IHOME-LIFE-IN
iCOLONIALDAYS
Written by
ALICE-MORSE-EARLE
in the year
Mpcccxcvm
M
v
Illustrated by Photographs,
Gathered by the Author,
of
Real Things, Works and
Happenings of Olden Times.
l__^kj
NewYorK
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan &f Co.,Ltd.
1910
All rights reserved. I
/
Copyright, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped November, 1898. Reprinted December;
1898; January, October, 1899; November, 1900; March, 1902.
February, August, 1906; March, 1907; March, 1909; July, 1910.
Norwood Press
J. S. Gushing 6f Co. Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THIS BOOK IS BEGUN
AS IT IS ENDED
IN MEMORY OF MT MOTHER
241139
Foreword
The illustrations for this book are in every case
from real articles and scenes , usually from those still
in existence rare relics of fast days. The futures
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, stuff, and metal
been rescued and recognized. The treasure stores of
Deerfield Memorial Hall, of the Eostonian 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 cooperation and assistance in my work.
The artistic and correct photographic representation
of many of these objects I owe to Mr. William F.
viii 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
different 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.
Contents
Page
1. Homes of the Colonists ..... i
II. The Light of Other Days . . 3 2
III. The Kitchen Fireside . . . . 52
IV. The Serving of Meals . . . . . 76
V. Food from Forest and Sea . . . .108
VI. Indian Corn . . . . . . .126
VII. Meat and Drink . . . . . .142
VIII. Flax Culture and Spinning . . . .166
IX. Wool Culture and Spinning, with a Postscript on
Cotton 187
X. Hand- Weaving .212
. XI. Girls Occupations . . . . . 252
XII. Dress of the Colonists . . . -* ,281
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
List of Illustrations
Page
Fairbanks House, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636 . Frontispiece
Log Cabin ........ 4
Suydam House, Bushwick, Long Island, 1 700 ... 7
Sabin Hall, Virginia . . . . . . .13
Slave Quarters, Upper Brandon . . . . .14
Fire-buckets . . . . . . . 16
Fireman s Certificate, 1800 . . . . . .17
First Fire Engine in Brooklyn, 1785 . . . . 18
White-Ellery House, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1707 . 20
Boardman-Hill House, North Saugus, Massachusetts, 1650 21
Birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams . . 22
Pierce Garrison House ...... 26
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 ....... 46
si
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 ........ 60
Waffle-irons . . . . . . . .61
Old Gridirons . . . . . . . .61
Plate- warmer . . . . . . . .63
Bake-kettle, Clock-jack, Dutch-oven, and Dye-tub . . 64
Roasting-kitchens ....... 66
Smoking-tongs ........ 69
Warming-pan . . . . . 4 . .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 . . . . . . .91
Colonial Glass Bottles 93
Old Spanish and English Glasses, Iron Loggerheads, and
Wooden Toddy-sticks 94
List of Illustrations xih
Page
Blackjacks 95
Silver-mounted Cocoanut Drinking-cup . . . .97
Winthrop Jug ........ 98
Georgius Rex Jug ....... 99
Maple- sugar Camp . . . . . . .114
John Winthrop s Mill . . . . . . -133
Old-time Corn-sheller . . . . . .140
Making Thanksgiving Pies .146
Upright Churns . . . . . . . .149
Revolving Churn . . . . . . .150
Cheese-basket, Cheese-ladder, Cheese-press . . 151
Sausage-gun . . . . . . . .154
Sugar-cutters . . . . . . . .156
Spice-mortars and Spice-mill . . . . . .157
Old Cider-mill 162
Flax-brake 170
Swingling-block and Swingling-knives . . . .171
Flax, Flax-basket, Flax-hetchels 173
Clock-reel 174
Flax-spinning . . . . . . . .186
Carding Wool 195
Wool-spinning . . . . . . . .197
Triple Reel 199
" Niddy-noddy, two heads and one body" . . .201
Wool-cards . . . . . . 204
Swifts . . . . . . . . .215
Skarne . . . . . . . .217
Sley 220
xiv List of Illustrations
Page
Loom-temples . . . . . . . .223
Loom-shuttles . . . . . . . .225
Tape-loom . . . . . . . .226
Silk Braid- loom . . . . . . .226
Quilling- wheels . . . . . . .229
Loom-basket and Bobbins . . . . . .233
Garter-loom ........ 236
Weaving Rag Carpet . . . . . . .238
Hand Stamps for Calico Printing ..... 240
Orange Peel, Blazing Star, Chariot Wheels and Church
Windows, Bachelor s Fancy ..... 243
Hand-woven Bed Coverlet . . . . . 24 c
V
Making Soap . . ^x 2 54
Goose Basket . . . . . . . .258
Knitted Bags ........ 264
Fleetwood-Quincy Sampler ...... 266
Embroidered Coat of Arms ...... 266
Colonial Embroidery, Old South Church, Boston . .268
Net Footing and Lace ... .... 270
Collars, Caps, Laces, and "Modesty-piece" . .271
Cut-paper Picture . . . . . . .279
Eighteenth-century Stays . . . , . . 286
Child s Suit worn in 1784 . . . . . .288
Calash, 1780 289
Pumpkin Hood, 1800 . . . . . .291
Colonial Pattens . . . . .295
Eighteenth-century Spectacles . 298
Birch Splint Broom ....... 304
List of Illustrations xv
Page
Barlow Jack-knives ... o ... 307
Old Gourd Dishes ....... 309
Goose-yoke and Pig-yoke . . . . .310
Mayflower Scythe-snathe, Pitchfork, Scythe, Flail and
Swingle, and Bill-hook . . . . . -313
Old-time Axes and Riven Laths . . . . .314
Indian Knot-bowls and Mortar . . . . .319
A Gundalow at the Landing . . . . .328
Wire Ferry on the Connecticut . . . . 330
Conestoga Wagon . . . . . . .340
"American Stage-wagon," 1795 . 343
Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Massachusetts .... 345
Old Pigskin and Deerskin Travelling-trunks . . .347
Old-time Bandboxes ....... 348
Wolfe Tavern, Newburyport, Massachusetts . . .350
Old-time Rocky Mountain Mail-coach . . . .352
Brother Jonathan s Chaise . . . . . .352
Campbell Coach . . . . . . .354
Dutch Sleigh in New York . . . . . 355
Tap-room and Bar, Wayside Inn . . . . 358
Swing-sign from Grosvenor Inn, Pomfret, Connecticut . 358
Sign-board, John Nash s Tavern, Amherst, Massachusetts . 360
The "Old Ship," Hingham, Massachusetts, 1680 . .365
The Old South Church, Boston 366
Rocky Hill Meeting-house, Salisbury, Massachusetts, 1785 370
Plan for Seating the Meeting-house . . . . 371
Foot-stove . . . . . . 375
Bass-viol, Psalm-book, and Pitch-pipe . . . 377
xvi List of Illustrations
Page
Pages of Old Psalm-book printed in Boston, 1690^ . 378
Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburgh, Virginia . . 381
Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia . . -383
Dutch Reformed Church, Bushwick, Long Island . .386
Starting to break out the Roads . . . . .412
A Chebobbin . . . . . . . .416
Crown Imperial . . . . . . .425
Flower Garden, Mount Vernon . . . . .432
Abigail Adams Garden, Quincy, Massachusetts . .435
Old Garden, Ellenville, New York .... 440
Old Well-sweep 444
Fraxinella . . . . . . . . 449
Ambrosia ........ End-papers
Home Life in Colonial Days
U N
Home Life in Colonial Days
CHAPTER I
HOMES OF THE COLONISTS
WHEN the first settlers landed on Ameri
can shores, the difficulties in finding or
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
hid 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
2 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 1645, 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 o ~
wood mortared with clay and grass. The settlers
were thankful even for these poor shelters, and
Homes of the Colonists 3
declared that they found 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-
4 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 5
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-
6 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 7
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 9
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.
io 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 1 1
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-
12 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 1656, in his
Leah 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
Homes of the Colonists 13
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
Horpe Life in Colonial Days
ging could be woven, and homespun for the use of
the negroes. A very beautiful example of a splendid
and comfortable Southern marfsion 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,
auch as Lower Brandon two centuries and a half
old and Upper Brandon, the homes of the Har-
rispns ; Westover, the home of the Byrds ; Shirley,
built in 1650, 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 15
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
i6
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.
As soon as an alarm
of fire was given by
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 Tunning 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 1 800.
Fire-buckets
Homes of the Colonists
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
i8
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 19
rolled, strong canvas bags, in which valuables could
be thrust and carried from the burning building.
The first fire-engine made in tjiis country was for
the town of Boston, and was made about 1650 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-
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 awash 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
21
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 manv 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 23
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, cc Bring oiled
paper for your windows/ The minister, Higgin-
son, sent promptly in 1629 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
* Frontispiece.
24 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 rfcsort, irf time of
danger. In the valley of Virginia each settlement
was formed of houses set in a square, connected from
Homes of the Colonists 25
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
26
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 27
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 1670;. 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 1679, tne 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
28
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 gracefal 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
29
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 ;
nearly all hadaknocker
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.
Knocker, Winslow House, Marshfield,
Massachusetts
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 31
the house to Lexington on April 18, 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.
CHAPTER II
THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
THE 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 his 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 1642, 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
The Light of Other Days 33
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 matie by burning the
pines on the banks of the Connecticut, that as early
as 1650 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 :
u 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 torches.. Rev. Mr. Newman, of Rehoboth,
is said to have compiled his vast concordance of the
34 Home Life in Colonial Days
Bible wholly by the dancing light of this candle-
wood. Lighting 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 light 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-wood 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,
The Light of Other Days 35
X -
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
Candle-dipping
The Light of Other Days 37
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
3 8 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
The 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,
and 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 1712,
in a letter written to John Winthrop, F.R.S., I
find:-
u 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 15, under penalty of fifteen
shillings fine.
The pungent and unique scent of the bayberry,
The Light of Other Days 41
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 of 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, courage, and
fortitude. It brought vast wealth to the commu
nities that carried on the fishing, and great indepen
dence and comfort to the families of the whalers.
To the whalemen themselves it brought incredible
42 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. Snuf
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
43
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 with 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.
44
Home Life in Colonial Days
Betty Lamps
in
Phoebe-lamps were similar
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
45
in favor for the lamps 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.
46 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
47
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 Days
49
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-
end 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 of 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 51
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
out seventeen million matches a day.
CHAPTER III
THE KITCHEN FIRESIDE
THE 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 light 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
The Kitchen Fireside 53
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
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
t>
S;
5
I
The Kitchen Fireside 55
chimney, where the constant and fierce fire crumbled
brick and split stone. These iron backs were often
cast in a 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
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-placefop^he old queen s-arm
or fowling-piece was on hooks over the kitchen
fireplace.
On the pothooks and trammels hungwfiat 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 w#rth three pounds apiece. In
many inventories of the estates oPthe settlers the
brass-ware foidned 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 aiidJb^ia^ed*0f 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
57
to hold potatoes or any single vegetable in place
within the vast general pot.
Iron Potato-boi
Chafing-dishes and skimmers of brass and copper
were also cheerful discs to reflect the kitchen firelight.
58 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
59
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
60 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 jS 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 6 1
Gridirons had long handles of wood or iron, which
could be fastened to the shorter stationary handles.
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 or
The Kitchen Fireside 63
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 65
itive 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 Devolving 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
66 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 67
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
plenty, and was held to be luck-bearing. On
68 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 arq^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
The Kitchen Fireside
6 9
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-
metal, box-shaped ; three sides were within the
house, and the fourth, with the stove door, outside
70 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
veniences 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
The Kitchen Fireside 71
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 had
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
J2 Home Life in Colonial Days
heating the inner sheets with a warming-pan.
This usually 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
Warming-pan f &
the old-time kitchen. Lowell s well-
known lines are vivid enough to bear never-dying
quotation :
The Kitchen Fireside 73
" A 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
74
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 75
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.
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 77
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 1638.
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 1633, an d it was in a leather case with a
knife and a bodkin. If the governor ate with a
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
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
Harvard Standing Salt
The Serving of Meals 79
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. 3^., 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 Eabees Boke, The Boke of Nurture,
The Boke of Curteseye, etc., and with the exception
8o 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 81
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.
82 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, Noggin, 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
1 He Serving- of 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
84 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 85
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 1629. 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 a
" fish-tail " handle ; these are said to be Dutch,
86 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 87
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 nevei 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 w,ith 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,
88
Home Life in Colonial Days
Massachusetts, named Marti ndale, 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 89
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
9 1
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-
92 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
The Serving of Meals
93
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 verifiable 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,
94
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 from 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
95
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.
96 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
The Serving of Meals
97
with silver feet and cc 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-
.yise with pewter."
Such a piece of
stoneware is the
oldest authenti
cated drinking-
jug in this country,
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-
Winthrop Jug
The Serving of Meals
99
nan 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," " fflanders
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-
Georges. I
Georgius Rex Jug
know one of these jugs which has a Revolutionary
bullet imbedded in its tough old side, and is not
ioo 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
The Serving of Meals 101
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 can 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
IO2 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 103
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.
IO4 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 as 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 :
The Serving of Meals 105
" 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, c break that Goose, thrust
that Chicken, spoil that Hen, c 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 the
table top as a plate. In some homes an abundant
dish, such as a vast bowl of suppawn and 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
io6 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
The Serving of Meals 107
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
THOUGH 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
venis,on 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
108
Food from Forest and Sea 109
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 i7J5> 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
1695, a quarter of venison could be bought in
New York City for ninepence. At the first Mas
sachusetts Thanksgiving, in 1621, 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
tu -keys 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
no 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 1690 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 dov/n 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, ^8000
was paid out for heads of black and gray squirrels,
at threepence a head, which would show that o/er
six hundred thousand were killed.
From the woods came a sweet food-store, one
Food from Forest and Sea 1 1 1
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-
H2 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
thrifty 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
Food from Forest and Sea 113
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
H4 Home Life in Colonial Days
moonlight ; the snow still covered the fields and its
pure shining white light could be seen through the
trees.
u 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
Food from Forest and Sea 115
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 1602, 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
n6 Home Life in Colonial Days
England full accounts of the fisheries, of the proper
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 thej
never such idlers may turne, carry, and returne fish without
shame or either great pain : hee is very idle that is past
twelve years of age and cannot doe so much: and shee is
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
Food from Forest and Sea 117
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
n8 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
1792, 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 1897 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 119
" 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 1609
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
I2O 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 1656, "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
Food from Forest and Sea 12 1
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 1640 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 ,r dumb-fish, as the
122 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 learn to be
Food from Forest and Sea 123
a skilled fisherman. He was called a " cut-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
124 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,
after 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,
Food from Forest and Sea 125
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.
CHAPTER VI
INDIAN CORN
A GREAT 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,
126
Indian Corn 127
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 1608, 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 1622, 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
128 Home Life in Colonial Days
upon the white men. The following year compara
tively little corn was planted, as the luxuriant foM-
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."
Indian Corn 129
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 " Turkic
wheat," as it was called by the colonists.
Famine and pestilence had left eastern Massachu-
130 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 network, 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
Indian Corn 131
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
132 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 eaoh 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
Indian Corn 133
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 1635. 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
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 :
u 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
Indian Corn 135
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-
136 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 10 at Night they go to their pastimes."
Indian Corn 137
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
138 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 rinding 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
Indian Corn 139
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-
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
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 141
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 ?
CHAPTER VII
MEAT AND DRINK
THE 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 injhe, 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 143
eagerness, even in times of great want. They
were justly rebuked for their indifference and dis
like by Johnson in his bonder-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:
u 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
144 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 ball* were
Meat and Drink 145
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, and quince
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-
Meat and Drink 147
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
148 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 of 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
Meat and Drink
149
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
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
Upright Churns
150 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
/** I J| turning and rub
bing them. An
old cheese-press,
Revolving Churn r
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 dyce,
152 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 amounts 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
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
lof the year was November,
-called "killing time."
When the chosen day arrived,
oxen, cows, and swine which
had been fattened for the
winter s stock were slaughtered early in the morn
ing, that the meat might be hard and cold before
Sausage-gun (open)
154 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
sil was really a syringe-
Sausage-gun (closed) J J
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 155
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
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
>57
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 to^dy.
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,
though 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 :
u 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 159
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 rilling 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-
160 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.
Meat and Drink 161
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
j 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
1 62 Home Life in Colonial Days
lever which turned the motor wheel. It was slo\\
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
cover ; 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
and 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.
Meat and Drink 163
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,
164 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 1690 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
Meat and Drink 165
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 1670 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
1 66
Flax Culture and Spinning 167
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.
1 68 Home Life in Colonial Days
Thomas Tusser says in his Book of House-
wifery :
u 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.
Flax Culture and Spinning 169
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, the
stalks were watered to rot the leaves and softei
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
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
,k 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
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
Flax-brake
Flax Culture and Spinning
171
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
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
Swingling Block and Swingling Knives
172 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 bundles
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
Flax Culture and Spinning
173
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 f o o t 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
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
Clock-reel
Flax Culture and Spinning 175
number had been wound. Then the spinner would
stop and tic 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
176 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
Flax Culture and Spinning 177
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,
178 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 jEgyptica> 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
Flax Culture and Spinning 179
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 knowing 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 an 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
180 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 ^15,000, 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
Flax Culture and Spinning 181
the great trees. In 1754, 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 1692
descanted on the flax-workers of Germantown :
u 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 Vinum, Linum, et Textrinum wound."
Virginia was earlier even in awakening interest in
manufacturing flax than Massachusetts, for wild flax
1 82 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
not 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 idle. I pray you will
Flax Culture and Spinning 183
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-
184 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.
Flax Culture and Spinning 185
By Revolutionary times General Howe thought
cc 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
1 86 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.
Flax-spinning
CHAPTER IX
WOOL CULTURE AND SPINNING
With a Postscript on Cotton
THE 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
1 88 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 tne 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
Wool Culture and Spinning 189
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
ijnust 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-
190 Home Life in Colonial Days
len 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 Bunkers, 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 1850 that patents for
knitting-machines were taken out there.
Among the manufactures of the province of
Pennsylvania in 1698 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
Wool Culture and Spinning 191
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-
192 Home Life in Colonial Days
lire./ The growth of the woollen industry in any
colony was regarded at once by England with jeal-
oils 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
facture 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
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,"
194 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 devils-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,
Wool Culture and Spinning
T 95
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, ajid 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
196 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
Wool Culture and Spinning
197
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
198 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 ringer, 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
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
2oo 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
Wool Culture and Spinning
201
" 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.
202 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 :
U 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 no 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
Wool Culture and Spinning 203
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
204 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.
Wool-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 205
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 100 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-
206 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 demand. 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,
Wool Culture and Spinning 207
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
1621, 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."
208 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.
Wool Culture and Spinning 209
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 1850
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
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, c Please make Aunt Rhody
let me weave! She answered, c 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 211
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.
CHAPTER X
HAND-WEAVING
A^Y one who passed through a New Englah i
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
Hand- Weaving 213
town had professioml-wea vers . 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-
214 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. The
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
Hand- Weaving
215
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
217
II
mil
II
K
l
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
21 8 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 jhe 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
Hand- Weaving 219
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
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 221
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 1756:
" 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 frorn, 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. Some
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.
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 duririg 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, thus
Englished in 1724:-
" The piece prepare
And order every slender thread with care;
The web enwraps the beam, the reed divides
Hand- Weaving 223
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-
224 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 su^cient length of
woof had been w,oven (it : ,was, tisually a few inches),
the weaver proceeded -.to ob 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 1 8 1 2, 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 makers
Hand- Weaving
225
initials burnt in it, it was a proper piece of work, of
which any craftsmaa might be proud. Apple-wood
and boxwood were the choice for shuttles.
Loom Shuttles
Smaller looms, called tape-looms, iraid-looms,
belt-looms, garter-looms, or " galhas-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
226 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
Silk Braid-loom
Hand-Weaving 227
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 1845, tne 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
228 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,
Hand-Weaving
229
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-
n y , 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-wheel* j j i
overcrowded the weav
ers ; all attempts at hand-spinning of cotton had
become quickly extinct. Wool-spinning lingered
230 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 1810 a million francs for a flax-
spinning machine. A clever Frenchman claimed
Hand- Weaving 231
to have invented one in response in a single day, but
similar clumsy machines had then been running in
England for twenty years. By 1850 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 (1360) 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
23 2 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 eoap
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 scratchier. 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
Hand- Weaving
233
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.
234 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.
Hand-Weaving 235
The homespun linens triat 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
236 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
Garter-loom
Hand-Weaving 237
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,
238 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.
Hand- Weaving 239
Grain-bags have been seen that have been in con
stant and hard use for seventy years, homespun
from coarse flax and hemp. I have several delight
ful bags about four feet long and two feet wide, of
rather closely woven pure white homespun linen, not
as heavy, however, as crash. They have the date
of their manufacture, 1789, and the initials of the
weaver, and have linen tapes woven in at each side.
They are used every spring packed with furs
and blankets and placed in cedar chests, and with
such usage will easily round out another century.
The product of these hand-looms which has
lingered longest in country use, especially in the
Northern states, and which is the sole product of
all the hand-looms that I know to be set up and
in use in New England (except one notable example
to which I will refer hereafter), is the rag carpet.
It is still in constant demand and esteem on farms
and in small villages and towns, and is an economi
cal and thrifty, and may be a comely floor-covering.
The accompanying illustration of a woman weaving
rag carpet on an old hand-loom is from a fine pho
tograph taken by Mrs. Arthur SewaJI of Bath,
Maine, and gives an excellent presentment of the
machine and the process.
The warp of these carpets was, in olden times, a
strong, heavy flaxen thread. To-day it is a heavy
2 4
Home Life in Colonial Days
cotton twine bought machine-spun in balls or
hanks. The weft or filling is narrow strips of all
the clean and varicolored rags that accumulate in
a household.
The preparing of this filling requires considerable
judgment. Heavy woollen cloth should be cut in
strips about half an inch wide. If there were
sewn with these strips of light cotton stuff of equal
Hand Stamps for Calico Printing
width, the carpet would prove a poor thing, heavy
in spots and slimsy in others. Hence lighter stuffs
should be cut in wider strips, as they can then be
crowded down by the batten of the loom to the
same width and substance as the heavy wools.
Calicoes, cottons, all-wool delaines, and lining cam
brics should be cut in strips at least an inch wide.
These strips, of whatever length they chance to be,
Hand-Weaving 241
are sewn into one continuous strip, which is rolled
into a hard ball weighing about a pound and a
quarter. It is calculated that one of these balls
will weave about a yard of carpeting. The joining
must be strongly and neatly done and should not
be bunchy. An aged weaver who had woven many
thousand yards of carpeting assured me the pret
tiest carpets were always those in which every alter
nate strip was white or very light in color. Another
thrifty way of using old material is the cutting into
inch-wide strips of woven ingrain or three-ply
carpet. This, through the cotton warp, makes a
really artistic monochrome floor-covering.
In one of the most romantic and beautiful spots
in old Narragansett lives the last of the old-time
weavers ; not a weaver who desultorily weaves a
run of rag carpeting to earn a little money in the
intervals of other work, or to please some import
unate woman-neighbor who has saved up her rags ;
but a weaver whose lifelong occupation, whose
only means of livelihood, has always been, and is
still, hand-weaving. I have told his story at some
length in my book, Old Narragansett^ of his
kin, his life, his work. His home is at the cross
roads where three townships meet, a cross-roads
where has often taken place that curious and sense
less survival of old-time tradition and superstition
242 Home Life in Colonial Days
shift marriages. A widow, a cousin of the Weaver
Rose s father, was the last to undergo this ordeal ;
clad only in her shift, she thrice crossed the King s
Highway and was thus married to avoid payment
of her first husband s debts. It is not far from the
old Church Foundation of St. Paul s of Narragan-
sett, and the tumble-down house of Sexton Martin
Read, the prince of Narragansett weavers in ante-
Revolutionary days. Weaver Rose learned to
weave from his grandfather, who was an apprentice
of Weaver Read.
In the loom-room of Weaver Rose a veritable
atmosphere of the past still lingers. Everything
appertaining to the manufacture of homespun
materials may there be found. Wheels, skarnes,
sleys, warping-bars, clock-reels, swifts, quilling-
wheels, vast bales of yarns and thread for he no
longer spins his thread and yarn. There are piles
of old and new bed coverlets woven in those fanci
ful geometric designs, which are just as the ancient
Gauls wove them in the Bronze Age, and which
formed a favorite bed-covering of our ancestors,
and of country folk to-day. These coverlets the
weaver calls by the good old English name of
hap-harlot, a name now obsolete in England, which
I have never seen used in text of later date than
Holinshead s Survey of London, written four hundred
Hand- Weaving
2 43
years ago. His manuscript pattern-book is over
a hundred years old, and has the rules for setting
the harnesses. They bear many pretty and odd
names, such as " Rosy Walk," " Baltimore Beauty,"
Orange Peel," "Blazing Star," "Chariot Wheels and Church Windows,
" Bachelor s Fancy "
244 Home Life in Colonial Days
"Girl s Love," "Queen s Fancy," "Devil s Fancy/
"Everybody s Beauty," "Four Snow Balls," "Five
Snow Balls," "Bricks and Blocks," "Gardener s
Note," " Green Vails," " Rose in Bloom," " Pan-
sies and Roses in the Wilderness," " Flag- Work,"
" Royal Beauty," " Indian March," " Troy s
Beauty," " Primrose and Diamonds," " Crown and
Diamonds," "Jay s Fancy," " In Summer and Win
ter," "Boston Beauty," and "Indian War." One
named " Bony Part s March " was very pretty, as
was " Orange Peel," and " Orange Trees " ; " Dog
Tracks " was even checkerwork, " Blazing Star,"
a herring-bone design. " Perry s Victory " and
" Lady Washington s Delight " show probably the
date of their invention, and were handsome designs,
while the " Whig Rose from Georgia," which had
been given to the weaver by an old lady a hun
dred years old, had proved a poor and ugly thing.
