. A frequent accompaniment of the kitchen fire- place in the eighteenth century, and a domestic luxury seen in well-to-do homes, was the various forms of the "roasting-kitchen," or Dutch oven. These succeeded the jacks; they were a box-like Home Life in Colonial Days arrangement open on one side which when in use was turned to the fire. Like other utensils of the day, they often stood up on legs, to bring the open Roasting-kitchens side before the blaze. A little door at the back could be opened for convenience in basting the roast. These kitchens came in various sizes for roasting birds or joints, and in them bread was occasionally baked. The bake-kettle, which in some commu- nities was also called a Dutch oven, was preferred for baking bread. It was a strong kettle, standing, of course, on stout, stumpy legs, and when in use was placed among the hot coals and closely covered with a strong metal, convex cover, on which coals were also closely heaped. Such perfect rolls, such biscuit, such shortcake, as issued from the heaped- up bake-kettle can never be equalled by other methods of cooking. When the great stone chimney was built, there The Kitchen Fireside was usually placed on one side of the kitchen fire- place a brick oven which had a smoke uptake into the chimney --and an ash-pit below. The great door was of iron. This oven was usually heated once a week. A great fire of dry wood, called oven wood, was kindled within it and kept burning fiercely for some hours. This thoroughly heated all the bricks. The coals and ashes were then swept out, the chimney draught closed, and the oven filled with brown bread, pies, pots of beans, etc. Sometimes the bread was baked in pans, some- times it was baked in a great mass set on cabbage leaves or oak leaves. In some towns an autumn harvest of oak leaves was gathered by children to use throughout the winter. The leaves were strung on sticks. This gathering was called going a-leafing. By the oven side was always a long-handled shovel known as a peel or slice, which sometimes had a rack or rest to hold it; this implement was a necessity in order to place the food well within the glowing oven. The peel was sprinkled with meal, great heaps of dough were placed thereon, and by a dexterous twist they were thrown on the cabbage or oak leaves. A bread peel was a universal gift to a bride; it was significant of domestic utility and p;enty, and was held to be luck-bearing. On 67 Home Life in Colonial Days Thanksgiving week the great oven had a fire built in it every morning, and every night it was well filled and closed till morning. On one side of the kitchen often stood a dresser, on which was placed in orderly rows the cheerful pewter and scant earthenware of the household:-- " -- the room was bright With glimpses of reflected light, From plates that on the dresser shone." In Dutch households plate-racks, spoon-racks, knife-racks, - all hanging on the wall, - took the place of the New England dresser. In the old Phillips farmhouse at Wickford, Rhode Island, is a splendid chimney over twenty feet square. So much room does it occupy that there is no central staircase, but little winding stairs ascend at three corners of the house. In the vast fireplace an ox could literally have been roasted. On each chimney-piece are hooks to hang firearms, and at one side curious little drawers are set for pipes and tobacco. In some Dutch houses in New York these tobacco shelves are in the entry, over the front door, and a narrow flight of three or four steps leads up to them. Hanging on a nail along- side the tobacco drawer, or shelf, would usually be seen a pipe-tongs, or smoking-tongs. They were 68 The Kitchen Fireside slender little tongs, usually of iron or steel; with them the smoker lifted a coal from the fireplace to light his pipe. The tongs owned and used by Captain Joshua Wingate, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who lived from 1679 to 1769, are here shown. The handle is unlike any other I have seen, having one end elongated, knobbed, and inge- niously bent S-shaped into convenient form to press down the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. Other old-time pipe-tongs were in the form of lazy- tongs. A companion of the pipe-tongs on the kitchen mantel was what was known as a comfortier - a little brazier of metal in which small coals could be handed about for pipe-lighting. An unusual luxury was a comfortier of sil- ver. These were found among the Dutch settlers. The Pennsylvania Germans were the first to use stoves. These were of various shapes. A curious one, seen in houses and churches, was of sheet- Smoking-tongS metal, box-shaped; three sides were within the house, and the fourth, with the stove door, outside Home Life in Colonial Days the house. Thus what was really the back of the stove projected into the room, and when the fire was fed it was necessary for the tender to go out of doors. These German stoves and hot-air drums, which heated the second story of the house, were ever a fresh wonder' to travellers of English birth and descent in Pennsylvania. There is no doubt that their evident economy and comfort sug- gested to Benjamin Franklin the "New Pennsyl- vania Fireplace," which he invented in 1742, in which both wood and coal could be used, and which was somewhat like the heating apparatus which we now call a Franklin stove, or heater. Thus German settlers had, in respect to heating, the most comfortable homes of all the colonies. Among the English settlers the kitchen was, too often, the only comfortable room in the house in winter weather. Indeed, the discomforts and incon- Teniences of a colonial home could scarcely be en- dured to-day; of course these culminated in the winter time, when icy blasts blew fiercely down the great chimneys, and rattled the loosely fitting win- dows. Children suffered bitterly in these cold houses. The rooms were not warm three feet away from the blaze of the fire. Cotton Mather and Judge Samuel Sewall both tell, in their diaries, of the ink freezing in their pens as they wrote within 70 Sne Kitchen Fireside the chimney-side. One noted that, when a great fire was built on the hearth, the sap forced out of the wood by the flames froze into ice at the end of the logs. The bedrooms were seldom warmed, and had it not been for the deep feather beds and heavy bed-curtains, would have been unendurable. In Dutch and some German houses, with alcove bedsteads, and sleeping on one feather bed, with another for cover, the Dutch settlers could be far warmer than any English settlers, even in four-post bedsteads curtained with woollen. Water froze immediately if left standing in bed- rooms. One diary, written in Marshfield, Massachu- setts, tells of a basin of water standing on the bed- room hearth, in front of a blazing fire, in which the water froze solid. President John Adams so dreaded the bleak New England winter and the ill-warmed houses that he longed to sleep like a dormouse every year, from autumn to spring. In the South- ern colonies, during the fewer cold days of the win- ter months, the temperature was not so low, but the houses were more open and lightly built than in the North, and were without cellars, and haa fewer fireplaces; hence the discomfort from the cold was as great, if not the positive suffering. The first chilling entrance into the ice-cold bed of a winter bedroom was sometimes mitigated by 71 Home Life in Colonial Days heating the This usually I Warming-pan known lines quotation : inner sheets with a warming-pan. hung by the side of the kitchen fire- place, and when used was filled with hot coals, and thrust within the bed, and constantly and rapidly moved back and forth to keep from scorch- ing the bed-linen. The warming-pan was a circular metal pan about a foot in diameter, four or five inches deep, with a long wooden handle and a per- forated metal cover, usually of copper or brass, which was kept highly pol- ished, and formed, as it hung on the wall, one of the cheerful kitchen discs to reflect the light of the glowing fire. The warming-pan has been deemed of sufficient decorative capacity to make it eagerly sought after by collectors, and a great room of one of these collectors is hung entirely around the four walls with a frieze of warm- ing-pans. Many of our New England poets have given us glimpses in rhyme of the old-time kitchen. Lowell's well- are vivid enough to bear never-dying The Kitchen Fireside SA fireplace filled the rooms one side With half a cord of wood in - There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. " The wa'nut log shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest - bless her! An' little flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. "Agin the chimbly crooknecks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The old queen's-arm that granther Young Fetched back from Concord busted." To me the true essence of the old-time fireside is found in Whittier's Snow-bound. The very chimney, fireplace, and hearthstone of which his beautiful lines were written, the kitchen of Whittier's boyhood's home, at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, is shown in the accompanying illustration. It shows a swing- ing crane. His description of the " laying the fire " can never be equalled by any prose:-- "We piled with care our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney back - The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart, And filled between with curious art 73 Home Life in Colonial Days Kitchen Fireplace of Whittier's Home The ragged brush; then hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom." No greater picture of homely contentment could be shown than the following lines :-- "Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, The Kitchen Fireside Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet The mug of cider simmered slow, And apples sputtered in a row. And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's woods. What matter how the night behaved! What matter how the north wind raved! Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow." Nor can the passing of years dim the ruddy glow of that hearth-fire, nor the charm of the poem. The simplicity of metre, the purity of wording, the gentle sadness of some of its expressions, make us read between the lines the deep and affectionate reminiscence with which it was written. 7i CHAPTER IV THE SERVING OF MEALS PERHAPS no greater difference exists between any mode of the olden times and that of to-day, than can be seen in the manner of serving the meals of the family. In the first place, the very dining-table of the colonists was not like our present ones; it was a long and narrow board, sometimes but three feet wide, with no legs attached to it. It was laid on supports or trestles, shaped usually something like a saw-horse. Thus it was literally a board, and was called a table-board, and the linen cover used at meals was not called a table- cloth, but a board-cloth or board-clothes. As smoothly sawed and finished boards were not so plentiful at first in the colonies as might naturally be thought when we remember the vast encircling forests, all such boards were carefully treasured, and used many times to avoid sawing others by the tedious and wearying process of pit-sawing. Hence portions of packing-boxes, or chests which had car- ried stores from England to the colonies, were made 76 The Serving of Meals into table-boards. One such oaken table-board, still in existence, has on the under side in quaint lettering the name and address of the Boston settler to whom the original packing-box was sent in I638- The old-time board-cloth was in no way inferior in quality or whiteness to our present table-linen; for we know how proud colonial wives and daughters were of the linen of their own spinning, weaving, and bleaching. The linen tablecloth was either of holland, huckaback, dowlas, osnaburg, or lockram --all heavy and comparatively coarse materials-- or of fine damask, just as to-day ; some of the hand- some board-cloths were even trimmed with lace. The colonists had plenty of napkins; more, as a rule, than families of corresponding means and sta- tion own to-day. They had need of them, for when America was first settled forks were almost unknown to English people - being used for eating in luxu- rious Italy alone, where travellers having seen and found them useful and cleanly, afterwards introduced them into England. So hands had to be constantly employed for holding food, instead of the forks we now use, and napkins were therefore as con- stantly necessary. The first fork brought to America was for Governor John Winthrop, in Boston, in I633, and it was in a leather case with a knife 'and a bodkin. If the governor ate with a 77 Home Life in Colonial Days fork at the table, he was doubtless the only person in the colony who did so. Thirty or forty years later a few two-tined iron and silver forks were brought across the water, and used in New York and Virginia, as well as Massachusetts; and by the end of the century they had come into scant use at the tables of persons of wealth and fashion. The first mention of a fork in Virginia is in an inventory dated 1677; this was of a single fork. The salt-cellar, or saler, as it was first called, was the centrepiece of the table-" Sett in the myddys of the tabull," says an old treatise on laying the table. It was often large and high, of curious device in silver, and was then called a standing salt. Guests of honor were seated "above the salt," that is, near the end of the table where sat the host and host- ess side by side; while children and persons who were not of Harvard Standing Salt much dignity or ac- count as guests were placed "below the salt," that is, below the middle of the table. There is owned by Harvard University, and here The Serving of Meals shown in an illustration, " a great silver salt" given to the college in 1644, when the new seat of learn- ing was but eight years old. At the table it divided graduates, the faculty, and such, from the under- graduates. It was valued at �5 Is. 3d., at five shillings an ounce, which was equal to a hundred dollars to-day; a rich gift, which shows to me the profound affection of the settlers for the new col- lege. It is inscribed with the name of the giver, Mr. Richard Harris. It is of simple English design well known during that century, and made in various sizes. There is no doubt that many of similar pattern, though not so heavy or so rich, were seen on the tables of substantial colonists. They are named in many wills. Often a small pro- jecting arm was attached to one side, over which a folded napkin could be thrown to be used as a cover; for the salt-cellar was usually kept covered, not only to preserve cleanliness, but in earlier days to prevent the ready introduction of poison. There are some very entertaining and curious old English books which were written in the six- teenth century to teach children and young rustics correct and elegant manners at the table, and also helpful ways in which to serve others. These books are called The Babees Boke, The Boke of Nurture, The Boke of Curteseye, etc., and with the exception 79 80 Home Life in Colonial Days of variations in the way of serving a dinner, and a few obsolete customs, and in the names and shapes and materials of the different dishes, plates, etc., used at the table, these books are just as instructive and sensible to-day as then. From them we learn that the only kind of table furnishings used at that time were cups to drink out of; spoons and knives to eat with; chafing- dishes to serve hot food; chargers for display and for serving large quantities of food; salt-cellars, and trenchers for use as plates. There were very few other table appointments used on any English table, either humble or great, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. One of the most important articles for setting the table was the trencher. These were made of wood, and often were only a block of wood, about ten or twelve inches square and three or four deep, hol- lowed down into a sort of bowl in the middle. In this the food was placed,--porridge, meat, vegetables, etc. Each person did not have even one of these simple dishes; usually two children, or a man and his wife, ate out of one trencher. This was a cus- tom in England for many years; and some very great people, a duke and his wife, not more than a century and a half ago, sat side by side at the table and ate out of one plate to show their unity The Serving of Meals and affection. It is told of an old Connecticut settler, a deacon, that as he had a wood-turning mill, he thought he would have a trencher apiece for his children. So he turned a sufficient num- ber of round trenchers in his mill. For this his neighbors deemed him deeply extravagant and put- ting on too many airs, both as to quantity and quality, since square trenchers, one for use by two persons, were good enough for any one, even a dea- con. So great a warrior and so prominent a man in the colony as Miles Standish used wooden trenchers at the table, as also did all the early governors. Nor did they disdain to name them in their wills, as valued household possessions. For many years college boys at Harvard ate out of wooden trenchers at the college mess-table. I have seen a curious old table top, or table- board, which permitted diners seated at it to dis- pense with trenchers or plates. It was of heavy oak about six inches thick, and at intervals of about eighteen inches around its edge were scooped out deep, bowl-shaped holes about ten inches in diameter, in which each individual's share of the dinner was placed. After each meal the top was lifted off the trestles, thoroughly washed and dried, and was ready for the next meal. Poplar-wood is an even, white, and shining wood. 81 Home Life in Colonial Days Until the middle of this century poplar-wood trenchers and plates were used on the table in Ver- mont, and were really attractive dishes. From earliest days the Indians made and sold many bowls and trenchers of maple-wood knots. One of these bowls, owned by King Philip, is at the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Old wooden trenchers and "Indian bowls" can be seen at the Memorial Hall in Deerfield. Wooden Trenchers, Spoons, Nogi n, Caster, and Dishes Bottles were made also of wood, and drinking-cups and "noggins," which were a sort of mug with a handle. Wood furnished many articles for the table to the colonist, just as it did in later days on our Western frontiers, where trenchers of wood ,ne servlng ot Meals and plates of birch-bark were seen in every log- cabin. The word tankard was originally applied to a heavy and large vessel of wood banded with metal, in which to carry water. Smaller wooden drinking tankards were subse- quently made and used throughout Europe, and were occasionally brought here by the colonists. The plainly shaped wooden tank- ard, made of staves and hoops and here shown, is from the collection at Deer- field Me- morial Hall. It was found in the house of Rev. Eli Moody. These com- Wooden Tankard monplace tankards of staves were not so rare as the beautiful carved and hooped tankard which is here pictured, and which is Home Life in Colonial Days in the collection of Mrs. Samuel Bowne Duryea, of Brooklyn. I have seen a few other quaintly carved ones, black with age, in American families of Hugue- not descent; these were apparently Swiss carvings. Carved Wooden Tankard The chargers, or large round platters found on every dining-table, were of pewter. Some were so big and heavy that they weighed five or six pounds apiece. Pewter is a metal never seen for modern The Serving of Meals table furnishing, or domestic use in any form to- day; but in colonial times what was called a gar- nish of pewter, that is, a full set of pewter platters, plates, and dishes, was the pride of every good housekeeper, and also a favorite wedding gift. It was kept as bright and shining as silver. One of the duties of children was to gather a kind of horse-tail rush which grew in the marshes, and because it was used to scour pewter, was called scouring-rush. Pewter bottles of various sizes were sent to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in I629. Governor Endicott had one, but they were certainly far from common. Dram cups, wine mugs, and funnels of pewter were also occasionally seen, but scarcely formed part of ordinary table furnishings. Metheg- lin cans and drinking-mugs of pewter were found on nearly every table. Pewter was used until this century in the wealthiest homes, both in the North and South, and was preferred by many who owned rich china. 'Among the pewter-lovers was the Revo- lutionary patriot, John Hancock, who hated the clatter of the porcelain plates. Porringers of pewter, and occasionally of silver, were much used at the table, chiefly for children to eat from. These were a pretty little shallow cir- cular dish with a flat-pierced handle. Some had r " fish-tail" handle; these are said to be Dutch. Home Life in Colonial Days "The porringers that in a row Hung high and made a glittering show" These porringers were in many sizes, from tiny little ones two inches in diameter to those eight or nine inches across. When not in use many house- keepers kept them hanging on hooks on the edge of a shelf, where they formed a pretty and cheerful decoration. The poet Swift says:-- "The porringers that in a row Hung high and made a glittering show." It should be stated that the word porringer, as used by English collectors, usually refers to a deep cup with a cover and two handles, while what we call porringers are known to these collectors as bleeding-basins or tasters. Here we apply the The Serving of Meals term taster, or wine-taster, to a small, shallow silver cup with bosses in the bottom to reflect the light and show the color and quality of wine. I have often seen the item wine-taster in colonial inven- tories and wills, but never bleeding-basin; while porringers were almost universal on such lists. Some families had a dozen. I have found fifteen in one old New England farmhouse. The small porringers are sometimes called posnets, which is an old-time word that may originally have referred to a posset-cup. "Spoons," says the learned archaeologist, La- borde, "if not as old as the world, are as old as soup." All the colonists had spoons, and certainly all needed them, for at that time much of their food was in the form of soup and " spoon-meat," such as had to be eaten with spoons when there were no forks. Meat was usually made into hashes or ragouts; thick stews and soups with chopped vege- tables and meats were common, as were hotch-pots. The cereal foods, which formed so large a part of English fare in the New World, were more frequently boiled in porridge than baked in loaves. Many of the spoons were of pewter. Worn-out pewter plates and dishes could be recast into new pewter spoons. The moulds were of wood or iron. The spoon mould of one of the first settlers of Greenfield, 87 Home Life in Colonial Days Massachusetts, named Martindale, is here shown with a pewter spoon. In this mould all his spoons and those of his neighbors were cast. It is now in the Deerfield Memorial Hall. Pewter Spoon and Spoon Mould A still more universal spoon material was alchymy, also called occamy, alcamy, arkamy, etc., a metal never used now, which was made of a mixture of pan-brass and arsenicum. Wooden spoons, too, were always seen. In Pennsylvania and New York laurel was called spoonwood, because the Indians made pretty white spoons from that wood to sell to the colonists. Horn was an appropriate and available material for spoons. Many Indian tribes excelled as they do to-day in the making of horn spoons. The vulgar affirmation, " By the great horn spoon," has perpetuated their familiar use. Every family of any considerable possessions or owning good household furnishings had a few silver spoons; nearly every person owned at least one. The Serving of Meals At the time America was settled the common form of silver spoon in England had what was known as a baluster stem and a seal head; the assay mark was in the inner part of the bowl. But the fashion was just changing, and a new and much altered form was introduced which was made in large numbers until the opening reign of George I. This shape was the very one without doubt in which many of the spoons of the first colonists were made; and wherever such spoons are found, if they are genuine Five