" Kapa s Diaper " was a complicated design which
took " five harnesses " to make. " Rattlesnake s
Trail," " Wheels of Fancy," " Chariot Wheels and
Church Windows," and " Bachelor s Fancy " were
all exceptionally fine designs.
Sometimes extremely elaborate patterns were
woven in earlier days. An exquisitely woven cover
let as fine as linen sheeting, a corner of which is
here shown, has an elaborate border of patriotic and
Hand-Weaving
245
Hand-woven Bed Coverlet
Masonic emblems, patriotic inscriptions, and the
name of the maker, a Red Hook, Hudson valley,
dame of a century ago, who wove this beautiful
bedspread -as the crowning treasure of her bridal
outfit. The " setting-up " of such a design as this
is entirely beyond my skill as a weaver to explain
or even comprehend. But it is evident that the
border must have been woven by taking up a single
246 Home Life in Colonial Days
warp-thread at a time, with a wire needle, not by
passing a shuttle, as it is far too complicated and
varied for any treadle-harness to be able to make a
shed for a shuttle.
Hand-weaving in Weaver Rose s loom-room to
day is much simplified in many of its preparatory
details by the employment of machine-made mate
rials. The shuttles and spools are made by ma
chinery ; and more important still, both warp and
weft is purchased ready-spun from mills. The
warp is simply a stout cotton twine or coarse thread
bought in balls or hanks ; while various cheap mill-
yarns or what is known as worsteds or coarse crewels
are used as filling. These, of course, are cheap, but
alas ! are dyed with fleeting or garish aniline dyes.
No new blue yarn can equal either in color 01
durability the old indigo-dyed, homespun, hard-
twisted yarn made on a spinning-wheel. Ger-
mantown, early in the field in American woo!
manufacture, still supplies nearly all the yarn for
his hand-looms.
The transition half a century or more ago from
what Horace Bushnell called " mother and daughter
power to water and steam power," was a complete
revolution in domestic life, and indeed of social
manners as well, When a people spin and weave
and make their own dress, you have in this very
Hand- Weaving 247
fact the assurance that they are home-bred, home-
living, home-loving people. You are sure, also,
that the lives of the women are home-centred.
The chief cause for women s intercourse with any
of the outside world except neighborly acquaint-
tance, her chief knowledge of trade and exchange,
is in shopping, dressmaking, etc. These causes
scarcely existed in country communities a century
ago. The daughters who in our days of factories
leave the farm for the cotton-mill, where they per
form but one of the many operations in cloth manu
facture, can never be as good home-makers or as
helpfu: mates as the homespun girls of our grand
mothers days ; nor can they be such co-workers in
great public movements.
In the summer of 1775, when all the preparations
for the War of the Revolution were in a most
unsettled and depressing condition, especially the
supplies for the Continental army, the Provincial
Congress made a demand on the people for thirteen
thousand warm coats to be ready for the soldiers by
cold weather. There were no great contractors
then as now to supply the cloth and make the gar
ments, but by hundreds of hearthstones throughout
the country wool-wheels and hand-looms were
started eagerly at work, and the order was rilled by
the handiwork of patriotic American women. Itt
248 Home Life in Colonial Days
\ the record book of some New England towns may
still be found the lists of the coat-makers. In the
inside of each coat was sewed the name of the town
and the maker. Every soldier volunteering for
eight months* service was given one of these home
spun, home-made, all-wool coats as a bounty. So
highly were these " Bounty Coats " prized, that the
heirs of soldiers who were killed at Bunker Hill
before receiving their coats were given a sum of
money instead. The list of names of soldiers who
then enlisted is known to this day as the " Coat
Roll," and the names of the women who made
the coats might form another roll of honor. The
English sneeringly called Washington s army the
" Homespuns." It was a truthful nickname, but
there was deeper power in the title than the English
scoffers knew.
The starting up of power-looms and the wonder
ful growth of woollen manufacture did not crowd
out homespun as speedily in America as in England.
When the poet Whittier set out from the Quaker
farmhouse to go to Boston to seek his fortune, he
wore a homespun suit every part of which, even
the horn buttons, was of domestic manufacture.
Many a man born since Whittier has grown to
manhood clothed for every-day wear wholly with
homespun ; and many a boy is living who was sent
Hand- Weaving 249
to college dressed wholly in a " full-cloth " suit,
with horn buttons or buttons made of discs of
heavy leather.
During the Civil War spinning and weaving were
revived arts in the Confederate cities ; and, as ever
in earlier days, proved a most valuable economic
resource under restricted conditions. In the home
of a friend in Charleston, South Carolina, an old,
worm-eaten loom was found in a garret where it had
lain since the embargo in 1812. It was set up in
1863, and plantation carpenters made many like it
for neighbors and fellow-citizens. All women in
the mountain districts knew how to use the loom,
and taught weaving to many others, both white and
black. A portion of the warp, which was cotton,
was spun at home ; more was bought from a cotton-
factory. My friend sacrificed a great number of
excellent wool-mattresses ; this wool was spun into
yarn and used for weft, and formed a most grateful
and dignified addition to the varied, grotesque, and
interesting makeshifts of the wardrobe of the South
ern Confederacy.
Though weaving on hand-looms in our Northern
and Middle states is practically extinct, save as to the
weaving of rag carpets (and that only in few com
munities), in the South all is different. In all the
mountain and remote regions of Kentucky, Tennes-
250 Home Life in Colonial Days
see, Georgia, the Carolinas, and I doubt not in
Alabama, both among the white and negro moun
tain-dwellers, hand-weaving is still a household art.
The descendants of the Acadians in Louisiana still
weave and wear homespun. The missions in the
mountains encourage spinning and weaving ; and it
is pleasant to learn that many women not only pur
sue these handicrafts for their home use, but some
secure a good living by hand-weaving, earning ten
cents a yard in weaving rag carpets. The coverlet
patterns resemble the ones already described. Names
from Waynesville, North Carolina, are " Washing
ton s Diamond Ring," "Nine Chariot Wheels";
from Pinehurst come " Flowery Vine," " Double
Table," "Cat Track," "Snow Ball and Dew Drop,"
" Snake Shed," " Flowers in the Mountains." At
Pinehurst the old settlers, of sturdy Scotch stock, all
weave. They make cloth, all cotton; cloth of cotton
warp and wool filling called drugget ; dimity, a
heavy cotton used for coverlets ; a yarn jean which
has wool warp and filling, and cotton jean which is
cotton warp and wool filling ; homespun is a heavy
cloth, of cotton and wool mixed. All buy cotton
warp or " chain," as they call it, ready-spun from
the mills. This is known by the name of bunch-
thread. These Pinehurst weavers still use home
made dyes. Cotton is dyed black with dye made
Hand-Weaving 251
by steeping the bark of the " Black Jack " or scrub-
oak mixed with red maple bark. Wool is dyed black
with a mixture of gall-berry leaves and sumac berries ;
for red they use a moss which they find growing on
the rocks, and which may be the lichen Roccella tine-
toria or dyer s-moss ; also madder root, and sassafras
bark. Yellow is dyed with laurel leaves, or " dye-
flower/ a yellow flower of the sunflower tribe ; laurel
leaves and " dye-flower " together made orange-red.
Blue is obtained from the plentiful wild indigo ; and
for green, the cloth or yarn is first dyed blue with
indigo, then boiled in a decoction of hickory bark
and laurel leaves. A bright yellow is obtained from
a clay which abounds in that neighborhood, proba
bly like a red ferruginous limestone found in Ten
nessee, which gives a splendid, fast color; when the
clay is baked and ground it gives a fine, artistic, dull
red. Purple dye comes from cedar tops and lilac
leaves ; brown from an extract of walnut hulls.
The affectionate regard which all good workmen
have for their tools and implements in handcrafts
is found among these Southern weavers. One as
sures me that her love for her loom is as for a human
companion. The machines are usually family heir
looms that have been owned for several generations,
and are treasured like relics.
CHAPTER XI
GIRLS OCCUPATIONS
HATCH ELLING and carding, spinning and
reeling, weaving and bleaching, cooking,
candle and cheese making, were not the
only household occupations of our busy grand
mothers when they were young ; a score of domes
tic duties kept ever busy their ready hands.
Some notion of the qualifications of a housekeeper
over a century ago may be obtained from this ad
vertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet of Septem
ber 23, 1780:
" Wanted at a Seat about half a day s journey from Phila
delphia, on which are good improvements and domestics,
A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheer
ful, active and amiable Disposition ; cleanly, industrious,
perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Con
cerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying,
marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing,
pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two
young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with
their father, compose- the Family. Such a person will be
252
Girls Occupations 253
treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every
encouragement due to such a character."
Respect and esteem, forsooth ! and due encourage
ment to such a miracle of saintliness and capacity ;
light terms indeed to apply to such a character.
There is, in the library of the Connecticut His
torical Society, a diary written by a young girl of
Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775. Her
name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily
work, and the entries run like this :
" Fix d gown for Prude, Mend Mother s Riding-hood,
Spun short thread, Fix d two gowns for Welsh s
girls, Carded tow, Spun linen, Worked on Cheese-
basket, Hatchel d flax with Hannah, we did 51 Ibs.
apiece, Pleated and ironed, Read a Sermon of Dod-
dridge s, -Spooled a piece, Milked the cows, Spun
linen, did 50 knots, Made a Broom of Guinea wheat
straw, Spun thread to whiten, Set a Red dye, Had
two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor s, I carded two pounds
of whole wool and felt Nationly, Spun harness twine,
Scoured the pewter."
She tells also of washing, cooking, knitting, weed
ing the garden, picking geese, etc., and of many
visits to her friends. She dipped candles in the
spring, and made soap in the autumn. This latter
was a trying and burdensome domestic duty, but
the soft soap was important for home use.
254 Home Life in Colonial Days
All the refuse grease from cooking, butchering,
etc., was stored through the winter, as well as wood-
ashes from the great fireplaces. The first operation
was to make the lye, to "set the leach." Many
families owned a strongly made leach-barrel ; others
made a sort of barrel from a section of the bark of
the white birch. This barrel was placed on bricks
or set at a slight angle on a circular groove in a wood
Oi stone base ; then filled with ashes ; water was
poured in till the lye trickled or leached out through
an outlet cut in the groove, into a small wooden tub
or bucket. The water and ashes were frequently
replenished as they wasted, and the lye accumulated
in a large tub or kettle. If the lye was not strong
enough, it was poured over fresh ashes. An old-
time receipt says :
"The great Difficulty in making Soap come is the want
of Judgment of the Strength of the Lye. If your Lye
will bear up an Egg or a Potato so you can see a piece
of the Surface as big as a Ninepence it is just strong
enough."
The grease and lye were then boiled together
in a great pot over, a fire out of doors. It took
about six bushels of ashes and twenty-four pounds
of grease to make a barrel of soap. The soft soap
made by this process seemed like a clean jelly, and
Girls* Occupations 255
showed no trace of the repulsive grease that helped
to form it. A hard soap also was made with the
tallow of the bayberry, and was deemed especially
desirable for toilet use. But little hard soap was
purchased, even in city homes.
It was a common saying : " We had bad luck with
our soap, * or good luck. The soap was always care
fully stirred one way. The " Pennsylvania Dutch "
used a sassafras stick to stir it. A good smart
worker could make a barrel of soap in a day, and
have time to sit and rest in the afternoon and talk
her luck over, before getting supper.
This soft soap was used in the great monthly
washings which, for a century after the settlement
of the colonies, seem to have been the custom.
The household wash was allowed to accumulate, and
the washing done once a month, or in some house
holds once in three months.
Thomas Tusser s rhymed instructions to good
housekeepers as to the washing contain chiefly warn
ings to the housekeeper against thieves, thus :
" Dry sun, dry wind,
Safe bind, safe find.
Go wash well, saith summer, with sun I shall dry;
Go wring well, saith winter, with wind so shall I.
To trust without heed is to venture a joint, j
Give tale and take count is a housewifely point."
256 Home Life in Colonial Days
Abigail Foote wrote of making a broom of
Guinea wheat. This was not broom-corn, for that
useful plant was not grown in Connecticut for the
purpose of broom-making till twenty years or more
after she wrote her diary. Brooms and brushes
were made of it in Italy nearly two centuries ago.
Benjamin Franklin, who was ever quick to use and
develop anything that would benefit his native
country, and was ever ready to take a hint, noted
a few seeds of broom-corn hanging on an im
ported brush. He planted these seeds and raised
some of the corn ; and Thomas Jefferson placed
broom-corn among the productions of Virginia in
1781. By this time many had planted it, but no
systematic plan of raising broom-corn abundantly
for the manufacture of brooms was planned till
1798, when Levi Dickenson, a Yankee farmer of
Hadley, Massachusetts, planted half an acre. From
this he made between one and two hundred brooms
which he peddled in a horse-cart in neighboring
towns. The following year he planted an acre; and
the tall broom-corn with its spreading panicles at
tracted much attention. Though he was thought
visionary when he predicted that broom manufacture
would be the greatest industry in the county, and
though he was sneeringly told that only Indians ought
to make brooms, he persevered ; and his neighbors
Girls Occupations 257
finally planted and made brooms also. He carried
brooms soon to Pittsfield, to New London, and in
1805 to Albany and Boston. So rapid was the
increase of manufacture that in 1810 seventy thou
sand brooms were made in the county. Since then
millions of dollars worth have gone forth from the
farms and villages in his neighborhood.
Mr. Dickenson at first scraped the seed from the
brush with a knife ; then he used a sort of hoe ;
then a coarse comb like a ripple-comb. He tied
each broom by hand, with the help of a negro ser
vant. Much of this work could be done by little
girls, who soon gave great help in broom manufact
ure ; though the final sewing (when the needle was
pressed through with a leather "palm" such as
sailors use) had to be done by the strong hands of
grown women and men.
Doubtless Abigail Foote made many an " Indian
broom," as well as her brooms of Guinea wheat,
which may have been a special home manufacture
of her neighborhood ; for many fibres, leaves, and
straws were used locally in broom-making.
Another duty of the women of the old-time
household was the picking of domestic geese.
Geese were raised for their feathers more than as
food. In some towns every family had a flock, and
their clanking was heard all day and sometimes all
258 Home Life in Colonial Days
night. They roamed the streets all summer, eating
grass by the highways and wallowing in the pitddles.
Sometimes they were yoked with a goose-yoke
made of a shingle with a hole in it. In midwinter
they were kept in barnyards, but the rest of the
year they spent the night in the street, each flock
near the home of its owner. It is said that one old
goose of each flock always kept awake and stood
watch ; and it was
told in Hadley,
Massachusetts, that
if a young man
chanced to be out
late, as for instance
a-courting, his re
turn home wakened
the geese through
out the village, who
sounded the un
seasonable hour with
a terrible clamor.
They made so much
noise on summer
Sundays that they
Goose Basket SCHOUsly disturbed
church services ; and became such nuisances that at
last the boys killed whole flocks.
Girls Occupations 259
Goose-picking was cruel work. Three or four
times a year were the feathers stripped from the
live birds. A stocking was pulled over the bird s
head to keep it from biting. Sometimes the head
was thrust into a goose basket. The pickers had
to wear old clothes and tie covers over the hair, as
the down flew everywhere. The quills, used for
pens, were never pulled but once from a goose.
Palladius, On Husbondrie, written in the fourth
century, and Englished in the fifteenth century,
tells of goose-picking : -
" Twice a yere deplumed may they be,
In spryngen tyme and harvest tyme."
The old Latin and English times for picking
were followed in the New World. Among the
Dutch, geese were everywhere raised ; for feather-
beds were, if possible, more desired by the Dutch
than the English.
In a work entitled Good Order established in Penn
sylvania and New Jersey, written by a Quaker in
1685, he urges that schools be provided where girls
could be instructed in " the spinning of flax, sewing,
and making all sorts of useful needle work, knitting
of gloves and stockings, making of straw-works, as
hats, baskets, etc., or any other useful art or mys
tery/ It was a century before his "making of
260 Home Life in Colonial Days
straw-works " was carried out, not till larger im
portations of straw hats and bonnets came to this
country.
When the beautiful and intricate straw bonnets
of Italian braid, Genoese, Leghorn, and others, were
brought here, they were too costly for many to pur
chase ; and many attempts, especially by country-
bred girls, were made to plait at home straw braids
to imitate these envied bonnets. Many towns
claim the first American straw bonnet ; in fact, the
attempts were almost simultaneous. To Betsey
Metcalf of Providence, Rhode Island, is usually
accorded the honor of starting the straw-hat busi
ness in America. The earliest recorded effort to
manufacture straw head-wear is shown in a patent
given to Mrs. Sibylla Masters of Philadelphia, for
using palmetto and straw for hats. This Mrs.
Masters was the first American, man or woman,
ever awarded a patent in England. The first patent
issued by the United States to a woman was also
for an invention in straw-plaiting. A Connecticut
girl, Miss Sophia Woodhouse, was given a prize for
" leghorn hats " which she had plaited ; and she
took out a patent in 1821 for a new material for
bonnets. It was the stalks, above the upper joint,
of spear-grass and redtop grass growing so pro
fusely in Weathersfield. From this she had a
Girls Occupations 261
national reputation, and a prize of twenty guineas
was given her the same year by the London Society
of Arts. The wife of President John Quincy
Adams wore one of these bonnets, to the great pride
of her husband.
When the bonnet was braided and sewed into
shape, it had to be bleached, for it was the dark
natural straw. I don t know the domestic process
in general use, but an ingenious family of sisters in
Newburyport thus accomplished their bleaching.
They bored holes in the head of a barrel ; tied
strings to each new bonnet ; passed the strings
through the holes and carefully plugged the open
ings with wood. This left the bonnets hanging
inside the barrel, which was set over an old-fashioned
foot-stove filled with hot coals on which sulphur
had been placed. The fumes of the burning sul
phur arose and filled the barrel, and were closely
retained by quilts wrapped around it. When the
bonnets were taken out, they were clear and white.
The base of a lignum-vitae mortar made into the
proper shape with layers of pasteboard formed the
mould on which the bonnet crown was pressed.
Even before they could spin girls were taught to
knit, as soon as their little hands could hold the
needles. Sometimes girls four years of age could
knit stockings. Boys had to knit their own sus-
262 Home Life in Colonial Days
penders. All the stockings and mittens for the
family, and coarse socks and mittens for sale, were
made in large numbers. Much fine knitting was
done, with many intricate and elaborate stitches ;
those known as the " herring-bone " and " fox and
geese " were great favorites. By the use of curious
stitches initials could be knit into mittens ; and it is
said that one young New Hampshire girl, using fine
flaxen yarn, knit the whole alphabet and a verse of
poetry into a pair of mittens ; which I think must
have been long-armed mitts for ladies wear, to have
space enough for the poetry.
To knit a pair of double mittens was a sharp and
long day s work. Nancy Peabody s brother of
Shelburne, New Hampshire, came home one night
and said he had lost his mittens while chopping in
the woods. Nancy ran to a bundle of wool in the
garret, carded and spun a big hank of yarn that
night. It was soaked and scoured the next morn
ing, and in twenty-four hours from the time the
brother announced his loss he had a fine new pair
of double mittens. A pair of double hooked and
pegged mittens would last for years. Pegging, I
am told, was heavy crocheting.
An elaborate and much-admired form of knit
ting was the bead bags and purses which were so
fashionable in the early years of this century,
Girls Occupations 263
though I have seen some knitted bags of colonial
days.
Great variety and ingenuity were shown in these
bags and purses. Some bore landscapes and fig
ures; others were memorials done in black and
white and purple beads, having so-called " mourn
ing designs," such as weeping willows, gravestones,
urns, etc., with the name of the deceased person
and date of death. Beautiful bags were knitted to
match wedding-gowns. Knitted purses were a
favorite token and gift from fair hands to husband
or lover. Watch chains were more unusual; they
were knit in a geometrical design, were about a yard
long and about three-eighths of an inch in diameter.
One I saw had in tiny letters in gilt beads the date
and the words " Remember the Giver." In all
these knitted and crocheted bags the beads had to
be strung by a rule in advance; in an elaborate
pattern of many colors it may easily be seen that
the mistake of a single bead in the stringing would
spoil the entire design. They were therefore never
a cheap form of decorative work. Five dollars was
often paid for knitting a single bag. A varied
group from the collection of Mr. J. Howard Swift
of Chicago is here shown.
Netting was another decorative handiwork. Netted
fringes for edging the coverlets, curtains, testers, and
264 Home Life in Colonial Days
valances of high-post bedsteads were usually made
of cotton thread or twine, and when tufted or tas-
selled were a pretty finish. A finer silk or cotton
netting was used for trimming sacks and petti
coats. A letter written by Mrs. Carrington from
Mount Vernon in 1799 says of Mrs. President
Washington :
u Her netting is a source of great amusement to her and
is so neatly done that all the younger part of the family are
proud of trimming their dresses with it, and have furnished
me with a whole suit so that I shall appear a la domes-
tique at the first party we have when I get home."
Netted purses and work-bags also were made
similar to the knitted ones. A homelier and heav
ier netting of twine was often done at home for small
fishing-nets.
Previous to the Revolution there was a boarding-
school kept in Philadelphia in Second Street near
Walnut, by a Mrs. Sarah Wilson. She thus ad
vertised:
" Young ladies may be educated in a genteel manner,
and pains taken to teach them in regard to their behaviour,
on reasonable terms. They may be taught all sorts fine
needlework, viz., working on catgut or flowering muslin,
sattin stitch, quince stitch, tent stitch, cross-stitch, open
work, tambour, embroidering curtains or chairs, writing and
cyphering. Likewise waxwork in all its several branches,
Knitted Bags
Girls Occupations 265
never as yet particularly taught here; also how to take
profiles in wax, to make wax flowers and fruits and pin-
baskets."
There was no limit to the beauty and delicacy of
the embroidery of those days. I have seen the
beautiful needlework cap and skirt worn by Gov
ernor Thomas Johnson of Maryland, when he was
christened. The coat of arms of both the Lux and
Johnson families, the name Agnes Lux and Anne
Johnson, and the words " God bless the Babe "
are embroidered upon them in most delicate fairy
stitches. The babe grew up to be the governor of
his state in Revolutionary times.
In an old book printed in 1821, a set of rules is
given for teaching needlework, and it is doubtless
exactly what had been the method for a century.
The girls were first shown how to turn a hem on a
piece of waste paper; then they proceeded to the
various stitches in this order: to hem, to sew and
fell a seam, to draw threads and hemstitch, to gather
and sew on gathers, to make buttonholes, to sew on
buttons, to do herring-bone stitch, to darn, to mark,
to tuck, whip, and sew on a frill. There is also a
long and tedious set of questions and answers like a
catechism, explaining the various stitches.
There was one piece of needlework which was
done by every little girl who was carefully brought
266
Home Life in Colonial Day
up : she sewed a sampler. These were worked in
M __ - ^_^ - _ various beautiful and difficult stitches
in colored silks and wool on a strong,
loosely woven canvas.
In English collections, the oblong
samplers, long and narrow, are as a
rule older than the square samplers ;
and it is safe to believe the same of
American samplers. Fortunately,
many of them are dated, but this an
cient one from the Quincy family has
no date. The oldest sampler I have
ever seen is in the collection of antique
articles now in Pilgrim Hall at Ply
mouth. It was made by a daughter
of the Pilgrims. The verse embroid
ered, on it reads :
Fieetwood-Quincy
Sampler
" Lorea Standish is My Name.
Lord Guide my Heart that I may do thy Will,
And fill my Hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame,
And I will give the Glory to thy Name."
Similar verses, and portions of hymns, are often
found on these samplers. A favorite rhyme was :
"When I was young and in my Prime,
You see how well I spent my Time.
Embroidered Coat of Arms
Girls Occupations 267
And by my sampler you may see
What care my Parents took of me."
A very spirited verse is :
" You ll mend your life to-morrow still you cry.
In what far Country does To-morrow lie ?
It stays so long, is fetch d so far, I fear
Twill prove both very old, and very dear."
Strange trees and fruits and birds and beasts,
wonderful vines and flowers, were embroidered on
these domestic tapestries.
In the hands of a skilful worker, the sampler
might become a thing of beauty and historical in
terest ; and the stitches learned and practised on it
might be used on more ambitious pieces of work,
which often took the shape of the family coat of
arms. Such was the work of Mary Salter (Mrs.
Henry Quincy), who was born in 1726, and died in
1755. It is the arms of Salter and Bryan party per
pale upon a shield. Rich in embossed work in gold
and silver thread, it is a beautiful testimonial to the
deft and proficient hand of the young needlewoman
who embroidered it.
Sometimes pretentious pictures representing
events in public or family history, were embroid
ered in crewels on sampler linen. The largest and
funniest one I have ever seen was the boarding-
268 Home Life in Colonial Days
school climax of glory of Miss Hannah Otis,
sister of the patriot James Otis. It is a view of
the Hancock House, Boston Common, and vicinity,
as they appeared from 1755 to 1760. Across its
expanse Governor Hancock rides triumphantly ;
and the fair maid looking over the garden wall
at the Charles River is Dorothy Quincy, afterwards
Madam Hancock. This triumph of school-girl
affection and needle-craft, wholly devoid of per
spective or proportion, made a great sensation
in Boston, in its day.
Another large piece of similar work is here repre
sented. The original is in the library of the
American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, Massa
chusetts. It is a view of the Old South Church,
Boston ; and with its hooped dames and coach and
footman, has a certain value as indicating the cos
tume of the times. It is dated 1756.
Familiar to the descendants of old New England
families, are the embroidered mourning pieces.
These are seldom more than a century old. On
them weeping willows and urns, tombs and mourn
ing figures, names of departed friends with dates of
their deaths, and epitaphs were worked with vast
skill, and were so much admired and were such a
delightful home decoration, that it is no unusual
thing to find these elaborate memento moris with
Colonial Embroidery, Old South Church, Boston
Girls Occupations 269
empty spaces for names and dates, waiting for some
one to die, and still unfilled, unfinished, blankly
commemorative of no one, while the industrious
embroiderer has long since gone to the tomb she
so deftly and eagerly pictured, and her name, too, is
forgotten.
Tambour work was a favorite form of embroid
ery. In 1788 Madam Hesselius wrote thus in jest
of her daughter, a Philadelphia miss :
u To tambour on crape she has a great passion,
Because here of late it has been much the fashion.
The shades are dis-sorted, the spangles are scattered
And for want of due care the crape has got tattered."
Tambouring with various stitches on different
kinds of net made pretty laces ; and these were
apparently the laces usually worked and worn. In
the form of rich veils and collars scores of intricate
and beautiful stitches were used, and exquisite arti
cles of wear were manufactured.
A strip of net footing pinned and sewn to paper,
with reels of fine linen thread and threaded needle
attached, is shown in the accompanying illustration
just as it was left by the deft and industrious hands
that have been folded for a century in the dust.
The pattern and stitches in this design are simple ;
the design was first pricked in outline with a pin,
270
Home Life in Colonial Days
then worked in. Other stitches and patterns, none
of them the most elaborate and difficult, are shown
in the infant s cap and collars, and the strips of
lace and " modesty-piece."
In the seventeenth century lace-making with
Net Footing and Lace
bobbins was taught ; it is referred to in Judge
Sewall s diary ; and a friend has shown me the
cushion and bobbins used by her far-away grand
mother who learned the various stitches in London
at a guinea a stitch.
The feminine love of color, the longing for deco
ration, as well as pride in skill of needle-craft, found
riotous expansion in quilt-piecing. A thrifty econ-
Girls* Occupations
271
omy, too, a desire to use up all the fragments and
bits of stuffs which were necessarily cut out in the
shaping, chiefly of women s and children s gar
ments, helped to make the patchwork a satisfaction.
The amount of labor, of careful fitting, neat piecing,
and elaborate quilting, the thousands of stitches that
went into one of these patchwork quilts, are to-day
Collars, Caps, Laces, and " Modesty-piece "
almost painful to regard. Women revelled in in
tricate and difficult patchwork ; they eagerly ex
changed patterns with one another; they talked over
the designs, and admired pretty bits of calico, and
pondered what combinations to make, with far more
zest than women ever discuss art or examine high
art specimens together to-day. There was one
satisfactory condition in the work, and that was the
272 Home Life in Colonial Days
quality of the cottons and linens of which the patch
work was made. They were none of the slimsy,
composition-filled, aniline-dyed calicoes of to-day.
A piece of "chancy," "patch," or "copper-plate"
a hundred years old will be as fresh to-day as when
woven. Real India chintzes and palampours are
found in these quilts, beautiful and artistic stuffs,
and the firm, unyielding, high-priced, "real " French
calicoes.
A sense of the idealization of quilt-piecing is given
also by the quaint descriptive names applied to the
various patterns. Of those the " Rising-sun,"
"Log Cabin," and "Job s Trouble" are perhaps
the most familiar. " Job s Trouble " was simply
honeycomb or hexagonal blocks. " To set a Job s
Trouble," was to cut out an exact hexagon for a
pattern (preferably from tin, otherwise from firm
cardboard) ; to cut out from this many hexagons
in stiff brown paper or letter paper. These were
covered with the bits of calico with the edges turned
under ; the sides were sewed carefully together over
and over, till a firm expanse permitted the removal
of the papers.
The name of the pattern seldom gave an expres
sion of its character. " Dove in the Window,"
" Rob Peter to Pay Paul," " Blue Brigade," " Fan-
mill," "Crow s Foot," "Chinese Puzzle," "Fly-
Girls Occupations 273
wheel," " Love-knot," " Sugar-bowl," are simply
whims of fancy. Floral names, such as " Dutch
Tulip," " Sunflower," " Rose of Sharon," " Blue
bells," cc World s Rose," might suggest a love of
flowers. Sometimes designs are appliqued on with
some regard for coloring. I once saw a quilt that
was a miracle of tedious work. The squares of
white cotton each held a slender stem with two
leaves of green or light brown calico, surmounted
by a four-petalled flower of high-colored calico,
pink, red, blue, etc. This design was all carefully
hemmed down. The effect was surprisingly Oriental.
When the patchwork was completed, it was laid
flatly on the lining (often another expanse of patch
work), with layers of wool or cotton wadding
between, and the edges were basted all around.
Four bars of wood, about ten feet long, " the
quiltin -frame," were placed at the four edges, the
quilt was sewed to them with stout thread, the bars
crossed and tied firmly at corners, and the whole
raised on chairs or tables to a convenient height.
Thus around the outstretched quilt a dozen quilters
could sit running the whole together with fanciful
set designs of stitching. When about a foot on
either side was wholly quilted, it was rolled upon
its bar, and the work went on ; thus the visible
quilt diminished, like Balzac s Peau de Chagrin,
274 Home Life in Colonial Days
in a united and truly sociable work that required
no special attention, in which all were facing to
gether and all drawing closer together as the after
noon passed in intimate gossip. Sometimes several
quilts were set up. I know of a ten days quilting-
bee in Narragansett in 1752.
In early days calicoes were not common, but
every one had woollen garments and pieces, and the
quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in
bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace
garments and remnants of decayed gentility were
pressed into service in these quilts : portions of
the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia
men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some bril
liant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn
petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by a
lord mayor of London and brought to America
by a member of the Merritt family of Salisbury,
Massachusetts, went through a series of advent
ures and migrations, and ended its days as small
bits of vivid color casting a grateful glory and
variety on a patchwork quilt in the Saco valley of
Maine. To this day at vendues or sales of old
country households in New England, there will be
handed out great rolls of woollen pieces to be used
for patchwork quilts or rag carpets, and they find
purchasers.
Girls Occupations 275
These woollen quilts had a thin wadding, and
were usually very closely quilted, so they were quite
flat. They were called " pressed quilts." An old
farm wife said to me in New Hampshire, " Girls
won t take the trouble to make pressed quilts now
adays, it s as much as they ll do to tack a puff,"
that is, make a light quilt with thick wadding only
tacked together from front to back, at regular inter
vals. A pressed quilt which I saw was quilted in
inch squares. Another had a fan-pattern with sun
flower leaf border ; another was quilted in the elab
orate pattern known as " feather-work."
As much ingenuity was exercised in the design
of the quilting as in the pattern of the patchwork,
and the marking for the quilt design was exceed
ingly tedious, since, of course, no drawings could be
used. I remember seeing one quilt marked by
chalking strings which were stretched tightly across
at the desired intervals, and held up and snapped
smartly down on the quilt, leaving a faint chalky
line to guide the eye and needle. Another simple
design was to quilt in rounds, using a saucer or
plate to form a perfect circle.
The most elaborate quilt I know of is of silk
containing portions of the wedding-dress of Esther
Powel, granddaughter of Gabriel Bernon ; she was
married to James Helme in 1738. When her
276 Home Life in Colonial Days
granddaughter was married in 1795, the quilt was
still unfinished, and a woman was hired who worked
on it for six months, putting a miracle of fine
stitches in the quilting. I think she must have
been very old and very slow, for the wages paid
her were but twenty cents a week and " her keep,"
which was very small pay even in that day of small
wages. When Washington came "to Newport, this
splendid quilt was sent to grace the bed upon which
the hero slept.
I said a few summers ago to a farmer s wife who
lived on the outskirts of a small New England
hill-village : " Your home is very beautiful. From
every window the view is perfect." She answered
quickly : " Yes, but it s awful lonely for me, for I
was born in Worcester; still I don t mind as long
as we have plenty of quiltings." In answer to
my questions she told me that the previous win
ter she had " kept count," and she had helped at
twenty-eight " regular " quiltings, besides her own
home patchwork and quilt-making, and much in
formal help of neighbors on plain quilts. Any
one who has attended a county fair (one not too
modernized and spoiled) and seen the display of
intricate patchwork and quilting still made in coun
try homes, can see that it is not an obsolete accom
plishment.
Girls* Occupations 277
V
A form of decorative work in which many women
took great delight and became astonishingly skilful
was what was known, or at any rate advertised, by
the ambitious title of Papyrotamia. It was simply
the cutting out of stiff paper of various decorative
and ornamental designs with scissors. At the time of
the Revolution it was evidently deemed a very high
accomplishment, and the best pieces of work were
carefully cherished, mounted on black paper, framed
and glazed, and given to friends or bequeathed by
will. One old lady is remembered as using her
scissors with extraordinary deftness, and amusing
herself and delighting her friends by occupying the
hours of every afternoon visit with cutting out en
tirely by hej- trained eye various pretty and curious
designs. Valentines in exceedingly delicate and
appropriate patterns, wreaths and baskets of varied
flowers, marine views, religious symbols, landscapes,
all were accomplished. Coats of arms and escutch
eons cut in black paper and mounted on white were
highly prized. Portrait silhouettes were cut with
the aid of a machine which marked and reduced
mechanically a sharp shadow cast by the sitter s
profile through candle-light on a sheet of white
paper. Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney wrote in rhyme
of a revered friend of her youth, Mrs. Lathrop, of
a period about a century ago :
278 Home Life in Colonial Days
" Thy dextrous scissors ready to produce
The flying squirrel or the long-neck d goose,
Or dancing girls with hands together join d, .
Or tall spruce-trees with wreaths of roses twin d,
The well-dress d dolls whose paper form display d,
Thy penknife s labor and thy pencil s shade."
I once found in an old lacquered box in a cup
board a paper packet containing all the cut-paper
designs mentioned in this rhyme and many more.
The workmanship of the " spruce-trees with wreaths
of roses twin d " was specially marvellous. I plainly
saw in that design a derivative of the English May
pole and encircling wreaths. This package was
marked with the name of the paper-cutter, a Revo
lutionary dame who died at the beginning of this
century. . Her home was remote from the Nor
wich home of Mrs. Lathrop, and I know she never
visited in Connecticut, yet she made precisely the
same designs and indeed all the designs. This is
but a petty proof among many other more decided
ones of the fact that even in those days of scant
communication and infrequent and contracted travel,
there were as in our own times waves of feminine
fancy work, of attempts at artistic expression, which
flooded every home, and receding, left behind much
decorative silt of varying but nearly universal use-
lessness and laborious commonplaceness.
Girls Occupations
279
One of the cut-paper landscapes of Madam Dem-
ing, a Boston lady who was a famous " papyrota-
mist," is here shown. It is now owned by James F.
Cut-paper Picture
Trott, Esq., of Niagara Falls. It is a view of Bos
ton streets just previous to the Revolution. In
that handsome volume, the Ten Broeck Genealogical
Record, are reproductions of some of the landscape
views by Albertina Ten Broeck at the same date.
280 Home Life in Colonial Days
They show the house and farm surroundings of the
old Ten Broeck " Bouwerie," the ancestral home in
New York, and give a wonderfully good idea of it.
These are not in dead silhouette, for an appearance
of shading is afforded by finely cut lines and inter
vening spaces. The highest form of cut-paper
reproduction and decoration ever reached was by
the English woman, Mrs. Delaney, who died in
1788, the friend of the Duchess of Portland, and
intimate of George III. and his queen. She repro
duced in colored paper, in what she called " paper
mosaics," the entire flora of the United Kingdom,
and it is said it was impossible at first sight to dis
tinguish these flowers from the real ones.
CHAPTER XII
DRESS OF THE COLONISTS
AT the time America was settled, rich dress
was almost universal in Europe among per
sons of any wealth or station. The dress
of plain people also, such as yeomen and small
farmers and work-people, was plentiful and substan
tial, and even peasants had good and ample clothing.
Materials were strongly and honestly made, clothing
was sewed by hand, and lasted long. The fashions
did not change from year to year, and the rich or
stout clothes of one generation were bequeathed by
will and worn by a second and even a third and
fourth generation.
In England extravagance in dress in court circles,
and grotesqueness in dress among all educated folk,
had become abhorrent to that class of persons who
were called Puritans ; and as an expression of their
dislike they wore plainer garments, and cut off their
flowing locks, and soon were called Roundheads.
The Massachusetts settlers who were Puritans de
termined to discourage extravagance in dress in the
New World, and attempted to control the fashions.
281
282 Home Life in Colonial Days
The Massachusetts magistrates were reminded of
their duties in this direction by sanctimonious spur
ring from gentlemen and ministers in England. One
such meddler wrote to Governor Winthrop in 1636 :
" Many in your plantacions discover too much
pride." Another stern moralist reproved the colo
nists for writing to England " for cut work coifes,
for deep stammel dyes," to be sent to them in
America. Others, prohibited from wearing broad
laces, were criticised for ordering narrow ones, for
" going as farr as they may."
In 1634 the Massachusetts General Court passed
restricting sumptuary laws. These laws forbade the
purchase of woollen, silk, or linen garments, with
silver, gold, silk, or thread lace on them. Two
years later a narrow binding of lace was permitted
on linen garments. The colonists were ordered
not to make or buy any slashed clothes, except
those with one slash in each sleeve and another
slash in the back. " Cut works, imbroidd or needle
or capps bands & rayles," and gold or silver gir
dles, hat-bands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were
forbidden. Liberty was thriftily given, however, to
the colonists to wear out any garments they chanced
to have unless in the form of inordinately slashed
apparel, immoderate great sleeves and rails, and long
wings, which could not possibly be endured.
Dress of the Colonists 283
In 1639 men>s attire was approached and scanned,
and " immoderate great breeches " were tabooed ;
also broad shoulder-bands, double ruffles and capes,
and silk roses, which latter adornment were worn
on the shoes.
In 1651 the Court again expressed its "utter
detestation that men and women of meane condi
tion, education, and calling, should take vppon them
the garbe of gentlemen by wearinge of gold or silver
lace, or buttons or poynts at their knees, or walke in
great boots, or women of the same ranke to wear
silke or tiffany hoods or scarfs."
Many persons were "presented " under this law,
men boot-wearers as well as women hood-wearers.
In Salem, in 1652, a man was presented for "excess
in bootes, ribonds, gould and silver lace."
In Newbury, in 1653, two women were brought
up for wearing silk hoods and scarfs, but they were
discharged on proof that their husbands were
worth ^200 each. In Northampton, in the year
1676, a wholesale attempt was made by the magis
trates to abolish " wicked apparell." Thirty-eight
women of the Connecticut valley were presented
at one time for various degrees of finery, and
as of too small estate to wear silk. A young girl
named Hannah Lyman was presented for " wearing
silk in a fflaunting manner, in an offensive way and
284 Home Life in Colonial Days
garb not only before but when she stood presented/*
Thirty young men were also presented for silk-
wearing, long hair, and other extravagances. The
calm flaunting of her silk in the very eyes of the
Court by sixteen-year-old Hannah was premonitory
of the waning power of the magistrates, for similar
prosecutions at a later date were quashed. By 1682
the tables were turned and we find the Court ar
raigning the selectmen of five towns for not prose
cuting offenders against these laws as in previous
years. In 1675 tne town f Dedham had been
similarly warned and threatened, but apparently was
never prosecuted. Connecticut called to its aid in
repressing extravagant dress the economic power of
taxation by ordering that whoever wore gold or
silver lace, gold or silver buttons, silk ribbons, silk
scarfs, or bone lace worth over three shillings a yard
should be taxed as worth ^150.
Virginia fussed a little over " excess in cloathes."
Sir Francis Wyatt was enjoined not to permit any
but the Council and the heads of Hundreds to wear
gold on their clothes, or to wear silk till they made
it which was intended more to encourage silk-
making than to discourage silk-wearing. And it
provided that unmarried men should be assessed
according to their apparel, and married men accord
ing to that of their family. In 1660 Virginia
Dress of the Colonists 285
colonists were ordered to import no " silke stuffe in
garments or in peeces except for whoods and scarfs,
nor silver or gold lace, nor bone lace of silk or
threads, nor ribbands wrought with gold or silver in
them."
The ministers did not fail in their duty in at
tempting to march with the magistrates in the re
striction and simplification of dress. They preached
often against " intolerable pride in clothes -and hair."
Even when the Pilgrims were in Holland the
preachers had been deeply disturbed over the dress
of their minister s wife, Madam Johnson, who wore
" lawn coives " and busks, and a velvet hood, and
" whalebones in her petticoat bodice," and worst of
all, "a topish hat." One of the earliest interferences
of Roger Williams was when he instructed the
women of Salem parish always to wear veils in pub
lic. But John Cotton preached to them the next
Sunday, and he proved to the dames and goodwives
that veils were a sign and symbol of undue subjec
tion to their husbands, and Salem women soon
proved their rights by coming barefaced to meeting.
Mr. Davenport preached about men s head-gear,
that men must take off their hats, and stand up at
the announcement of the text. And if New Haven
men wore their hats in meeting, I can t see why they
fussed so over the Quakers broadbrims.
286 Home Life in Colonial Days
After a while the whole church interfered. In
1769 the church at Andover put it to vote whether
" the parish Disapprove of the female sex sitting
with their Hats on in the Meeting-house in time of
Divine Service as being Indecent." In the town
of Abington, in 1775, it was voted that it was " an
indecent way that the female sex do sit with their
hats and bonnets on to worship God." Still another
town voted that it was the " Town s Mind " that
the women should take their bonnets off in meeting
and hang them " on the peggs." We do not know
positively, but I suspect that the bonnets continued
to grace the heads instead of the pegs in Andover,
Abington, and other towns.
To know how the colonists were dressed, we have
to learn from the lists of their clothing which they
left by will, which lists are still preserved in court
records ; from the inventories of the garments fur
nished to each settler who came by contract ; from
the orders sent back to England for new clothing ;
from a few crude portraits, and from some articles
of ancient clothing which are still preserved.
When Salem was settled the Massachusetts Bay
Company furnished clothes to all the men who
emigrated and settled that town. Every man had
four pairs of shoes, four pairs of stockings, a pair of
Norwich garters, four shirts, two suits of doublet
Eighteenth-century Stays
Dress of the Colonists 287
and hose of leather lined with oiled skin, a woollen
suit lined with leather, four bands, two handker
chiefs, a green cotton waistcoat, a leather belt, a
woollen cap, a black hat, two red knit caps, two pairs
of gloves, a mandillion or cloak lined with cotton,
and an extra pair of breeches. Little boys just as
soon as they could walk wore clothes made pre
cisely like their fathers : doublets which were warm
double jackets, leather knee-breeches, leather belts,
knit caps. The outfit for the Virginia planters was
not so liberal, for the company was not so wealthy.
It was called a " Particular of Apparell." It had
only three bands, three pairs stockings, and three
shirts instead of four. The suits were of canvas,
frieze, and cloth. The clothing was doubtless
lighter, because the climate of Virginia was warmer.
There were no gloves, no handkerchiefs, no hat,
no red knit caps, no mandillion, no extra pair of
breeches. They had " a dozen points," which were
simply tapes to hold up the clothing and fasten it
together. The clothing of the Piscataquay planters
varied but little from the others. They had scarlet
waistcoats and cassocks of cloth, not of leather. We
are apt to think of the Puritan settlers of New Eng
land as sombre in attire, wearing "sad-colored"
garments, but green and scarlet waistcoats and scarlet
caps certainly afforded a gay touch of color.
288
Home Life in Colonial Days
A young boy, about ten years old, named John
Livingstone, was sent from New York to school
in New England at the latter part of the seven
teenth century. An "account of his new linen and
clothes " has been preserved, and it gives an ex
cellent idea of the clothing of a son of wealthy
people at that time. It reads thus, in the old
spelling :
" Eleven new shirts,
4 pair laced sieves,
8 Plane Cravats,
4 Ccavats with Lace,
4 Stripte Wastecoats with
black buttons,
i Flowered Wastecoat,
4 New osenbrig britches,
i Gray hat with a black
ribbon,
I Gray hat with a blew
ribbon,
I Dousin black buttons,
i Dousin coloured buttons,
3 Pair gold buttons, ,
3 Pair silver buttons,
2 Pair Fine blew Stockings,
1 Pair Fine red Stockings,
4 White Handkerchiefs,
2 Speckled Handkerchiefs,
5 Pair Gloves,
i Stuff Coat with black
buttons,
I Cloth Coat,
i Pair blew plush britches,
1 Pair Serge britches,
2 Combs,
i Pair new Shooes.
Silk & Thred to mend his
Cloathes."
Osenbrig was a heavy, strong linen. This would
seem to be a summer outfit, and scarcely warm
enough for New England winters. Other school
boys at that date had deerskin breeches.
Child s Suit worn in 1784
Dress of the Colonists
289
Leather was much used, especially in the form of
tanned buckskin breeches and the deerskin hunters
jackets, which have always and deservedly been a
favorite wear, since they are one of the most appro
priate, useful,
comfortable, and
picturesque gar
ments ever worn
by men in any
active outdoor
life.
Soon in the
larger cities and
among wealthy
folk a much more
elaborate and va
ried style of dress
became fashiona
ble. The dress of
little girls in fami
lies of wealth was
certainly almost
as formal and ele
gant as the dress
of their mammas, and it was a very hampering and
stiff dress. They wore vast hoop-petticoats, heavy
stays, and high-heeled shoes. Their complexions
Calash, 1780
290 Home Life in Colonial Days
were objects of special care; they wore masks of
cloth or velvet to protect them from the tanning
rays of the sun, and long-armed gloves. Little
Dolly Payne, who afterwards became the wife of
President Madison, went to school wearing " a
white linen mask to keep every ray of sunshine from
the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every
morning by her careful mother, and long gloves
covering the hands and arms." Our present love
of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our indiffer
ence to being sunburned, makes such painstaking
vanity seem most unbearably tiresome.
In 1737 Colonel John Lewis sent from Virginia
to England for a wardrobe for a young miss, a
school-girl, wjio was his ward. The list reads
thus :
" A cap ruffle and tucker, the 4 pair plain Spanish shoes,
lace 5 shillings per Yard, 2 pair calf shoes,
1 pair White Stays, i mask,
8 pair White Kid gloves, i fan,
2 pair coloured kid gloves, i necklace,
2 pair worsted hose, i Girdle and buckle,
3 pair thread hose, i piece fashionable Calico,
i pair silk shoes laced, 4 yards ribbon for knots,
i pair morocco shoes, i y 2 yard Cambric,
i Hoop Coat, A mantua and coat of lute-
i Hat, string."
Dress of the Colonists 291
In the middle of the century George Washington
also sent to England for an outfit for his step
daughter, Miss Custis. She was four years old,
and he ordered for her, pack-thread stays, stiff coats
of silk, masks,
caps, bonnets, bibs,
ruffles, necklaces,
fans, silk and cal
amanco shoes, and
leather pumps.
There were also
eight pairs of kid
mitts and four
pairs of gloves ;
these with the
masks show that
this little girl s
complexion was
also to be well
guarded.
A little New Pumpkin Hood, I!
England Miss Huntington, when twelve years old,
was sent from Norwich, Connecticut, to be " fin
ished " in a Boston boarding-school. She had
twelve silk gowns, but her teacher wrote home
that she must have another gown of " a recently
imported rich fabric," which was at once bought
292 Home Life in Colonial Days
for her because it was " suitable for her rank and
station."
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centu
ries there was a constant succession of rich and gay
fashions ; for American dress was carefully modelled
upon European, especially English modes. Men s
wear was as rich as women s. An English traveller
said that Boston women and men in 1740 dressed
as gay every day as courtiers in England at a coro
nation. But with all the richness there was no
wastefulness. The sister of the rich Boston mer
chant, Peter Faneuil, who built Faneuil Hall, sent
her gowns to London to be turned and dyed, and
her old ribbons and gowns to be sold. But her
gowns, which are still preserved, are of magnifi
cent stuffs.
New Yorkers were dressed in gauzes, silks, and
laces; even women Quakers in Pennsylvania had
to be warned against wearing hoop-petticoats, scarlet
shoes, and puffed and rolled hair.
The family of so frugal a man as Benjamin
Franklin did not escape a slight infection of the
prevailing love for gay dress. In the Pennsylvania
Gazette this advertisement appeared in 1750:-
" Whereas on Saturday night last the house of Benjamin
Franklin of this city, Printer, was broken open, and the
following things feloniously taken away, viz., a double
Dress of the Colonists 293
necklace of gold beads, a womans long scarlet cloak
almost new, with a double cape, a womans gown, of
printed cotton of the sort called brocade print, very remark
able, the ground dark, with large red roses, and other large
and yellow flowers, with blue in some of the flowers, with
many green leaves ; a pair of womens stays covered with
white tabby before, and dove colour d tabby behind, with two
large steel hooks and sundry other goods, etc."
Southern dames, especially of Annapolis, Balti
more, and Charleston, were said to have the richest
brocades and damasks that could be bought in Lon
don. Every sailing-vessel that came from Europe
brought boxes of splendid clothing. The heroes
of the Revolution had a high regard for dress. The
patriot, John Hancock, was seen at noonday wear
ing a scarlet velvet cap, a blue damask gown lined
with velvet, white satin embroidered waistcoat, black
satin small-clothes, white silk stockings, and red
morocco slippers. George Washington was most
precise in his orders for his clothing, and wore the
richest silk and velvet suits.
A true description of a Boston printer just after
the Revolution shows his style of dress :
u He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small
clothes, white siik stockings, and pumps fastened with
silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from
instep to toe. His small clothes were tied at the knees
294 Home Life in Colonial Days
with ribbon of the same colour in double bows, the ends
reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well
loaded with pomatum, frizzled or craped and powdered.