Types of Spoons antiques, they may safely be assigned a date earlier than 1714. The handle was flat and broad at the end, where it was cleft in three points which 90 Home Life in Colonial Days were turned up, that is, not toward the back of the spoon. This was known as the "hind's-foot handle." The bowl was a perfectly regular ellipse and was strengthened by continuing the handle in a narrow tongue or rat-tail, which ran down the back of the bowl. The succeeding fashion, in the early part of the eighteenth century, had a longer elliptical bowl. The end of the handle was rounded and turned up at the end, and it had a high sharp ridge down the middle. This was known as the old English shape, and was in common use for half a century. About the period of our Revolutionary War a shape nearly like the one in ordinary present use became the mode; the bowl became egg-shaped, and the end of the handle was turned down instead of up. The rat-tail, which extended down the back of the bowl, was shortened into a drop. Apostle spoons, and monkey spoons for extraordinary use were occasionally made, and a few are still pre- served; examples of five types of spoons are shown from the collection of Edward Holbrook, Esq., of New York. Families of consequence had usually a few pieces of silver besides their spoons and the silver salt. Some kind of a drinking-cup was the usual form. Persons of moderate means often owned a silver cup. I have seen in early inventories and lists the The Serving of Meals names of a large variety of silver vessels : tankards, beer-bowls, beakers, flagons, wine cups, wine bowls, wine cans, tasters, caudle-cups, posset-cups, dram- Dutch Silver Tankard cups, punch-bowls, tumblers, mugs, dram bottles, two-eared cups, and flasks. Virginians and Mary- landers in the seventeenth century had much more silver than New Englanders. Some Dutch mer- Home Life in Colonial Days chants had ample amounts. It was deemed a good and safe investment for spare money. Bread- baskets, salvers, muffineers, chafing-dishes, casters, milk pitchers, sugar boxes, candlesticks, appear in inventories at the end of the century. A tankard or flagon, even if heavy and handsome, would be placed on the table for every-day use; the other pieces were usually set on the cupboard's head for ornament. The handsome silver tankard owned by Sarah Jansen de Rapelje is here shown. She was the first child of European parents born in New Netherland. The tankard was a wedding gift from her husband, and a Dutch wedding scene is graven on the lid. There was a great desire for glass, a rare novelty to many persons at the date of colonization. The English were less familiar with its use than settlers who came from Continental Europe. The establish- ment of glass factories was attempted in early days in several places, chiefly to manufacture sheet- glass, but with slight success. Little glass was owned in the shape of drinking-vessels, none used generally on the table, I think, during the first few years. Glass bottles were certainly a great rarity, and were bequeathed with special mention in wills, and they are the only form of glass vessel named. The earliest glass for table use was greenish in 92 The Serving of Meals Colonial Glass Bottles color, like coarse bottle glass, and poor in quality, sometimes decorated in crude designs in a few colors. Bristol glass, in the shape of mugs and plates, was next seen. It was opaque, a milky white color, and was coarsely decorated with vitrifiable colors in a few lines of red, green, yellow, or black, occasionally with initials, dates, or Scriptural references. Though shapes were varied, and the number was generally plentiful, there was no attempt made to give separate drinking-cups of any kind to each individual at the table. Blissfully ignorant of the existence or presence of microbes, germs, and bac- teria, our sturdy and unsqueamish forbears drank contentedly in succession from a single vessel, 93 Home Life in Colonial Days which was passed from hand to hand, and lip to lip, around the board. Even when tumbler- shaped glasses were seen in many houses, - flip- glasses, they were called, - they were of communal size, - some held a gallon, - and all drank friom the same glass. The great punch-bowl, not a very handy vessel to handle when filled with punch, was passed up and down as freely as though it were a loving-cup, and all drank from its brim. At college tables, and even at tavern boards, where table neighbors might be strangers, the flowing bowl Old Spanish and English Glasses, Iron Loggerheads, and Wooden Toddy Sticks and foaming tankard was passed serenely from one to another, and replenished to pass again. Leather was perhaps the most curious material The Serving of Meals used. Pitchers, bottles, and drinking-cups were made of it. Great jugs of heavy black leather, waxed and bound, and tipped with silver, were used to hold metheglin, ale, and beer, and were a very substantial, and at times a very handsome ves- Black Jacks sel. The finest examples I have ever seen are here represented. The stitches and waxed thread at the base and on the handles can plainly be perceived. They are bound with a rich silver band, and have a silver shield bearing a date of gift to Samuel Brenton in 1778; but they are probably a century older than that date. They are the property by inheritance of Miss Rebecca Shaw, aged ninety-six years, of Wickford, Rhode Island. Home Life in Colonial Days The use of these great leather jacks, in a clum- sier form than here shown, led to the amusing mis- take of a French traveller, that the English drank their ale out of their boots. These leather jugs were commonly called black jacks, and the larger ones were bombards. Giskin was still another and rarer name. Drinking-cups were sometimes made of horn. A handsome one has been used since colonial days on Long Island for "quince drink," a potent mixture of hot rum, sugar, and quince marmalade, or pre- serves. It has a base of silver, a rim of silver, and a cover of horn tipped with silver. A stirrup-cup of horn, tipped with silver, was used to " speed the parting guest." Occasionally the whole horn, in true mediaeval fashion, was used as a drinking-cup. Often they were carved with considerable skill, as the beautiful ones in the collection of Mr. A. G. Richmond, of Canajoharie, New York. Gourds were plentiful on the farm, and gathered with care, that the hard-shelled fruit might be shaped into simple drinking-cups. In Elizabeth's time silver cups were made in the shape of these gourds. The ships that brought "lemmons and ray- sins of the sun" from the tropics to the colonists, also brought cocoanuts. Since the thirteenth cen- tury the shells of cocoanuts have been mounted 96 The Serving of Meals with silver feet and "covercles " in a goblet shape, and been much sought after by Englishmen. Mounted in pewter, and sometimes in silver, or simply shaped with a wooden . handle attached, the shell of the cocoanut was a favorite among the English set- tlers. To this day one of the cocoanut-shell cups, or dippers, is a favorite drinking-cup of many. A hand- some cocoa- nut goblet, richly mounted in silver, is shown in the Silver-mounted Cocoanut Drinking-cup accompanying illustration. It was once the property of the Revo- lutionary patriot, John Hancock, and is now in the custody of the Bostonian Society, at the Old State House, in Boston, Massachusetts. Home Life in Colonial Days Popular drinking-mugs of the English, from which specially they drank their mead, metheglin, and ale, were the stone- ware jugs which were made in Germany and England, in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, in great num- bers. An English writer in 1579, spoke of the English custom of drink- ing from "pots of earth, of sundry colors and moulds, whereof many are garnished with silver, or least- vise with pewter." - Such a piece of stoneware is the s oldest authenti- cated drinking- jug in this country, Winthrop Jug which was brought here and used by English colonists. It was the property of Gov- ernor John Winthrop, who came to Boston in 1630, and now belongs to the American Antiqua- The Serving of Meals rian Society, in Worcester, Massachusetts. It stands eight inches in height, is apparently of Ger- man Gresware, and is heavily mounted in silver. The lid is engraved with a quaint design of Adam and Eve and the tempting serpent in the apple- tree. It was a gift to John Winthrop's father from his sister, Lady Mildmay, in 1607, and was then, and is still now, labelled, "a stone Pot tipped and covered with a Silver Lydd." Many other Bos- ( ton colonists had similar . "stone juggs," " flanders juggs," "tipt juggs." What were known as "Fulham juggs" were also much prized. The most interesting ones are the Georgius Rex jugs, those marked with a crown, the initials G. R., or a medallion head of the first of the Eng- lish Georges. I' Georgius Rex Jug know one of these jugs which has a Revolutionary bullet imbedded in its tough old side, and is not Home Life in Colonial Days even cracked. Many of them had pewter or silver lids, which are now missing. Some have the curi- ous hound handle which was so popular with Eng- lish potters. There was no china in common use on the table, and little owned even by persons of wealth through- out the seventeenth century, either in England or America. Delft ware was made in several factories in Holland at the time the Dutch settled in New Netherland; but even in the towns of its manufact- ure it was not used for table ware. The pieces were usually of large size, what were called state pieces, for cabinet and decorative purposes. The Dutch settlers, however, had " purslin cupps " and earthen dishes in considerable quantities toward the end of the century. The earthen was possibly Delft ware, and the "Purslin" India china, which by that time was largely imported to Holland. Some Portuguese and Spanish pottery was imported, but was not much desired, as it was ill fired and perishable. It was not until Revolutionary times that china was a common table furnishing; then it began to crowd out pewter. The sudden and enormous growth of East India commerce, and the vast cargoes of Chinese pottery and porcelain wares brought to American ports soon gave ample china to every housewife. In the Southern colonies Soo0 The Serving of Meals beautiful isolated pieces of porcelain, such as vast punch-bowls, often were found in the homes of opulent planters; but there, as in the North, the first china for general table use was the handleless tea-cups, usually of some Canton ware, which crept with the fragrant herb into every woman's heart - both welcome Oriental waifs. It may well be imagined that this long narrow table - with a high salt-cellar in the middle, with clumsy wooden trenchers for plates, with round pewter platters heaped high with the stew of meat and vegetables, with a great noggin or two of wood, a Zan of pewter, or a silver tankard to drink from, with leather jacks to hold beer or milk, with many wooden or pewter and some silver spoons, but no forks, no glass, no china, no covered dishes, no saucers - did not look much like our dinner tables to-day. Even the seats were different; there were seldom chairs or stools for each person. A long narrow bench without a back, called a form, was placed on each side of the table. Children in many house- holds were not allowed to sit, even on these uncom- fortable forms, while eating. Many times they had to stand by the side of the table during the entire meal; in old-fashioned families that uncomfortable and ungracious custom lasted till this century. I IOl 102 Home Life in Colonial Days know of children not fifty years ago standing thus at all meals at the table of one of the Judges of the Supreme Court. He had a bountiful table, was a hospitable entertainer and well-known epicure; but children sat not at his board. Each stood at his own place and had to behave with decorum and eat in entire silence. In some families children stood behind their parents and other grown persons, and food was handed back to them from the table so we are told. This seems closely akin to throw- ing food to an animal, and must have been among people of very low station and social manners. In other houses they stood at a side-table; and, trencher in hand, ran over to the great table to be helped to more food when their first supply was eaten. The chief thought on the behavior of children at the table, which must be inferred from all the ac- counts we have or mose times is that they were to eat in silence, as fast as possible (regardless of indi- gestion), and leave the table as speedily as might be. In a little book called A Pretty Little Pocket Book, printed in America about the time of the Revolution, I found a list of rules for the behavior of children at the table at that date. They were ordered never to seat themselves at the table until after the bless- ing had been asked, and their parents told them to The Serving of Meals be seated. They were never to ask for anything on the table; never to speak unless spoken to; always to break the bread, not to bite into a whole slice; never to take salt except with a clean knife; not to throw bones under the table. One rule read: " Hold not thy knife upright, but sloping; lay it down at right hand of the plate, with end of blade on the plate." Another, " Look not earnestly at any other person that is eating." When children had eaten all that had been given them, if they were " moderately satisfied," they were told to leave at once the table and room. When the table-board described herein was set with snowy linen cloth and napkins, and ample fare, it had some compensations for what modern luxuries it lacked, some qualifications for inducing content- ment superior even to our beautiful table-settings. There was nothing perishable in its entire furnish- ing: no frail and costly china or glass, whose injury and destruction by clumsy or heedless servants would make the heart of the housekeeper ache, and her anger nourish the germs of ptomaines within her. There was little of intrinsic value to watch and guard and worry about. There was little to make extra and difficult work,-no glass to wash with anxious care, no elaborate silver to clean,-- only a few pieces of pewter to polish occasionally Io3 Home Life in Colonial Days It was all so easy and so simple when compared with the complex and varied paraphernalia and accompaniments of serving of meals to-day, that it was like Arcadian simplicity. In Virginia the table furnishings were similar to those in New England; but there were greater con- trasts in table appointments. There was more silver, and richer food; but the negro servants were so squalid, clumsy, and uncouth that the incongru- ity made the meals very surprising and, at times, repellent. When dinners of some state were given in the larger towns, the table was not set or served like the formal dinner of to-day, for all the sweets, pas- try, vegetables, and meats were placed on the table together, with a grand " conceit" for the ornament in the centre. At one period, when pudding was part of the dinner, it was served first. Thus an old-time saying is explained, which always seemed rather meaningless, "I came early - in pudding- time." There was considerable formality in por- tioning out the food, especially in carving, which was regarded a much more than a polite accom- plishment, even as an art. I have seen a list of sixty or seventy different terms in carving to be applied with exactness to different fish, fowl, and meats. An old author says :- io4 The Serving of Meals " How all must regret to hear some Persons, even of quality say, ' pray cut up that Chicken or Hen,' or ' Halve that Plover'; not considering how indiscreetly they talk, when the proper Terms are, 'break that Goose,' 'thrust that Chicken,' ' spoil that Hen,' ' pierce that Plover.' If they are so much out in common Things, how much more would they be with Herons, Cranes, and Peacocks." It must have required good judgment and con- stant watchfulness never to say "spoil that Hen," when it was a chicken; or else be thought hope- lessly ill-bred. There were few state dinners, however, served in the American colonies, even in the large cities; there were few dinners, even, of many courses; not always were there many dishes. There were still seen in many. homes more primitive forms of serving and eating meals, than were indicated by the lack of individual drinking-cups, the mutual use of a trencher, or even the utilization of tne table top as a plate. In some homes an abundant dish, such as a vast bowl of suppawn ana milk, a pumpkin stewed whole in its shell, or a savory and mammoth hotchpot was set, often smoking hot, on the table-board; and from this well- filled receptacle each hungry soul, armed with a long-handled pewter or wooden spoon, helped him- self, sometimes ladling his great spoonfuls into a soS Home Life in Colonial Days trencher or bowl, for more moderate and reserved after-consumption,-just as frequently eating directly from the bountiful dish with a spoon that came and went from dish to mouth without reproach, or thought of ill-manners. The accounts of travellers in all the colonies frequently tell of such repasts; some termed it eating in the fashion of the Dutch. The reports of old settlers often recall the general dish; and some very distinguished persons joined in the circle around it, and were glad to get it. Variety was of little account, compared to quantity and quality. A cheerful hospitality and grateful hearts filled the hollow place of formality and ele- gance. By the time that newspapers began to have adver- tisements in them - about 1750 - we find many more articles for use at the table; but often the names were different from those used to-day. Our sugar bowls were called sugar boxes and sugar pots; milk pitchers were milk jugs, milk ewers, and milk pots. Vegetable dishes were called basins, pud- ding dishes twifflers, small cups were called sneak cups. We have still to-day a custom much like one of olden times, when we have the crumbs removed from our tables after a course at dinner. Then a voider was passed around the table near the close of to6 The Serving of Meals o07 the dinner, and into it the persons at the table placed their trenchers, napkins, and the crumbs from the table. The voider was a deep wicker, wooden, or metal basket. In the Boke of Nurture, written in 1577, are these lines:-- " When meate is taken quyte awaye And Voyders in presence, Put you your trenchour in the same and all your resydence. Take you with your napkin & knyfe the croms that are fore the, In the Voyder your Napkin leave for it is a curtesye." CHAPTER V FOOD FROM FOREST AND SEA T HOUGH all the early explorers and travel- lers came to America eager to find pre- - cious and useful metals, they did not dis- cover wealth and prosperity underground in mines, but on the top of the earth, in the woods and fields. To the forests they turned for food, and they did not turn in vain. Deer were plentiful everywhere, and venison was offered by the Indians to the first who landed from the ships. Some families lived wholly on venison for nine months of the year. In Vir- ginia were vast numbers of red and fallow deer, the latter like those of England, except in the smaller number of branches of the antlers. They were so devoid of fear as to remain undisturbed by the approach of men; a writer of that day says: " Hard by the Fort two hundred in one herd have been usually observed." They were destroyed ruthlessly by a system of fire-hunting, in which tracts of for- ests were burned over, by starting a continuous circle of fire miles around, which burnt in toward I o Food from Forest and Sea the centre of the circle; thus the deer were driven into the middle, and hundreds were killed. This miserable, wholesale slaughter was not for venison, but for the sake of the hides, which were very valuable. They were used to make the durable and suitable buckskin breeches and jackets so much worn by the settlers; and they were also exported to Europe in large numbers. A tax was placed on hides for the support of the beloved William and Mary College. In Georgia, in 1735, the Indians sold a deer for sixpence. Deer were just as abundant in the more Northern colonies. At Albany a stag was sold readily by the Indians for a jack-knife or a few iron nails. The deer in winter came and fed from the hog-pens of Albany swine. Even in I695, a quarter of venison could be bought in New York City for ninepence. At the first Mas- sachusetts Thanksgiving, in I621, the Indians brought in five deer to the colonists for their feast. That year there was also " great store of wild turkies." These beautiful birds of gold and pur- ple bronze were at first plentiful everywhere, and were of great weight, far larger than our domestic turkeys to-day. They came in flocks of a hun- dred, Evelyn says of three hundred on the Chesa- peake, and they weighed thirty or forty pounds og Home Life in Colonial Days each: Josselyn says he saw one weighing sixty pounds. William Penn wrote that turkeys weigh- ing thirty pounds apiece sold in his day and colony for a shilling only. They were shy creatures and fled inland from the white man, and by I69o were rarely shot near the coast of New England, though in Georgia, in 1733, they were plentiful enough and cheap enough to sell for fourpence apiece. Flights of pigeons darkened the sky, and broke down the limbs of trees on which they lighted. From Maine to Virginia these vast flocks were seen. Some years pigeons were so plentiful that they were sold for a penny a dozen in Boston. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, and quail abounded, plover, snipe, and curlew were in the marsh-woods; in fact, in Virginia every bird familiar to Englishmen at home was found save peacock and domestic fowl. Wild hare and squirrels were so many that they became pests, and so much grain was eaten by them that bounties were paid in many towns for the heads of squirrels. County treasuries were exhausted by these premiums. The Swedish traveller, Kalm, said that in Pennsylvania in one year, 1749, X8ooo was paid out for heads of black and gray squirrels, at threepence a head, which would show that over six hundred thousand were killed. From the woods came a sweet food-store, one IIO Food from Forest and Sea specially grateful when sugar was so scarce and so high-priced, - wild honey, which the colonists eagerly gathered everywhere from hollow tree- trunks. Curiously enough, the traveller, Kalm, insisted that bees were not native in America, but were brought over by the English; that the Indians had no name for them and called them English flies. Governor Berkeley of Virginia, writing in 1706, called the maple the sugar-tree; he said:-- "The Sugar-Tree yields a kind of Sap or Juice which by boiling is made into Sugar. This Juice is drawn out, by wounding the Trunk of the Tree, and placing a Re- ceiver under the Wound. It is said that the Indians make one Pound of Sugar out of eight Pounds of the Liquor. It is bright and moist with a full large Grain, the Sweet- ness of it being like that of good Muscovada." The sugar-making season was ever hailed with delight by the boys of the household in colonial days, who found in this work in the woods a won- derful outlet for the love of wild life which was strong in them. It had in truth a touch of going a-gypsying, if any work as hard as sugaring-off could have anything common with gypsy life. The maple-trees were tapped as soon as the sap began to run in the trunk and showed at the end of the twigs; this was in late winter if mild, or in the earli- IIr Home Life in Colonial Days est spring. A notch was cut in the trunk of the tree at a convenient height from the ground, usually four or five feet, and the running sap was guided by setting in the notch a semicircular basswood spout cut and set with a special tool called a tap- ping-gauge. In earlier days the trees were " boxed," that is, a great gash cut across the side and scooped out and down to gather the sap. This often proved fatal to the trees, and was abandoned. A trough, usually made of a butternut log about three feet long, was dug out, Indian fashion, and placed under the end of the spout. These troughs were made deep enough to hold about ten quarts. In later years a hole was bored in the tree with an augur; and sap-buckets were used instead of troughs. Sometimes these troughs were left in distant sugar-camps from year to year, turned bottom side up, through the summer and winter. It was more thr;fty and tidy, however, to carry them home and store them. When this was done, the men and boys began work by drawing the troughs and spouts and provisions to the woods on hand-sleds. Sometimes a mighty man took in a load on his back. It is told of John Alexander of Brattleboro, Vermont, that he once went into camp upon snow- shoes carrying for three miles one five-pail iron kettle, two sap-buckets, an axe and trappings, a 112 Food from Forest and Sea knapsack, four days' provisions, and a gun and ammunition. The master of ceremonies - the owner of the camp --selected the trees and drove the spouts, while the boys placed the troughs. Then the snow had to be shovelled away on a level spot about eigh- teen or twenty feet square, in which strong forked sticks were set twelve feet apart. Or the ground was chosen so that two small low-spreading and strong trees could be trimmed and used as forks. A heavy green stick was placed across from fork to fork, and the sugaring-off kettles, sometimes five in number, hung on it. Then dry wood had to be gathered for the fires; hard work it was to keep them con- stantly supplied. It was often cut a year in ad- vance. As the sap collected in the troughs it was gathered in pails or buckets which, hung on a sap- yoke across the neck, were brought to the kettles and the sap set a-boiling down. When there was a "good run of sap," it was usually necessary to stay in the camp over night. Many times the campers stayed several nights. As the "good run " meant milder weather, a night or two was not a bit- ter experience; indeed, I have never heard any one speak nor seen any account of a night spent in a sugar-camp except with keen expressions of delight. If possible, the time was chosen during a term of 113 Home. Life in Colonial Days moonlight; the snow still covered the fields and its pure shining white light could be seen through the trees. " God makes sech nights, so white and still Fer's you can look and listen. Moonlight an' snow, on field and hill, All silence and all glisten." The great silence, broken only by steady drop- ping of the sap, the crackle of blazing brush, and the occasional hooting of startled owls; the stars seen singly overhead through the openings of the trees, shining down the dark tunnel as bright as though there were no moon; above all, the clearness and sweetness of the first atmosphere of spring, - gave an exaltation of the senses and spirit which the country boy felt without understanding, and indeed without any formulated consciousness. If the camp were near enough to any group of farmhouses to have visitors, the last afternoon and evening in camp was made a country frolic. Great sled-loads of girls came out to taste the new sugar, to drop it into the snow to candy, and to have an evening of fun. Long ere the full riches of the forests were tested the colonists turned to another food-supply,--the treasures of the sea. The early voyagers and colonists came to the 114 Maple-sugar Camp Food from Forest and Sea coasts of the New World to find gold and furs. The gold was not found by them nor their children's children in the land which is now the United States, till over two centuries had passed from the time of the settlement, and the gold-mines of California were opened. The furs were at first found and profitably gathered, but the timid fur-bearing ani- mals were soon exterminated near the settlements. There was, however, a vast wealth ready for the colonists on the coast of the New World which was greater than gold, greater than furs; a wealth ever- obtainable, ever-replenished, ever-useful, ever-sala- ble; it was fish. The sea, the rivers, the lakes, teemed with fish. Not only was there food for the settlers, but for the whole world, and all Europe desired fish to eat. The ships of the early discov- erer, Gosnold, in i602, were "pestered with cod." Captain John Smith, the acute explorer, famous in history as befriended by Pocahontas, went to New England, in 1614, to seek for whale, and instead he fished for cod. He secured sixty thousand in one month; and he wrote to his countrymen, "Let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Guiana or Potosi, with less hazard and charge, and more cer- tainty and facility." This promise of wealth has proved true a thousandfold. Smith wrote home to Ins Home Life in Colonial Days England full accounts of the fisheries, of the propev equipment of a fishing-vessel, of the methods of fishing, the profits, all in a most enticing and famil. iar style. He said in his Description of New Eng- land: - '"What pleasure can be more than to recreate them- selves before their owne doores in their owne boates, upon the Sea, where man, woman, and childe, with a small hooke and line by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasure ? And is it not pretty sport to pull up twopence, sixpence, or twelvepence, as fast as you can hale and veare a line ? If a man worke but three days in seaven hee may get more than hee can spend unless hee will be excessive. " Young boyes and girles, salvages, or any other, be the3 never such idlers may turne, carry, and returne fish withou shame or either great pain: hee is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so much: and shee i very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them." His accounts and similar ones were so much read in England that when the Puritans asked King James of England for permission to come to Amer- ica, and the king asked what profit would be found by their emigration, he was at once answered, " Fish- ing." Whereupon he said in turn, " In truth 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own calling." Yet in spite of their intent to fish, the first English I6 Food from Forest and Sea ships came but poorly provided for fishing, and the settlers had little success at first even in getting fish for their own food. Elder Brewster of Plymouth, who had been a courtier in Queen Elizabeth's time, and had seen and eaten many rich feasts, had noth- ing to eat at one time but clams. Yet he could give thanks to God that he was " permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in the sand." The Indian Squanto showed the Pil- grims many practical methods of fishing, among them one of treading out eels from the brook with his feet and catching them with his hands. And every ship brought in either cod-hooks and lines, mackerel-hooks and lines, herring-nets, seines, shark- hooks, bass-nets, squid-lines, eel-pots, coils of rope and cable, "drails, barbels, pens, gaffs," or mussel- hooks. Josselyn, in his New England's Rarities, written in 1672, enumerated over two hundred kinds of fish that were caught in New England waters. Lobsters certainly were plentiful enough to pre- vent starvation. The minister Higginson, writing of lobsters at Salem, said that many of them weighed twenty-five pounds apiece, and that "the least boy in the plantation may catch and eat what he will of them." In 1623, when the ship Anne arrived from England, bringing many of the wives and children 117 Home Life in Colonial Days of the Pilgrims who had come in the first ships, the only feast of welcome that the poor husbands had to offer the newcomers was " a lobster or a piece of fish without bread or anything else but a cup of spring water." Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long were caught in New York Bay. The traveller, Van der Donck, says " those a foot long are better for serv- ing at table." Truly a lobster six feet long would seem a little awkward to serve on a dinner table. Eddis, in his Letters from America, written in I792, says these vast lobsters were caught in New York waters until Revolutionary days, when " since the incessant cannonading, they have entirely for- saken the coast; not one having been taken or seen since the commencement of hostilities." Be- side these great shell-fish the giant lobster confined in our New York Aquarium in T 897 seems but a dwarf. In Virginia waters lobsters were caught, and vast crabs, often a foot in length and six inches broad, with a long tail and many legs. One of these crabs furnished a sufficient meal for four men. From the gossiping pages of the Labadist mis- sionaries who came to America in 1697 we find hints of good fare in oysters in Brooklyn. Food from Forest and Sea " Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a pail full of Gowanes oysters which are the best in the country, They are fully as good as those of England, better than those we eat at Falmouth. I had to try some of them raw. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot long. Others are young and small. In conse quence of the great quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for the burning of lime. They pickle the oysters in small casks and send them to Barbados." Van der Donck corroborates the foot-long oysters seen by the Labadist travellers. He says the "large oysters roasted or stewed make a good bite," - a very good bite, it would seem to us. Strachey, in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia, says he saw oysters in Virginia that were thirteen inches long. Fortunately for the starving Virgin- ians, oyster banks rose above the surface at ebb-tide at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, and in I609 a large number of these famished Virginia colonists found in these oyster banks a means of preservation of life. As might be expected of any country so inter- sected with arms of the sea and fresh-water streams, Virginia at the time of settlement teemed with fish. The Indians killed them in the brooks by striking them with sticks, and it is said the colonists scooped them up in frying-pans. Horses ridden into the x 9 Home Life in Colonial Days rivers stepped on the fish and killed them. In one cast of a seine the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, caught five thousand sturgeon as large as cod. Some sturgeon were twelve feet long. The works of Captain John Smith, Rolfe's Relation, and other books of early travellers, all tell of the enormous amount of fish in Virginia. The New York rivers were also full of fish, and the bays; their plenty in New Netherland inspired the first poet of that colony to rhyming enumera- tion of the various kinds of fish found there; among them were sturgeon --beloved of the Indians and despised of Christians ; and terrapin - not despised by any one. "Some persons," wrote the Dutch traveller, Van der Donck, in I656, "prepare deli- cious dishes from the water terrapin, which is lus- cious food." The Middle and Southern states paid equally warm but more tardy tribute to the terra- pin's reputation as luscious food. While other fish were used everywhere for food, -cod was the great staple of the fishing industry. By the year 1633 Dorchester and Marblehead had started in the fisheries for trading purposes. Stur- geon also was caught at a little later date, and bass and alewives. Morton, in his New England Canaan, written in 1636, says, " I myself at the turning of the tyde have 120 food from Forest and Sea seen such multitudes of sea bass that it seemed to me that one might goe over their backs dri-shod." The regulation of fish-weirs soon became an important matter in all towns where streams let ale- wives up from the sea. The New England min- isters took a hand in promoting and encouraging the fisheries, as they did all positive social move- ments and commercial benefits. Rev. Hugh Peter in Salem gave the fisheries a specially good turn. Fishermen were excused from military training, and portions of the common stock of corn were assigned to them. The General Court of Mas- sachusetts exempted "vessels and stock" from "country charges" (which were taxes) for seven years. Seashore towns assigned free lands to each boat to be used for stays and flakes for drying. As early as I640 three hundred thousand dried cod- fish were sent to market from New England. Codfish consisted of three sorts, "marchantable, middling, and refuse." The first grade was sold chiefly to Roman Catholic Europe, to supply the constant demands of the fast-days of that religion, and also those of the Church of England; the second was consumed at home or in the merchant vessels of New England; the third went to the negroes of the West Indies, and was often called Jamaica fish. The dun-fish or dumb-fish, as the I21 Home Life in Colonial Days word was sometimes written, were the best; so called from the dun-color. Fish was always eaten in New England for a Saturday dinner; and Mr. Palfrey, the historian, says that until this century no New England dinner on Saturday, even a for- mal dinner party, was complete- without dun-fish being served. Of course the first fishing-vessels had to be built and sent from England. Some carried fifty men. They arrived on the coast in early spring, and by midsummer sailed home. The crew had for wages one-third share of the fish and oil; another third paid for the men's food, the salt, nets, hooks, lines, etc.; the other third went to the ship's owners for profit. This system was not carried out in New Eng- land. There, each fisherman worked on "his own hook " -and it was literally his own hook; for a tally was kept of the fish caught by each man, and the proceeds of the trip were divided in proportion to the number of fish each caught. When there was a big run of fish, the men never stopped to eat or sleep, but when food was held to them gnawed it off while their hands were employed with the fish- lines. With every fishing-vessel that left Glouces- ter and Marblehead, the chief centres of the fishing industries, went a boy of ten or twelve to learra to be 122 Food from Forest and Sea a skilled fisherman. He was called a " cu-tail," for he cut a wedge-shaped bit from the tail of every fish he caught, and when the fish were sorted out the cut-tails showed the boy's share of the profit. For centuries, fish was plentiful and cheap in New England. The traveller Bennet wrote of Boston, in 1740:- "Fish is exceedingly cheap. They sell a fine cod, will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea for about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as cheap as sprats in London. Salmon, too, they have in great plenty, and these they sell for about a shilling apiece which will weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds." Two kinds of delicious fish, beloved, perhaps, above all others to-day, - salmon and shad,- seem to have been lightly regarded in colonial days. The price of salmon - less than a penny a pound - shows the low estimation in which it was held in the early years of the eighteenth century. It is told that farm-laborers in the vicinity of the Connecticut River when engaged to work stipulated that they should have salmon for dinner but once a week. Shad were profoundly despised; it was even held to be somewhat disreputable to eat them; and the story is told of a family in Hadley, Massachusetts, who were about to dine on shad, that, hearing a knock 123 Home Life in Colonial Days at the door, they would not open it till the platter holding the obnoxious shad had been hidden. At first they were fed chiefly to hogs. Two shad for a penny was the ignoble price in 1733, and it was never much higher until after the Revolution. After shad and salmon acquired a better reputation as food, the falls of various rivers became great resorts for American fishermen as they had been for the Indians. Both kinds of fish were caught in scoop- nets and seines below the falls. Men came from a distance and loaded horses and carts with the fish to carry home. Every farmhouse near was filled with visitors. It was estimated that at the falls at South Hadley there were fifteen hundred horses in one day. Salted fish was as carefully prepared and amiably regarded for home use in New England and New York as in England and Holland at the same date. The ling and herring of the old countries of Europe gave place in America to cod, shad, and mackerel. The greatest pains was taken in preparing, drying, and salting the plentiful fish. It is said that in New York towns, such as New York and Brooklyn, fter shad became a popular fish, great heaps were left when purchased at each door, and that the necessary cleaning and preparation of the shad was done on the street. As all housewives purchased shad and salted and packed at about the same time, 124 Food from Forest and Sea those public scavengers, the domestic hogs who roamed the town streets unchecked (and ever wel- comed), must have been specially useful at shad-time. Not in the waters, but of it, were the magnificent tribes of marine fowl that, undiminished by the feeble weapons and few numbers of the Indians, had peopled for centuries the waters of the New World. The Chesapeake and its tributaries furnished each autumn vast feeding-grounds of wild celery and other aquatic plants to millions of those creat- ures. The firearms of Captain John Smith and his two companions were poor things compared with the fowling-pieces of to-day, but with their three shots they killed a hundred and forty-eight ducks at one firing. The splendid wild swan wheeled and trumpeted in the clear autumn air; the wild geese flew there in their beautiful V-shaped flight; duck in all the varieties known to modern sportsmen - canvas-back, mallard, widgeon, red- head, oxeye, dottrel - rested on the Chesapeake waters in vast flocks a mile wide and seven miles long. Governor Berkeley named also brant, shell drake, teal, and blewings. The sound of their wings was said to be "like a great storm coming over the water." For centuries these ducks have been killed by the white man, and still they return each autumn to their old feeding-places. 125, CHAPTER VI INDIAN CORN AGREAT field of tall Indian corn waving its stately and luxuriant green blades, its grace- ful spindles, and glossy silk under the hot August sun, should be not only a beautiful sight to every American, but a suggestive one; one to set us thinking of all that Indian corn means to us in our history. It was a native of American soil at the settlement of this country, and under full and thoroughly intelligent cultivation by the Indians, who were also native sons of the New World. Its abundance, adaptability, and nourishing qualities not only saved the colonists' lives, but altered many of their methods of living, especially their manner of cooking and their tastes in food. One of the first things that every settler in a new land has to learn is that he must find food in that land; that he cannot trust long to any supplies of food which he has brought with him, or to any fresh supplies which he has ordered to be sent after him. He must turn at once to hunting, fishing, 1126 Indian Corn planting, to furnish him with food grown and found in the very place where he is. This was quickly learned by the colonists in America, except in Virginia, where they had sad starving-times before all were convinced that corn was a better crop for settlers than silk or any of the many hoped-for productions which might be valua- ble in one sense but which could not be eaten. Powhatan, the father of the Indian princess Poca- hontas, was one of the first to " send some of his People that they may teach the English how to sow the Grain of his Country." Captain John Smith, ever quick to learn of every one and ever practical, got two Indians, in the year 16o8, to show him how to break up and plant forty acres of corn, which yielded him a good crop. A succeeding governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, equally practical, intelligent, and determined, assigned small farms to each colonist, and encouraged and enforced the growing of corn. Soon many thousand bushels were raised. There was a terrible Indian massacre in I622, for the careless colonists, in order to be free to give their time to the raising of that new and exceedingly alluring and high-priced crop, tobacco, had given the Indians firearms to go hunting game for them; and the lesson of easy killing with powder and shot, when once learned, was turned with havoc 127 Home Life in Colonial Days upon the white men. The following year compara tively little corn was planted, as the luxuriant foli- age made a perfect ambush for the close approach of the savages to the settlements. There was, of course, scarcity and famine as the result; and a bushel of corn-meal became worth twenty to thirty shillings, which sum had a value equal to twenty to thirty dollars to-day. The planters were each com- pelled by the magistrates the following year to raise an ample amount of corn to supply all the families; and to save a certain amount for seed as well. There has been no lack of corn since that time in Vir- ginia. The French colonists in Louisiana, perhaps be- cause they were accustomed to more dainty food than the English, fiercely hated corn, as have the Irish in our own day. A band of French women settlers fairly raised a "petticoat rebellion " in revolt against its daily use. A despatch of the governor of Louisiana says of these rebels:-- "The men in the colony begin through habit to use corn as an article of food; but the women, who are mostly Parisians, have for this food a dogged aversion, which has not been subdued. They inveigh bitterly against His Grace, the Bishop of Quebec, who, they say, has enticed them away from home under pretext of sending them to enjoy the milk and honey of the land of promise." 128 Indian Corn This hatred of corn was shared by other races. An old writer says : - " Peter Martyr could magnifie the Spaniards, of whom he reports they led a miserable life for three days together, with parched grain of maize onlie " -- which, when compared with the diet of New Eng- land settlers for weeks at a time, seems such a bagatelle as to be scarce worth the mention of Peter Martyr. By tradition, still commemorated at Fore, fathers' Dinners, the ration of Indian corn supplied to each person in the colony in time of famine was but five kernels. The stores brought over by the Pilgrims were poor and inadequate enough; the beef and pork were tainted, the fish rotten, the butter and cheese corrupted. European wheat and seeds did not mature well. Soon, as Bradford says in his now famous Log-Book, in his picturesque and forcible English, "the grim and grizzled face of starvation stared" at them. The readiest supply to replenish the scanty larder was fish, but the English made surprisingly bungling work over fishing, and soon the most unfailing and valuable supply was the native Indian corn, or " Guinny wheat," or " Turkie wheat," as it was called by the colonists. Famine and pestilence had left eastern Massachu- 129 Home Life in Colonial Days setts comparatively bare of inhabitants at the time of the settlement of Plymouth ; and the vacant corn- fields of the dead Indian cultivators were taken and planted by the weak and emaciated Plymouth men, who never could have cleared new fields. From the teeming sea, in the April run of fish, was found the needed fertilizer. Says Governor Bradford:-- " In April of the first year they began to plant their corne, in which service Squanto stood them in great stead, showing them both ye manner how to set it, and after, how to dress and tend it." From this planting sprang not only the most useful food, but the first and most pregnant industry of the colonists. The first fields and crops were communal, and the result was disastrous. The third year, at the sight of the paralyzed settlement, Governor Brad- ford wisely decided, as did Governor Dale of Vir- ginia, that " they should set corne every man for his owne particuler, furnishing a portion for public offi- cers, fishermen, etc., who could not work, and in that regard trust to themselves." Thus personal energy succeeded to communal inertia; Bradford wrote that women and children cheerfully worked in the fields to raise corn which should be their very own. A field of corn on the coast of Massachusetts or 3o Indian Corn Narragansett or by the rivers of Virginia, growing long before any white man had ever been seen on these shores, was precisely like the same field planted three hundred years later by our American farmers. There was the same planting in hills, the same number of stalks in the hill, with pumpkin- vines running among the hills, and beans climbing the stalks. The hills of the Indians were a trifle nearer together than those of our own day are usually set, for the native soil was more fertile. The Indians taught the colonists much more than the planting and raising of corn; they showed also how to grind the corn and cook it in many palatable ways. The various foods which we use to-day made from Indian corn are all cooked just as the Indians cooked them at the time of the settlement of the country; and they are still called with Indian names, such as hominy, pone, suppawn, samp, succotash. The Indian method of preparing maize or corn was to steep or parboil it in hot water for twelve hours, then to pound the grain in a mortar or a hollowed stone in the field, till it was a coarse meal. It was then sifted in a rather closely woven basket, and the large grains which did not pass through the sieve were again pounded and sifted. Samp was often pounded in olden times in a 13-1 Home Life in Colonial Days primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood or a stump of a tree, which had been cut off about three feet from the ground. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped like the inside of the mortar, and fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a young and slender tree, a growing sap- ling, which was bent over and thus gave a sort of spring which pulled the pestle up after being pounded down on the corn. This was called a sweep and mortar mill. They could be heard at a long distance. Two New Hampshire pioneers made clearings about a quarter of a mile apart and built houses. There was an impenetrable gully and thick woods between the cabins; and the blazed path was a long distance around, so the wives of the settlers seldom saw each other or any other woman. It was a source of great comfort and companionship to them both that they could signal to each other every day by pounding on their mortars. And they had an in- genious system of communication which one spring morning summoned one to the home of the other. where she arrived in time to be the first to welcome fine twin babies. After these simple stump and sapling mortars were abandoned elsewhere they were used on Long 132 John Winthrop's Mill, New London, Connecticut Indian Corn Island, and it was jestingly told that sailors in a fog could always know on what shore they were, when they could hear the pounding of the samp-mortars on Long Island. Rude hand-mills next were used, which were called quernes, or quarnes. Some are still in exist- ence and known as samp-mills. Windmills fol- lowed, of which the Indians were much afraid, dreading "their long arms and great teeth biting the corn in pieces"; and thinking some evil spirit turned the arms. As soon as maize was plentiful, English mills for grinding meal were started in many towns. There. was a windmill at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1631. In 1633 the first water- mill, at Dorchester, was built, and in :Ipswich a grist- mill was built in I635. The mill built by Governor John Winthrop in New London is still standing. The first windmill erected in America was one built and set up by Governor Yeardley in Virginia in 1621. By 1649 there were five water-mills, four windmills, and a great number of horse and hand mills in Virginia. Millers had one-sixth of the meal they ground for toll. Suppawn was another favorite of the settlers, and was an Indian dish made from Indian corn; it was a thick corn-meal and milk porridge. It was soon seen on every Dutch table, for the Dutch were very 133 Home Life in Colonial Days fond of all foods made from all kinds of grain; and it is spoken of by all travellers in early New York, and in the Southern colonies. Samp and samp porridge were soon abundant dishes. Samp is Indian corn pounded to a coarsely ground powder. Roger Williams wrote of it :-- " Nawsamp is a kind of meal pottage unparched. From this the English call their samp, which is the Indian corn beaten and boiled and eaten hot or cold with milk and butter, and is a diet exceedingly wholesome for English bodies." The Swedish scientist, Professor Kalm, told that the Indians gave him " fresh maize-bread, baked in an oblong shape, mixed with dried huckleberries, which lay as close in it as raisins in a plum pudding." Roger Williams said that sukquttahhash was "corn seethed like beans." Our word "succotash " we now apply to corn cooked with beans. Pones were the red men's appones. The love of the Indians for "roasting ears " was quickly shared by the white man. In Virginia a series of plantings of corn were made from the first of April to the last of June, to afford a three months' succession of roasting ears. The traveller, Strachey, writing of the Indians in 134 Indian Corn 1618, said: " They lap their corn in rowles within the leaves of the corne and so boyle yt for a dayntie." This method of cooking we have also retained to the present day. It seemed to me very curious to read in Governor Winthrop's journal, written in Boston about 1630, that when corn was "parched," as he called it, it turned inside out and was " white and floury within"; and to think that then little English children were at that time learning what pop-corn was, and how it looked when it was parched, or popped. Hasty pudding had been made in England of wheat-flour or oatmeal and milk, and the name was given to boiled puddings of corn-meal and water. It was not a very suitable name, for corn-meal should never be cooked hastily, but requires long boiling or baking. The hard Indian pudding slightly sweetened and boiled in a bag was every- where made. It was told that many New England families had three hundred and sixty-five such pud- dings in a year. The virtues of "jonny-cake" have been loudly sung in the interesting pages of Shepherd Tom. The way the corn should be carried to the mill, the manner in which it should be ground, the way in which the stones should revolve, and the kind of stones, receive minute description, as does the mix- 135 Home Life in Colonial Days ing and the baking, to the latter of which the mid, die board of red oak from the head of a flour-barrel is indispensable as a bakeboard, while the fire to bake with must be of walnut logs. Hasty pud- ding, corn dumplings, and corn-meal porridge, so eminently good that it was ever mentioned with respect in the plural, as "them porridge," all are described with the exuberant joyousness of a happy, healthful old age in remembrance of a happy, high- spirited, and healthful youth. The harvesting of the corn afforded one of the few scenes of gayety in the lives of the colonists. A diary of one Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts, in the year 1767, thus describes a corn-husking, and most ungallantly says naught of the red ear and attendant osculation:-- " Made a husking Entertainm't. Possibly this leafe may last a Century and fall into the hands of some in- quisitive Person for whose Entertainm't I will inform him that now there is a Custom amongst us of making an Entertainm't at husking of Indian Corn whereto all the neighboring Swains are invited and after the Corn is finished they like the Hottentots give three Cheers or huzza's but cannot carry in the husks without a Rhum bottle; they feign great Exertion but do nothing till Rhum enlivens them, when all .is done in a trice, then after a hearty Meal about o at Night they go to their pastimes." 136 Indian Corn There was one way of eating corn which was spoken of by all the early writers and travellers which we should not be very well satisfied with now, but it shows us how useful and necessary corn was at that time, and how much all depended on it. This preparation of corn was called nocake or nookick. An old writer named Wood thus de- fined it:- "It is Indian corn parched in the hot ashes, the ashes being sifted from it; it is afterwards beaten to powder and put into a long leatherne bag trussed at the Indian's backe like a knapsacke, out of which they take three spoonsful a day." It was held to be the most nourishing food known, and in the smallest and most condensed form. Both Indians and white men usually carried it in a pouch when they went on long journeys, and mixed it with snow in the winter and water in summer. Gookin says it was sweet, toothsome, and hearty. With only this nourishment the Indians could carry loads "fitter for elephants than men." Roger Williams says a spoonful of this meal and water made him many a good meal. When we read this we are not surprised that the Pilgrims could keep alive on what is said was at one time of famine their food for a day,--five kernels of corn apiece. The apostle 137 Home Life in Colonial Days Eliot, in his Indian Bible, always used the word nookick for the English words flour or meal. We ought to think of the value of food in those days; and we may be sure the governor and his council thought corn of value when they took it for taxes and made it a legal currency just like gold and silver, and forbade any one to feed it to pigs. If you happen to see the price of corn during those years down to Revolutionary times, you will, perhaps, be surprised to see how much the price varied. From ten shillings a bushel in 1631, to two shillings in 1672, to twenty in 1747, to two in 1751, and one hundred shillings at the opening of the Revolution. In these prices of corn, as in the price of all other articles at this time, the differ- ence was in the money, which had a constantly changing value, not in the article itself or its use- fulness. The corn had a steady value, it always furnished just so much food; and really was a standard itself rather than measured and valued by the poor and shifting money. There are many other interesting facts connected with the early culture of corn: of the finding hidden in caves or " caches" in the ground the Indian's corn which he had stored for seed; of the sacred "corn-dances" of the Indians; that the first patent granted in England to an American was to a Phila- 138 Indian Corn delphia woman for a mill to grind a kind of hominy; of the great profit to the colonists in corn-raising, for the careless and greedy Indians always ate up all their corn as soon as possible, then had to go out and trap beavers in the woods to sell the skins to the colonists for corn to keep them from starving. One colonist planted about eight bushels of seed- corn. He raised from this eight hundred and sixty- four bushels of corn, which he sold to the Indians for beaver skins which gave him a profit of �327. Many games were played with the aid of kernels of corn: fox and geese, checkers, " hull gull, how many," and games in which the corn served as counters. The ears of corn were often piled into the attic until the floor was a foot deep with them. I once entered an ell bedroom in a Massachusetts farm- house where the walls, rafters, and four-post bed- stead were hung solid with ears of yellow corn, which truly " made a sunshine in a shady place." Some of the preparation of corn fell upon the boys; it was their regular work all winter in the evening firelight to shell corn from the ears by scraping them on the iron edge of the wooden shovel or on the fire-peel. My father told me that even in his childhood in the first quarter of this century many families of moderate means fastened the long- 139 140 Home Life in Colonial Days handled frying-pan across a tub and drew the corn ears across the sharp edge of the handle of the pan. I note in Peter Parley's reminiscences of his child- Old Corn-sheller hood a similar use of a frying-pan handle in his home. Other farmers set the edge of a knife blade in a piece of wood, and scraped on the back of the blade. In some households the corn was pounded Indian Corn into hominy in wooden mortars. An old corn- sheller used in western Massachusetts is here shown. When the corn was shelled, the cobs were not carelessly discarded or disregarded. They were stored often in a lean-to or loft in the kitchen ell; from thence they were brought down in skepes or boxes about a bushel at a time; and after being used by the children as playthings to build "cob-houses," were employed as light wood for the fire. They had a special use in many households for smoking hams; and their smoke was deemed to impart a specially delightful flavor to hams and bacon. One special use of corn should be noted. By order of the government of Massachusetts Bay in 1623, it was used as ballots in public voting. At annual elections of the governors' assistants in each town, a kernel of corn was deposited to signify a favorable vote upon the nominee, while a bean signi- fied a negative vote; " and if any free-man shall put in more than one Indian corn or bean he shall forfeit for every such offence Ten Pounds." The choice of a national flower or plant is much talked about to-day. Aside from the beauty of maize when growing and its wonderful adaptability in every part for decoration, would not the noble and useful part played by Indian corn in our early his- tory entitle it to be our first choice ? x4rI CHAPTER VII MEAT AND DRINK HE food brought in ships from Europe to the colonists was naturally limited by the imperfect methods of transportation which then existed. Nothing like refrigerators were known; no tinned foods were even thought of; ways of packing were very crude and careless; so the kinds of provisions which would stand the long voyage on a slow sailing-vessel were very few. The settlers turned at once, as all settlers in a new land should, to the food-supplies found in the new home; of these the three most important ones were corn, fish, and game. I have told of their plenty, their value, and their use. There were many other bountiful and good foods, among them pumpkins or pompions, as they were at first called. The pumpkin has sturdily kept its own place on the New England farm, varying in popularity and use, but always of value as easy of growth, easy of cooking, and easy to keep in a dried form. Yet the colonists did not welcome the pumpkin with 142 Meat and Drink eagerness, even in times of great want. They were justly rebuked for their indifference and dis- like by Johnson in his Wonder-working Providence, who called the pumpkin "a fruit which the Lord fed his people with till corn and cattle increased "; and another pumpkin-lover referred to "the times wherein old Pompion was a saint." One colonial poet gives the golden vegetable this tribute:-- " We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." I am very sure were I living on dried corn and scant shell-fish, as the Pilgrims were forced to do, I should have turned with delight to " pompion- sause " as a change of diet. Stewed pumpkins and pumpkin bread were coarse ways of using the fruit for food. Pumpkin bread - made of half Indian meal - was not very pleasing in appearance. A traveller in 1704 called it an "awkward food." It is eaten in Connecticut to this day. The Indians dried pumpkins and strung them for winter use, and the colonists followed the Indian custom. In Virginia pumpkins were equally plentiful and useful. Ralph Hamor, in his True Discourse, says they grew in such abundance that a hundred were often observed to spring from one seed. The Vir- ginia Indians boiled beans, peas, corn, and pumpkins 143 Home Life in Colonial Days together, and the colonists liked the dish. In the trying times at "James-Citty," the plentiful pump- kins played a great part in providing food-supplies for the starving Virginians. Squashes were also native vegetables. The name is Indian. To show the wonderful and varied way in which the English spelt Indian names let me tell you that Roger Williams called them askuta- squashes; the Puritan minister Higginson, squanter- squashes; the traveller Josselyn, squontorsquashes, and the historian Wood, isquoukersquashes. Potatoes were known to New Englanders, but were rare and when referred to were probably sweet pota- toes. It was a long time before they were much liked. A farmer at Hadley, Massachusetts, had what he thought a very large crop in 1763 - it was eight bushels. It was believed by many persons that if a man ate them every day, he could not live seven years. In the spring all that were left on hand were carefully burned, for many believed that if cattle or horses ate these potatoes they would die. They were first called, when carried to England, Virginia potatoes; then they became much liked and grown in Ireland; then the Irish settlers in New Hampshire brought them back to this conti- nent, and now they are called, very senselessly, Irish potatoes. Many persons fancied the balls were 144 Meat and Drink what should be eaten, and said they " did not much desire them." A fashionable way of cooking them was with butter, sugar, and grape-juice; this was mixed with dates, lemons, and mace; seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper; then covered with a frosting of sugar --and you had to hunt well to find the potato among all these other things. In the Carolinas the change in English diet was effected by the sweet potato. This root was cooked in various ways: it was roasted in the ashes, boiled, made into puddings, used as a substitute for bread, made into pancakes which a foreigner said tasted as though composed of sweet almonds; and in every way it was liked and was so plentiful that even. the slaves fed upon it. Beans were abundant, and were baked by. the Indians in earthen pots just as we bake them to-day. The settlers planted peas, parsnips, tur- nips, and carrots, which grew and thrived. Huckle- berries, blackberries, strawberries, and grapes grew wild. Apple-trees were planted at once, and grew well in New England and the Middle states. Twenty years after the Roman Catholic settlement of Maryland the fruitful orchards were conspicu- ously flourishing. Johnson, writing in 1634, said that all then in New England could have apple, pear, arnd quince 145 146 Home Life in Colonial Days tarts instead of pumpkin--pies. They made apple- slump, apple-mose, apple-crowdy, apple-tarts, mess apple-pies, and puff apple-pies. The Swedish par- son, Dr. Acrelius, writing home in 1758 an account of the settlement of Delaware, said :-- " Apple-pie is used through the whole year, and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. House-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it." The making of a portion of the autumn's crop of apples into dried apples, apple-sauce, and apple- butter for winter was preceded in many country homes by an apple-paring. The cheerful kitchen of a farmhouse was set with an array of empty pans, tubs, and baskets; of sharp knives and heaped-up barrels of apples. A circle of laughing faces com- pleted the scene, and the barrels of apples were quickly emptied by the many skilful hands. The apples intended for drying were strung on linen thread and hung on the kitchen and attic rafters. The following day the stout crane in the open fire- place was hung with brass kettles which were filled with the pared apples, sweet and sour in proper proportions, the sour at the bottom since they re- Making Thanksgiving Pies Meat and Drink quired more time to cook. If quinces could be had, they were added to give flavor, and molasses, or boiled-down pungent " apple-molasses," was added for sweetening. As there was danger that the sauce would burn over the roaring logs, many housewives placed clean straw at the bottom of the kettle to keep the apples from the fiercest heat. Days were spent in preparing the winter's stock of apple-sauce, but when done and placed in barrels in the cellar, it was always ready for use, and when slightly frozen was a keen relish. Apple-butter was made of the pared apples boiled down with cider. Wheat did not at first ripen well, so white bread was for a time rarely eaten. Rye grew better, so bread made of" rye-an'-injun," which was half rye- meal, half corn-meal, was used instead. Bake-shops were so many in number in all the towns that it is evident that housewives in towns and villages did not make bread in every home as to-day, but bought it at the baker's. At the time.when America was settled, no Euro- pean peoples drank water as we do to-day, for a constant beverage. The English drank ale, the Dutch beer, the French and Spanish light wines, for every-day use. Hence it seemed to the colonists a great trial and even a very dangerous experiment to drink water in the New World. They were forced 147 Home Life in Colonial Days to do it, however, in many cases; and to their sur- prise found that it agreed with them very well, and that their health improved. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, who was a most sensible and thoughtful man, soon had water used as a constant drink by all in his household. As cows increased in number and were cared for, milk of course was added to the every-day fare. Rev. Mr. Higginson wrote in 1630 that milk cost in Salem but a penny a quart; while another minister, John Cotton, said that milk and ministers were the only things cheap in New England. At that time milk cost but a penny and a quarter a quart in old England. Milk became a very important part or the food of families in the eighteenth century. In 1728 a discussion took place in the Boston newspapers as to the expense of keeping a family "of middling figure." These writers all named only bread and milk for breakfast and supper. Ten years later a minister, calculating the expenses of his, family, set down bread and milk for both breakfast and supper. Milk and hasty pudding, milk and stewed pumpkin, milk and baked apples, milk and ber- ries, were variations. In winter, when milk was scarce, sweetened cider diluted with water was used instead. Sometimes bread was soaked with this 148 Meat and Drink mixture. It is said that children were usually very fond of it. As comparatively few New England families in the seventeenth century owned churns, I cannot think that many made butter; of course families of wealth ate it, but it was not com- mon as to-day. In the inventories of the property of the early settlers of Maine ~- there is but one churn named. Butter was worth from three- pence to sixpence a pound. As cattle in- creased the duties of the dairy grew, and Upright Churns soon were never-ceas- ing and ever-tiring. The care of cream and making of butter was in the eighteenth century the duty of every good wife and dame in the country, and usu- ally in the town. Though the shape and ease of action of churns varied, still butter-making itself varied little from the same work to-day. Several old-time churns 149 Home Life in Colonial Days are shown, the revolving one being the most unusual. Cheese was plentiful and good in all the Northern colonies. It was also an unending care from the time the milk was set over the fire to warm and then to curdle; through the breaking of the curds in the cheese-basket; through shaping into cheeses and pressing in the cheese-press, plac- ing them on the cheese-ladders, and constantly turning and rub- bing them. An Revolving Churn old cheese-press, cheese-ladder, and cheese-basket from Deerfield Memorial Hall are shown in the illustration. In all households, even in those of great wealth and many servants, assistance was given in all house- wifery by the daughters of the household. In the South it was chiefly by superintendence and teach- ing through actual exposition the negro slaves; in the North it was by the careful performance o/ the work. Meat and Drink Cheese-basket, Cheese-ladder. Cheese-press The manuscript cooking receipt-book of many an ancient dame shows the great care they took in family cooking. English methods of cooking at the time of the settlement of this country were very complicated and very laborious. It was a day of hashes, ragouts, soups, hotchpots, etc. There were no great joints served until the time of Charles the First. In almost every six- teenth-century receipt for cooking meat, appear some such directions as these: "Y-mynce it, smyte them. on gobbets, hew them on gobbets, chop on gob- bets, hew small, dyce them, skern them to dvce, Home Life in Colonial Days kerf it to dyce, grind all to dust, smyte on peces, parcel-hem; hew small on morselyen, hack them small, cut them on culpons." Great amourts of spices were used, even perfumes; and as there was no preservation of meat by ice, perhaps the spices and perfumes were necessary. Of course the colonists were forced to adopt simpler ways of cooking, but as towns and com- merce increased there were many kitchen duties which made much tedious work. Many pickles, spiced fruits, preserves, candied fruits and flowers, and marmalades were made. Preserving was a very different art from canning fruit to-day. There were no hermetically sealed jars, no chemical methods, no quick work about it. Vast jars were filled with preserves so rich that there was no need of keeping the air from them; they could be opened, that is, the paper cover taken off, and used as desired; there was no fear of fer- mentation, souring, or moulding. The housewives pickled samphire, fennel, purple cabbage, nasturtium-buds, green walnuts, lemons, radish-pods, barberries, elder-buds, parsley, mush- rooms, asparagus, and many kinds of fish and fruit. They candied fruits and nuts, made many marmalades and quiddonies, and a vast number of fruit wines and cordials. Even their cakes, pies, and puddings 152 Meat and Drink were most complicated, and humble households were lavish in the various kinds they manufactured and ate. They collared and potted many kinds of fish and game, and they salted and soused. Salted meat was eaten, and very little fresh meat; for there were no means of keeping meat after it was killed. Every well-to-do family had a "powdering- tub," in which meat was "powdered," that is, salted and pickled. Many families had a smoke-house, in which beef, ham, and bacon were smoked. Perhaps the busiest month of the year was November, --called " killing time." When the chosen day arrived, oxen, cows, and swine which Sausage-gun (open) had been fattened for the winter's stock were slaughtered early in the morn- ing, that the meat might be hard and cold before Home Life in Colonial Days being put in the pickle. Sausages, rolliches, and headcheese were made, lard tried out, and tallow saved. A curious and quaint domestic implement or utensil found hanging on the walls of some kitch- ens was what was known as a sausage-gun. One here is shown with the piston detached, and also ready for use. The sau- sage-meat was forced out through the nozzle into the sausage-cases. A simpler form of sausage- stuffer has also been seen, much like a tube- and-piston garden- syringe; though I must add a suspicion which has always lingered in my mind that the latter uten- ilSausage-gun was really a syringe- Sausage-gun (closea gun, such as once was used to disable humming-birds by squirting water upon them. Sausage-meat was thus prepared in New York farmhouses. The meat was cut coarsely into half- Meat and Drink inch pieces and thrown into wooden boxes about three feet long and ten inches deep. Then its first chopping was by men using spades which had been ground to a sharp edge. There were many families that found all their supply of sweetening in maple sugar and honey; but housewives of dignity and elegance desired to have some supply of sugar, certainly to offer visitors for their dish of tea. This sugar was always loaf- sugar, and truly loaf-sugar; for it was purchased ever in great loaves or' cones which averaged in weight about nine to ten pounds apiece. One cone would last thrifty folk for a year. This pure clear sugar-cone always came wrapped in a deep blue-purple paper, of such unusual and beautiful tint and so color-laden that in country homes it was carefully saved and soaked, to supply a dye for a small amount of the finest wool, which was used when spun and dyed for some specially choice purpose. The cut- ting of this cone of sugar into lumps of equal size and regular shape was distinctly the work of the mistress and daughters of the house. It was too exact and too dainty a piece of work to be in- trusted to clumsy or wasteful servants. Various simply shaped sugar-shears or sugar-cutters were used. An ordinary form is shown in the illustra- tion. I well recall the only family in which I ever ISS Home Life in Colonial Days saw this solemn function of sugar-cutting take place --it was about thirty years ago. An old Boston East India merchant, one of the last to cling to a residence in what is known now as the " Burnt Dis- trict," always desired (and his desire was law) to use Sugar-cutters these loaves of sugar in his household. I don't know where he got them so long after every one else had apparently ceased buying them - he may have specially imported them; at any rate he had them, and to the end of her life it was the morning duty of his wife "to cut the sugar." I can see my old cousin still in what she termed her breakfast room, dressed very handsomely, standing before a bare Meat and Drink mahogany table on which a maid placed the consid- erable array of a silver salver without legs, which was set on a folded cloth and held the sugar-loaf and the sugar-cutter; and another salver with legs that bore various bowls and one beautiful silver sugar-box which was kept filled high for her husband's toddy. It seemed an interminably tedious work to me and a senseless one, as I chafingly waited for the delight- ful morning drive in delightful Boston. It was in this household that I encountered the sweetest thing of my whole life; I have written elsewhere its praises in full; a barrel, a small one, to be sure, but Spice-mortars and Spice-mills still a whole teak-wood barrel full of long strings of glistening rock-candy. I had my fill of it at will, tnough it was not kept as a sweetmeat, but was a 158 Home Life in Colonial Days kitchen store having a special use in the manufact ure of rich brandy sauces for plum puddings, and of a kind of marchepane ornamentation for desserts. All the spices used in the household were also ground at home, in spice-mortars and spice-mills. These were of various sizes, including the pepper- mills, which were set on the table at meal-times, and the tiny ornamental graters which were carried in the pocket. The entire food of a household was the possible production of a farm. In a paper published in the American Museum in 1787 an old farmer says:-- <" At this time my farm gave me and my whole family a good living on the produce of it, and left me one year with another one hundred and fifty silver dollars, for I never spent more than ten dollars a year which was for salt, nails, and the like. Nothing to eat, drink or wear was bought, as my farm provided all." The farm food was not varied, it is true, as to- day; for articles of luxury came by importation. The products of tropical countries, such as sugar, molasses, tea, coffee, spices, found poor substitutes in home food-products. Dried pumpkin was a poor sweetening instead of molasses; maple sugar and honey were not esteemed as was sugar; tea was ill- replaced by raspberry leaves, loosestrife, hardhack, Meat and Drink goldenrod, dittany, blackberry leaves, yeopon, sage, and a score of other herbs; coffee was better than parched rye and chestnuts; spices could not be compensated for or remotely imitated by any sub- stitutes. So though there was ample quantity of food, the quality, save in the town, was not such as English housewives had been accustomed to; there were many deprivations in their kitchens which tried them sorely. The better cooks they were, the more trying were the limitations. Every woman with a love for her fellow-woman must feel a thrill of keen sympathy for the goodwife of Newport, New Hamp- shire, who had to make her Thanksgiving mince- pies with a filling of bear's meat and dried pumpkins, sweetened with maple sugar, and her crust of corn- meal. Her husband loyally recorded that they were the best mince-pies he ever ate. As years passed on and great wealth came to indi- viduals, the tables of the opulent, especially in the Middle colonies, rivalled the luxury of English and French houses of wealth. It is surprising to read in Dr. Cutler's diary that when he dined with Colonel Duer in New York in 1787, there were fifteen kinds of wine served besides cider, beer, and porter. John Adams probably lived as well as any New Englander of similar position and means. A Sun- 159 Home Life in Colonial Days day dinner at his house was thus described by a visitor: the first course was a pudding of Indian meal, molasses, and butter; then came a course of veal and bacon, neck of mutton, and vegetables. When the New Englander went to Philadelphia, his eyes opened wide at the luxury and extravagance of fare. He has given in his diary some accounts of the lavishness of the Philadelphia larder. Such entries as these are found: - (Of the home of Miers Fisher, a young Quaker lawyer.) " This plain Friend, with his plain but pretty wife with her Thees and Thous, had provided us a costly entertain- ment; ducks, hams, chickens, beef, pig, tarts, creams, cus- tards, jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, porter, punch, wine and a long, etc." (At the home of Chief Justice Chew.) " About four o'clock we were called to dinner. Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweetmeats of twenty sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., with a des- sert of fruits, raisins, almonds, pears, peaches." "A most sinful feast again! everything which could de- light the eye or allure the taste; curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty kinds of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands, whipped sillabubs, etc. Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, beer." By which lists may plainly be seen that our second President had somewhat of a sweet tooth. 160o Meat and Drink The Dutch were great beer-drinkers and quickly established breweries at Albany and New York. But before the century had ended New Englanders had abandoned the constant drinking of ale and beer for cider. Cider was very cheap; but a few shillings a barrel. It was supplied in large amounts to students at college, and even very little children drank it. President John Adams was an early and earnest wisher for temperance reform; but to the end of his life he drank a large tankard of hard cider every morning when he first got up. It was free in every farmhouse to all travellers and tramps. A cider-mill was usually built on a hillside so the building could be one story high in front and two in the back. Thus carts could easily unload the apples on the upper level and take away the barrels of cider on the lower. Standing below on the lower floor you could see two upright wooden cylinders, set a little way apart, with knobs, or nuts as they were called, on one cylinder which fitted loosely into holes on the other. The cylin- ders worked in opposite directions and drew in and crushed the apples poured down between them. The nuts and holes frequently clogged with the pomace. Then the mill was stopped and a boy scraped out with a stick or hook the crushed ap- ples. A horse walking in a small circle moved a Home Life in Colonial Days lever which turned the motor wheel. It was slow work; it took three hours to grind a cart-load of apples; but the machinery was efficient and simple. The pomace fell into a large shallow vat or tank, and if it could lie in the vat overnight it was a benefit. Then the pomace was put in a press. This was simple in construction. At the bottom was a platform grooved in channels; a sheaf of clean straw was spread on the platform, and with wooden shovels the pomace was spread thick over it. Then a layer of straw was laid at right angles with the first, and more pomace, and so on till the form was about three feet high; the top board was put on as a c:over; the screw turned and blocks pressed down, usually with a long wooden hand-lever, very slowly at first, then harder, until the mass was solid and every drop of juice had trickled into the channels of the platform and thence to the pan below. Within the last two or three years I have seen those cider-mills at work in the country back of old Plymouth and in Narragansett, sending afar their sourly fruity odors. And though apple orchards are running out, and few new trees are planted, and the apple crop in those districts is growing smaller apd smaller, yet is the sweet cider of country cider- mills as free and plentiful a' gift to any passer-by as the water from the well or the air we breathe. x62 Old Cider-mill ___ Meat and Drink Perry was made from pears, as cider is from apples, and peachy from peaches. Metheglin and mead, drinks of the old Druids in England, were made from honey, yeast, and water, and were popular everywhere. In Virginia whole plantations of the honey-locust furnished locust beans for making me- theglin. From persimmons, elderberries, juniper berries, pumpkins, corn-stalks, hickory nuts, sassa- fras bark, birch bark, and many other leaves, roots, and barks, various light drinks were made. An old song boasted :- " Oh, we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips." Many other stronger and more intoxicating liquors were made in large quantities, among them enormous amounts of rum, which was called often " kill-devil." The making of rum aided and almost supported the slave-trade in this country. The poor negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea-captains and merchants and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves were then carried on slave-ships to the West Indies, and sold at a large profit to planters and slave-dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa. Thus the circle of molasses, 163 Home Life in Colonial Days rum, and slaves was completed. Many slaves were also landed in New England, but there was no crop there that needed negroes to raise it. So slavery never was as common in New England as in the South, where the tropical tobacco and rice fields needed negro labor. But New England's share in promoting negro slavery in America was just as great as was Virginia's. Besides all the rum that was sent to Africa, much was drunk by Americans at home. At weddings, funerals, christenings, at all public meetings and private feasts, New England rum was ever present. In nothing is more contrast shown between our present day and colonial times than in the habits of liquor-drinking. We cannot be grateful enough for the temperance reform, which began at the early part of this century, and was so sadly needed. For many years the colonists had no tea, choco- late, or coffee to drink; for those were not in use in England when America was settled. In 169o two dealers were licensed to sell tea " in publique " in Boston. Green and bohea teas were sold at the Boston apothecaries' in 1712. For many years tea was also sold like medicine in England at the apothecaries' and not at the grocers'. Many queer mistakes were made through igno- rance of its proper use. Many colonists put the 164 Meat and Drink tea into water, boiled it for a time, threw the liquid away, and ate the tea-leaves. In Salem they did not find the leaves very attractive, so they put butter and salt on them. In I670 a Boston woman was licensed to sell coffee and chocolate, and soon coffee-houses were established there. Some did not know how to cook coffee any more than tea, but boiled the whole coffee-beans in water, ate them, and drank the liquid; and naturally this was not very good either to eat or drink. At the time of the Stamp Act, when patriotic Americans threw the tea into Boston harbor, Ameri- cans were just as great tea-drinkers as the English. Now it is not so. The English drink much more tea than we do; and the habit of coffee-drinking, first acquired in the Revolution, has descended from generation to generation, and we now drink more coffee than tea. This is one of the differ- ences in our daily life caused by the Revolution. Many home-grown substitutes were used in Rev- olutionary times for tea: ribwort was a favorite one; strawberry and currant leaves, sage, thorough- wort, and " Liberty Tea," made from the four- leaved loosestrife. "Hyperion tea " was raspberry leaves, and was said by good patriots to be "very delicate and most excellent." CHAPTER VIII FLAX CULTURE AND SPINNING IN recounting the various influences which as- sisted the Americans to success in the War for Independence, such as the courage and integ- rity of the American generals, the generosity of the American people, the skill of Americans in marks- manship, their powers of endurance, their acclima- tization, their confidence and faith, etc., we must never forget to add their independence in their own homes of any outside help to give them every necessity of life. No farmer or his wife need fear any king when on every home farm was found food, drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, shelter. Home-made was an adjective that might be applied to nearly every article in the house. Such would not be the case under similar stress to-day. In the matter of clothing alone we could not now be inde- pendent. Few farmers raise flax to make linen; few women can spin either wool or flax, or weave cloth; many cannot knit. In early days every farmer and his sons raised wool and flax; his wife x66 Flax Culture and Spinning and daughters spun them into thread and yarn, knit these into stockings and mittens, or wove them into linen and cloth, and then made them into clothing. Even in large cities nearly all women spun yarn and thread, all could knit, and many had hand-looms to weave cloth at home. These home occupations in the production of clothing have been very happily termed the "homespun industries." Nearly every one has seen one of the pretty foot- wheels for spinning flax thread for linen, which may yet be found in the attics of many of our farm- houses, as well as in some of our parlors, where, with a bunch of flax wound around and tied to the spindle, they have within a few years been placed as a relic of the olden times. If one of these flax-wheels could speak to-day, it would sing a tale of the patient industry, of the tiring work of our grandmothers, even when they were little children, which ought never to be for- gotten. As soon as the colonists had cleared their farms from stones and stumps, they planted a field, or "patch" of flax, and usually one of hemp. The seed was sown broadcast like grass-seed in May. Flax is a graceful plant with pretty drooping blue flowers; hemp has but a sad-colored blossom. 167 Home Life in Colonial Days Thomas Tusser says in his Book of House. wifery : - "c Good flax and good hemp to have of her own, In May a good huswife will see it be sown. And afterwards trim it to serve in a need; The fimble to spin, the card for her seed." When the flax plants were three or four inches high, they were weeded by young women or chil- dren who had to work barefoot, as the stalks were very tender. If the land had a growth of thistles, the weeders could wear three or four pairs of woollen stockings. The children had to step facing the wind, so if any plants were trodden down the wind would help to blow them back into place. When the flax was ripe, in the last of June or in July, it was pulled up by the roots and laid out carefully to dry for a day or two, and turned several times in the sun; this work was called pulling and spread- ing, and was usually done by men and boys. It then was " rippled." A coarse wooden or heavy iron wire comb with great teeth, named a ripple- comb, was fastened on a plank; the stalks of flax were drawn through it with a quick stroke to break off the seed-bolles or "bobs," which fell on a sheet spread to catch them; these were saved for seed for the next crop, or for sale. x68 Flax Culture and Spinning Rippling was done in the field. The stalks were then tied in bundles called beats or bates and stacked. They were tied only at the seed end, and the base of the stalks was spread out forming a tent-shaped stack, called a stook. When dry, th. stalks were watered to rot the leaves and softer fibres. Hemp was watered without rippling. This was done preferably in running water, as the rotting flax poisoned fish. Stakes were set in the water in the form of a square, called a steep-pool, and the bates of flax or hemp were piled in solidly, each alternate layer at right angles with the one beneath it. A cover of boards and heavy stones was piled on top. In four or five days the bates were taken up and the rotted leaves removed. A slower process was termed dew-retting; an old author calls it "a vile and naughty way," but it was the way chiefly employed in America. When the flax was cleaned, it was once more dried and tied in bundles. Then came work for strong men, to break it on the ponderous flax-brake, to separate the fibres and get out from the centre the hard woody "hexe" or "bun." Hemp was also broken. A flax-brake is an implement which is almost impossible to describe. It was a heavy log of wood about five feet long, either large enough so the flat I69 Home Life in Colonial Days top was about three feet from the ground, or set on heavy logs to bring it to that height. A portion of the top was cut down leaving a block at each end, and several .. long slats were set in length- wise and held firm at each end with edges up, by being set into the end blocks. Then a similar set of slats, put in a heavy frame, was made with the slats set far enough apart to go into the Flax-brake spaces of the lower slats. The flax was laid on the lower slats, the frame and upper slats placed on it, and then pounded down with a heavy wooden mallet weighing many pounds. Sometimes the upper frame of slats, or knives as they were called, were hinged to the big under log at one end, and heavily weighted at the 170 Flax Culture and Spinning other, and thus the blow was given by the fall of the weight, not by the force of the farmer's muscle. The tenacity of the flax can be seen when it would stand this violent beating; and the cruel blow can be imagined, which the farmer's fingers sometimes got when he care- lessly thrust his hand with the flax too far under the descending jaw - a shark's maw was equally gentle. Flax was usu- ally broken twice, once with an " open - tooth brake," once with a "close or strait brake," that is, one where the long, sharp-edge strips of wood Swingling Block and Swingling Knives were set closely together. Then it was scutched or swingled with a swingling block and knife, to take out any small particles of bark that might adhere. A man could Home Life in Colonial Days swingle forty pounds of flax a day, but it was hard work. All this had to be done in clear sunny weather when the flax was as dry as tinder. The clean fibres were then made into bundle, called strikes. The strikes were swingled again, and from the refuse called swingle-tree hurds, coarse bagging could be spun and woven. After being thoroughly cleaned the rolls or strikes were some- times beetled, that is, pounded in a wooden trough with a great pestle-shaped beetle over and over again until soft. Then came the hackling or hetcheling, and the fineness of the flax depended upon the number of hacklings, the fineness of the various hackles or hetchels or combs, and the dexterity of the operator. In the hands of a poor hackler the best of flax would be converted into tow. The flax was slightly wetted, taken hold of at one end of the bunch, and drawn through the hackle-teeth towards the hetchel- ler, and thus fibres were pulled and laid into con- tinuous threads, while the short fibres were combed out. It was dusty, dirty work. The threefold process had to be all done at once; the fibres had to be divided to their fine filaments, the long threads laid in untangled line, and the tow sepa- rated and removed. After the first hackle, called a ruffler, six other finer hackles were often used. It 172 Flax Culture and Spinning Flax, Flax Basket, Flax Hetchels was one of the surprises of flax preparation to see how little good fibre would be left after all this hackling, even from a large mass of raw material, but it was equally surprising to see how much linen thread could be made from this small amount of fine flax. The fibres were sorted according to fine- ness ; this was called spreading and drawing. So then after over twenty dexterous manipulations the Home Life in Colonial Days flax was ready for the wheel, for spinning, - the most dexterous process of all, - and was wrapped round the spindle. Seated at the small flax-wheel, the spinner placed her foot on the treadle, and spun the fibre into a long, even thread. Hung on the wheel was a small bone, wood, or earth- enware cup, or a gourd-shell, filled with wa- ter, in which the spinner moistened her fingers as she held the twist- Clock-reel ing flax, which by the movement of the wheel was wound on bob- bins. When all were filled, the thread was wound off in knots and skeins on a reel. A machine called a clock-reel counted the exact number of strands in a knot, usually forty, and ticked when the requisite Flax Culture and Spinning number had been wound. Then the spinner would stop and tie the knot. A quaint old ballad has the refrain : " And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked." That