Behind, his natural hair was augmented by the addition of
a large queue called vulgarly a false tail, which, enrolled
in some yards of black ribbon, hung half-way down his
back."
/
Many letters still exist written by prominent citi
zens of colonial times ordering clothing, chiefly
from Europe. Rich laces, silk materials, velvet, and
fine cloth of light and gay colors abound. Fre
quently they ordered nightgowns of silk and dam
ask. These nightgowns were not a garment worn
at night, but a sort of dressing-gown. Harvard
students were in 1754 forbidden to wear them.
Under the name of banyan they became very fash
ionable, and men had their portraits painted in
them, for instance the portrait of Nicholas Boylston,
now in Harvard Memorial Hall.
With the increase of trade with China many
Chinese and East Indian goods became fashionable,
with hundreds of different names. A few were of
silk or linen, but far more of cotton; among them
nankeens were the most imported and even for
winter wear.
Both men and women wore for many years great
cloaks or capes, known by various names, such as
Dress of the Colonists
295
roquelaures, capuchins, pelisses, etc. Women s shoes
were of very thin materials, and paper-soled. They
wore to protect these frail shoes, when walking on
the ill-paved streets, various forms of overshoes,
known as goloe-shoes, clogs, pattens, etc. When
riding, women in the colonies wore, as did Queen
Colonial Pattens
Elizabeth, a safeguard, a long over-petticoat to pro
tect the gown from mud and rain. This was some
times called a foot-mantle, also a weather-skirt. A
traveller tells of seeing a row of horses tied to a
fence outside a Quaker meeting. Some carried side
saddles, some men s saddles and pillions. On the
fence hung the muddy safeguards the Quaker dames
had worn outside their drab petticoats. Men wore
296 Home Life in Colonial Days
sherry-vallies or spatter-dashes to protect their gay
breeches.
There was one fashion which lasted for a century
and a half which was so untidy, so uncomfortable,
so costly, and so ridiculous that we can only wonder
that it was endured for a single season I mean
the fashion of wig-wearing by men. The first colo
nists wore their own natural hair. The Cavaliers
had long and perfumed love-locks ; and though the
Puritans had been called Roundheads, their hair
waved, also, over the band or collar, and often hung
over the shoulder. The Quakers, also, wore long
locks, as the lovely portrait of William Penn shows.
But by 1675 wigs had become common enough to
be denounced by the Massachusetts government,
and to be preached against by many ministers ;
while other ministers proudly wore them. Wigs
were called horrid bushes of vanity, and hundreds
of other disparaging names, which seemed to make
them more popular. They varied from year to
year ; sometimes they swelled out at the sides, or
rose in great puffs, or turned under in heavy rolls,
or hung in braids and curls and pig-tails ; they
were made of human hair, of horsehair, goat s-hair,
calves and cows tails, of thread, silk, and mohair.
They had scores of silly and meaningless names,
such as "grave full-bottom," "giddy feather-top,
Dress of the Colonists 297
"long-tail," "fox-tail," "drop-wig," etc. They
were bound and braided with pink, green, red, and
purple ribbons, sometimes all these colors on one
wig. They were very heavy, and very hot, and
very expensive, often costing what would be equal
to a hundred dollars to-day. The care of them was
a great item, often ten pounds a year for a single
wig, and some gentlemen owned eight or ten wigs.
Little children wore them. I have seen the bill for
a wig for William Freeman, dated 1754; he was a
child seven years old. His father paid nine pounds
for it, and the same for wigs for his other boys of
nine and ten. Even servants wore them ; I read in
the Massachusetts Gazette of a runaway negro slave
who " wore off a curl of hair tied around his head
with a string to imitate a wig," which must have
been a comical sight. After wigs had become un
fashionable, the natural hair was powdered, and was
tied in a queue in the back. This was an untidy,
troublesome fashion, which ruined the clothes ; for
the hair was soaked with oil or pomatum to make
the powder stick.
Comparatively little jewellery was worn. A few
men had gold or silver sleeve-buttons ; a few women
had bracelets or lockets ; nearly all of any social
standing had rings, which were chiefly mourning-
rings. As these gloomy ornaments were given to
298
Home Life in Colonial Days
all the chief mourners at funerals, it can be seen that
a man of large family connections, or of prominent
social standing, might acquire a great many of them.
The minister and doctor usually had a ring at every
funeral they attended. It is told of an old Salem
doctor, who died in 1758, that he had a tankard full
Eighteenth-century Spectacles
of mourning-rings which he had secured at funerals.
Men sometimes wore thumb-rings, which seems no
queerer than the fact that they carried muffs. Old
Dr. Prince of Boston carried an enormous bearskin
muff.
Gloves also were gifts at funerals, sometimes in
large numbers. At the funeral of the wife of Gov-
Dress of the Colonists 299
ernor Bekher, in 1738, over a thousand pairs were
given away. Rev. Andrew Eliot, who was pastor of
the North Church in Boston, had twenty-nine hun
dred pair of gloves given him in thirty-two years ;
many of these he sold. In all the colonies, whether
settled by Dutch, English, French, German, or
Swedes, gloves were universally given at funerals.
The early watches were clumsy affairs, often glo
bose in shape, with a detached outer case.
To show how few of the first colonists owned
either watches or clocks, we have the contemporary
evidence of Roger Williams. When he rowed
thirty miles down the bay, and disputed with the
" Foxians " at Newport in 1672, it was agreed that
each party should be heard in turn for a quarter of
an hour. But no clock was available in Newport ;
and among the whole population that flocked to the
debate, there was not a single watch. Williams
says, " unless we had Clocks and Watches and
Quarter Glasses (as in some Ships) it was impossi
ble to be exactly punctual," so they guessed at the
time.
Sun-dials were often set in the street in front of
houses ; and noon-marks on the threshold of the
front door or window-sill helped to show the hour
of the day.
CHAPTER XIII
JACK-KNIFE INDUSTRIES
CHEPA ROSE was one of those old-
time chap-men known throughout New
England as " trunk pedlers." Bearing on
his back by means of a harness of stout hempen
webbing two oblong trunks of thin metal, proba
bly tin, for forty-eight years he had appeared at
every considerable farmhouse throughout Narra-
gansett and eastern Connecticut, at intervals as
regular as the action and appearance of the sun,
moon, and tides; and everywhere was he greeted
with an eager welcome.
Chepa was, as he said, " half Injun, half French,
and half Yankee." From his Indian half he
had his love of tramping which made him choose
the wandering trade of trunk pedler ; his French
half made him a good trader and talker; while his
Yankee half endowed him with a universal Yankee
trait, a " handiness," which showed in scores of
gifts and accomplishments and knacks that made
300
Jack-knife Industries 301
him as warmly greeted everywhere as were his
attractive trunks.
He was a famous medicine-brewer; from the
roots and herbs and barks that he gathered as he
tramped along the country roads he manufactured a
cough medicine that was twice as effective and twice
as bitter as old Dr. Greene s ; he made famous
plasters, of two kinds, plasters to stick and plasters
to crawl, the latter to follow the course of the dis
ease or pain ; he concocted wonderful ink ; he
showed Jenny Greene how to bleach her new straw
bonnet with sulphur fumes ; he mended umbrellas,
harnesses, and tinware ; he made glorious teetotums
which the children looked for as eagerly and unfail
ingly as they did for his tops and marbles, his rib
bons and Gibraltars.
One day he came through the woods to John
Helme s house carrying in his hand a stout birchen
staff or small tree-trunk, which he laid down on
the flat millstone imbedded in the grass at the
back door, while he displayed and sold his wares
and had his dinner. He then went out to the
dooryard with little Johnny Helme, sat down on
the millstone, lighted his pipe, opened his jack-
knife, and discoursed thus : -
" Johnny, I m going to tell you how to make an Injun
broom. Fust, you must find a big birch-tree. There ain t
302 Home Life in Colonial Days
so many big ones now of any kind as there useter be when
we made canoes and plates and cradles, and water spouts,
and troughs, and furnitoor out of the bark. But you must
get a yallow birch-tree as straight as H and edzactly five
inch acrost. Now, how kin ye tell how fur it is acrost a
tree afore ye cut it off? I kin tell by the light of my eye,
but that s Injun larnin . Lemme tell you by book-larnin .
Measure it round, and make the string in three parts, and
one part ll be what it is acrost. If it s nine inch round,
it ll be three inch acrost, and so on. Now don t you for-
git that. Wai ! you must get a straight birch-tree five inch
acrost where you cut it off, just like this one. Then make
the stick six foot long. Then one foot and two inch from
the big end cut a ring round the bark ; wal ! say two inch
wide just like this. Then you take off all the bark below
that ring. Then you begin a-slivering with a sharp jack-
knife, leetle teeny flat slivers way up to the bark ring.
When it s all slivered up thin and flat there ll be a leetle
hard core left inside at the top, and you must cut it out
careful. Then you take off the bark above the ring and
begin slivering down. Leave a stick just big enough for a
handle. Then tie this last lot of slivers down tight over
the others with a hard-twisted tow string, and trim em off
even. Then whittle off and scrape off a good smooth
handle with a hole in the top to put a loop of cowhide in,
to hang it up by orderly.
" Yes, Johnny, I ve got just enough Injun in me to
make a good broom; not enough to be ashamed of and
not enough to be proud of. But you mustn t forgit this ;
Jack-knife Industries 303
a moccasin s the best cover a man ever had on his feet in
the woods ; the easiest to get stuff for, the easiest to make,
the easiest to wear. And a birch-bark canoe s the best
boat a man can have on the river. It s the easiest to get
stuff for, easiest to carry, the fastest to paddle. And a
snowshoe s the best help a man can have in the winter.
It s the easiest to get stuff for, the easiest to walk on, the
easiest to carry. And just so a birch broom is the best
broom a man or at any rate a woman can have ; four best
things and all of em is Injun. Now you just slip in and
take that broom to Phillis. I see her the last time I wa
here a-using a mizrable store broom to clean her oven
and just ask her if I can t have a mug of apple-jack afore
I go to bed."
If this scene had been laid in New Hampshire or
Vermont instead of Narragansett, the Indian broom
would have been no novelty to any boy or house-
servant. For in the northern New England states,
heavily wooded with yellow birch, every boy knew
how to make the Indian brooms, and every house
hold in country or town had them. There was a
constant demand in Boston for them, and some
times country stores had several hundred of the
brooms at a time. Throughout Vermont seventy
years ago the uniform price paid for making one
of these brooms was six cents ; and if the splints
were very fine and the handle scraped with glass, it
304
Home Life in Colonial Days
took nearly three evenings to finish it. Indian
squaws peddled them throughout the country for
ninepence apiece. Major Rob
ert Randolph told in fashion
able London circles about the
year 1750, that when he was a
boy in New Hampshire he
earned his only spending-money
by making these brooms and
carrying them on his back ten
miles to town to sell them.
Girls could whittle as well as
boys, and often exchanged the
birch brooms they made for a
bit of ribbon or lace.
A simpler and less durable
broom was made of hemlock
branches. A local rhyme says
of them:
" Driving at twilight the waiting
cows,
With arms full-laden with
hemlock boughs,
To be traced on a broom ere the coming day
From its eastern chambers should dance away."
The hemlock broom was simply a bunch of close-
growing, full-foliaged hemlock branches tied tightly
Birch Splint Broom
Jack-knife Industries 305
together and wound around with hempen twine,
" traced," the rhyme says, with a sharply pointed
handle, which the boys had shaped and whittled,
driven well into the bound portion. This making
of brooms for domestic use is but an example of
one of the many score of useful domestic and farm
articles which were furnished by the natural resources
of every wood-lot, adapted by the Yankee jack-knife
and a few equally simple tools, of which the gimlet
might take the second place.
> It was so emphatically a wooden age in colonial
days that it seemed almost that there were no hard
metals used for any articles which to-day seem so
necessarily of metal. Ploughs were of wood, and
harrows ; cart-wheels were often wholly of wood
without tires, though sometimes iron plates called
strakes held the felloes together, being fastened to
them by long clinch-pins. The dish-turner and
cooper were artisans of importance in those days ;
piggins, noggins, runlets, keelers, firkins, buckets,
churns, dye-tubs, cowles, powdering-tubs, were made
with chary or no use of metal.
The forests were the wealth of the colonies in
more ways than one ; and it may be said that they
furnished both domestic winter employment and
toys for the boys. The New England forests were
full of richly varied kinds of wood, suitable for
306 Home Life in Colonial Days
varied uses, with varied qualities pliability, stiff
ness, durability, weight, strength ; and it is surpris
ing to see how quickly the woods were assigned to
fixed uses, even for toys ; in every state pop-guns
were made from elder; bows and arrows of hemlock;
whistles of chestnut or willow.
The Rev. John Pierpont wrote thus of the whit
tling of his childhood days :
" The Yankee boy before he s sent to school
Well knows the mysteries of that magic tool
The pocket-knife. To that his wistful eye
Turns, while he hears his mother s lullaby.
And in the education of the lad,
No little part that implement hath had.
His pocket-knife to the young whittler brings
A growing knowledge of material things,
Projectiles, music, and the sculptor s art.
His chestnut whistle, and his shingle dart,
His elder pop-gun with its hickory rod,
Its sharp explosion and rebounding wad,
His corn-stalk fiddle, and the deeper tone
That murmurs from his pumpkin-leaf trombone
Conspire to teach the boy. To these succeed
His bow, his arrow of a feathered reed,
His windmill raised the passing breeze to win,
His water-wheel that turns upon a pin.
Thus by his genius and his jack-knife driven
Ere long he ll solve you any problem given i
Jack-knife Industries 307
Make you a locomotive or a clock,
Cut a canal or build a floating dock :
Make anything in short for sea or shore,
From a child s rattle to a seventy-four.
Make it, said I ay, when he undertakes it,
He ll make the thing and make the thing that
makes it."
The boy s jack-knife was a possession so highly
desired, so closely treasured in those days when boys
had so few belongings, that it is pathetic to read
Barlow Jack-knives
of many a farm lad s struggles and long hours cf
weary work to obtain a good knife. Barlow knives
were the most highly prized for certainly sixty years,
and had, I am told, a vast popularity for over
a century. May they forever rest in glorious
memory, as they lived the happiest of lots ! To be
308 Home Life in Colonial Days
the best beloved of a century of Yankee boys is
indeed an enviable destiny. A few battered old
soldiers of this vast army of Barlow jack-knives still
linger to show us the homely features borne by the
century s well beloved : the Smithsonian Institution
cherishes some of colonial days ; and from Deerfield
Memorial Hall are shown three Barlow knives
whose picture should appear to every American
something more than the presentment of dull bits of
wood and rusted metal. These Yankee jack-knives
were, said Daniel Webster, the direct forerunners
of the cotton-gin and thousands of noble American
inventions ; the New England boy s whittling was
his alphabet of mechanics.
In this connection, let us note the skilful and
utilitarian adaptation not only of natural mate
rials for domestic and farm use, but also natural
forms. The farmer and his wife both turned to
Nature for implements and utensils, or for parts
adapted to shape readily into the implements and
utensils of every-day life. When we read of the
first Boston settlers that "the dainty Indian maize
was eat with clam-shells out of wooden trays," we
learn of a primitive spoon, a clam-shell set in a
split stick, which has been used till this century.
Large flat clam-shells were used and highly es
teemed by housewives, as skimming-shells in the
Jack-knife Industries
309
dairy, to skim cream from the milk. Gourd-
shells made capital bowls, skimmers, dippers, and
bottles ; pumpkin-shells, good seed and grain
holders. Turkey-
wings made an
ever-ready hearth-
brush. In the
forests were many
"crooked sticks"
that were more
useful than any
straight ones
could be. When
the mower wanted
a new snathe or
snead, as he called
it, for his scythe,
he found in the
woods a deformed
sapling that had
grown under a
log or twisted
around a rock in
a double bend, which made it the exact shape desired.
He then whittled it, dressed it with a draw-shave,
fastened the nebs with a neb-wedge, hung it with
an iron ring, and was ready for the mowing-field.
Old Gourd Dishes
Jio Home Life in Colonial Days
Sled-runners were made from saplings bent at
the root. The best thills for a cart were those
naturally shaped by growth. The curved pieces of
wood in the harness of a draught-horse, called the
hames, to which the traces are fastened, could be
found in twisted growths, as could also portions of
ox-yokes. The gambrels used in slaughtering
times, hay-hooks, long-handled pothooks for brick
ovens, could all be cut ready-shaped.
The smaller underbrush and saplings had many
uses. Sled and cart stakes were cut from some ;
long bean-poles from others ; specially straight
clean sticks were saved for whip-stocks. Sections
of birch bark could be bottomed and served for
baskets, or for potash cans, while capital feed-boxes
could be made in the same way of sections cut
from a hollow hemlock. Elm rind and portions of
Goose-yoke and Pig-yoke
Jack-knife Industries 311
brown ash butts were natural materials for chair-
seats and baskets, as were flags for door-mats.
Forked branches made geese and hog yokes. Hogs
that ran at large had to wear yokes. It was ordered
that these yokes should measure as long as twice
and a half times the depth of the neck, while the
bottom piece was three times the width of the neck.
In the shaping of heavy and large vessels such
as salt-mortars, pig troughs, maple-sap troughs, the
jack-knife was abandoned and the methods of the
Indians adopted. These vessels were burnt and
scraped out of a single log, and thus had a weighty
stability and permanence. Wooden bread troughs
were also made from a single piece of wood. These
were oblong, trencher-shaped bowls about eighteen
inches long ; across the trough ran lengthwise a
stick or rod on which rested the sieve, searse, or
temse, when flour was sifted into the trough. The
saying cc set the Thames (or temse) on fire," meant
that hard work and active friction would set the
wooden temse on fire.
Sometimes the mould for an ox-bow was dug out
of a log of wood. Oftener a plank of wood was
cut into the desired shape as a frame or mould, and
fastened to a heavy backboard. The ox-bow was
steamed, placed in the bow-mould, pinned in, and
then carefully seasoned.
312 Home Life in Colonial Days
The boys whittled cheese-ladders, cheese-hoops,
and red-cherry butter-paddles for their mothers
dairy ; also many parts of cheese-presses and churns.
To the toys enumerated by Rev. Mr. Pierpont,
they added box-traps and " figure 4 " traps of vari
ous sizes for catching vari-sized animals.
Many farm implements other than those already
named were made, and many portions of tools and
implements ; among them were shovels, swingling-
knives, sled-neaps, stanchions, handles for spades
and bill-hooks, rake-stales, fork-stales, flails. A
group of old farm implements from Memorial
Hall, at Deerfield, is here given. The handleless
scythe-snathe is said to have come over on the
Mayflower.
The making of flails was an important and use
ful work. Many were broken and worn out during
a great threshing. Both parts, the staff or handle,
and the swingle or swiple, were carefully shaped
from well-chosen wood, to be joined together later
by an eelskin or leather strap.
The flail is little seen on farms to-day. Thresh
ing and winnowing machines have taken its place.
The father of Robert Burns declared threshing
with a flail to be the only degrading and stultifying
work on a farm ; but I never knew another farmer
who deemed it so, though it was certainly hard
Jack-knife Industries
313
work. Last autumn I visited the " Poor Farm "
on Quonsett Point in old Narragansett. In the
vast barn of that beautiful and sparsely occupied
country home, two powerful men, picturesque in
blue jeans tucked in
heavy boots, in scarlet
shirts and great straw
hats, were threshing out
grain with flails. Both
men were blind, one
wholly, the other par
tially so and were
" Town Poor." Their
strong, bare arms swung
the long flails in alter
nate strokes with the
precision of clockwork,
bringing each blow
down on the piled-up
wheat-straw which cov
ered the barn-floor, as
they advanced, one step
ping backward while the
Other Stepped forward, Mayflower Scythe-snathe, Pitchfork, Scythe
and then receded with
mechanical and rhythmic regularity, a step and a
blow, from one end of the long barn to the other.
314 Home Life in Colonial Days
The half-blind thresher could see the outline of
the open door against the sunlight, and his steps
and voice guided his sightless fellow-worker. Thus
healthful and useful employment was given to two
stricken waifs through the use of primitive methods,
which no modern machine could ever have afforded ;
Old-time Axes and Riven Laths
and the blue sky and bay, with autumnal sunshine
on the piled-up golden wheat on floor and in rack,
idealized and even made of the threshers, paupers
though they were, a beautiful picture of old-time
farm-life.
Wood for axe-helves was carefully chosen, sawed,
split, and whittled into shape. These were then
scraped as smooth as ivory with broken glass,
Jack-knife Industries 315
Some men had a knack that was almost genius in
shaping these axe-helves and selecting the wood for
them. In a country where the broad-axe was so
important an implement used every day by every
farmer ; where lumbermen and loggers and ship
wrights swung the axe the entire day for many
months, men were ready to pay double price for a
well-made helve, so shaped as to let the heavy blow
jar as little as possible the hand holding the helve.
One Maine farmer boasted that he had made and
sold five hundred axe-helves, and received a good
price for them all ; that some had gone five hun
dred miles out west, others a hundred miles " up
country " ; and of no one of them which he had
set had it ever been said, as of the axe in Deuter
onomy, " When a man goeth into the wood to hew
wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe
to cut down a tree, then the head slippeth from
the helve."
A little money might be earned by cutting heel-
pegs for shoemakers. These were made of a maple
trunk sawed across the grain, making the circular
board thin enough a half inch or so for the
correct length of the pegs. The end was then
marked in parallel lines, then grooved across at
right angles, then split as marked into pegs with
knife and mallet. A story is told of a farmer named
316 Home Life in Colonial Days
Meigs, who, on the winter ride to market in com
pany with a score or more of his neighbors, stole
out at night from the tavern fireside where all were
gathered to the barn where the horses were put up.
There he took an oat-bag out of a neighbor s sleigh
and poured out a good feed for his own horse. In
the morning it was found that his horse had not
relished the shoe-pegs that had been put in his
manger ; and their telltale presence plainly pointed
out the thief. These shoe-pegs were a venture of
two farmer boys which their father was taking to
town to sell for them, and in indignation the boys
thrust on the thief the name of Shoe-pegs Meigs,
which he carried to the end of his life.
When the boys had learned to use a few other
tools besides their jack-knives, as they quickly did,
they could get sawed staves from the sawmills and
make up shooks of staves bound with hoops of red
oak, for molasses hogsheads. These would be
shipped to the West Indies, and form an impor
tant link in the profitable rum and slave round of
traffic that bound Africa, New England, and the
West Indies so closely together in those days. A
constant occupation for men and boys was making
rived or shaved shingles. They were split with a
beetle and wedge. A smart workman could by
sharp work make a thousand a day. There may
Jack-knife Industries 317
still be occasionally found in what were well-wooded
pine regions, in shed or barn-lofts, or in old wood-
houses, a stout oaken frame or rack such as was at
one time found in nearly every house. It was
known as a bundling-mould or shingling-mould.
At the bottom of this strong frame were laid
straight sticks and twisted withes which extended
up the sides. Upon these were evenly packed the
shingles, two hundred and fifty in number, known
as a "quarter." The withes or "binders" were
twisted strongly around when the number was full.
The mould held them firmly in place while being
tied. These were sealed by law and shipped. Cul
lers of staves were regularly appointed town officers.
The dimensions of the shingles were given by law
and rule ; fifteen inches was the length for one
period of time, and the bundling-mould conformed
to it.
Daniel Leake of Salisbury, New Hampshire,
made during his lifetime and was paid for a million
shingles. During the years he was accomplishing
this colossal work he cleared three hundred acres
of land, tapped for twenty years at least six hun
dred maple-trees, making sometimes four thousand
pounds of sugar a year. He could mow six acres
a day, giving nine tons of hay ; his strong, long
arms cut a swath twelve feet wide. In bis spare time
ji 8 Home Life in Colonial Days
he worked as a cooper, and he was a famous drum-
maker. Truly there were giants in those days. I
love to read of such vigorous, powerful lives ; they
seem to be of a race entirely different from our own.
Still, among our New England forbears I doubt not
many of us had some such giants, who conquered
for us the earth and forests.
One mark the shingling industry left on the
household. In the sawing of blocks there would
always be some too knotty or gnarled to split into
shingles. These were what were known in the
vernacular as " on-marchantable shingle-bolts."
They formed in many a pioneer s home and in
many a pioneer school-house good solid seats for
children and even grown people to sit on. And
even in pioneer meeting-houses these blocks could
sometimes be seen.
Other fittings for the house were whittled out.
Long, heavy, wooden hinges were cut from horn
beam for cupboard and closet doors ; even shed
doors were hung on wooden hinges as were house
doors in the earliest colonial days. Door-latches
were made of wood, also oblong buttons to fasten
chamber and cupboard doors.
New England housekeepers prized the smooth,
close-grained bowls which the Indians made from
the veined and mottled knots of maple-wood. They
Jack-knife Industries 319
were valued at what seems high prices for wooden
utensils and were often named and bequeathed in
wills. Maple-wood has been used and esteemed by
many nations for cups and bowls. The old Eng
lish and German vessel known as a mazer was made
of maple-wood, often bound and tipped with silver.
Spenser speaks in his SbepbeartFs Calendar of
" a mazer yrought of the maple wood." A well-
known specimen in England bears the legend in
Gothic text :
"In the Name of the Trinitie
Fille the kup and drinke to me."
Sometimes a specially skilful Yankee would rival
the Indians in shaping and whittling out these
bowls. I have seen two really beautiful ones carved
J2O Home Life in Colonial Days
with double initials, and one with a Scriptural
reference, said to be the work of a lover for his
bride. Another token of affection and skill from
the whittler were carved busks, which were the
broad and strong strips of wood placed in corsets
or stays to help to form and preserve the long-
waisted, stiff figure then fashionable. One carved
busk bears initials and an appropriately sentimental
design of arrows and hearts.