is, the lover seized the rare and propitious moments of Mistress Polly's comparative leisure to kiss her. Usually the knots or lays were of forty threads, and twenty lays made a skein or slipping. The number varied, however, with locality. To spin two skeins of linen thread was a good day's work; for it a spinner was paid eight cents a day and " her keep." These skeins of thread had to be bleached. They were laid in warm water for four days, the water being frequently changed, and the skeins constantly wrung out. Then they were washed in the brook till the water came from them clear and pure. Then they were " bucked," that is, bleached with ashes and hot water, in a bucking-tub, over and over again, then laid in clear water for a week, and afterwards came a grand seething, rinsing, beating, washing, drying, and winding on bobbins for the loom. Sometimes the bleaching was done with slaked lime or with buttermilk. These were not the only bleaching operations the 175 Home Life in Colonial Days flax went through; others will be detailed in the chapter on hand-weaving. One lucrative product of flax should be men- tioned - flaxseed. Flax was pulled for spinning when the base of the stalk began to turn yellow, which was usually the first of July. An old saying was, "June brings the flax." For seed it stood till it was all yellow. The flaxseed was used for mak- ing oil. Usually the upper chambers of country stores were filled a foot deep with flaxseed in the autumn, waiting for good sleighing to convey the seed to town. In New Hampshire in early days, a wheelwright was not a man who made wagon-wheels (as such he would have had scant occupation), but one who made spinning-wheels. Often he carried them around the country on horseback selling them, thus adding another to the many interesting itinera- cies of colonial days. Spinning-wheels would seem clumsy for horse-carriage, but they were not set up, and several could be compactly carried when taken apart; far more ticklish articles went on pack- horses, -large barrels, glazed window-sashes, etc. Nor would it seem very difficult for a man to carry spinning-wheels on horseback, when frequently a woman would jump on horseback in the early morn- ing, and with a baby on one arm and a flax-wheel 176 Flax Culture and Spinning tied behind, would ride several miles to a neighbor's to spend the day spinning in cheerful companion- ship. A century ago one of these wheelwrights sold a fine spinning-wheel for a dollar, a clock-reel for two dollars, and a wool-wheel for two dollars. Few persons are now living who have ever seen carried on in a country home in America any of these old-time processes which have been recounted. As an old antiquary wrote:-- " Few have ever seen a woman hatchel flax or card tow, or heard the buzzing of the foot-wheel, or seen bunches of flaxen yarn hanging in the kitchen, or linen cloth whitening on the grass. The flax-dresser with the shives, fibres, and dirt of flax covering his garments, and his face begrimed with flax-dirt has disappeared; the noise of his brake and swingling knife has ended, and the boys no longer make bonfires of his swingling tow. The sound of the spinning- wheel, the song of the spinster, and the snapping of the clock-reel all have ceased; the.warping bars and quill wheel are gone, and the thwack of the loom is heard only in the factory. The spinning woman of King Lemuel cannot be found." Frequent references are made to flax in the Bible, notably in the Book of Proverbs; and the methods of growing and preparing flax by the ancient Egyp- tians were precisely the same as those of the Ameri- can colonist a hundred years ago, of the Finn, Lapp, 177 Home Life in Colonial Days Norwegian, and Belgian flax-growers to-day. This ancient skill was not confined to flax-working. Rosselini, the eminent hierologist, says that every modern craftsman may see on Egyptian monument" four thousand years old, representations of the process of his craft just as it is carried on to-day. The paintings in the Grotto of El Kab, shown in Hamilton's �Agyptica, show the pulling, stocking, tying, and rippling of flax going on just as it is done in Egypt now. The four-tooth ripple of the Egyptian is improved upon, but it is the same implement. Pliny gives an account of the mode of preparing flax: plucking it up by the roots, tying it in bundles, drying, watering, beating, and hackling it, or, as he says, "combing it with iron hooks." Until the Christian era linen was almost the only kind of clothing used in Egypt, and the teeming banks of the Nile furnished flax in abundance. The quality of the linen can be seen in the bands pre- served on mummies. It was not, however, spun on a wheel, but on a hand-distaff, called sometimes a rock, on which the women in India still spin the very fine thread which is employed in making India muslins. The distaff was used in our colonies; it was ordered that children and others tending sheep or cattle in the fields should also " be set to some other employment withal, such as spinning upon 178 Flax Culture and Spinning the rock, knitting, weaving tape, etc." I heard recently a distinguished historian refer in a lecture to this colonial statute, and he spoke of the children sitting upon a rock while knitting or spinning, etc., evidently klnowing naught of the proper significa- tion of the word. The homespun industries have ever been held to have a beneficent and peace-bringing influence on women. Wordsworth voiced this sentiment when he wrote his series of sonnets beginning:-- " Grief! thou hast lost a.n ever-ready friend Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute." Chaucer more cynically says, through the Wife of Bath : - " Deceite, weepynge, spynnynge God hath give To wymmen kyndely that they may live." Spinning doubtless was an ever-ready refuge in the monotonous life of the early colonist. She soon had plenty of material to work with. Everywhere, even in the earliest days, the culture of flax was encouraged. By 1640 the Court of Massachusetts passed two orders directing the growth of flax, ascer- taining what colonists were skilful in breaking, spin- ning, weaving, ordering that boys and girls be taught to spin, and offering a bounty for linen 179 Home Life in Colonial Days grown, spun, and woven in the colony. Connecti. cut passed similar measures. Soon spinning-classes were formed, and every family ordered to spin so many pounds of flax a year, or to pay a fine. The industry received a fresh impulse through the immi- gration of about one hundred Irish families from Londonderry. They settled in New Hampshire on the Merrimac about 1719, and spun and wove with far more skill than prevailed among those English settlers who had already become Americans. They established a manufactory according to Irish methods, and attempts at a similar establishment were made in Boston. There was much public excitement over spinning, and prizes were offered for quantity and quality. Women, rich as well as poor, appeared on Boston Common with their wheels, thus making spinning a popular holiday recreation. A brick building was erected as a spinning-school costing �I5,000, and a tax was placed on carriages and coaches in 1757 to support it. At the fourth anniversary in 1749 of the " Boston Society for promoting Industry and Frugality," three hundred " young spinsters " spun on their wheels on Boston Common. And a pretty sight it must have been: the fair young girls in the quaint and pretty dress of the times, shown to us in Hogarth's prints, spinning on the green grass under 18o Flax Culture and Spinning 181 the great trees. In I754, on a like occasion, a minister preached to the " spinsters," and a collec- tion of ,453 was taken up. This was in currency of depreciated value. At the same time premiums were offered in Pennsylvania for weaving linen and spinning thread. Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Poor Richard's Almanac :-- " Many estates are spent in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting." But the German colonists long before this had been famous flax-raisers. A Pennsylvania poet in I692 descanted on the flax-workers of Germantown :- "Where live High German people and Low Dutch Whose trade in' weaving linen cloth is much, There grows the flax as also you may know, That from the same they do divide the tow." Father Pastorius, their leader, forever commemo- rated his interest in his colony and in the textile arts by his choice for a device for a seal. Whittier thus describes it in his Pennsylvania Pilgrim:-- "Still on the town-seal his device is found, Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a three-foil ground With Finum, Linum, et Textrinum wound." Virginia was earlier even in awakening interest in manufacturing flax than Massachusetts, for wild fla3 Home Life in Colonial Days grew there in profusion, ready for gathering. In 1646 two houses were ordered to be erected at Jamestown as spinning-schools. These were to be well built and well heated. Each county was to send to these schools two poor children, seven or eight years old, to be taught carding, spinning, and knitting. Each child was to be supplied by the county authorities on admission to the school with six barrels of Indian corn, a pig, two hens, clothing, shoes, a bed, rug, blanket, two coverlets, a wooden tray, and two pewter dishes or cups. This plan was n'ot wholly carried out. Prizes in tobacco (which was the current money of Virginia in which every- thing was paid) were given, however, for every pound of flax, every skein of yarn, every yard of linen of Virginia production, and soon flax-wheels and spinners were plentiful. Intelligent attempts were made to start these industries in the South. Governor Lucas wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Pinckney, in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1745 : - " I send by this Sloop two Irish servants, viz.: a Weaver and a Spinner. I am informed Mr. Cattle hath produced both Flax and Hemp. I pray you will purchase some, and order a loom and spinning-wheel to be made for them, and set them to work. I shall order Flax sent from Philadel- phia with seed, that they may not be ;ale. I pray you will I82 Flax Culture and Spinning also purchase Wool and sett them to making Negroes cloth- ing which may be sufficient for my own People. " As I am afraid one Spinner can't keep a Loom at work, I pray you will order a Sensible Negroe woman or two to learn to spin, and wheels to be made for them; the man Servant will direct the Carpenter in making the loom and the woman will direct the Wheel." The following year Madam Pinckney wrote to her father that the woman had spun all the material they could get, so was idle; that the loom had been made, but had no tackling; that she would make the harness for it, if two pounds of shoemaker's thread were sent her. The sensible negro woman and hundreds of others learned well to spin, and excellent cloth has been always woven in the low country of Carolina, as well as in the upper districts, till our own time. In the revolt of feeling caused by the Stamp Act, there was a constant social pressure to encourage the manufacture and wearing of goods of American manufacture. As one evidence of this movement the president and first graduating class of Rhode Island College - now Brown University - were clothed in fabrics made in New England. From Massachusetts to South Carolina the women of the colonies banded together in patriotic societies called Daughters of Liberty, agreeing to wear only gar- I83 Home Life in Colonial Days ments of homespun manufacture, and to drink no tea. In many New England towns they gathered together to spin, each bringing her own wheel. At one meeting seventy linen-wheels were employed. In Rowley, Massachusetts, the meeting of the Daughters is thus described :-- " A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the. day at the house of the Rev'd Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies there appearing neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment. After which being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Matters of church and patriotism were never far apart in New England; so whenever the spinners gathered at New London, Newbury, Ipswich, or Beverly, they always had an appropriate sermon. A favorite text was Exodus xxxv. 25: " And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands." When the Northboro women met, they presented the results of their day's work to their minister. There were forty-four women and they spun 2223 knots of linen and tow, and wove one linen sheet and two towels. 184 Flax Culture and Spinning By Revolutionary times General Howe thought " Linen and Woollen Goods much wanted by the Rebels"; hence when he prepared to evacuate Boston he ordered all such goods carried away with him. But he little knew the domestic industrial resources of the Americans. Women were then most profi- cient in spinning. In 1777 Miss Eleanor Fry of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, spun seven skeins one knot linen yarn in one day, an extraordinary amount. This was enough to weave twelve linen handker- chiefs. At this time when there were about five or six skeins to a pound of flax, the pay for spinning was sixpence a skein. The Abbe Robin wondered at the deftness of New England spinners. In 1789 an outcry was raised against the luxury said to be eating away the substance of the new country. The poor financial administration of the government seemed deranging everything; and again a social movement was instituted in New England to promote " Oeconomy and Household Indus- tries." "The Rich and Great strive by example to convince the Populace of their error by Growing their own Flax and Wool, having some one in the Family to dress it, and all the Females spin, several weave and bleach the linen." The old spinning- matches were revived. Again the ministers preached to the faithful women " Oeconomists," who thus 185 Home Life in Colonial Days combined religion, patriotism, and industry. Truly it was, as a contemporary writer said, "a pleasing Sight: some spinning, some reeling, some carding cotton, some combing flax," as they were preached to. Within a few years attempts have been made in England and Ireland to encourage flax-growing, as before it is spun it gives employment to twenty dif- ferent classes of laborers, many parts of which work can be done by young and unskilled children. In Courtrai, where hand spinning and weaving of flax still flourish, the average earnings of a family are three pounds a week. In Finland homespun linen still is made in every household. The British Spinning and Weaving School in New Bond Street is an attempt to revive the vanished industry in England. In our own country it is pleasant to record that the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers is planning to start on a large scale the culture and manufacture of flax in our Eastern states; this is not, however, with any thought of reviving either the preparation, spinning, or weaving of flax by old-time hand processes. x86 Flax-soining CHAPTER IX WOOL CULTURE AND SPINNING With a Postscript on Cotton HE art of spinning was an honorable occu- pation for women as early as the ninth century; and it was so universal that it furnished a legal title by which an unmarried woman is known to this day. Spinster is the only one of all her various womanly titles that survives; webster, shepster, litster, brewster, and baxter are obsolete. The occupations are also obsolete save those indicated by shepster and baxter --that is, the cutting out of cloth and baking of bread; these are the only duties among them all that she still performs. The wool industry dates back to prehistoric man. The patience, care, and skill involved in its manu- facture have ever exercised a potent influence on civilization. It is, therefore, interesting and grati- fying to note the intelligent eagerness of our first colonists for wool culture. It was quickly and proudly noted of towns and of individuals as a 187 Home Life in Colonial Days proof of their rapid and substantial progress that they could carry on any of the steps of the cloth industry. Good Judge Sewall piously exulted when Brother Moody started a successful fulling- mill in Boston. Johnson in his Wonder-working Providence tells with pride that by 1654 New Eng- landers " have a fulling-mill and caused their little ones to be very dilligent in spinning cotton-woole, many of them having been clothiers in England." This has ever seemed to me one of the fortunate conditions that tended to the marked success of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, that so many had been " clothiers " or cloth-workers in England; or had come from shires in England where wool was raised and cloth made, and hence knew the importance of the industry as well as its practical workings. As early as 1643 the author of New England's First Fruits wrote: " They are making linens, fustians, dimities, and look immediately to woollens from their own sheep." Johnson estimated the number of sheep in the colony of Massachusetts, about 1644, as three thousand. Soon the great wheel was whir- ring in every New England house. The raising of sheep was encouraged in every way. They were permitted to graze on the commons; it was for, bidden to send them from the colony; no sheep under two years old could be killed to sell; if a dog 188 Wool Culture and Spinning killed a sheep, the dog's owner must hang him and pay double the cost of the sheep. All persons who were not employed in other ways, as single women, girls, and boys, were required to spin. Each family must contain one spinner. These spinners were formed into divisions or "squadrons " of ten per- sons; each division had a director. There were no drones in this hive; neither the wealth nor high station of parents excused children from this work. Thus all were levelled to one kind of labor, and by this levelling all were also elevated to indepen- dence. When the open expression of revolt came, the homespun industries seemed a firm rock for the foundation of liberty. People joined in agreements to eat no lamb or mutton, that thus sheep might be preserved, and to wear no imported woollen cloth. They gave prizes for spinning and weaving. Great encouragement was given in Virginia in early days to the raising and manufacture of wool. The Assembly estimated that five children not over thirteen years of age could by their work readily spin and weave enough to keep thirty persons clothed. Six pounds of tobacco was paid to any one bringing to the county court-house where he resided a yard of homespun woollen cloth, made wholly in his family; twelve pounds of tobacco were offered for reward for a dozen pair of wool- I89 -lHome Life in Colonial Days ien hose knitted at home. Slaves were taught to spin; and wool-wheels and wool-cards are found by the eighteenth century on every inventory of planters' house furnishings. The Pennsylvania settlers were early in the en- couragement of wool manufacture. The present industry of hosiery and knit goods long known as Germantown goods began with the earliest settlers of that Pennsylvania town. Stocking-weavers were there certainly as early as 1723; and it is asserted there were knitting-machines. At any rate, one Mack, the son of the founder of the Dunkers, made "leg stockings " and gloves. Rev. Andrew Bur- naby, who was in Germantown in 1759, told of a great manufacture of stockings at that date. In 1777 it was said that a hundred Germantown stock- ing-weavers were out of employment through the war. Still it was not till 1850o that patents for knitting-machines were taken out there. Among the manufactures of the province of Pennsylvania in I698 were druggets, serges, and coverlets; and among the registered tradesmen were dyers, fullers, comb-makers, card-makers, weavers, and spinners. The Swedish colony as early as 1673 had the wives and daughters "employing them- selves in spinning wool and flax and many in weav- ing." The fairs instituted by William Penn for Sgo Wool Culture and Spinning the encouragement of domestic manufactures and trade in general, which were fostered by Franklin and continued till 1775, briskly stimulated wool and flax manufacture. In 1765 and in 1775 rebellious Philadelphians banded together with promises not to eat or suffer to be eaten in their families any lamb or "meat of the mutton kind "; in this the Philadelphia butchers, patriotic and self-sacrificing, all joined. A wool-factory was built and fitted up and an appeal made to the women to save the state. In a month four hundred wool-spinners were at work. But the war cut off the supply of raw material, and the manufacture languished. In 1790, after the war, fifteen hundred sets of irons for spinning-wheels were sold from one shop, and mechanics everywhere were making looms. New Yorkers were not behindhand in industry. Lord Cornbury wrote home to England, in 1705, that he "had seen serge made upon' Long Island that any man might wear; they make very good linen for common use; as for Woollen I think they have brought that to too great perfection." In Cornbury's phrase, " too great perfection," may be found the key for all the extraordinary and apparently stupid prohibitions and restrictions placed by the mother-country on colonial wool manufact- 191 Home Life in Colonial Days ure. The growth of the woollen industry in any colony was regarded at once by England with jeal- ous eyes. Wool was the pet industry and principal staple of Great Britain; and well it might be, for until the reign of Henry VIII. English garments from head to foot were wholly of wool, even the shoes. Wool was also received in England as cur- rency. Thomas Fuller said, "The wealth of our nation is folded up in broadcloth." Therefore, the Crown, aided by the governors of the provinces, sought to maintain England's monopoly by regu- lating and reducing the culture of wool in America through prohibiting the exportation to England of any American wool or woollen materials. In 1699 all vessels sailing to England from the colonies were prohibited taking on board any "Wool, Woolfells, Shortlings, Moslings, Wool Flocks, Worsteds, Bays, Bay or Woollen Yarn, Cloath, Serge, Kersey, Says, Frizes, Druggets, Shalloons, etc."; and an arbitrary law was passed prohibiting the transporta- tion of home-made woollens from one American province to another. These laws were never fully observed and never checked the culture and manu- acture of wool in this country. Hence our colo- nies were spared the cruel fate by which England's same policy paralyzed and obliterated in a few years the glorious wool industry of Ireland. Luckily 192 Wool Culture and Spinning 193 for us, it is further across the Atlantic Ocean than across St. George's Channel. The "all-wool goods a yard wide," which we so easily purchase to-day, meant to the colonial dame or daughter the work of many weeks and months, from the time when the fleeces were first given to her deft hands. Fleeces had to be opened with care, and have all pitched or tarred locks, dag- locks, brands, and feltings cut out. These cut- tings were not wasted, but were spun into coarse yarn. The white locks were carefully tossed and separated and tied into net bags with tallies to be dyed. Another homely saying, "dyed in the wool," showed a process of much skill. Blue, in all shades, was the favorite color, and was dyed with indigo. So great was the demand for this dye-stuff that indigo-pedlers travelled over the country selling it. Madder, cochineal, and logwood dyed beautiful reds. The bark of red oak or hickory made very pretty shades of brown and yellow. Various flowers growing on the farm could be used for dyes. The flower of the goldenrod, when pressed of its juice, mixed with indigo, and added to alum, made a beautiful green. The juice of the pokeberry boiled with alum made crimson dye, and a violet juice from the petals of the iris, or "flower-de-luce," Home Life in Colonial Days that blossomed in June meadows, gave a delicate light purple tinge to white wool. The bark of the sassafras was used for dyeing yellow or orange color, and the flowers and leaves of the balsam also. Fustic and copperas gave yel- low dyes. A good black was obtained by boiling woollen cloth with a quantity of the leaves of the common field-sorrel, then boiling again with log- wood and copperas. In the South there were scores of flowers and leaves that could be used for dyes. During the Revolutionary War one enterprising South Caroli- nian got a guinea a pound for a yellow dye he made from the sweet-leaf or horse-laurel. The leaves and berries of gall-berry bush made a good black much used by hatters and weavers. The root of the barberry gave wool a beautiful yellow, as did the leaves of the devil's-bit. The petals of Jerusalem artichoke and St.