On the rim of spinning-wheels, on shuttles, swifts,
and on niddy-noddys or hand-reels I have seen
lettering by the hands of rustic lovers. A finely
carved legend on a hand-reel reads :
" POLLY GREENE, HER REEL.
,Count your threads right
If you reel in the night
When I am far away.
June, 1777."
Perhaps some Revolutionary soldier gave this as
a parting gift to his sweetheart on the eve of battle.
On his powder-horn the rustic carver bestowed
his best and daintiest work. Emblem both of war
and of sport, it seemed worthy of being shaped into
the highest expression of his artistic longing. A
chapter, even a book, might be filled with the
romantic history and representations of American
Jack-knife Industries 321
powder-horns ; patriotism, sentiment, and advent
ure shed equal halos over them. Months of the
patient work of every spare moment was spent in
beautifying them, and their quaintness, variety, and
individuality are a never-ceasing delight to the an
tiquary. Maps, plans, legends, verses, portraits,
landscapes, family history, crests, dates of births,
marriages, and deaths, lists of battles, patriotic
and religious sentiments, all may be found on
powder-horns. They have in many cases proved
valuable historical records, and have sometimes
been the only records of events. Mr. Rufus A.
Grider, of Canajoharie, has made colored drawings
of about five hundred of these powder-horns, and
of canteens or drinking-horns. It is unfortunate
that the ordinary processes of book-illustration give
too scant suggestion of the variety, beauty, and
delicacy of their decoration, to permit the repro
duction of some of these powder-horns in these
pages.
These habits of employing the spare moments of
farm-life in the manufacture from wood of farm im
plements and various aids to domestic comfort,
were not peculiar to New England farmers, nor
invented by them. The old English farmer-author,
Thomas Tusser, in his rhymed book, Five Hundred
Points of Good Husbandry, written in the sixteenth
322 Home Life in Colonial Days
century (which Southey declared to be one of the
most curious and formerly one of the most popular
books in our language), was careful to give instruc
tions in his " remembrances " and " doings " as to
similar industries on the English farm and manor
house. He says:
"Yokes, forks, and such other let bailie spy out
And gather the same as he walketh about;
And after, at leisure, let this be his hire,
To beath them and trim them at home by the fire."
70 beath is to heat unseasoned wood to harden
and straighten it.
" If hop-yard or orchard ye mean for to have,
For hop-poles and crotches in lopping go save.
"Save elm, ash, and crab tree for cart and for plow,
Save step for a stile of the crotch of a bough ;
Save hazel for forks, save sallow for rake :
Save hulver and thorn, thereof flail for to make."
The Massachusetts Bay settlers came chiefly from
the vicinity, many from the same county, where
Tusser lived and farmed, and where his points of
good husbandry were household words ; so they
had in their English homes as had their grand
fathers before them, the knowledge and habit of
saving and utilizing the various woods on the farm,
and of occupying every spare minute with the use-
Jack-knife Industries 323
ful jack-knife. The varied and bountiful trees of
the New World stimulated and emphasized the whit
tling habit until it became universally accepted as a
distinguishing New England characteristic, a Yankee
trait.
This constant employment of every moment of
the waking hours contributed to impart to New
Englanders a regard and method of life which
is spoken of by many outsiders with contempt,
namely, a closely girded and invariable habit of
economy. Children brought up in this way knew
the value of everything in the household, knew the
time it took to produce it, for they had labored
themselves, and they grew to take care of small
things, not to squander and waste what they had
been so long at work on. This, instead of being a
thing to sneer at, is one of the very best elements in
a community, one of the best securities of character.
For sudden leaps to fortune are given to but few,
and are seldom lasting, and the results of sudden
inflations are more disastrous even to a community
than to isolated individuals, as may be abundantly
proved by the early history of Virginia. It was not
meanness that made the wiry New England farmer
so cautious and exacting in trade, when the pennies
he saved sent his son through college. It was not
meanness which made him refuse to spend money;
324 Home Life in Colonial Days
he had no money to spend, and it was a high sense
of honor that kept him from running in debt. It
was not meanness which so justly ordered conditions
and cared for the unfortunate that even in those
days of horrible drunkenness often there would not
be a pauper in the entire village. It has been a re
proach that in some towns the few town poor were
vendued out to be cared for; the mode was harsh in
its wording, and unfeeling in method, but in reality
the pauper found a home. I have known cases
where the pauper was not only supported but
cherished in the families to whose lot she fell.
CHAPTER XIV
TRAVEL, TRANSPORTATION, AND TAVERNS
WHEREVER the earliest colonists set
tled in America, they had to adopt the
modes of travel and the ways of get
ting from place to place of their prede
cessors and new neighbors, the Indians. These
were first and generally to walk on their
own stout legs ; second, to go wherever they could
by water, in boats. In Maryland and Virginia,
where for a long time nearly all settlers tried to
build their homes on the banks of the rivers and
bays, the travel was almost entirely by boats ; as it
was between settlements on all the great rivers, the
Hudson, Connecticut, and Merrimac.
Between the large settlements in Massachusetts
Boston, Salem, and Plymouth travel was prefera
bly, when the weather permitted, in boats. The colo
nists went in canoes, or pinnaces, shaped and made
exactly like the birch-bark canoes of the Canadian
Indians to-day ; and in dugouts, which were formed
from hollowed pine-logs, usually about twenty feet
325
326 Home Life in Colonial Days
long and two or three feet wide ; both of these
were made for them by the Indians. It was said
that one Indian, working alone, felling the pine-tree
by the primitive way of burning and scraping off
the charred parts with a stone tool called a celt (for
the Indians had no iron or steel axes), then cutting
off the top in the same manner, then burning out
part of the interior, then burning and scraping and
shaping it without and within, could make one of
these dugouts in three weeks. The Indians at
Onondaga still make the wooden mortars they use
in the same tedious way.
When the white men came to America in great
ships, the Indians marvelled much at the size, think
ing they were hollowed out of tree-trunks as were
the dugouts, and wondered where such vast trees
grew.
The Swedish scientific traveller, Kalm, who was in
America in 1748, was delighted with the Indian
canoes and dugouts. He found the Swede settlers
using them constantly to go long distances to mar
ket. He said :
" They usually carry six persons who however by no
means must be unruly, but sit at the bottom of the canoe
in the quietest manner possible lest the boat upset. They
are narrow, round below, have no keel and may be easily
overset. So when the wind is brisk the people make for
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 327
the land. Larger dugouts were made for war-canoes
which would carry thirty or forty savages."
These boats usually kept close to the shore, both
in calm and windy weather, though the natives were
not afraid to go many miles out to sea in the
dugouts.
The lightness of the birch-bark canoe made it
specially desirable where there were such frequent
overland transfers. It was and is a beautiful and
perfect expression of natural and wild life ; as Long
fellow wrote :
" . . . the forest s life was in it,
All its mystery and magic,
All the lightness of the birch tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the larch s supple sinews,
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in autumn."
The French governor and missionaries all saw
and admired these birch-bark canoes. Father Char-
levoix wrote a beautiful and vivid description of
them. All the early travellers noted their ticklish
balance. Wood, writing in 1634, said, " In these
cockling fly-boats an Englishman can scarce sit
vvithout a fearful tottering," and Madam Knights a
century later said in her vivid English of a trip in
one :
328
Home Life in Colonial Days
" The Cannoo was very small and shallow, which greatly
terrify d me and caused me to be very circumspect, sitting
with my hands fast on each side, my eyes steady, not dar
ing so much as to lodge my tongue a hair s bredth more on
one side of my mouth than tother, nor so much as think
on Lett s wife, for a very thought would have oversett our
wherry."
When boats and vessels were built by the colo
nists, they were in forms or had names but little
used to-day. Shallop, ketch, pink, and snow are
A Gundalow at the Landing
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 329
rarely heard. Sloops were early built, but schooner
is a modern term. Batteau and periagua still are
used ; and the gundalow, picturesque with its lateen
sail, still is found on our northern New England
shores.
The Indians had narrow foot-paths in many places
through the woods. On them foot-travel was pos
sible, though many estuaries and rivers intersected
the coast; for the narrow streams could be crossed
on natural ford-ways, or on rude bridges of fallen
trees, which the English government ordered to be
put in place.
As late as 1631 Governor Endicott would not go
from Salem to Boston to visit Governor Winthrop
because he was not strong enough to wade across
the fords. He might have done as Governor Win
throp did the next year when he went to Plymouth
to visit Governor Bradford (and it took him two
days to get there) ; he might have been carried
across the fords pickaback by an Indian guide.
The Indian paths were good, though only two
or three feet wide, and in many places the savages
kept the woods clear from underbrush by burning
over large tracts. When King Philip s War took
place, all the land around the Indian settlements in
Narragansett and eastern Massachusetts was so
free of brush that horsemen could ride everywhere
330 Home Life in Colonial Days
freely through the woods. Some of the old paths
are famous in our history. The most so was the
Bay Path, which ran from Cambridge through
Marlborough, Worcester, Oxford, Brookfield, and
on to Springfield and the Connecticut River. Hol
land s beautiful story called by the name of the
path gives its history, its sentiment, and much that
happened on it in olden times.
When new paths were cut through the forests,
the settlers " blazed " the trees, that is, they chopped
a piece of the bark off tree after tree standing on
the side of the way. Thus the " blazes " stood out
clear and white in the dark shadows of the forests,
like welcome guide-posts, showing the traveller his
way. In Maryland roads turning off" to a church
were marked by slips or blazes cut near the ground.
In Maryland and Virginia what were known as,
and indeed are still called, rolling-roads were cut
through the forest. They were narrow roads adown
whieh hogsheads of tobacco, fitted with axles, could
be drawn or rolled from inland plantations to the
river or bay side; sometimes the hogsheads were
simply rolled by human propulsion, not dragged
on these roads.
The .broader rivers soon had canoe-ferries. The
first regular Massachusetts ferry from Charlestown
to Boston was in 1639. ^ carr i e d passengers for
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 331
threepence apiece. From Chelsea to Boston was
fourpence. In 1636 the Cambridge ferryman
charged but half a penny, as so many wished to
attend the Thursday lecture in the Boston churches.
We learn from the Massachusetts Laws that often
a rider had to let his horse cross by swimming over,
being guided from the ferry-boat; he then paid no
ferriage for the horse. After wheeled vehicles were
used, these ferries were not large enough to carry
them properly. Often the carriage had to be taken
apart, or towed over, while the horse had his fore
feet in one canoe-ferry and his hind feet in another,
the two canoes being lashed together. The rope-
ferry lingered till our own day, and was ever a pict
uresque sight on the river. As soon as roads were
built there were, of course, bridges and cart-ways,
but these were only between the closely neigh
boring towns. Usually the bridges were merely
" horse-bridges " with a railing on but one side.
After the period of walking and canoe-riding had
had its day, nearly all land travel for a century was
on horseback, just as it was in England at that
date. In 1672 there were only six stage-coaches
in the whole of Great Britain ; and a man wrote
a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too
much travel. Boston then had one private coach.
Women and children usually rode seated on a pil-
I
332 Home Life in Colonial Days
lion behind a man. A pillion was a padded cushion
with straps which sometimes md on one side a sort
of platform-stirrup. One wa y of progress which
would help four persons ride piart of their journey
was what was called the ride-anej-tie system. Two
of the four persons who were travelling started on
their road on foot ; two mounted on the saddle and
pillion, rode about a mile, dismounted, tied the
horse, and walked on. When the two who had
started on foot reached the waiting horse, they
mounted, rode on past the other couple for a mile
or so, dismounted, tied, and walked on ; and so on.
It was also a universal and courteous as it was a
pleasant custom for friends to ride out on the road
a few miles with any departing guest or friend, and
then bid them God speed agatewards.
In 1704 a Boston schoolmistress named Madam
Knights rode from Boston to New York on horse
back. She was probably the first woman to make
the journey, and it was a great and daring undertak
ing. She had as a companion the " post." This
was the mail-carrier, who also rode on horseback,
One of his duties was to assist and be kind to all
persons who cared to journey in his company. The
first regular mail started from New York to Boston
on January i, 1673. The postman carried two
" portmantles," which were crammed with letters
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 333
and parcels. He did not change horses till he
reached Hartford. He was ordered to look out
and report the condition of all ferries, fords, and
roads. He had to be "active, stout, indefatigable,
and honest." When he delivered his mail it was
laid on a table at an inn, and any one who wished
looked over all the letters, then took and paid the
postage (which was very high) on any addressed to
himself. It was usually about a, month from this
setting out of " the post " in winter, till his return.
As late certainly as 1730 the mail was carried from
New York to Albany in the winter by a " foot-
post." He went up the Hudson River, and lonely
enough it must have been ; probably he skated up
when the ice was good. This mail was only sent
at irregular intervals.
In 1760 there were but eight mails a year from
Philadelphia to the Potomac River, and even then
the post-rider need not start till he had received
enough letters to pay the expenses of the trip. It
was not till postal affairs were placed in the capable
and responsible hands of Benjamin Franklin that
there were any regular or trustworthy mails.
The journal and report of Hugh Finlay, a post-
office surveyor in 1773 of the mail service from
Quebec to St. Augustine, Florida, tells of the vicis
situdes of mail-matter even at that later day. In
334 Home Life in Colonial Days
some places the deputy, as the postmaster was
called, had no office, so his family rooms were
constantly invaded. Occasionally a tavern served as
post-office ; letters were thrown down on a table
and if the weather was bad, or smallpox raged, or
the deputy were careless, they were not forwarded
for many days. Letters that arrived might lie on
the table or bar-counter for days for any one to pull
over, until the owner chanced to arrive and claim
them. Good service could scarcely be expected
from any deputy, for his salary was paid according
to the number of letters coming to his office ; and
as private mail-carriage constantly went on, though
forbidden by British law, the deputy suffered.
" If an information were lodg d but an informer
wou d get tar d and feather d, no jury wou d find
the fact." The government-riders were in truth
the chief offenders. Any ship s captain, or wagon-
driver, or post-rider could carry merchandise ;
therefore small sham bundles of paper, straw, or
chips would be tied to a large sealed packet or
letter, and both be exempt from postage paid to the
Crown.
The post-rider between Boston and Newport
loaded his carriage with bundles real and sham,
which delayed him long in delivery. He bought
and sold on commission along this road; and in
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 335
violation of law he carried many letters to his own
profit. He took twenty-six hours to go eighty
miles. Had the Newport deputy dared to com
plain, he would have incurred much odium and
been declared a "friend of slavery and oppression."
" Old Herd," the rider from Saybrook to New
York, had been in the service forty-six years and
had made a good estate. He coolly took postage
of all way-letters as his perquisite ; was a money
carrier and transferrer, all advantage to his own
pocket ; carried merchandise ; returned horses for
travellers ; and when Finlay saw him he was waiting
for a yoke of oxen he was paid for fetching along
some miles. A Pennsylvania post-rider, an aged
man, occupied himself as he slowly jogged along by
knitting mittens and stockings. Not always were
mail portmanteaux properly locked ; hence many
letters were lost and the pulling in and out of
bundles defaced the letters.
Of course so much horseback riding made it
necessary to have horse-blocks in front of nearly
all houses. In course of time stones were set every
mile on the principal roads to tell the distance
from town to town. Benjamin Franklin set mile
stones the entire way on the post-road from Boston
to Philadelphia. He rode in a chaise over the
road ; and a machine which he had invented was
33 6 Home Life in Colonial Days
attached to the chaise ; and it was certainly the first
cyclometer that went on that road, over which so
many cyclometers have passed during the last five
years. It measured the miles as he travelled.
When he had ridden a mile he stopped ; from a
heavy cart loaded with milestones, which kept
alongside the chaise, a stone was dropped which
was afterwards set by a gang of men.
A number of old colonial milestones are still stand
ing. There is one in Worcester, on what was the
" New Connecticut Path " ; one in Springfield on
the " Bay Path," and there are several of Benjamin
Franklin s setting, one being at Stratford, Connecticut.
The inland transportation of freight was carried
on in the colonies just as it was in Europe, on the
backs of pack-horses. Very interesting historical
evidence in relation to the methods of transportation
in the middle of the eighteenth century may be found
in the ingenious advertisement and address with which
Benjamin Franklin raised transportation facilities for
Braddock s army in 1755. This is one of his most
characteristic literary productions. Braddock s ap
peals to the Philadelphia Assembly for a rough
wagon-road and wagons for the army succeeded in
raising only twenty-five wagons. Franklin visited
him in his desolate plight and agreed to assist him,
and appealed to the public to send to him for the
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 337
use of the army a hundred and fifty wagons and
fifteen hundred pack-horses; for the latter Franklin
offered to pay two shillings a day each, as long as
used, if provided with a pack-saddle. Twenty
horses were sent with their loads to the camp as
gifts to the British officers. As a good and definite
list of the load one of these pack-horses was expected
to carry (as well as a record of the kind of provisions
grateful to an officer of that day) let me give an
inventory :
Six pounds loaf-sugar, Two gallons Jamaica spirits,
Six pounds muscovado sugar, One bottle flour of mustard,
One pound green tea, Two well-cured hams,
One pound bohea tea, One-half dozen cured
Six pounds ground coffee, tongues,
Six pounds chocolate, Six pounds rice,
One-half chest best white Six pounds raisins,
biscuit, One Gloucester cheese,
One-half pound pepper, One keg containing 20 Ibs.
One quart white vinegar, best butter.
Two dozen bottles old Ma
deira wine,
The wagons and horses were all lost after Brad-
dock s defeat, or were seized by the French and
Indians, and Franklin had many anxious months of
responsibility for damages from the owners ; but I
am confident the officers got all the provisions
33 8 Home Life in Colonial Days
Franklin gathered the wagons in York and Lancas
ter ; no two Engli-sh shires could have done better
at that time than did these Pennsylvania counties.
In Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Ohio,
pack-horses long were used, and a pretty picture is
drawn by Doddridge and many other local historians
of the trains of these horses with their gay collars
and stuffed bells, as, laden with furs, ginseng, and
snakeroot, they filed down the mountain roads to
the towns, and came home laden with salt, nails, tea,
pewter plates, etc. At night the horses were hob
bled, and the clappers of their bells were loosened;
the ringing prevented the horses being lost. The
animals started on their journey with two hun
dred pounds burden, of which part was provender
for horse and man, which was left at convenient re
lays to be taken up on the way home. Two men
could manage fifteen pack-horses, which were teth
ered successively each to the pack-saddle of the one
in front of him. One man led the foremost horse,
and the driver followed the file to watch the packs
and urge on the laggards. Their numbers were
vast ; five hundred were counted at one time in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, going westward. It was a
costly method of transportation. Mr. Rowland
says that in 1784 the expense of carrying a ton s
weight from Philadelphia to Erie by pack-horses
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 339
was $249. It is interesting to note that the routes
taken by those men, skilled only in humble wood
craft, were the same ones followed in later years by
the engineers of the turnpikes and railroads.
As the roads were somewhat better in Pennsyl
vania than in some other provinces, and more
needed, so wagons soon were far greater in num
ber; indeed, during the Revolution nearly all the
wagons and horses used by the army came from
that state. There was developed in Pennsylvania
by the soft soil of these many roads, as well as by
various topographical conditions, a splendid ex
ample of a true American vehicle, one which was
for a long time the highest type of a commodious
freight-carrier in this or any other country the
Conestoga wagon, " the finest wagon the world has
ever known." They were first used in any consid
erable number about 1760. They had broad wheel-
tires, and one of the peculiarities was a decided
curve in the bottom, analogous to that of a galley
or canoe, which made it specially fitted for travers
ing mountain roads ; for this curved bottom pre
vented freight from slipping too far at either end
when going up or down hill. This body was uni
versally painted a bright blue, and furnished with
sideboards of an equally vivid red. The wagon-
bodies were arched over with six or eight stately
34
Home Life in Colonial Days
Conestoga Wagon
bows, of which the middle ones were the lowest,
and the others rose gradually to front and rear till
the end bows were nearly of equal height. Over
them all was stretched a strong, white, hempen
cover, well corded down at the sides and ends.
These wagons could be loaded up to the bows, and
could carry four to six tons in weight. The rates
between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were about
two dollars a hundred pounds. The horses, four
to seven in number, were magnificent, often matched
throughout ; some were all dapple-gray, or all bay.
The harnesses, of best materials and appearance,
were costly ; each horse had a large housing of
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 341
deerskin or heavy bearskin trimmed with deep scar
let fringe ; while the head-stall was tied with bunches
of gay ribbons. Bell-teams were common ; each
horse except the saddle-horse then had a full set of
bells tied with high-colored ribbons.
The horses were highly fed ; and when the driver,
seated on the saddle-horse, drew rein on the prancing
leader and flourished his fine bull-hide London
whip, making the silk snap and tingle round the
leader s ears, every horse started off with the pon
derous load with a grace and ease that was beautiful
to see.
The wagons were first used in the Conestoga val
ley, and most extensively used there ; and the sleek
powerful draught-horses known as the Conestoga
breed were attached to them, hence their name.
These teams were objects of pride to their owners,
objects of admiration and attention wherever they
appeared, and are objects of historical interest and
satisfaction to-day.
Often a prosperous teamster would own several
Conestoga wagons, and driving the leading and
handsomest team himself would start off his proud
procession. From twenty to a hundred would fol
low in close row. Large numbers were constantly
passing. At one time ten thousand ran from Phila
delphia to other towns. Josiah Quincy told of the
Home Life in Colonial Days
road at Lancaster being lined with them. The
scene on the road between the Cumberland valley
and Greensburg, where there are five distinct and
noble mountain ranges, Tuscarora, Rays Hill,
Alleghany, Laurel Hills, and Chestnut Ridge,
when a long train of white-topped Conestoga wagons
appeared and wound along the mountain sides, was
picturesque and beautiful with a charm unparalleled
to-day.
" Many a fleet of them
In one long upward winding row.
It ever was a noble sight
As from the distant mountain height
Or quiet valley far below,
Their snow-white covers looked like sail."
There were two classes of Conestoga wagons and
wagoners. The u Regulars," or men who made it
their constant and only business; and " Militia.
A local poet thus describes these outfits :
" Militia-men drove narrow treads,
Four horses and plain red Dutch beds,
And alvvays carried grub and feed."
They were farmers or common teamsters who
made occasional trips, usually in winter time, and
did some carriage for others, and drove but four
horses with their wagons. The " Regulars " had
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 343
broad tires, carried no feed for horses nor food for
themselves, but both classes of teamsters carried
coarse mattresses and blankets, which they spread
side by side, and row after row, on the bar-room
"American Stage- wagon "
floor of the tavern at which they " put up." Their
horses when unharnessed fed from long troughs
hitched to the wagon-pole. The wagons that plied
between the Delaware and the small city of Pitts
burgh were called Pitt-teams.
The life of the Conestoga wagon did not end
344 Home Life in Colonial Days
even with the establishment of railroads in the
Eastern states ; farther and farther west it penetrated,
ever chosen by emigrants and travellers to the
frontiers ; and at last in its old age it had an equal
career of usefulness as the " prairie-schooner," in
which vast numbers of families safely crossed the
prairies of our far West. The white tilts of the
wagons thus passed and repassed till our own day.
Four-wheeled wagons were but little used in New
England till after the War of 1812. Two-wheeled
carts and sleds carried inland freight, which was
chiefly transported over the snow in the winter.
The Conestoga wagon of the past century was far
ahead of anything in England at that date; indeed
Mr. C. W. Ernst, the best authority I know on
the subject, says we had in every way far better
traffic facilities at that time than England. In other
ways we excelled. Though Finlay found many
defects in the postal service in 1773, he also found
the Stavers mail-coach plying between Boston and
Portsmouth long before England had such a thing.
Mr. Ernst says : " The Stavers mail-coach was stun
ning ; used six horses when roads were bad, and
never was late. They had no mail-coaches in Eng
land till after the Revolution, and I believe Massa
chusetts men introduced the idea in England/*
We are apt to grow retrospectively sentimental
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 345
over the delights, aesthetic and physical, of ancient
stage-coach days. Those days are not so ancient as
many fancy. The first stage-coach which ran di
rectly from Philadelphia to New York in 1766
and primitive enough it was was called "the
flying-machine, a good stage-wagon set on springs/
Wayside Inn ^
Its swift trip occupied two days in good weather.
It was but a year later than the original stage-coach
between Edinburgh and Glasgow. At that time,
in favorable weather, the coach between London
and Edinburgh made the trip in thirteen days.
The London mail-coach in its palmiest days could
346 Home Life in Colonial Days
make this trip in forty-three hours and a half. As
early as 1718 Jonathan Wardwell advertised that he
would run a stage to Rhode Island. In 1767 a
stage-coach was run during the summer months
between Boston and Providence; in 1770 a stage-
chaise started between Salem and Boston and a
post-chaise between Boston and Portsmouth the
following year. As early as 1732 some common-
carrier lines had wagons which would carry a few
passengers. Let us hear the testimony of some
travellers as to the glorious pleasure of stage-coach
travelling. Describing a trip between Boston and
New York towards the end of the last century
President Quincy of Harvard College said:
u The carriages were old and the shackling and much of
the harness made of ropes. One pair of horses carried us
eighteen miles. We generally reached our resting-place
for the night if no accident intervened, at ten o clock, and
after a frugal supper went to bed, with a notice that we
should be called at three next morning, which generally
proved to be half-past two, and then, whether it snowed or
rained, the traveller must rise and make ready, by the help
of a horn-lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his
way over bad roads, sometimes getting out to help the
coachman lift the coach out of a quagmire or rut, and
arrived in New York after a week s hard travelling, wonder
ing at the ease as well as the expedition with which our
journey was effected."