-John's-wort dyed yel low. Yellow root is a significant name and reveals its use: oak, walnut, or maple bark dyed brown. Often the woven cloth was dyed, not the wool. The next process was carding; the wool was first greased with rape oil or "melted swine's grease," which had to be thoroughly worked in; about three pounds of grease were put into ten pounds of wool. Wool-cards were rectangular pieces of thin board, 194 Wool Culture and Spinning with a simple handle on the back or at the side; to this board was fastened a smaller rectangle of strong leather, set thick with slightly bent wire teeth, like a coarse brush. The carder took one card with her Carding Wool left hand, and resting it on her knee, drew a tuft of wool across it several times, until a sufficient quantity of fibre had been caught upon the wire teeth. She then drew the second wool-card, which had to be warmed, across the first several times, until the Home Life in Colonial Days fibres were brushed parallel by all these "tum- mings." Then by a deft and catchy motion the wool was rolled or carded into small fleecy rolls which were then ready for spinning. Wool-combs were shaped like the letter T, with about thirty long steel teeth from ten to eighteen inches long set at right angles with the top of the T. The wool was carefully placed on one comb, and with careful strokes the other comb laid the long staple smooth for hard-twisted spinning. It was tedious and slow work, and a more skilful opera- tion than carding; and the combs had to be kept constantly heated; but no machine-combing ever equalled hand-combing. There was a good deal of waste in this combing, that is, large clumps of tangled wool called noil were combed out. They were not really wasted, we may be sure, by our frugal ancestors, but were spun into coarse yarn. An old author says: "The action of spinning must be learned by practice, not by relation." Sung by the poets, the grace and beauty of the occupation has ever shared praise with its utility. Wool-spinning was truly one of the most flexible and alert series of movements in the world, and to its varied and graceful poises our grandmothers may owe part of the dignity of carriage that was so characteristic of them. The spinner stood slightly 196 Wool Culture and Spinning Wool-spinning leaning forward, lightly poised on the ball of the left foot; with her left hand she picked up from the platform of the wheel a long slender roll of the Soft carded wool about as large round as the little finger, and deftly wound the end of the fibres on the point of the spindle. She then gave a gentle Home Life in Colonial Days motion to the wheel with a wooden peg held in her right hand, and seized with the left the roll at ex- actly the right distance from the spindle to allow for one "drawing." Then the hum of the wheel rose to a sound like the echo of wind; she stepped backward quickly, one, two, three steps, holding high the long yarn as it twisted and quivered. Suddenly she glided forward with even, graceful stride and let the yarn wind on the swift spindle. Another pinch of the wool-roll, a new turn of the wheel, and da capo. The wooden peg held by the spinner deserves a short description; it served the purpose of an elongated finger, and was called a driver, wheel-peg, etc. It was about nine inches long, an inch or so in diameter; and at about an inch from the end was slightly grooved in order that it might surely catch the spoke and thus propel the wheel. It was a good day's work for a quick, active spin- ner to spin six skeins of yarn a day. It was esti- mated that to do that with her quick backward and forward steps she walked over twenty miles. The yarn might be wound directly upon the wooden spindle as it was spun, or at the end of the spindle might be placed a spool or broach which twisted with the revolving spindle, and held the new-spun yarn. This broach was usually simply a 198 Wool Culture and Spinning 199 stiff roll of paper, a corn-cob, or a roll of corn-husk. When the ball of yarn was as large as the broach Triple Reel would hold, the spinner placed wooden pegs in certain holes in the spokes of her spinning-wheel Home Life in Colonial Days and tied the end of the yarn to one peg. Then she took off the belt of her wheel and whirred the big wheel swiftly round, thus winding the yarn on the pegs into hanks or clews two yards in circumference, which were afterwards tied with a loop of yarn into knots of forty threads; while seven of these knots made a skein. The clock-reel was used for winding yarn, also a triple reel. The yarn might be wound from the spindle into skeins in another way, - by using a hand-reel, an implement which really did exist in every farm- house, though the dictionaries are ignorant of it, as they are of its universal folk-name, niddy-noddy. This is fortunately preserved in an every-day do- mestic riddle:-- "Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, Two heads and one body." The three pieces of these niddy-noddys were set together at curious angles, and are here shown rather than described in words. Holding the reel in the left hand by seizing the central "body " or rod, the yarn was wound from end to end of the reel, by an odd, waving, wobbling motion, into knots and skeins of the same size as by the first process described. One of these niddy-noddys was owned by Nabby Marshall of Deerfield, who lived to be one hundred 200 Wool Culture and Spinning o20t " Niddy-noddy, two heads and one body" and four years old. The other was brought from Ireland in 1733 by Hugh Maxwell, father of the Revolutionary patriot Colonel Maxwell. As it was at a time of English prohibitions and restric- tions of American manufactures, this niddy-noddy, as an accessory and promoter of colonial wool man- ufacture, was smuggled into the country. Sometimes the woollen yarn was spun twice; es- pecially if a close, hard-twisted thread was desired, to be woven into a stiff, wiry cloth. When there were two, the first spinning was called a roving. The single spinning was usually deemed sufficient to furnish yarn for knitting, where softness and warmth were the desired requisites. Home Life in Colonial Days It was the pride of a good spinster to spin the finest yarn, and one Mistress Mary Prigge spun a pound of wool into fifty hanks of eighty-four thou- sand yards; in all, nearly forty-eight miles. If the yarn was to be knitted, it had to be washed and cleansed. The wife of Colonel John May, a prominent man in Boston, wrote in her diary for one day:- "A large kettle of yarn to attend upon. Lucretia and self rinse, scour through many waters, get out, dry, attend to, bring in, do up and sort I Io score of yarn; this with baking and ironing. Then went to hackling flax." It should be remembered that all those bleach- ing processes, the wringing out and rinsing in vari- ous waters, were far more wearisome then than they would be to-day, for the water had to be carried labo- riously in pails and buckets, and drawn with pumps and well-sweeps; there were no pipes and conduits. Happy the household that had a running brook near the kitchen door. Of course all these operations and manipulations usually occupied many weeks and months, but they could be accomplished in a much shorter time. When President Nott of Union College, and his brother Samuel, the famous preacher, were boys on a stony farm in Connecticut, one of the brothers 202 Wool Culture and Spinning needed a new suit of clothes, and as the father was sick there was neither money nor wool in the house. The mother sheared some half-grown fleece from her sheep, and in less than a week the boy wore it as clothing. The shivering and generous sheep were protected by wrappings of braided straw. During the Revolution, it is said that in a day and a night a mother and her daughters in Townsend, Massachusetts, sheared a black and a white sheep, carded from the fleece a gray wool, spun, wove, cut and made a suit of clothes for a boy to wear off to fight for liberty. The wool industry easily furnished home occupa- tion to an entire family. Often by the bright fire- light in the early evening every member of the household might be seen at work on the various stages of wool manufacture or some of its necessary adjuncts, and varied and cheerful industrial sounds fill the room. The old grandmother, at light and easy work, is carding the wool into fleecy rolls, seated next the fire; for, as the ballad says, "she was old and saw right dimly." The mother, step- ping as lightly as one of her girls, spins the rolls into woollen yarn on the great wheel. The oldest daughter sits at the clock-reel, whose continuous buzz and occasional click mingles with the humming rise and fall of the wool-wheel, and the irritating 20o3 Home Life in Colonial Days scratch, scratch, of the cards. A little girl at a small wheel is filling quills with woollen yarn for the loom, not a skilled work; the irregular sound shows her intermittent industry. The father is setting fresh teeth in a wool-card, while the boys are whittling hand-reels and loom-spools. Woo:-cards One of the household implements used in wool manufacture, the wool-card, deserves a short special history as well as a description. In early days the leather back of the wool-card was pierced with an awl by hand; the wire teeth were cut off from a length of wire, were slightly bent, and set and clinched one by one. These cards were laboriously made by many persons at home, for their household use. As early as 1667 wire was made in Massachu- Wool Culture and Spinning setts; and its chief use was for wool-cards. By Revolutionary times it was realized that the use of wool-cards was almost the mainspring of the wool industry, and CIoo bounty was offered by Massa- chusetts for card-wire made in the state from iron mined in what they called then the " United Ameri- can States." In 1784 a machine was invented by an American which would cut and bend thirty-six thousand wire teeth an hour. Another machine pierced the leather backs. This gave a new em- ployment to women and children at home and some spending-money. They would get boxes of the bent wire teeth and bundles of the leather backs from the factories and would set the teeth in the backs while sitting around the open fire in the even- ing. They did this work, too, while visiting-- spending an afternoon; and it was an unconscious and diverting work like knitting; scholars set wool- cards while studying, and schoolmistresses while teaching. This method of manufacture was super- seded fifteen years later by a machine invented by Amos Whittemore, which held, cut, and pierced the leather, drew the wire from a reel, cut and bent a looped tooth, set it, bent it, fastened the leather on the back, and speedily turned out a fully made card. John Randolph said this machine had everything but an immortal soul. By this time spinning and weav o20 Home Life in Colonial Days ing machinery began to crowd out home work, and the machine-made cards were needed to keep up with the increased aemand. At last machines crowded into every department of cloth manufacture; and after carding-machines were invented in England --great rollers set with card-teeth - they were set up in many mills throughout the United States. Families soon sent all their wool to these mills to be carded even when it was spun and woven at home. It was sent rolled up in a homespun sheet or blanket pinned with thorns; and the carded rolls ready for spinning were brought home in the same way, and made a still bigger bundle which was light in weight for its size. Sometimes a red-cheeked farmer's lass would be seen riding home from the carding-mill, through New England woods or along New England lanes, with a bundle of carded wool towering up behind her bigger than her horse. Of the use and manufacture of cotton I will speak very shortly. Our greatest, cheapest, most indispensable fibre is also our latest one. It never formed one of the homespun industries of the colo- nies; in fact, it was never an article of extended domestic manufacture. A little cotton was always used in early days for stuffing bedquilts, petticoats, warriors' armor, and similar purposes. It was bought by the pound, 206 Wool Culture and Spinning East India cotton, in small quantities; the seeds were picked out one by one, by hand ; it was carded on wool-cards, and spun into a rather intractable yarn which was used as warp for linsey-woolsey and rag carpets. Even in England no cotton weft, no all- cotton fabrics, were made till after 1760, till Har- greave's time. Sometimes a twisted yarn was made of one thread of cotton and one of wool which was knit into durable stockings. Cotton sewing-thread was unknown in England. Pawtucket women named Wilkinson made the first cotton thread on their home spinning-wheels in 1792. Cotton was planted in America, Bancroft says, in I621, but MacMaster asserts it was never seen growing here till after the Revolution save as a garden ornament with garden flowers. This asser- tion seems oversweeping when Jefferson could write in a letter in 1786:-- "The four southermost States make a great deal of cotton. Their poor are almost entirely clothed with it in winter and summer. In winter they wear shirts of it and outer clothing of cotton and wool mixed. In summe; their shirts are linen, but the outer clothing cotton. The dress of the women is almost entirely of cotton, manu- factured by themselves, except the richer class, and even many of these wear a great deal of homespun cotton. It Is as well manufactured as the calicoes of Europe." 207 Home Life in Colonial Days Still cotton was certainly not a staple of conse- quence. We were the last to enter the list of cotton- producing countries and we have surpassed them all. The difficulty of removing the seeds from the staple practically thrust cotton out of common use. In India a primitive and cumbersome set of rollers called a churka partially cleaned India cotton. A Yankee schoolmaster, Eli Whitney, set King Cot- ton on a throne by his invention of the cotton-gin in 1792. This comparatively simple but inesti- mable invention completely revolutionized cloth manufacture in England and America. It also changed general commerce, industrial development, and the social and economic order of things, for it gave new occupations and offered new modes of life to hundreds of thousands of persons. It entirely changed and cheapened our dress, and altered rural life both in the North and South. A man could, by hand-picking, clean only about a pound of cotton a day. The cotton-gin cleaned as much in a day as had taken the hand-picker a year to accomplish. Cotton was at once planted in vast amounts; but it certainly was not plentiful till then. Whitney had never seen cotton nor cotton seed when he began to plan his invention; nor did he, even in Savannah, find cotton to experi- ment with until after considerable search. 208 Wool Culture and Spinning After the universal manufacture and use of the cotton-gin, negro women wove cotton in Southern houses, sometimes spinning their own cotton thread; more frequently buying it mill-spun. But, after all, this was in too small amounts to be of importance; it needed the spinning-jennies and power-looms of vast mills to use up the profuse supply afforded by the gin. A very interesting account of the domestic manu- facture of cotton in Tennessee about the year I85o was written for me by Mrs. James Stuart Pilcher, State Regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Tennessee. A portion of her pleas- ant story reads:-- "There were two looms in the loom-room, and two negro women were kept busy all the time weaving; there were eight or ten others who did nothing but spin cotton and woollen thread; others spooled and reeled it into hanks. The spinning was all done on the large wheel, from the raw cotton; a corn-shuck was wrapped tightly around the steel spindle, then the thread was run and spun on this shuck until it was full; then these were reeled off into hanks of thread, then spooled on to corn-cobs with holes burned through them. These were placed in an upright frame, with long slender rods of hickory wood something like a ramrod run through them. The frame held about one hundred of these cob-spools; the end of the cotton 20 2Io Home Life in Colonial Days thread from each spool was gathered up by an experienced warper who carried all the threads back and forth on the large warping-bars; this was a difficult task; only the brightest negro women were warpers. The thread had been dyed before spooling and the vari-colored cob-spools could be arranged to make stripes lengthwise of the cloth; and the hanks had also been dipped in a boiling-hot sizing made of meal and water. The warp-threads were carefully taken from the bars and rolled upon the wooden beam of the loom, the ends passed through the sley and tied. The weaver then began her work. The thread for the filling (called the woof by the negroes) was reeled from the hank on the winding-blades, upon small canes about four inches long which, when full, were placed in the wooden shuttles. These women spun and wove all the clothing worn by the negroes on the plantation; cotton cloth for women and men in the summer time; and jeans for the men; linsey- woolsey for the women and children for winter. All were well clothed. The women taught us to spin, but the weavers were cross and would not let us touch the loom, for they said we broke the threads in the warp. My grand- mother never interfered with them when they were careful in their work. We would say, 'Please make Aunt Rhody let me weave! ' She answered, 'No, she is managing the loom; if she is willing, very well; if not, you must not worry her.' We thought it great fun to try to weave, but generally had to pay Aunt Rhody for our meddling by giv- ing her cake, ribbons, or candy." Wool Culture and Spinning The colonists were constantly trying to find new materials for spinning, and also used many make- shifts. Parkman, in his Old Regime, tells that in the year 1704, when a ship was lost that was to bring cloth and wool to Quebec, a Madame de Repentigny, one of the aristocrats of the French- Canadian colony, spun and wove coarse blankets of nettle and linden bark. Similar experiments were made by the English colonists. Coarse thread was spun out of nettle-fibre by pioneers in western New York. Levi Beardsley, in his Reminiscences, tells of his mother at the close of the last century, in her frontier home at Richfield Springs, weaving bags and coarse garments from the nettles which grew so rankly everywhere in that vicinity. Deer hair and even cow's hair was collected from the tanners, spun with some wool, and woven into a sort of felted blanket. Silk-grass, a much-vaunted product, was sent back to England on the first ships and was every- where being experimented with. Coarse wicking was spun from the down of the milkweed - an airy, feathery material that always looks as if it ought to be put to many uses, yet never has seemed of much account in any trial that has been made of it. 211 CHAPTER X HAND-WEAVING A NY one who passed through a New England A village on a week day a century ago, or rode up to the door of a Pennsylvania or Virginia house, would probably be greeted with a heavy thwack-thwack from within doors, a regular sound which would readily be recognized by every one at that time as proceeding from weaving on a hand- loom. The presence of these looms was, perhaps, not so universal in every house as that of their homespun companions, the great and little wheels, for they required more room; but they were found in every house of any considerable size, and in many also where they seemed to fill half the build- ing. Many households had a loom-room, usually in an ell part of the house; others used an attic or a shed-loft as a weaving-room. Every farmer's daughter knew how to weave as well as to spin, yet it was not recognized as wholly woman's work as was spinning; for there was a trade of hand-weav- ing for men, to which they were apprenticed. Every 212 Hand-Weaving town had professional weavers. They were a univer- sally respected class, and became the ancestors of many of the wealthiest and most influential citizens to-day. They took in yarn and thread to weave on their looms at their own homes at so much a yard;. wove their own yarn into stuffs to sell; had appren- tices to their trade; and also went out working by the day at their neighbors' houses, sometimes carry- ing their looms many miles with them. Weavers were a universally popular element of the community. The travelling weaver was, like all other itinerant tradesmen of the day, a welcome newsmonger; and the weaver who took in weaving was often a stationary gossip, and gathered inquiring groups in his loom-room; even children loved to go to his door to beg for bits of colored yarn-- thrums --which they used in their play, and also tightly braided to wear as shoestrings, hair-laces, etc. The hand-loom used in the colonies, and occasion- ally still run in country towns to-day, is an historic machine, one of great antiquity and dignity. It is, perhaps, the most absolute bequest of past centuries which we have had, unchanged, in domestic use till the present time. You may see a loom like the Yan- kee one shown here in Giotto's famous fresco in the Campanile, painted in 1335; another, still the same, in Hogarth's Idle Apprentice, painted just four hun- 213 Home Life in Colonial Days dred years later. Many tribes and nations have hand-looms resembling our own; but these are exactly like it. Hundreds of thousands of men and women of the generations of these seven centuries since Giotto's day have woven on just such looms as our grandparents had in their homes. This loom consists of a frame of four square tim- ber posts, about seven feet high, set about as far apart as the posts of a tall four-post bedstead, and connected at top and bottom by portions of a frame. From post to post across one end, which may be called the back part of the loom, is the yarn-beam, about six inches in diameter. Upon it are wound the warp-threads, which stretch in close parallels from it to the cloth-beam at the front of the loom. The cloth-beam is about ten inches in diameter, and the cloth is wound as the weaving proceeds. The yarn-beam or yarn-roll or warp-beam was ever a very important part of the loom. It should be made of close-grained, well-seasoned wood. T'he iron axle should be driven in before the beam is turned. If the beam is ill-turned and irregular in shape, no even, perfect woof can come from it. The slightest variation in its dimensions makes the warp run off unevenly, and the web never "sets" well, but has some loose threads. We have seen the homespun yarn, whether linen 214 Hand-Weaving or woollen, left in carefully knotted skeins after being spun and cleaned, bleached, or dyed. To prepare Swifts it for use on the loom a skein is placed on the swift, an ingenious machine, a revolving cylindrical frame 216 Home Life in Colonial Days made of strips of wood arranged on the principle of the lazy-tongs so the size can be increased or dimin- ished at pleasure, and thus take on and hold firmly any sized skein of yarn. This cylinder is sup- ported on a centre shaft that revolves in a socket, and may be set in a heavy block on the floor or fastened to a table or chair. A lightly made, carved swift was a frequent lover's gift. I have a beautiful one of whale-ivory, mother-of-pearl, and fine white bone which was made on a three years' whaling voyage by a Nantucket sea-captain as a gift to his waiting bride; it has over two hundred strips of fine white carved bone. Both quills for the weft and spools for the warp may be wound from the swift by a quilling-wheel, small wheels of various shapes, some being like a flax-wheel, but more simple in construction. The quill or bobbin is a small reed or quill, pierced from end to end, and when wound is set in the recess of the shuttle. When the piece is to be set, a large number of shuttles and spools are filled in advance. The full spools are then placed in a row one above the other in a spool-holder, sometimes called a skarne or scarne. As I have not found this word in