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 347
The Columbia Centinel of April 24, 1793, adver
tised a new line of " small genteel and easy stage-
" Old Pigskin and Deerskin Travelling-trunks
carriages " from Boston to New York with four
inside passengers, and smart horses. Many of the
announcements of the day have pictures of the
348 Home Life in Colonial Days
coaches. They usually resemble market wagons
with round, canvas-covered tops, and the driver
is seated outside the body of the wagon with
his feet on the foot-board. Trunks were small,
covered with deerskin or pigskin, studded with
brass nails ; and each traveller took his trunk under
his seat and feet.
The poet, Moore, gives in rhyme his testimony
of Virginia roads in 1 800 :
u Dear George, though every bone is aching
After the shaking
I ve had this week over ruts and ridges,
And bridges
Made of a few uneasy planks,
In open ranks,
Over rivers of mud whose names alone
Would make knock the knees of stoutest man."
The traveller Weld, in 1795, gave testimony that
the bridges were so poor that the driver had always
to stop and arrange the loose planks ere he dared
cross, and he adds:
" The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in
the stage to lean out of the carriage first on one side then
on the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep
roads with which the road abounds. c Now, gentlemen, to
the right, upon which the passengers all stretched their
Old-time Bandboxes
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 349
bodies half-way out of the carriage to balance on that side.
c Now, gentlemen, to the left, and so on."
The coach in which this pleasure trip was taken
is shown in the illustration entitled " American
Stage-wagon. * It is copied from a first edition of
WeWs Travels.
Ann Warder, in her journey from Philadelphia to
New York in 1759, notes two overturned and aban
doned stage-wagons at Perth Amboy; and many
other travellers give similar testimony. In 1796
the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore took five
days.
The growth in stage-coaches and travel came with
the turnpike at the beginning of this century. In
transportation and travel, improvement of road
ways is ever associated with improvement of vehi
cles. The first extensive turnpike was the one
between Philadelphia and Lancaster, built in 1792.
The growth and the cost of these roads may be
briefly mentioned by quoting a statement from the
annual message of the governor of Pennsylvania
in 1838, that that commonwealth then had two
thousand five hundred miles of turnpikes which
had cost $3 7,000,000.
Many of these turnpikes were beautiful and
splendid roads ; for instance, the " Mohawk and
350 Home Life in Colonial Days
Hudson Turnpike," which ran in a straight line
from Albany to Schenectady, was ornamented and
shaded with two rows of the quickly growing and
fashionable poplar-trees and thickly punctuated with
taverns. On one turnpike there were sixty-five
taverns in sixty miles. The dashing stage-coach
accorded well with this fine thoroughfare.
With the splendid turnpikes came the glorious
coaching days. In 1827 the Traveller s Register
reported eight hundred stage-coaches arriving, and
as many leaving Boston each week. The forty-mile
road from Boston to Providence sometimes saw
twenty coaches going each way. The editor of
the Providence Gazette wrote : " We were rattled
from Boston to Providence in four hours and fift)
minutes if any one wants to go faster he may go
to Kentucky and charter a streak of lightning."
There were four rival lines on the Cumberland
road, the National, Good Intent, Pioneer, and
June Bug. Some spirited races the old stage-road
witnessed between the rival lines. The distance
from Wheeling to Cumberland, one hundred and
thirty-two miles, was regularly accomplished in
twenty-four hours. No heavy luggage was carried
and but nine passengers ; fourteen coaches rolled
off together one was a mail-coach with a horn.
Relays were every ten miles ; teams were changed
RESPECTFULLY .INPOUAI TIIK ITIILIC.
That they have put m complete <c/itu r that -mil kncwb
EfiX, Forme riv kept b\ M -ttu
Stale S
.u
o R
if/t tfi/ custom
cc ever ccnrettiencc <tnft
Wolfe Tavern, Newburyport, Massachusetts
352 Home Life in Colonial Days
The middle of the century saw the beginning of
the end of coaching in all the states that had been
colonies. Further west the old stage-coach had to
trundle in order to exist at all : Ohio, Indiana,
Missouri, across the plains, and then over the
Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake. The road from
Old-time Rocky Mountain Mail-coach
Carson to Plainville gave the crack ride, and the
driver wore yellow kid gloves. The coach known
as the Concord wagon, drawn by six horses, still
makes cheerful the out-of-the-way roads of our
Western states, and recalls the life of olden times.
The story of spirited and gay life still exists in the
Wells Fargo Express. The usefulness of the Con-
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 353
cord coach is not limited to the western nor the
northern portion of our continent ; in South America
it flourishes, banishing all rivals.
Canal travel and transportation were proposed at
the close of provincial days, and a few short canals
were built. Benjamin Franklin was early awake to
their practicability and value. Among the stock-
owners of the Dismal Swamp Canal was George
Washington, and he was equally interested in the
Potomac Canal.
The Erie Canal, first proposed to the New York
legislature in 1768, was completed in 1825. There
was considerable passenger travel on this canal at
" a cent and a half a mile, a mile and a half an hour."
Horace Greeley has given an excellent picture of
this leisurely travel ; it was asserted by some that
stage-coaches were doomed by the canal-boat, but
they continued to exist till they encountered a
more formidable rival.
Until turnpike days all small carriages were two-
wheeled ; chaises, chairs, and sulkies were those
generally used. The chaise and harness used by
Jonathan Trumbull "Brother Jonathan" are
here shown. With regard to private conveyances,
whether coaches, chaises, or chairs, the colonies kept
close step from earliest days with the mother-
countries. Randolph noted with envy the Boston
354 Home Life in Colonial Days
coaches of the seventeenth century. Parson
Thatcher was accused and reprehended in 1675
for making visits with a coach and four. Coaches
were taxed both in England and America ; so we
know exactly how plentiful they were. There were
as many in Massachusetts in 1750 in proportion to
the number of inhabitants as there were in England
in 1830. Judge Sewall s diary often refers to pri
vate coaches ; and one of the most amusing scenes
it depicts is his continued and ingenious argument
when wooing Madam Winthrop for his third wife,
when she stipulated that he should keep a coach,
and his frugal mind disposed him not to do it.
Coach-building prospered in the colonies ; Lucas
and Paddock in Boston, Ross in New York, made
beautiful and rich coaches. Materials were ample
Campbell Coach
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 355
and varied in the New World for carriage-building ;
horseflesh not over-choice, to be sure became
over-plentiful ; it was said that no man ever walked
in America save a vagabond or a fool. A coach
made for Madam Angelica Campbell of Schenec-
tady, New York, by coach-builder Ross, in 1790,
Dutch Sleigh in New York. From an old print
is here shown. It is now owned by Mr. John D.
Campbell of Rotterdam, New York.
Sleighs were common in New York a half-cen
tury before they were in Boston. Madam Knights
noted the fast racing in sleighs in New York when
she was there in 1704.
356 Home Life in Colonial Days
One other curious conveyance of colonial days
should be spoken of, a sedan-chair. This was a
strong covered chair fastened on two bars with
handles like a litter, and might be carried by two or
four persons. When sedan-chairs were so much
used in England, they were sure to be somewhat
used in cities in America. One was presented to
Governor Winthrop as early as 1646, portion of a
capture from a Spanish galleon. Judge Sewall
wrote in 1706, " Five Indians carried Mr. Brom-
field in a chair." This was in the country, down
on Cape Cod, and doubtless four Indians carried
him while one rested. As late as 1789 Eliza
Quincy saw Dr. Franklin riding in a sedan-chair
in Philadelphia.
The establishment and building of roads, bridges,
and opening of inns show that mutual interest which
marks civilization, and separates us from the lonely,
selfish life of a savage. Soon inns were found every
where in the Northern colonies. In New England,
New York, and Pennsylvania an inn was called an
ordinary, a victualling, a cook-shop, or a tavern
before we had our modern word hotel.
Board was not very high at early inns ; the prices
were regulated by the different towns. In 1633 the
Salem innkeeper could only have sixpence for a
meal. This was at the famous Anchor Tavern,
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 357
which was kept as a hostelry for nearly two centuries.
At the Ship Tavern, board, lodging, wine at dinner,
and beer between meals cost three shillings a day.
Great care was taken by the magistrates to choose
responsible men and women to keep taverns, and
they would not permit too many taverns in one
town. At first the tavern-keeper could not sell
sack (which was sherry), nor stronger intoxicating
liquor to travellers, but he could sell beer, provided
it was good, for a penny a quart. Nor could he
sell cakes or buns except at a wedding or funeral.
He could not allow games to be played, nor singing
or dancing to take place.
We know from Shakespeare s plays that the dif
ferent rooms in English inns had names. This
was also the custom in New England. The Star
Chamber, Rose and Sun Chamber, Blue Chamber,
Jerusalem Chamber, were some of them. Many of
the taverns of Revolutionary days and some of colo
nial times are still standing. A few have even been
taverns since first built ; others have served many
other uses. A well-preserved old house, built in
1690 in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was originally
known as the Red Horse Tavern, but has acquired
greater fame as the Wayside Inn of Longfellow s
Tales. Its tap-room with raftered ceiling and cage-
like bar with swinging gate is a picturesque room,
358
Home Life in Colonial Days
and is one of the few old tap-rooms left unaltered
in New England.
Every inn had a name, usually painted on its
CXjToivenoT U
ir 65
Swing-sign from Grosvenor Inn, Pomfret. Connecticut
swinging sign-board, with some significant emblem
These names were simply repetitions of old English
tavern-signs until Revolutionary days, when patriotic
landlords eagerly invented and adopted names sig
nificant of the new nation. The scarlet coat of
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 359
King George became the blue and buff of George
Washington ; and the eagle of the United States
took the place of the British lion.
The sign-board was an interesting survival of
feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged
companions, such as vanes and weathercocks, door
knockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque ele
ment of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters
might be written on historic, commemorative, em
blematic, heraldic, biblical, humorous, or significant
signs, nearly all of which have vanished from public
gaze, as has disappeared also the general incapacity
to read, which made pictorial devices a necessity.
Gilders, painter-stainers, smiths, and joiners all
helped to make the tavern-sign a thing of varied
workmanship if not of art. It is said that Phila
delphia excelled in the quantity and quality of her
sign-boards. With fair roads for colonial days, the
best and amplest system of transportation, and the
splendid Conestoga wagons, great inns multiplied
throughout Pennsylvania. In Baltimore both tav
erns and signs were many and varied, from the Three
Loggerheads to the Indian Queen with its "two
hundred guest-rooms with a bell in every room/
and the Fountain Inn built around a shady court,
with galleries on every story, like the Tabard Inn
at Southwark.
360
Home Life in Colonial Days
The swinging sign-board of John Nash s Tavern
at Amherst, Massachu
setts, is here reproduced
from the History of Am
ber st. It is a good type
of the ordinary sign-board
which was found hanging
in front of every tavern a
century ago.
In Virginia and the
Carolinas taverns were not
so plentiful nor so neces
sary ; for a traveller might
ride from Maryland to
Georgia, and be sure of a
welcome at every private
house on the way. Some
planters, eager for com
pany and news, stationed
negroes at the gate to in-
y j te pasSCrS-bv On the
J
post-road to come into
the house and be entertained. Berkeley, in his His
tory of Virginia^ wrote :
"The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who
need no other recommendation than being human creat-
iires. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon
Or ink for A
tke
Sign-board, John Nash s Tavern, Am
herst, Massachusetts
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 361
the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives,
and then he may depend upon being received with hospi
tality. This good-nature is so general among their people,
that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal
servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plan
tation affords; and the poor planters who have but one
bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form or couch all
night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself
after his journey."
So universal was this custom of free entertain
ment that it was a law in Virginia that unless there
had been a distinct agreement to pay for board and
shelter, no pay could be claimed from any guest, no
matter how long he remained. In the few taverns
that existed prices were low, about a shilling a
dinner ; and it was ordered that the meal must be
wholesome and good.
The governor of New Netherlands at first enter
tained all visitors to New Amsterdam at his house
in the fort. But as commerce increased "he found
this hospitality burdensome, and a Harberg or
tavern was built ; it was later used as a city hall.
In England throughout the seventeenth century,
and indeed" much later, traversing the great cities
by night was a matter of some danger. The streets
were ill-lighted, were full of holes and mud and
filth, and were infested with thieves. Worse still.
362 Home Life in Colonial Days
groups of drunken and dissipated young men of
wealth, calling themselves Mohocks, Scourers, and
other names, roamed the dark streets armed with
swords and bludgeons, assaulting, tormenting, and
injuring every one whom they met, who had the
ill fortune to be abroad at night.
There was nothing of that sort known in Ameri
can cities ; there was little noise or roistering, no
highway robbery, comparatively little petty stealing.
The streets were ill-paved and dirty, but not foul
with the accumulated dirt of centuries as in London.
The streets in nearly all cities were unlighted.
In 1697 New Yorkers were ordered to have a
lantern and candle hung out on a pole from every
seventh house. And as the watchman walked
around he called out, " Lanthorn, and a whole can-
dell-light. Hang out your lights." The watch
man was called a rattle-watch, and carried a long
staff and a lantern and a large rattle or klopper,
which he struck to frighten away thieves. And all
night long he called out each hour, and told the
weather. For instance, he called out, " Past mid
night, and all s well " ; " One o clock and fair
winds," or " Five o clock and cloudy skies." Thus
one could lie safe in bed and if he chanced to
waken could know that the friendly rattle-watch
was near at hand, and what was the weather and
Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 363
the time of night. In 1658 New York had in all"
ten watchmen, who were like our modern police;
to-day it has many thousands.
In New England the constables and watch were
all carefully appointed by law. They carried black
staves six feet long, tipped with brass, and hence
were called tipstaves. The night watch was called
a bell-man. He looked out for fire and thieves
and other disorders, and called the time of the
night, and the weather. The pay was small, often
but a shilling a night, and occasionally a " coat of
kersey." In large towns, as Boston and Salem,
thirteen " sober, honest men and householders "
were the night watch. The highest in the com
munity, even the magistrates, took their turn at the
watch, and were ordered to walk two together, a
young man with "one of the soberer sort."
CHAPTER XV
SUNDAY IN THE COLONIES
THE first building used as a church at the
Plymouth colony was the fort, and to it the
Pilgrim fathers and mothers and children
i walked on Sunday reverently and gravely, three in
I a row, the men fully armed with swords and guns,
till they built a meeting-house in 1648. In other
New England settlements, the first services were
held in tents, under trees, or under any shelter.
The settler who had a roomy house often had also
the meeting. The first Boston meeting-house had
mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor. It
was used till 1640, and some very thrilling and in
spiring scenes were enacted within its humble walls.
Usually the earliest meeting-houses were log houses,
with clay-filled chinks, and roofs thatched with reeds
and long grass, like the dwelling-houses. At Salem
is still preserved one of the early churches. The
second and more dignified form of New England
meeting-house was usually a square wooden build-
364
Sunday in the Colonies
365
ing with a truncated pyramidal roof, surmounted
often with a belfry, which served as a lookout station
and held a bell, from which the bell-rope hung
down to the floor in the centre of the church aisle.
The old church at Hingham, Massachusetts, still
The "Old Ship," Hingham, Massachusetts, 1680
standing and still used, is a good specimen of this
shape. It was built in 1681, and is known as the
" Old Ship," and is a comely and dignified build
ing. As more elegant and costly dwelling-houses
were built, so were better meeting-houses ; and the
third form with lofty wooden steeple at one end, in
3 66 Home Life in Colonial Days
the style of architecture invented by Sir Christo
pher Wren, after the great fire of London, multi
plied and increased until every town was graced
with an example. In all these the main body of
the edifice remained as bare, prosaic, and undeco-
rated as were the preceding churches, while all the
ambition of both builders and congregation spent
itself in the steeple. These were so varied and at
times so beautiful that a chapter might be written
on New England steeples. The Old South Church
of Boston is a good example of this school of
ecclesiastical architecture, and is a well-known his
toric building as well.
The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in
the windows, and when glass came it was not set
with putty, but was nailed in. The windows had
what were termed " heavy current side-shutters."
The outside of the meeting-house was not
" colored," or " stained " as it was then termed,
but was left to turn gray and weather-stained, and
sometimes moss-covered with the dampness of the
great shadowing hemlock and fir trees which were
usually planted around New England churches. The
first meeting-houses were often decorated in a very
singular and grotesque manner. Rewards were paid
by all the early towns for killing wolves ; and any
person who killed a wolf brought the head to the
The Old South Church, Boston
Sunday in the Colonies 367
meeting-house and nailed it to the outer wall ; the
fierce grinning heads and splashes of blood made a
grim and horrible decoration. All kinds of notices
were also nailed to the meeting-house door where
all of the congregation might readily see them,
notices of town-meetings, of sales of cattle or farms,
lists of town-officers, prohibitions from selling guns
to the Indians, notices of intended marriages, ven-
dues, etc. It was the only meeting-place, the only
method of advertisement. In front of the church
was usually a row of stepping-stones or horse
blocks, for nearly all came on horseback ; and often
on the meeting-house green stood the stocks, pil
lory, and whipping-post.
A verse from an old-fashioned hymn reads thus:
" New England s Sabbath day
Is heaven-like, still, and pure,
When Israel walks the way
Up to the temple s door.
The time we tell
When there to come,
By beat of drum,
Or sounding shell."
The first church at Jamestown, Virginia, gathered
the congregation by beat of drum ; but while
attendants of the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and
368 Home Life in Colonial Days
Dutch Reformed churches in the New World were
in general being summoned to divine service by the
ringing of a bell hung either over the church or in
the branches of a tree by its side, New England
Puritans were summoned, as the hymn relates, by
drum, or horn, or shell. The shell was a great
conch-shell, and a man was hired to blow it a
mournful sound at the proper time, which was
usually nine o clock in the morning. In Stock-
bridge, Massachusetts, the church-shell was after
wards used for many years as a signal to begin and
stop work in the haying field. In Windsor, Con
necticut, a man walked up and down on a platform
on the top of the meeting-house and blew a trum
pet to summon worshippers. Many churches had
a church drummer, who stood on the roof or in the
belfry and drummed ; a few raised a flag as a sum
mons, or fired a gun.
Within the meeting-house all was simple enough :
raftered walls, puncheon and sanded or earthen
floors, rows of benches, a few pews, all of unpainted
wood, and a pulpit which was usually a high desk
overhung by a heavy sounding-board, which was
fastened to the roof by a slender metal rod. The
pulpit was sometimes called a scaffold. When pews
were built they were square, with high partition
walls, and had narrow, uncomfortable seats round
Sunday in the Colonies 369
three sides. The word was always spelled " pue " ;
and they were sometimes called " pits." A little
girl in the middle of this century attended a service
in an old church which still retained the old-fash
ioned square pews ; she exclaimed, in a loud voice,
" What ! must I be shut in a closet and sit on a
shelf? " These narrow, shelf-like seats were usually
hung on hinges and could be turned up against the
pew-walls during the long psalm-tunes and prayers ;
so the members of the congregation could lean
against the pew-walls for support as they stood.
When the seats were let down, they fell with a
heavy slam that could be heard half a mile away
in the summer time, when the windows of the
meeting-house were open. Lines from an old
poem read:
" And when at last the loud Amen
Fell from aloft, how quickly then
The seats came down with heavy rattle,
Like musketry in fiercest battle."
A few of the old-time meeting-houses, with high
pulpit, square pews, and deacons seats, still re
main in New England. The interior of the Rocky
Hill meeting-house at Salisbury, Massachusetts, is
here shown. It fully illustrates the words of the
poet :
37 Home Life in Colonial Days
u Old house of Puritanic wood
Through whose unpainted windows streamed
On seats as primitive and rude
As Jacob s pillow when he dreamed,
The white and undiluted day "
The seats were carefully and thoughtfully assigned
by a church committee called the Seating Corn-
Rocky Hill Meeting-house, Salisbury, Massachusetts, 1785
mittee, the best seats being given to older persons
of wealth and dignity who attended the church.
Whittier wrote of this custom:
" In the goodly house of worship, where in order due and fit,
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people
sit.
Sunday in the Colonies
371
Mistress first and good wife after, clerkly squire before
the clown,
From the brave coat lace-embroidered to the gray coat
shading down."
Plan for Seating the Meeting-house
Many of the plans for "seating the meeting
house " have been preserved ; the pews and their
assigned occupants are clearly designated. A copy
is shown of one now in Deerfield Memorial Hall.
In the early meeting-houses men and women sat
on separate sides of the meeting-house, as in Quaker
meetings till our own time. Sometimes a group of
372. Home Life in Colonial Days
young women or of young men were permitted to
sit in the gallery together. Little girls sat beside
their mothers or on footstools at their feet, or some
times on the gallery stairs ; and I have heard of a
little cage or frame to hold Puritan babies in meet
ing. Boys did not sit with their families, but were
in groups by themselves, usually on the pulpit and
gallery stairs, where tithing-men watched over them.
In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered by the town that
" all ye boyes of ye towne are appointed to sitt
upon ye three paire of stairs in ye meeting-house,
and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boys
upon ye pulpitt stairs."
In Stratford the tithing-man was ordered to
" watch over youths of disorderly carriage, and see
they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps
and blows as is in his discretion meet/ In Durham
any misbehaving boy was punished publicly after
the service was over. We would nowadays scarcely
seat twenty or thirty active boys together in church
if we wished them to be models of attention and
dignified behavior ; but after the boys seats were
removed from the pulpit stairs they were all turned
in together in a "boys pew" in the gallery. There
was a boys pew in Windsor, Connecticut, as late as
1845, and pretty noisy it usually was. A certain
small boy in Connecticut misbehaved himself on
Sunday in the Colonies 373
Sunday, and his wickedness was specified by the
justice of peace as follows : -
" A Rude and Idel Behaver in the meeting hous. Such
as Smiling and Larfing and Intiseing others to the Same
Evil. Such as Larfing or Smiling or puling the hair of hio
nayber Benoni Simkins in the time of Publick Worship.
Such as throwing Sister Penticost Perkins on the Ice, it
being Saboth day, between the meeting hous and his plaes
of abode."
I can picture well the wicked scene ; poor, meek
little Benoni Simpkins trying to behave well in
meeting, and not cry out when the young " wanton
gospeller " pulled her hair, and unfortunate Sister
Perkins tripped up on the ice by the young rascal.
Another vain youth in Andover, Massachusetts,
was brought up before the magistrate, and it was
charged that he "sported and played, and by In
decent gestures and wry faces caused laughter and
misbehavior in the beholders." The girls were just
as wicked ; they slammed down the pew-seats.
Tabatha Morgus of Norwich "prophaned the Lord s
daye " by her " rude and indecent behavior in
Laughing and playing in ye tyme of service." On
Long Island godless boys " ran raesses " on the
Sabbath and " talked of vane things," and as for
Albany children, they played hookey and coasted
down hill on Sunday to the scandal of every one
374 Home Life in Colonial Days
evidently, except their parents. When the boys
were separated and families sat in pews together, all
became orderly in meeting.
The deacons sat in a "Deacons Pue" just in front
of the pulpit ; sometimes also there was a " Deaf
Pue " in front for those who were hard of hearing.
After choirs were established the singers seats were
usually in the gallery; and high up under the beams
in a loft sat the negroes and Indians.
If any person seated himself in any place which
was not assigned to hirn, he had to pay a fine, usu
ally of several shillings, for each offence. But in
old Newbury men were fined as high as twenty-
seven pounds each for persistent and unruly sitting
in seats belonging to other members.
The churches were all unheated. Few had stoves
until the middle of this century. The chill of the
damp buildings, never heated from autumn to
spring, and closed and dark throughout the week,
was hard for every one to bear. In some of the
early log-built meeting-houses, fur bags made of
wolfskins were nailed to the seats ; and in winter
church attendants thrust their feet into them. Dogs,
too, were permitted to enter the meeting-house and
lie on their masters feet. Dog-whippers or dog-
pelters were appointed to control and expel them
when they became unruly or unbearable. Women
Sunday in the Colonies
375
and children usually carried foot-stoves, which were
little pierced metal boxes that stood on wooden
legs, and held hot coals. During the noon inter
mission the half-frozen church attendants went to
a neighboring house or tavern, or to a noon-house
Foot-stove
to get warm. A noon-house or "Sabba-day house,"
as it was often called, was a long low building built
near the meeting-house, with horse-stalls at one end
and a chimney at the other. In it the farmers kept,
says one church record, " their duds and horses."
A great fire of logs was built there each Sunday,
and before its cheerful blaze noonday luncheons of
376 Home Life in Colonial Days
brown bread, doughnuts, or gingerbread were eaten,
and foot-stoves were filled. Boys and girls were
not permitted to indulge in idle talk in those noon-
houses, much less to play. Often two or three
families built a noon-house together, or the church
built a " Society-house," and there the children had
a sermon read to them by a deacon during the
" nooning" ; sometimes the children had to explain
aloud the notes they had taken during the sermon
in the morning. Thus they throve, as a minister
wrote, on the " Good Fare of brown Bread and the
Gospel." There was no nearer approach to a Sun
day-school until this century.
The services were not shortened because the
churches were uncomfortable. By the side of the
pulpit stood a brass-bound hour-glass which was
turned by the tithing-man or clerk, but it did not
hasten the closing of the sermon. Sermons two or
three hours long were customary, and prayers from
one to two hours in length. When the first church
in Woburn was dedicated, the minister preached a
sermon nearly five hours long. A Dutch traveller
recorded a prayer four hours long on a Fast Day.
Many prayers were two hours long. The doors
were closed and watched by the tithing-man, and
none could leave even if tired or restless unless with
2;ood excuse. The singing of the psalms was tedious
Sunday in the Colonies
377
Bass-viol, Psalm-book and Pitch-pipe
and unmusical, just as it was in churches of all
denominations both in America and England at that
date. Singing was by ear and very uncertain, and
the congregation had no notes, and many had no
378 Home Life in Colonial Days
psalm-books, and hence no words. So the psalms
were " lined " or " deaconed " ; that is, a line was
read by the deacon, and then sung by the congrega
tion. Some psalms when lined and sung occupied
half an hour, during which the congregation stood.
There were but eight or nine tunes in general use,
and even these were often sung incorrectly. There
were no church organs to help keep the singers
together, but sometimes pitch-pipes were used to set
the key. Bass-viols, clarionets, and flutes were
played upon at a later date in meeting to help the
singing. Violins were too associated with dance
music to be thought decorous for church music.
Still the New England churches clung to and loved
their poor confused psalm-singing as one of their
few delights, and whenever a Puritan, even in road
or field, heard the distant sound of a psalm-tune he
removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer.
Contributions at first were not collected by the
deacons, but the entire congregation, one after
another, walked up to the deacons seat and placed
gifts of money, goods, wampum, or promissory
notes in a box. When the services were ended, all
remained in the pews until the minister and his
wife had walked up the aisle and out of the church.
The strict observance of Sunday as a holy day
was one of the characteristics of the Puritans. Any
f f f tri n fir
Mil N&CS and therefore I
. f f
f r
if i if-f f Hs f
/ &- s s f f s i & *
JticbSsU Tune*
i 4 oyr Notts
your fifft
Tunes to*
l *
Pages of Old Psalm-book printed in Boston in 1690
Sunday in the Colonies 379
profanation of the day was severely punished by
fine or whipping. Citizens were forbidden to fish,
shoot, sail, row, dance, jump, or ride, save to and from
church, or to perform any work on the farm. An
infinite number of examples might be given to show
how rigidly the laws were enforced. The use of
tobacco was forbidden near the meeting-house.
These laws were held to extend from sunset on
Saturday to sunset on Sunday ; for in the first in
structions given to Governor Endicott by the com
pany in England, it was ordered that all in the
colony cease work at three o clock in the afternoon
on Saturday. The Puritans found support of this
belief in the Scriptural words, " The evening and
the morning were the first day."
A Sabbath day in the family of Rev. John Cotton
was thus described by one of his fellow-ministers:
" He began the Sabbath at evening, therefore then per
formed family duty after supper, being longer than ordinary
in exposition. After which he catechized his children and
servants, and then returned to his study. The morning
following, family worship being ended, he retired into his
study until the bell called him away. Upon his return from
meeting (where he had preached and prayed some hours),
he returned again into his study (the place of his labor and
prayer), unto his favorite devotion ; where having a small
carried him up for his dinner, he continued until the
380 Home Life in Colonial Days
tolling of the bell. The public service of the afternoon
being over, he withdrew for a space to his pre-mentioned
oratory for his sacred addresses to God, as in the forenoon,
then came down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed,
after supper sang a Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking
himself again to his study he closed the day with prayer.
Thus he spent the Sabbath continually."
The Virginia Cavaliers were strict Church of
England men and the first who came to the colony
were strict Sunday-keepers. Rules were laid down
to enforce Sunday observance. Journeys were for
bidden, boat-lading was prohibited, also all prof
anation of the day by sports, such as shooting,
fishing, game-playing, etc. The offender who broke
the Sabbath laws had to pay a fine and be set in the
stocks. When that sturdy watch-dog of religion
and government Sir Thomas Dale came over,
he declared absence from church should be punish
able by death ; but this severity never was executed.
The captain of the watch was made to play the
same part as the New England tithing-man. Every
Sunday, half an hour before service-time, at the last
tolling of the bell, the captain stationed sentinels,
then searched all the houses and commanded and
forced all (except the sick) to go to church. Then,
when all were driven churchwards before him, he
went with his guards to church himself.
Sunday in the Colonies
381
Captain John Smith, in his Pathway to erect a
Plantation^ thus vividly described the first places of
divine worship in Virginia:
" Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to
three or foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne ; our
walls were railes of wood ; our seats unhewed trees till we
cut plankes ; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two
neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an
old rotten tent ; this came by way of adventure for new.
This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a
barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and
earth ; so also was the walls ; the best of our houses were
of like curiosity, that could neither well defend from wind
nor rain.
" Yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening;
Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburgh, Virginia
382 Home Life in Colonial Days
every Sunday two sermons ; and every three months a holy
Communion till our Minister died: but our Prayers daily
with an Homily on Sundays we continued two or three
years after, till more Preachers came."
A timber church sixty feet long took the place
of this mud and clay chapel, and this was in turn
replaced by the brick one whose ruined arches are
still standing. The wooden church saw the most
pompous ceremony of the day when the governor,
De La Warre, or Delaware as we now call it, in full
dress, attended by all his councillors and officers
and fifty halbert-bearers in scarlet cloaks, filed within
its flower-decked walls.
This decoration of flowers was significant of the
difference between the church edifices of the Puri
tans and of the Cavaliers. The churches of the
Southern colonies were, as a rule, much more richly
furnished. Many were modelled in shape after the
old English churches and were built of stone, though
Jonathan Boucher, the colonial clergyman, could
write that the greater number of the Southern
churches were, at the . time of the Revolution,
"composed of wood, without spires, or towers or
steeples or bells, placed in retired and solitary spots
and contiguous to springs or wells." Many of the
churches and the chapels-of-ease stood by the water
side, and to the services came the church attendant
Sunday in the Colonies
383
Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia
in canoes, periaugers, dugouts, etc. It made an
animated scene upon the water, as the boats came
rowing in and as they departed after the service.
Sometimes the seats were comfortably cushioned,
and they were carefully assigned as in the Puritan
meetings. In some Virginia churches seats in the
galleries were deemed the most dignified. There
was a pew for the magistrates, another for the
magistrates ladies ; pews for the representatives and
church-wardens, vestrymen, etc. Persons crowded
into pews above their stations, just as in New Eng-
384 Home Life in Colonial Days
land, and were promptly displaced. Groups of
men built pews together, and there were school
boys galleries and pews.
The first clergyman in Virginia, Robert Hunt,
a true man of God, came as a missionary, and he
and others were men of marked intellect and reli
gion, but in the eighteenth century the pay was too
small and uncertain to attract any great men from
the Church of England, and church attendance
dwindled and became irregular. For in Virginia
the parish was expected to receive any clergyman
sent them from England, a rule which often proved
unsatisfactory; and deservedly so, since some very
disreputable offshoots of English families were
thrust upon the Virginia churches. In the Caro-
linas, where the church chose its own clergyman,
harmony and affection prevailed in the parishes as
it did among the New England Puritans. Though
the Virginians did not always love their clergy
men, still they were ever steadfast in their affec
tion to their church, and regarded it as the only
church.
Sunday was not observed with as much rigidity
in New Netherland as in New England, but strict
rules and laws were made for enforcing quiet dur
ing service-time. Fishing, gathering berries or nuts,
playing in the streets, working, going on pleasure
Sunday in the Colonies 385
trips, all were forbidden. On Long Island shooting
of wild fowl, carting of grain, travelling for pleasure,
all were punished. In Revolutionary times a cage
was set up in City Hall Park, near the present New
York Post-office, in which boys were confined who
did not properly regard the Sabbath.
Before the Dutch settlers had any churches or
domines, as they called their ministers, they had
krankbesoeckerSy or visitors of the sick, who read ser
mons to an assembled congregation every Sunday.
The first church at Albany was much like the
Plymouth fort, simply a blockhouse with loopholes
through which guns could be fired. The roof was
mounted with three cannon. It had a seat for the
magistrates and one for the deacons, and a handsome
octagonal pulpit which had been sent from Holland,
and which still exists. The edifice had a chandelier
and candle sconces and two low galleries. The first
church in New Amsterdam was of stone, and was
seventy-two feet long.
A favorite form of the Dutch churches was six or
eight sided, with a high pyramidal roof, topped with
a belfry and a weather-vane. Usually the windows
were so small and of glass so opaque that the church
was very dark. A few of the churches were poorly
heated with high stoves perched up on pillars, the
Albany and Schenectady churches among them, but
Home Life in Colonial Days
all the women carried foot-stoves, and some of the
men carried muffs.
Almost as important as the domine was the
voor/eezer or chorister, who was also generally
the bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, funeral in-
viter, schoolmas
ter, and some
times town clerk.
He " tuned the
psalm " ; turned
the hour-glass ;
gave out the
psalms on a hang
ing board to the
congregation; read
the Bible ; gave
up notices to the
domine by stick
ing the papers in
the end of a cleft
stick and holding
it up to the high
Dutch Reformed Church, Bushwick, Long Island, nillnit
1711. From an old print
The deacons
had control of all the church money. In the
middle of the sermon they collected contributions
by passing sacjes. These were small cloth or vel-
Sunday in the Colonies 387
vet bags hung on the end of a pole six or eight
feet long. A French traveller told that the Dutch
deacons passed round " the old square hat of the
preacher " on the end of a stick for the contribu
tions. Usually there was a little bell on the sacje
which rung when a coin was dropped in.
In many Dutch churches the men sat in a row of
pews around the wall while the women were seated
on chairs in the centre of the church. There were
also a few benches or pews for persons of special
dignity, or for the minister s wife.
There were many other colonists of other reli
gious faiths : the Roman Catholics in Maryland and
the extreme Southern colonies ; the Quakers in
Pennsylvania; the Baptists in Rhode Island; the
Huguenots, Lutherans, Moravians; but all enjoined
an orderly observance of the Sabbath day. And it
may be counted as one of the great blessings of the
settlement of America, one of the most ennobling
conditions of its colonization, that it was made at a
time when the deepest religious feeling prevailed
throughout Europe, when devotion to some reli
gion was found in every one, when the Bible was a
newly found and deeply loved treasure; when the
very differences of religious belief and the formation
of new sects made each cling more lovingly and
more earnestly to his own faith.
CHAPTER XVI
COLONIAL NEIGHBORLINESS
IF the first foundation of New England s
strength and growth was godliness, its next
was neighborliness, and a firm rock it proved
to build upon. It may seem anomalous to assert
that while there was in olden times infinitely greater
independence in each household than at present,
yet there was also greater interdependence with sur
rounding households.
It is curious to see how completely social ethics
and relations have changed since olden days. Aid
in our families in times of stress and need is not
given to us now by kindly neighbors as of yore ;
we have well-arranged systems by which we can buy
all that assistance, and pay for it, not with affection
ate regard, but with current coin. The colonist
turned to any and all who lived around him, and
never turned in vain for help in sickness, or at the
time of death of members of his household ; for
friendly advice ; for culinary aids to a halting appe
tite ; for the preparation for feasting an exceptional
Colonial Neighborliness 389
number of persons ; in short, in any unusual emer
gency, as well as in frequent every-day cooperation
in log-rolling, stone-piling, stump-pulling, wall-
building, house-raising, etc., all the hard and
exhausting labor on the farm.
The word " cooperation " is modern, but the thing
itself is as old as civilization. In a new country
where there was much work to be done which one
man or one family could not do, under the me
chanical conditions which then existed, a working
together, or union of labor was necessary for prog
ress, indeed, almost for obtaining a foothold.
The term "log-rolling" is frequently employed in
its metaphorical sense in politics, both by English
and American writers who have vague knowledge
of the original meaning of the word. A log-rolling
in early pioneer days, in the Northern colonies and in
western Virginia and the central states, was a
example of generous cooperation, where each gave
of his best his time, strength, and good will; and
where all worked to clear the ground in the forest
for a home-farm for a neighbor who might be newly
come and an entire stranger, but who in turn would
just as cheerfully and energetically give his work for
others when it was needed.
With the vanishing of the log-rolling, and a score
of similar kindly usages and customs, has gone from
390 Home Life in Colonial Days
our communities all traces of the old-time exalted
type of neighborliness. We nowadays have gen
eralized our sentiments; we have more philanthropy
and less neighborliness ; we have more love for
mankind and less for men. We are independent
of our neighbors, but infinitely more dependent on
the world at large. The personal element has been
removed to a large extent from our social ethics.
We buy nursing and catering just as we hire our
houses built and buy our corn ready ground.
Doubtless everything we buy is infinitely better ;
nevertheless, our loss in affectionate zeal is great.
The plantation was the unit in Virginia; in New
England it was the town. The neighborly helpful
ness of the New England settlers extended from
small to great matters ; it formed communal privi
leges and entered into every department of town
life. For instance, the town of Gloucester in 1663
granted a right to a citizen for running a small saw
mill for twenty-one years. In return for this right
the grantee was to sell boards to Gloucester men at
" one shilling per hundred better cheape than to
strangers " and was to receive pay " raised in the
towne." Saco and Biddeford, in Maine, ordered that
fellow-townsmen should have preference in every
employment. Other towns ordered certain persons
to buy provisions "of the towns-men in preference/
Colonial Neighborliness 391
Reading would not sell any of its felled timber out
of the town. Thus the social compact called a town
extended itself also into all the small doings of daily
life, and the mutual helpfulness made mutual inter
ests that proved no small element of the force which
bound all together in 1776 in a successful struggle
for independence.
In outlying settlements and districts this feeling
of mutual dependence and assistance was strong
enough to give a name which sometimes lingered
long. "The Loomis Neighborhood/ "The Mason
Neighborhood," " The Robinson Neighborhood "
were names distinctive for half a century, and far
more distinguishing and individual than the Green
ville, Masontown, and Longwood that succeeded
them.
There was one curious and contradictory aspect
of this neighborliness, this kindliness, this thought
for mutual welfare, and that was its narrowness,
especially in New England, as regards the limita
tions of space and locality. It is impossible to judge
what caused this restraint of vision, but it is certain
that in generality and almost in universality, just as
soon as any group of settlers could call themselves
a town, these colonists notions of kindliness and
thoughtfulness for others became distinctly and
rigidly limited to their own townspeople. The
39 2 Home Life in Colonial Days
town was their whole world. Without doubt this
was partly the result of the lack of travelling facili
ties and ample communication, which made town
ships far more separated and remote from each other
than states are to-day, and made difficult the possi
bility of speedy or full knowledge of strangers.
This caused a constant suspicion of all new
comers, especially those who chanced to enter with
scant introduction, and made universal a custom of
" warning out " all strangers who arrived in any
town. This formality was gone through with by
the sheriff or tithing-man. Thereafter should the
warned ones prove incapable or unsuccessful or
vicious, they could not become a charge upon the
town, but could be returned whence they came with
despatch and violence if necessary. By this means,
and by various attempts to restrict the powers of
citizens to sell property to newcomers, th& town
kept a jealous watch over the right of entry into
the corporation.
Dorchester in 1634 enacted that "no man within
the Plantation shall sell his house or lott to any
man without the Plantation whome they shall dis
like off." Providence would not permit a proprietor
to sell to any " but to an Inhabitant " without con
sent of the town. New Haven would neither sell
nor let ground to a stranger. Hadley would sell
Colonial Neighborliness 393
no land to any until after three years occupation,
and then only with approval of the "Town s Mind."
In 1637 the General Court very reasonably ques
tioned whether towns could legally restrain in
dividuals from disposal of their own property, but
the custom was so established, so in touch with the
narrow exclusiveness of the colonists, that it still
prevailed. The expression of the town of Water-
town when it would sell lots only to freemen of the
congregation, because it wished no strange neigh
bors, but only " to sitt down there close togither,"
was the sentiment of all the towns. One John
Stebbins, who had twice served as a soldier of
Watertown and lived there seven years, could not
get a town lot.
The legal process of warning out of town had an
element of the absurd in it, and in one case that of
mystery, namely : a sheriff appeared before the woe
begone intruder, and said, half laughing, " I warn
you off the face of the earth." " Let me get my
hat before I go," stammered the terrified wanderer,
who ran into the house for his hat and was never
seen by any mortal eye in that town afterwards. It
has become a tradition of local folk-lore that he
literally vanished from the earth at the command
of the officer of the law.
The harboring of strangers, even of relatives who
394 Home Life in Colonial Days
were not local residents, was a frequent source of
bickering between citizens and magistrates, as well
as a constant cause of arbitration between towns.
A widow in Dorchester was not permitted to enter
tain her own son-in-law from another town, and her
neighbor was fined in 1671 "under distress" for
housing his own daughter. She was a married
woman, and alleged she could not return to her
husband on account of the inclement weather.
As time passed on and immigration continued,
freemen clung closely to their right to keep out
strangers and outsiders. From the Boston Town
Records of 1714 we find citizens still prohibited
from entertaining a stranger without giving notice
to the town authorities, and a description of the
stranger and his circumstances. Boston required
that all coming from Ireland should be registered
" lest they become chargeable." Warnings and
whippings out of town still continued. All this was
so contrary to the methods of colonies in other
countries, such as the Barbadoes, Honduras, etc.,
where extraordinary privileges were offered settlers,
free and large grants of land, absolvment from past
debts, etc., that it makes an early example of the
curious absorbing and assimilating power of Ameri
can nationality, which ever grew and grew even
against such clogs and hampering restrictions.
Colonial Neighborliness 395
In the Southern colonies the same kindliness
existed as in the North, but the conditions differed.
John Hammond, of Virginia, wrote in 1656, in his
Leah and Rachel:
" The Country is not only plentiful!, but pleasant and
profitable, pleasant in regard of the extraordinary good
neighbourhood and loving conversation they have one
with another.
" The inhabitants are generally affable, courteous, and
very assistant to Strangers (for what but plenty makes
hospitality and good neighbourhood) and no sooner are
they settled, but they will be visiting, presenting and ad
vising the strangers how to improve what they have, how
to better their way of livelihood."
In summer when fresh meat was killed, the
neighbors shared the luxury, and in turn gave of
their slaughter. Hammond adds :
" If any fall sick and cannot compass to follow his crops
which would soon be lost, the adjoining neighbour, or upon
request more joyn together and work it by spells, until he
recovers ; and that gratis, so that no man may by sickness
loose any part of his year s work.
" Let any travell, it is without charge and at every house
is entertainment as in a hostelry."
It was the same in the Carolinas. Ramsay, the
early historian of South Carolina, said that hospital
ity was such a virtue that innkeepers complained
396 Home Life in Colonial Days
that their business was not worth carrying on. The
doors of citizens were open to all decent travellers,
and shut to none.
The plantations were in many counties too far
apart for any cooperative labor, and the planters
were not men of such vast strength or so great per
sonal industry, even in their own affairs, as were the
Yankees. There were slaves on each plantation to
do all the hard work of lifting, etc. But in out-of-
the-way settlements the Virginia planters kindliness
was shown in a vast and unbounded hospitality, a
hospitality so insatiable that it watched for and way
laid travellers to expend a welcome and lavish atten
tions upon. Negroes were stationed at the planter s
gate where it opened on the post-road or turnpike,
to hail travellers and assure them of a hearty wel
come at the " big house up yonder. * One writer
says of the planters :
" Their manner of living is most generous and open :
strangers are sought after with Greediness to be invited."
The London Magazine of the year 1743 published
a series of papers entitled Itinerant Observations in
America. It was written with a spirited pen which
thus pleasantly describes simple Maryland hospi
tality, not of men of vast wealth but of very poor
folk:
Colonial Neighborliness 397
" With the meaner Sort you find little else to drink but
Water amongst them when their Cyder is spent, but the
Water is presented you by one of the barefooted Family in
a copious Calabash, with an innocent Strain of good Breed
ing and Heartiness, the Cake baking on the Hearth, and
the prodigious Cleanliness of everything around you must
needs put you in Mind of the Golden Age, the Times of
ancient Frugality and Purity. All over the Colony a uni
versal Hospitality reigns, full Tables and open Doors ; the
kind Salute, the generous Detention speak somewhat like
the roast-Beef Ages of our Forefathers."
There came a time when this Southern hospitality
became burdensome. With the exhaustion of the
soil and competition in tobacco-raising, the great
wealth of the Virginians was gone. But visitors did
not cease; in fact, they increased. The generous
welcome offered to kinsmen, friends, and occasional
travellers was sought by curiosity-hunters and tour
ists who wanted to save a tavern-bill. Nothing
could be more pathetic than the impoverishment
of Thomas Jefferson through these impositions.
Times and conditions had changed, but Jefferson
felt bound in honor to himself and his state to keep
the same open hand and ready welcome as of yore.
His overseer describes his own hopeless efforts to
keep these travelling friends and admirers from
eating his master out of house and home:
398 Home Life in Colonial Days
" They were there all times of the year ; but about the
middle of June the travel would commence from the lower
part of the State to the Springs, and then there was a per
fect throng of visitors. They travelled in their own car
riages and came in gangs, the whole family with carriage
and riding horses and servants, sometimes three or four
such gangs at a time. We had thirty-six stalls for horses
and only used ten of them for the stock we kept there.
Very often all the rest were full, and I had to send horses
off to another place. I have often sent a wagon-load of
hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would
not be enough left to make a bird s nest. I have killed a
fine beef, and it would all be eaten up in a day or two."
The final extinction of old-time hospitality in
Virginia came not from a death of hospitable intent,
but from an entire vanishing of the means to fur
nish entertainment. And the Civil War drove away
even the lingering ghost.
Many general customs existed in the early colo
nies which were simply exemplifications of neigh-
borliness put in legal form. Such were the systems
of common lands and herding. This was an old
Aryan custom which existed many centuries ago,
and has ever been one of the best ways of uniting
any settlement of people, especially a new settle
ment; for it makes the interest of one the interest
of all, and promotes union rather than selfishness.
Colonial Neighborliness 399
Common lands were set off and common herds
existed in many of the Northern colonies; cow
herds or " cow-keeps " were appointed and paid
by the town to care throughout the summer for all
the cattle owned by the inhabitants. This was an
intelligent provision ; for it saved much work of
individuals during the months when farmers had
so much hard work to do, and so short a time to
do it in. In Albany and New York the cowherd
and " a chosen proper youngster " in other words,
a good, steady boy went through the town at
sunrise sounding a horn, which the cattle heard and
knew ; and they quickly followed him to green
pastures outside the town. There they lingered till
nearly sunset, when they were brought home to the
church, and the owners were again warned by the
horn of the safe return of their cattle, and that it
was milking time. Sometimes the cowherd re
ceived part of his pay in butter or cheese. In
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cowherd Rice, in 1635,
agreed to take charge of one hundred cows for three
months for ten pounds. The town also paid two
men or boys to help him the first two weeks, and
one man a week longer ; he kept the cows alone
after that, for the intelligent cattle had fallen into
habits of order and obedience to his horn. He had
to pay threepence fine each time he failed to bring
in all the cattle at night.
400 Home Life in Colonial Days
On Long Island and in Connecticut there were
cowherds, calf-keepers, and pound-keepers. The
calf-keepers duties were to keep the calves away
from the cows, water them, protect them, etc. In
Virginia and Maryland there were cow-pens in early
days, and cowherds ; but in the South the cattle
generally roamed wild through the forests, and were
known to their owners by earmarks. In all com
munities earmarks and other brands of ownership on
cattle, horses, sheep, and swine were very important,
and rigidly regarded where so much value was kept
in domestic cattle. These earmarks were registered
by the town clerk in the town records, and were
usually described both in words and rude drawings.
One of my great-great-grandfather s earmarks for
his cows was a "swallow-fork slit in both ears";
another was a slit under the ear and a " half-penny
mark on the foreside of the near ear." This custom
of herding cattle in common lasted in some out-of-
the-way places to this century, and even lingered
long in large cities such as Boston, where cows were
allowed to feed on Boston Common till about 1840.
In Philadelphia until the year 1795 a cowherd
stood every morning at the corner of Dock and
Second streets, blew his horn, tramped off to a
distant pasture followed by all the cows of his
neighborhood, who had run out to him as soon as
Colonial Neighborliness 401
they heard the familiar sound. He led them back
to the same place at night, when each returned alone
to her own home.
Sheep-herds or shepherds in colonial days also
took charge of the sheep of many owners in herd-
walks, or ranges, by day, and by night in sheep-
folds built with fences and gates.
Fence-viewers were men who were appointed by
the town for common benefit to take charge of
building and keeping in repair the fences that sur
rounded the " great lotts " or commons ; that is,
the enclosed fields which were the common property
of each town, in which all farmers living near could
place their cattle. The fence-viewers saw that each
man worked a certain amount each year on these
" pales " as the fences were called, or paid his share
for the work of others. Each farmer or cow-owner
usually built about twenty feet of fence for each cow
which he pastured in the " great lotts." The fence-
viewers also examined the condition of fences around
private lands; noted breaks and ordered repairs.
For if cattle broke through a poorly made fence,
and did damage to crops, the fence-owner had to
stand the loss, while if the fences were good and
strong, proving the cattle unruly and destructive,
the owner of the cattle had to pay. All the colonies
were watchful over the safe-keeping of fences. In
XD
4O2 Home Life in Colonial Days
1659 tne Dutch rulers of New Amsterdam (now
New York) ordered that for " stripping fences of
rails and posts" the offender should be whipped and
branded, and for a second offence he could be pun
ished by death. This seems cruelly severe, but that
year there was a great scarcity of grain and other food,
and if the fences were pulled down, cattle could get
into fields and eat up the growing crops, and famine
and death might result.
Sometimes a common field was fenced in and
planted with Indian corn. In this case the fence
served to keep the cattle out, not in. This was
always the case in Virginia.
Hay-wards were, as the name indicates, men to
keep watchful care over the growing hay. For in
stance, in Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1661, Goodman
Montague was chosen hay-ward by the town. He
was to have twelvepence for each cow or hog, two
shillings for each horse, and twenty pence for each
twenty sheep that he found loose in any field or
meadow, and successfully turned out. The owner
of the animal was to pay the fine. At a later date
these hay-wards were called field-drivers. They are
still appointed in many towns and cities, among
them Boston.