any dictionary, ancient or modern, its correct spelling is unknown. Sylvester Judd, in his Margaret, spells it skan. Skean and skayn have also been seen. Hand-Weaving Skarne with Loom Spools Though ignored by lexicographers, it was an article and word in established and universal use in the colonies. I have seen it in newspaper advertise- ments of weavers' materials, and in inventories of weavers' estates, spelled ad libitum; and elderly country folk, both in the North and South, who remember old-time weaving, know it to-day. It seems to me impossible to explain clearly in words, though it is simple enough in execution, the laying of the piece, the orderly placing the warp on the warp-beam. The warping-bars are entirely de- tached from the loom, are an accessory, not a part of it. They are two upright bars of wood, each holding a number of wooden pins set at right angles Home Life in Colonial Days to the bars, and held together by crosspieces. Let forty full spools be placed in the skarne, one above the other. The free ends of threads from the spools are gathered in the hand, and fastened to a pin at the top of the warping-bars. The group of threads then are carried from side to side of the bars, passing around a pin on one bar, then around a pin on the opposite bar, to the extreme end; then back again in the same way, the spools revolving on wires and freely playing out the warp-threads, till a sufficient length of threads are stretched on the bars. Weav- ers of olden days could calculate exactly and skil- fully the length of the threads thus wound. You take off twenty yards of threads if you want to weave twenty yards of cloth. Forty warp-threads make what was called a bout or section. A warp of two hundred threads was designated as a warp of five bouts, and the bars had to be filled five times to set it unless a larger skarne with more spools was used. From the warping-bars these bouts are care- fully wound on the warp-beam. Without attempting to explain farther, let us con- sider the yarn-beam neatly wound with these warp- threads and set in the loom - that the " warping " and "beaming" are finished. The "drawing" or "entering" comes next; the end of each warp- thread in regular order is "thumbed" or drawn in 218 Hand-Weaving with a warping-needle through the eye or "mail" of the harness, or heddle. The heddle is a row of twines, cords, or wires called leashes, which are stretched vertically between two horizontal bars or rods, placed about a foot apart. One rod is suspended by a pulley at the top of the loom; and to the lower rod is hitched the foot-treadle. In the middle of each length of twine or wire is the loop or eye, through which a warp- thread is passed. In ordinary weaving there are two heddles, each fastened to a foot-treadle. There is a removable loom attachment which when first shown to me was called a raddle. It is not necessary in weaving, but a convenience and help in preparing to weave. It is a wooden bar with a row of closely set, fine, wooden pegs. This is placed in the loom, and used only during the setting of the warp to keep the warp of proper width; the pegs keep the bouts or sections of the warp disentangled during the " thumbing in" of the threads through the heddle-eyes. This attach- ment is also called a ravel or raivel; and folk-names for it (not in the dictionary) were wrathe and rake; the latter a very good descriptive title. The warp-threads next are drawn through the interspaces between two dents or strips of the sley or reed. This is done with a wire hook called a 219 220 Home Life in Colonial Days sley-hook or reed-hook. Two warp- threads are drawn in each space. The sley or reed is composed of a row of short and very thin parallel strips of cane or metal, somewhat like comb-teeth, called dents, fixed at both ends closely in two long, strong, parallel bars of wood set two or three or even four inches apart. There may be fifty or sixty of these dents to one inch, for weaving very fine linen; usually there are about twenty, which gives a "bier" - a counting out of forty warp-threads to each inch. Sleys were numbered according to the number of biers they held. The number of dents to an inch determined the "set of the web," the fineness of the piece. This reed is placed in a groove on the lower edge of a heavy batten (or lay or lathe). This batten hangs by two swords or side bars and swings from an axle or "rocking tree" at the top of the loom. As the heavy batten swings on its axle, the reed forces with a sharp blow every newly placed thread of the weft into its proper place close to the previously woven part of the texture. This is the heavy thwacking sound heard in hand-weaving. Hand-Weaving On the accurate poise of, the batten depends largely the evenness of the completed woof. If the material is heavy, the batten should be swung high, thus having a good sweep and much force in its blow. The batten should be so poised as to swing back itself into place after each blow. The weaver, with foot on treadle, sits on a nar- row, high bench, which is fastened from post to post of the loom. James Maxwell, the weaver- poet, wrote under his portrait in his Weaver's Meditations, printed in I756:-- " Lo! here 'twixt Heaven and Earth I swing, And whilst the Shuttle swiftly flies, With cheerful heart I work and sing And envy none beneath the skies." There are three motions in hand-weaving. First: by the action of one foot-treadle one harness or heddle, holding every alternate warp-thread, is de- pressed from the level of the entire expanse of warp-threads. The separation of the warp-threads by this de- pression of one harness is called a shed. SomL elaborate patterns have six harnesses. In such a piece there are ten different sheds, or combinations of openings of the warp-threads. In a four-harness piece there are six different sheds. 221 222 Home Life in Colonial Days Room is made by this shed for the shuttle, which, by the second motion, is thrown from one side of the loom to the other by the weaver's hand, and thus goes over every alternate thread. The revolv- ing quill within the shuttle lets the weft-thread play out during this side-to-side motion of the shuttle. The shuttle must not be thrown too sharply else it will rebound and make a slack thread in the weft. By the third motion the batten crowds this weft- thread into place. Then the motion of the other foot-treadle forces down the other warp-threads which pass through the second set of harnesses, the shuttle is thrown back through this shed, and so on. In order to show the amount of work, the num- ber of separate motions in a day's work in weaving of close woollen cloth like broadcloth (which was only about three yards), we must remember that the shuttle was thrown over three thousand times, and the treadles pressed down and batten swung the same number of times. A simple but clear description of the process of weaving is given in Ovid's Metamorphoses, thur Englished in 1724: - "The piece prepare And order every slender thread with care; The web enwraps the beam, the reed dividis Hand-Weaving While through the widening space the shuttle glides, Which their swift hands receive, then poised with lead The swinging weight strikes close the inserted thread." A loom attachment which I puzzled over was a tomble or tumble, the word being seen in eighteenth- century lists, etc., yet absolutely untraceable. I at last inferred, and a weaver confirmed my inference, that it was a corruption of temple, an attachment made of flat, narrow strips of wood as long as the Loom Temples web is wide, with hooks or pins at the end to catch into the selvage of the cloth, and keep the cloth stretched firmly an even width while the reed beats the weft-thread into place. There were many other simple yet effective attach- ments to the loom. Their names have been upon the lips of scores of thousands of English-speaking people, and the words are used in all treatises on weaving; yet our dictionaries are dumb and igno- Home Life in Colonial Days rant of their existence. There was the pace-weight, which kept the warp even; and the bore-staff, which tightened the warp. When a sufficient length of woof had been woven (it was usually a few inches), the weaver proceeded to do what was called draw- ing a bore or a sink. He shifted the temple for- ward; rolled up the cloth on the cloth bar, which had a crank-handle and ratchets; unwound the warp a few inches, shifted back the rods and heddles, and started afresh. Looms and their appurtenances were usually made by local carpenters; and it can plainly be seen that thus constant work was furnished to many classes of workmen in every community,-wood-turners, beam- makers, timber-sawyers, and others. The various parts of the looms were in unceasing demand, though apparently they never wore out. The sley was the most delicate part of the mechanism. Good sley- makers could always command high prices for their sleys. I have seen one whole and good, which has been in general use for weaving rag carpets ever since the War of 1812, for which a silver dollar was paid. Spools were turned and marked with the maker's in- itials. There were choice and inexplicable lines in the shape of a shuttle as there are in a boat's hull. When a shuttle was carefully shaped, scraped, hol- lowed out, tipped with steel, and had the maker's 224 Hand-Weaving initials burnt in it, it was a proper piece of work, of which any craftsman might be proud. Apple-wood and boxwood were the choice for shuttles. Loo.. Snuttles Smaller looms, called tape-looms, braid-looms, belt-looms, garter-looms, or "gallus-frames," were seen in many American homes, and useful they were in days when linen, cotton, woollen, or silk tapes, bobbins, and webbings or ribbons were not common and cheap as to-day. Narrow bands such as tapes, none-so-pretty's, ribbons, caddises, ferret- ings, inkles, -were woven on these looms for use for garters, points, glove-ties, hair-laces, shoestrings, belts, hat-bands, stay-laces, breeches-suspenders, etc. These tape-looms are a truly ancient form of ap- pliance for the hand-weaving of narrow bands, -a heddle-frame. They are rudely primitive in shape, but besides serving well the colonists in all our original states, are still in use among the Indian tribes in New Mexico and in Lapland, Italy, and northern Germany. They are scarcely more than Q. Home Life in Colonial Days a slightly shaped board so cut in slits that the centre of the board is a row of narrow slats. These slats are pierced in a row by means of a heated wire Tape-loom and the warp-threads are passed through the holes. A common form of braid-loom was one that was laid upon a table. A still simpler form was held 226 Silk Braid-loom Hand-Weaving upright on the lap, the knees being firmly pressed into semicircular indentations cut for the purpose on either side of the board which formed the lower part of the loom. The top of the loom was steadied by being tied with a band to the top of a chair, or a hook in the wall. It was such light and pretty work that it seemed merely an industrial amusement, and girls carried their tape-looms to a neighbor's house for an afternoon's work, just as they did their knitting-needles and ball of yarn. A fringe-loom might also be occasionally found, for weaving decorative fringes; these 'were more com- mon in the Hudson River valley than elsewhere. I have purposely given minute, but I trust not tiresome, details of the operation of weaving on a hand-loom, because a few years more will see the last of those who know the operation and the terms used. The fact that so many terms are now obso- lete proves how quickly disuse brings oblivion. When in a country crowded full of weavers, as was England until about I845, the knowledge has so suddenly disappeared, need we hope for much greater memory or longer life here? When what is termed the Westmoreland Revival of domestic in- dustries was begun eight or ten years ago, the great- est difficulty was found in obtaining a hand-loom. No one knew how to set it up, and it was a long 227 Home Life in Colonial Days time before a weaver could be found to run it and teach others its use. The first half of this century witnessed a vital struggle in England, and to an extent in America, between hand and power machinery, and an inter- esting race between spinning and weaving. Under old-time conditions it was calculated that it took the work of four spinners, who spun swiftly and constantly, to supply one weaver. As spinning was ever what was known as a by-industry, --that is, one that chiefly was done by being caught up at odd moments, - the supply both in England and America did not equal the weavers' demands, and ten spinners had to be calculated to supply yarn for one weaver. Hence weavers never had to work very hard; as a rule, they could have one holiday in the week. What with Sundays, wakes, and fairs, Irish weavers worked only two hundred days in the year. In England the weaver often had to spend one day out of the six hunting around the country for yarn for weft. So inventive wits were set at work to en- large the supply of yarn, and spinning machinery was the result. Thereafter the looms and weavers were pushed hard and had to turn to invention. The shuttle had always simply been passed from one hand to the other of the weaver on either side of the web. The fly-shuttle was now invented, 228 Hand-Weaving which by a simple piece of machinery, worked by one hand, threw the shuttle swiftly backward and forward, and the loom was ahead in the race. Then came the spinning-jen- ny, which spun yarn with a hundred spin- dles on each machine. But this was for weft yarns, and did not make strong warps. Finally Arkwright supplied this lack in water-twist or " thros- tle-spun" yarn. All these inventions again Quilling-wheels overcrowded the veav- ers; all attempts at hand-spinning of cotton had become quickly extinct. Wool-spinning lingered Home Life in Colonial Days longer. Five Tomlinson sisters, --the youngest forty years old, --with two pair of wool-cards and five hand-wheels, paid the rent of their farm, kept three cows, one horse, had a ploughed field, and made prime butter and eggs. One sister clung to her spinning till 1822. Power-looms were invented to try to use up the jenny's supply of yarn, but these did not crowd out hand-looms. Weavers never had so good wages. It was the Golden Age of Cotton. Some families earned six pounds a week; good clothes, even to the extent of ruffled shirts, good furniture, even to silver spoons, good food, plentiful ale and beer, entered every English cottage with the weaving of cotton and wool. A far more revolutionary and more hated machine than the power-loom was the combing-machine called Big Ben. " Come all ye Master Combers, and hear of our Big Ben. He'll comb more wool than fifty of your men With their hand-combs, and comb-pots, and such old- fashioned way." Flax-spinning and linen-weaving by power ma- chinery were slower in being established. English- men were halting in perfecting these machines. Napoleon offered in 18 o a million francs for a flax- spinning machine. A clever Frenchman claimed 230 Hand-Weaving to have invented one in response in a single day, but similar clumsy machines had then been running in England for twenty years. By I85o men, women, and children - combers, spinners, and weavers- were no longer individual workers; they had be- come part of that great monster, the mill-machinery. Riots and misery were the first result of the pass- ing of hand weaving and spinning. In the Vision of Piers Ploughman (i36o) are these lines :- " Cloth that cometh fro the wevyng Is nought comly to were Till it be fulled under foot Or in fullyng stokkes Wasshen wel with water And with taseles cracched, Y-touked and y-tented And under taillours hande." Just so in the colonies four centuries later, cloth that came from the weaving was not comely to wear till it was fulled under foot or in fulling-stocks, washed well in water, scratched and dressed with teazels, dyed and tented, and put in the tailor's hands. Nor did the roll of centuries bring a change in the manner of proceeding. If grease had been put on the wool when it was carded, or sizing in 231 Home Life in Colonial Days the warp for the weaving, it was washed out by good rinsing from the woven cloth. This- became now somewhat uneven and irregular in appearance, and full of knots and fuzzes which were picked out with hand-tweezers by burlers before it was fulled or milled, as it was sometimes called. The fulling- stocks were a trough in which an enormous oaken hammer was made to pound up and down, while the cloth was kept thoroughly wet with warm soap and water, or fullers' earth and water. Naturally this thickened the web much and reduced it in length. It was then teazelled; that is, a nap or rough surface was raised all over it by scratching it with weavers' teazels or thistles. Many wire brushes and metal substitutes have been tried to take the place of nature's gift to the cloth-worker, the teazel, but nothing has been invented to replace with full satisfaction that wonderful scratcher. For the slender recurved bracts of the teazel heads are stiff and prickly enough to roughen thoroughly the nap of the cloth, yet they yield at precisely the right point to keep from injuring the fabric. If the cloth were to be "y-touked," that is, dyed, it was done at this period, and it was then "y-tented," spread on the tenter-field and caught on tenter-hooks, to shrink and dry. Nowadays, we sometimes cut or crop the nap 232 Hand-Weaving with long shears, and boil the web to give it a lus- tre, and ink it to color any ill-dyed fibres, and press it between hot plates before it goes to the tailor's Loom Basket and Bobbins hands; but these injurious processes were omitted in olden times. Worsted stuffs were not fulled, but were woven of hand-combed wool. Home Life in Colonial Days Linen webs after they were woven had even more manipulations to come to them than woollen stuffs. In spite of all the bleaching of the linen thread, it still was light brown in color, and it had to go through at least twoscore other processes, of buck- ing, possing, rinsing, drying, and bleaching on the grass. Sometimes it was stretched out on pegs with loops sewed on the selvage edge. This bleaching was called crofting in England, and grass- ing in America. Often it was thus spread on the grass for weeks, and was slightly wetted several times a day; but not too wet, else it would mildew. In all, over forty bleaching operations were em- ployed upon "light linens." Sometimes they were "soured" in buttermilk to make them purely white. Thus at least sixteen months had passed since the flaxseed had been sown, in which, truly, the spinster had not eaten the bread of idleness. In the winter months the fine, white, strong linen was made into "board cloths" or tablecloths, sheets, pillow-biers, aprons, shifts, shirts, petticoats, short gowns, gloves, cut from the spinner's own glove pattern, and a score of articles for household use. These were carefully marked, and sometimes embroidered with home-dyed crewels, as were also splendid sets of bed-hangings, valances, and testers for four-post bedsteads. 234 Hand-Weav'ing The homespun linens tnat were thus spun and woven and bleached were one of the most beauti- ful expressions and types of old-time home life. Firm, close-woven, and pure, their designs were not greatly varied, nor was their woof as symmetrical and perfect as modern linens-but thus were the lives of those who made them; firm, close-woven in neighborly kindness, with the simplicity both of innocence and ignorance; their days had little variety, and life was not altogether easy, and, like the web they wove, it was sometimes narrow. I am always touched when handling these homespun linens with a consciousness of nearness to the makers; with a sense of the energy and strength of those enduring women who were so full of vitality, of unceasing action, that it does not seem to me they can be dead. The strong, firm linen woven in many struggling country homes was too valuable and too readily exchangeable and salable to be kept wholly for farm use, especially when there were so few salable arti- cles produced on the farm. It was sold or more frequently exchanged at the village store for any desired commodity, such as calico, salt, sugar, spices, or tea. It readily sold for forty-two cents a yard. Therefore the boys and even the fathers did not always have linen shirts to wear. From the tow 235 Home Life in Colonial Days which had been hatchelled out from harl a coarse thread was spun and cloth was woven which was made chiefly into shirts and smocks and tow "tongs" or "skilts," which were loose flapping summer trousers which ended almost half-way from the knee to the ankle. This tow stuff was never free from prickling spines, and it proved, so tradi- tion states, an absolute instrument of torture to the wearer, until frequent washings had worn it out and thus subdued its knots and spines. A universal stuff woven in New Hampshire by the Scotch-Irish linen-weavers who settled there, and who influenced husbandry and domestic manu factures and customs all around them, was what was known as striped frocking. It was worn also to a considerable extent in Connecticut and Massachu- setts. The warp was strong white cotton or tow thread, the weft of blue and white stripes made by weaving alternately a shuttleful of indigo-dyed homespun yarn and one of white wool or tow. Many boys grew to manhood never wearing, except on Sundays, any kind of coat save a long, loose, shapeless jacket or smock of this striped frocking, known everywhere as a long-short. The history of the old town of Charmingfare tells of the farmers in that vicinity tying tight the two corners of this long-short at the waist and thus making a sort of 236 Carter-loom I_ Hand-Weaving loose bag in which various articles could be carried. Sylvester Judd, in his Margaret, the classic of old New England life, has his country women dressed also in long-shorts, and tells of the same fabric. Another material which was universal in country districts had a flax or tow warp, and a coarser slack- twisted cotton or tow filling. This cloth was dyed and pressed and was called fustian. It was worth a shilling a yard in 1640. It was named in the earliest colonial accounts, and was in truth the ancient fus- tian, worn throughout Europe in the Middle Ages for monks' robes and laborers' dress, not the stuff to-day called fustian. We read in The Squier of Low Degree, " Your blanketts shall be of fustayne." Another coarse cloth made in New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas was cro- cus. The stuff is obsolete and the name is forgotten save in a folk-saying which lingers in Virginia - " as coarse as crocus." Homespun stuff for the wear of negroes was known and sold as "Virginia cloth." Vast quantities of homespun cloth was made on Virginian plantations, thousands of yards annually at Mount Vernon for slave-wear, and for the house-mistress as well. It is told of Martha Washington that she always carefully dyed all her worn silk gowns and silk scraps to a desired shade, ravelled them with care, 237 Home Life in Colonial Days wound them on bobbins, and had them woven into chair and cushion covers. Sometimes she changed the order of things. To a group of visitors she at one time displayed a dress of red and white striped material of which the white stripes were cotton, and the red, ravelled chair covers and silk from the General's worn-out stockings. Checked linen, with bars of red or blue, was much used for bedticks, pillow-cases, towelling, aprons, and even shirts and summer trousers. In all the Dutch communities in New York it was woven till this century. When Benjamin Tappan first attended meeting in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1769, he was surprised to find that all the men in the church but four or five wore checked shirts. Worcester County men always wore white shirts, and deemed a checked shirt the mark of a Connecti- cut River man. It is impossible to overestimate the durability of homespun materials. I have "flannel sheets" a hundred years old, the lightest, most healthful, and agreeable summer covering for children's beds that ever any one was blessed with. Cradle sheets of this thin, closely woven, white worsted stuff are not slimsy like thin flannel, yet are softer than flannel. Years of use with many generations of children have left them firm and white. 238 Weavire Rag Crw