Hog-reeves were men appointed by the citizens
to look after their hogs that roamed the roads and
Colonial Neighborliness 403
streets, to see that all those swine had rings in their
noses, were properly marked, and did not do damage
to crops. Many towns had hog-reeves till this
century ; for until seventy years ago hogs ran freely
everywhere, even in the streets of our great cities.
It was a favorite jest to appoint a newly married
man hog-reeve. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was
married and became a householder in Concord,
the young philosopher was appointed to that office.
Sometimes a single swineherd was hired to take care
of the roving swine. The two Salem swineherds or
swine-keepers in 1640 were to have sixpence for
each hog they drove daily to pasture from April to
November. These and many other public offices
were simply a form of legalized cooperation ; a
joining together of neighbors for public good.
The neighborly assistance given to new settlers
began with the clearing of the ground for occupancy.
The girdling of trees was easy and speedy, but it
was discountenanced as dangerous and hideous, and
was not frequently practised. A chopping-bee was
a universal method among pioneers of clearing
ground in newly settled districts, or even in older
townships in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine,
where great tracts of land were left for many years in
the original growth. Sometimes this bee was held
to clear land for a newly married man, or a new
404 Home Life in Colonial Days
neighbor, or one who had had bad luck ; but it was
just as freely given to a prosperous farmer, though
plentiful thanks and plentiful rum were the only
rewards of the willing workers.
All the strong men of. the township repaired at
an early hour to the tract to be cleared, and with
powerful blows attacked the great trees. A favorite
way of bringing the day s work and the day s excite
ment to a climax was by a "drive." This was made
by chopping half-way into the trunks of a great group
or circle of trees under-cutting it was called
so that by a few powerful and well-driven blows at the
monarch of the group, and perhaps a few well-con
certed pulls on a rope, the entire group could be
felled together, the leader bringing down with his
spreading branches in his mighty fall his fellows in
front of him, and they in turn their neighbors, with
a crash that shook the earth and made the moun
tains ring. It was dangerous work; accidents were
frequent ; the records of death at log-rollings are
pathetic to read and to think of, in a country where
the loss of a sturdy man meant so much to some
struggling household. A heavy and sudden gust
of wind might blow down a small tree, which had
been carelessly " under-cut," and thus give an un
expected and premature collapse of the simple
machinery of the grand finale.
Colonial Neighborliness 405
A century ago a New Hampshire woman and her
husband went out into the forest primeval ; he cut
down a few trees, made a little clearing termed a
cut-down wherein a tiny patch of sky and cloud
and scant sunlight could be seen overhead, but no
sunrise or sunset, and built a log house of a single
room a home. With the opening spring came
one day a group of kindly settlers from distant
clearings and settlements, some riding from ten
miles away the previous day. In front of the log
house they chopped all the morning long with
sturdy arms and swinging blows, yet felled nothing,
till in the afternoon when all was ready for the final
blow at the towering leader, which by its fall should
lay low a great sloping tract for a dooryard and
home field. As the noble trees fell at last to the
earth with a resounding crash, lo ! in the opening
there appeared to the startled eyes of the settler s
wife, as if rising out of heaven, a neighbor in her
loneliness Mount Kearsage, grand, serene, and
beautiful, crowned with the glories of the setting
sun, standing guard over a smiling lake at its foot.
And every day through her long and happy life till
ninety-six years old, as she looked at the splendid
mountain, standing as it will till time shall be no
more, did she thank God for His gift, for that
noble companionship which came so suddenly, so
406 Home Life in Colonial Days
inspiringly, upon the cramped horizon of her lonely
forest home.
After the trees were all felled, it was no longer a
" cut-down " but an " opening." This was made
preferably in the spring. The fallen trees were left
some months on the ground to dry in the summer
sun, while the farmer turned to other work on his
farm, or, if he were starting in life, hired out for the
summer. In the autumn the tops were set on fire,
and the lighter limbs usually burned out, leaving
the great charred tree-trunks. Then came what
was known as a piling-bee, a perfect riot of hard
work, cinders, and dirt. Usually the half-burned
tree-trunks were " niggered off" in Indian fashion,
by burning across with a smaller stick of wood till
the long log was in lengths which could be dragged
by the farmers with their oxen and horses into vast
piles and again set on fire. Another treat of rum
accompanied this day s work. The word " log
rolling " was often applied to the latter bee, and
occasionally the felling of trees and dragging into
piles for firing was done in a single log-rolling.
Sometimes before the opening was cleared it was
planted. The spring rains and melting snows
carried the fertilizing ashes deep into the soil.
Corn was planted and " dug in " ; rye was sowed
and " hacked in." The crops were astonishing ; the
Colonial Neighborliness 407
grain grew among the fallen logs and stumps in riot
ing luxuriance. A stump-pulling was another occa
sion for a friendly bee, to clear off and put into
comely shape the new field.
Another exhibition of cooperation was in a
stone-hauling or a stone-bee. Some of the rocky
fields of hard New England would defy a lifetime of
work of one man and a single yoke of oxen. With
judicious blasting, many oxen, strong arms, and
willing hearts the boulders and ledges were tamed.
Stone walls eight feet wide, such as may be seen in
Hopkinton, New Hampshire, stand as monuments
of the patience, strength, skill, and cooperation of
our forbears.
To show the struggle and hard work willingly
done for a home, let me give the statement in 1870
of a respected citizen, the historian of Norridge-
wock, Maine, when he was over ninety years old.
He served an apprenticeship of eight years till he
was twenty-one, then bought on credit a tract of
fifty acres in the primeval woods. On eight acres
he felled the trees and left them through the winter.
In April, 1801, he spent three weeks in burning off
the logs and clearing as well as possible by hand
work three acres. These he sowed with wheat and
rye, buying the seed on credit. He hired a yoke
of oxen for one day and did what harrowing he
408 Home Life in Colonial Days
could in that short time, grubbing around the
stumps with a hoe for two more days. The crop
grew, as did all others on similar soil, amazingly.
The two bushels of seed-wheat yielded fifty-two
bushels, the bushel of rye thirty bushels. On his
other five acres among the fallen trees he planted
corn, and raised a hundred and twenty-eight bushels.
He adds :
" When I could leave my work on my new land I
worked out haying and other work. I made shoes in the
Fall, taught school in the Winter, paid for my board and
some clothing, but husbanded my resources to pay for my
land. At the end of the year found myself worth two
hundred dollars. I continued to clear up four acres each
year till I had cleared the fifty acres, planted an orchard
and erected suitable farm buildings and fences."
Six years later he married and prospered. In
eleven years he was worth two thousand dollars;
he filled, during his long life, many positions of
trust and of profit, and did many and varied good
deeds; he continued in active life till he was ninety
years old. At his death he left a considerable fort
une. It is an interesting picture of the value of
honorable economy and thrift; a typical New Eng
land picture, with a certain vigor and stimulus about
it that makes it pleasing.
A " raising " might be of a church or a school-
Colonial Neighborliness 409
house, or of a house or barn for a neighbor. All
the strong men far and near turned out to help,
tools were lent, and many strong hands and arms
made quick work. Often the frame of a whole side
of a house the broadside was fastened together
on the ground. After it was laid out and pinned
together, shores of long poles were attached to the
plates with ox-chains, and it was literally lifted
into place by the united strength of the entire band
of men and boys. Sometimes women " pulled on
the rope to express their good will and helpfulness.
Then the other sides were put up, and the cross
beams, braces, and studding all pinned and nailed
into place. Afterwards the huge rafters were raised
for the roof. Each man was assigned in the begin
ning to his place and work, and worked faithfully
when his turn came. When the ridge-pole was put
in place, the building was christened, as it was called,
by breaking over it a bottle of rum. Often the
house was literally given a name. Sitting astride
the ridge-pole, one poet sang:
" Here s a mighty fine frame
Which desarves a good name,
Say what shall we call it ?
The timbers all straight,
And was hewed fust rate,
The frame is well put together.
4io Home Life in Colonial Days
It is a good frame
That desarves a good name,
Say ! what shall we name it ? "
Another, a Rochester, New Hampshire, frame
was celebrated in verse which closed thus :
" The Flower of the Plain is the name of this Frame,
We ve had exceeding good Luck in raising the Same."
It was not luck that made these raisings a suc
cess, it was skill and strength; skill and powers
of endurance which could overcome and surmount
even the quantity of vile New England rum with
which the workmen were plied throughout the day.
Accidents were frequent, and often fatal. A great
frame of a meeting-house, or a vast barn with forty
or fifty men at work on it, could not collapse with
out loss of life and much injury of limb.
In the work of these raisings the highest as well
as the humblest citizens took part. Truly a man
could glow with the warmth of home even in a bare
and scantily furnished house, at the thought that
the walls and rafters were held in place by the kind
wishes and deeds of all his friends and neighbors.
There is nothing in nature so unnatural, so sin
gular in quality, as the glittering artificiality of the
early morning in the country the day after a heavy,
drifting, New England snowstorm. For a day and
Colonial Neighborliness , 41 1
a night the wildly whirling snow that cc driving o er
the fields seems nowhere to alight " has restrained
the outlook, and every one has turned depressed
from that outside life of loneliness and gloom.
The following morning always opens with an ex
cessively bright and dazzling sunshine which is not
like any other sunshine in any place or season, buf
is wholly artificial, like the lime-light of a theatre.
We always run eagerly to the window to greet once
more the signs of life and cheerfulness ; but the
landscape is more devoid of life and reality than
during any storm of wind and snow and sleet, no
matter how dark and lowering. There is a changed
aspect in everything; it is metallic, and everything
is made of the same horrible white metal. Nothing
seems familiar; not only are the wonted forms and
outlines vanished, and all their varied textures and
materials and beautiful diversity of color gone also,
but there is a steely immobility restraining every
thing which is so complete that it seems as if it
were a shell that could never be broken.
" We look upon a world unknown,
On nothing we can call our own,"
It is no longer a real landscape but an artificial
encircling diorama of meaningless objects made of
vast unshaded sheets of white glazed Bristol-board,
412 Home Life in Colonial Days
painted with white enamel, warranted not to crack ;
with the garish high-lights put in crystallized alum
or possibly powdered glass. It is without life, or
atmosphere, or reality ; it has nothing but the mil
lion reflections of that artificial and repellent sun
shine. In a quarter of an hour, even in a few
minutes, it is agonizingly monotonous to the spirit
as it is painful to the eye; then, like a veritable oasis
of color and motion in an unmovable glittering
white desert, a sound and sight of beautiful and
active life appears. Around the bend of the road
comes slow and straining down the hill, as has come
through the glaring artificial sunlight after every
heavy snowstorm for over a century past, a long
train of oxen with a snow-plough " breaking out "
the old post-road. Beautiful emblems of patient
and docile strength, these splendid creatures are
never so grateful to the sight as now. Their slow
progress down the hill has many elements to make
it interesting; it is historic. Ever since the township
was thickly settled enough for families to have any
winter communication with each other, whether for
school, church, mail, or doctor, this road has been
broken o\it in precisely this same way.
In nearly all scattered townships in New England
the custom prevails to-day just as it did a century
and more ago even in large towns, and a description
Colonial Neighborliness 413
of the present "breaking out" is that of the past
also. The work is now usually done in charge of
road-surveyors or the road-masters, who are often
appointed from the remote points of the township.
There is, therefore, much friendly rivalry to see
which surveyor will first reach the centre of the
town and the tavern. Beginning at sunrise with
his own yoke of oxen hitched to a snow-plough,
each road-master breaks through the drift to the
nearest neighbor, who adds his yoke to the other,
and so from neighbor to neighbor till sometimes
fifteen or twenty yoke of oxen are hitched in a
long line to the plough. Sometimes a pair of wild
young steers are hitched, plunging and kicking,
with the sober elders. By this time the first yoke
often begins to show signs of distress by lolling
out the tongue, a sure symptom of overwork in
oxen, and they are left at some farmer s barn to
cool down.
Whittier thus describes the scene of breaking out
the winter roads in his Snow-Bound:
" Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
414 Home Life in Colonial Days
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider mug, their jokes
From lip to lip."
Thus are the white snow-waste and the drifted
roads turned by cheerful cooperation into a mid
winter visiting where every neighbor can exchange
greetings with the other, young and old. For of
course school does not keep, and the boys crowd on
the snow-plough or try their new snowshoes, and the
men of the various families who do not go with
the oxen hitch up the sleighs, pods, and pungs and
follow the snow-plough, and the young men send a
volley of snowballs against every house where any
fair maid lives. And at the tavern in the afternoon
is a great sight, greater in ante-temperance days than
now: scores of yoke of oxen at the door, the horse-
sheds full of horses and sleighs, all the lads and
men of the township within. There is rivalry in
the method of breaking. One road-master always
used a snow-plough ; another lashed an ordinary
plough on either side of a narrow ox-sled; a third
used a coarse harrow weighted down with a group
of standing boys. This broke up the drifts in a
Colonial Neighborliness 415
wonderful manner. The deeper drifts often have
to be shovelled out partly by hand. After the road
to the tavern is broken, the road to the school-
house, the doctor s house, and the meeting-house
come next.
The roads thus made were not permitted in former
days to be cut up idly by careless use ; many town
ships forbade by law the use of narrow sleds and
sleighs. The roads were narrow at best; often when
two sleighs met the horses had to be unharnessed,
and the sleighs lifted past over each other. On
lonely hill-roads or straight turnpikes, where team
sters could see some distance ahead, turnouts were
made where one sleigh could wait for another to pass.
After there had been a heavy fall of snow and the
roads were well broken, the time was always chosen
where any logging was done to haul logs to the
sawmill on ox-sleds. An interesting sled was used
which had an interesting name, chebobbin. One
writer called it a cross between a tree and a bob
sled. It was made by a close and ingenious adapta
tion of natural forms of wood, which made excellent
runners, cross-bars, etc. ; they were fastened together
so loosely that they readily adjusted themselves to
the inequalities of the wood-roads. The word and
article are now almost obsolete. In some localities
chebobbin became tebobbin and tarboggin, all three
4i 6 Home Life in Colonial Days
being adaptations in nomenclature, as they were in
form, of the Indian toboggan or moose-sled, a
sledge with runners or flat bottom of wood or bark,
upon which the red men drew heavy loads over the
snow. This sledge has become familiar to us in
the light and strong Canadian form now used for
the delightful winter sport of tobogganing.
On these chebobbins great logs were hitched
together by chains, and dragged down from the
upland wood-lots. Under these mighty loads the
snow-tracks got an almost icy polish, prime sledding
for country sleighing parties. Sometimes a logging-
bee was made to clear a special lot for a neighbor,
and a band of wood-choppers worked all day
together. It was cheerful work, though the men
had to stand all day in the snow, and the ther
mometer was below zero. But there was no cutting
wind in the forest, and the exercise kept the blood
warm. Many a time a hearty man would drop his
axe to wipe the sweat from his brow. Loose wool
len frocks, or long-shorts, two or three over each
other, were warm as are the overlapping feathers of a
bird ; a few had buckskin or sheepskin waistcoats ;
their hands were warmly covered with home-knit
mittens. In later days all had heavy well-greased
boots, but in the early years of such pioneer settle
ments, as the towns of New Hampshire and Ver-
Colonial Neighborliness 417
mont, all could not afford to wear boots. Their
place was well supplied by heavy woollen stockings,
shoes, and an over-covering of old stockings, or
cloth soaked in neat s-foot oil ; this was deemed a
positive preventive of frozen feet.
It was the custom both among men and women
to join forces on a smaller scale and have a little
neighborly visiting by what was called " change-
work." For instance, if two neighbors both were
to make soap, or both to make apple-butter, or both
to make up a rag carpet, instead of each woman sit
ting at home alone sewing and fitting the carpet,
one would take her thimble and go to spend the
day, and the two would sew all day long, finish and
lay the carpet at one house. In a few days the
visit would be returned, and the second carpet be
finished. Sometimes the work was easier when two
worked together. One man could load logs and
sled them down to the sawmill alone, but two by
" change-work " could accomplish the task much
more rapidly and with less strain.
Even those evil days of New England house
holds, the annual house-cleaning, were robbed of
some of their dismal terrors by what was known as
a " whang," a gathering of a few friendly women
neighbors to assist one another in that dire time,
and thus speed and shorten the hours of misery.
418 Home Life in Colonial Days
For any details of domestic life of colonial days
the reader has ever to turn to the diary of Judge
Samuel Sewall of Boston, just as the student of
English life of the same date turns to the diary of
Samuel Pepys. Sewall was a Puritan of the narrow
type of the later days of Puritanism and there is
little of warmth or beauty in his pages, save that
throughout them there shines with gentle radiance
the unconscious record of a pure and never-dying
neighborliness, the neighborliness of an upright and
reserved but deeply tender Christian. No thought
ful person can read the simple and meagre, but
wholly self-forgetful entries which reveal this trait
of character without a feeling of profound respect
and even affection for Sewall. He was the richest
man in town, and one of the most dignified of citi
zens, a busy man full of many cares and plans. But
he watched by the bedside of his sick and dying
neighbors, those of humble station as well as his
friends and kinsfolk, nursing them with tender care,
praying with them, bringing appetizing gifts, and
also giving pecuniary aid to the household. He
afforded even more homely examples of neighborly
feeling ; he sent " tastes of his dinner " many times
to friends and neighbors. This pleasant custom
lingered till the present day in New England; I
saw last summer, several times, covered treasures
Colonial Neighborliness 419
of housewifery being carried in petty amounts, lit
erally "a taste," to tempt tired appetites or lonely
diners. The gift of a portion of the over-bountiful
supply for the supper of a wedding, a reception,
etc., went by the expressive name of " cold party."
In rural Pennsylvania a charming and friendly cus
tom prevailed among country folk of all nationalities
the f metzel-soup," the cc taste " of sausage-mak
ing. This is the anglicized form of Metzelsuppe ;
metzeln means to kill and cut to pieces espe
cially for sausage meat. When each farmer butch
ered and made sausage, a great dish heaped with
eight or ten pounds of the new sausages was sent
to each intimate friend. The recipient would in
turn send metzel-soup when his family killed and
made sausage. If the metzel-soup were not re
turned, the minister promptly learned of it and
set at work to effect a reconciliation between the
offended parties. The custom is dying out, and in
many towns is wholly vanished.
Sewall seemed to regard it as a duty, and doubt
less it was also a pleasure, to pray for and with
dying friends. His is not the only old-time diary
that I have read in which those long prayers are
recorded, nor are his surprised occasional records of
the impatience of dying friends the only ones I
have seen. A very sick man, even though he were
Home Life in Colonial Days
a Puritan, might occasionally tire of the prayers of
laymen.
Sewall was ever ready to signify his good will and
interest in his neighbors advancing fortunes, by
driving a nail at a ship-building or a pin at a house-
raising, by laying a stone in a wall or a foundation
of a house, the latter, apparently, in the case of
some very humble homes. He, the Judge of the
Supreme Court, served on the watch, walking and
guarding the streets and his neighbors safety just
as faithfully as did the humblest citizen.
CHAPTER XVII
OLD-TIME FLOWER GARDENS
ADJOINING the street through which I al
ways, in my childhood, walked slowly each
Sunday, on my way to and from church,
was a spot to detain lingering footsteps a beauti
ful garden laid out and tenanted like the gardens of
colonial days, and serene with the atmosphere of a
worthy old age ; a garden which had been tended
for over half a century by a withered old man and
his wife, whose golden wedding was spent in the
house they had built, and in the garden they had
planted when they were bride and groom. His
back was permanently bowed with constant weeding
and pruning and planting and hoeing, and his hands
and face were brown as the soil he cultivated. The
"hot-glowing" crimson peonies, seedlings which
the wife had sown in her youth, had become great
shrubs, fifteen or twenty feet in circumference.
The flowering shrubs were trees. Vigorous borders
of box crowded across the paths and towered on
either side, till one could scarcely walk through
421
422 Home Life in Colonial Days
them. There were beautiful fairy groves of fox
gloves " gloriously freckled, purple, and white/
and tall Canterbury bells ; and at stiffly regular
intervals were set flowering almonds, St. Peter s
wreath, Persian lilacs, " Moses in the burning
bush," which shrub was rare in our town, and
" laburnums rich in streaming gold, syringas ivory
pure." At the lower ends of the flower borders
were rows of " honey-blob " gooseberries, and aged
currant bushes, gray with years, overhung by a few
patriarchal quince and crab-apple trees, in whose
low-spreading gnarled branches I spent many a
summer afternoon, a happy visitor, though my own
home garden was just as beautiful, old-fashioned,
and flower-filled.
The varying grades of city streets had gradually
risen around the garden until it lay depressed sev
eral feet below the level of the adjoining streets, a
pleasant valley, like Avalon,-
" Deep-meadowed, happy, fair, with orchard lawns,
And bowery hollows crown d with summer seas."
A flight of stone steps led down to it, steps
very steep, narrow, and slippery with green moss,
and ladies -delights that crowded and blossomed in
every crack and crevice of the stones. On each
side arose terraces to the street, and in the spring
Old-time Flower Gardens 423
these terraces flushed a mass of vivid, glowing rose-
color from blooming moss-pink, forming such a
glory that pious church-going folk from the other
end of the town did not think it wicked to walk
thither, on a Sunday .morn in May, to look at the
rosy banks that sloped to the valleyed garden, as
they had walked there in February or March to see
" Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wear on his smiling face a dream of spring,"
in the shape of the first crocuses and snowdrops
that opened beside a snow-drift still lingering on a
shaded bank; and to watch the first benumbed
honey-bees who greeted every flower that bloomed
in that cherished spot, and who buzzed in bleak
March winds over the purple crocus and " blue
flushing" grape-hyacinth as cheerfully as though
they were sipping the scarlet poppies in sunny
August.
The garden edges and the street were overhung
by graceful larches and by thorny honey-locust trees
that bore on their trunks great clusters of powerful
spines and sheltered in their branches an exceed
ingly unpleasant species of fat, fuzzy caterpillars,
which always chose Sunday to drop on my garments
as I walked to church, and to go with me to meet
ing, and in the middle of the long prayer to parade
424 Home Life in Colonial Days
on my neck, to my startled disgust and agitated
whisking away, and consequent reproof for being
noisy in meeting.
What fragrances arose from that old garden, and
were wafted out to passers-by ! The ever-present,
pungent, dry aroma of box was overcome or tem
pered, through the summer months, by a succes
sion of delicate flower-scents that hung over the
garden-vale like an imperceptible mist; perhaps the
most perfect and clear among memory s retrospec
tive treasures was that of the pale fringed " snow-
pink," and later, " sweet william with its homely
cottage smell." Phlox and ten-weeks stock were
there, as everywhere, the last sweet-scented flowers
of autumn.
At no time was this old garden sweeter than in
the twilight, the eventide, when all the great clumps
of snowy phlox, night-rockets, and luminous even
ing primrose, and all the tangles of pale yellow and
white honeysuckle shone irradiated; when,
" In puffs of balm the night air blows
The burden which the day foregoes,"
and scents far richer than any of the day the
" spiced air of night " floated out in the dusky
gloaming.
Though the old garden had many fragrant leaves
Old-time Flower Gardens
and flowers, their delicate perfume was sometimes
fairly deadened by an al
most mephitic aroma that
came from an ancient blos
som, a favorite in Shake
speare s day the jewelled
bell of the noxious crown-
imperial. This stately
flower, with its rich color
and pearly drops, has
through its evil scent been
firmly banished from our
garden borders.
One of the most cheer
ful flowers of this and of
my mother s garden was
the happy-faced little pansy
that under various fanciful
folk-names has ever been
loved. Like Montgom
ery s daisy, it " blossomed
everywhere." Its Italian
name
means
idl
thoughts"; the German, Crown imperial
" little stepmother." Spen
ser called it " pawnee." Shakespeare said maidens
called it " love-in-idleness," and Drayton named it
426 Home Life in Colonial Days
" heartsease." Dr. Prior gives these names
" Herb Trinity, Three Faces under a Hood, Fancy
Flamy, Kiss Me, Pull Me, Cuddle Me unto You,
Tickle my Fancy, Kiss Me ere I Rise, Jump Up
and Kiss Me, Kiss Me at the Garden Gate, Pink of
my Joan." To these let me add the New England
folk-names bird s-eye, garden-gate, johnny-jump-
up, kit-run-about, none-so-pretty, and ladies -de-
light. All these testify to the affectionate and
intimate friendship felt for this laughing and fairly
speaking little garden face, not the least of whose
endearing qualities was that, after a half-warm, snow-
melting week in January or February, this bright-
some little " delight " often opened a tiny blossom
to greet and cheer us a true "jump-up-and-kiss-
me," and proved by its blooming the truth of the
graceful Chinese verse,
u Ere man is aware
That the spring is here
The plants have found it out."
Another dearly loved spring flower was the daf
fodil, the favorite also of old English dramatists
and poets, and of modern authors as well, when we
find that Keats names a daffodil as the thing of
beauty that is a joy forever. Perhaps the happiest
and most poetic picture of daffodils is that of Dora
Old-time Flower Gardens 427
Wordsworth, when she speaks of them as " gay and
glancing, and laughing with the wind." Perdita,
in The Winter s Tale, thus describes them in her
ever-quoted list: "Daffodils that come before the
swallow dares and take the winds of March with
beauty." Most cheerful and sunny of all our
spring flowers, they have never lost their old-time
popularity, and they still laugh at our bleak March
winds.
Bouncing-bet and her comely hearty cousins of
the pink family made delightsome many a corner
of our home garden. The pinks were Jove s own
flowers, and the carthusian pink, china pink, clove
pink, snow pink, plumed pink, mullein pink, sweet
william, maltese cross, ragged robin, catch-fly, and
campion, all made gay and sweet the summer. The
clove pink was the ancestor of all the carnations.
The richest autumnal glory came from the cheer
ful marigold, the " golde " of Chaucer, and " mary-
bud" of Shakespeare. This flower, beloved of all
the old writers, as deeply suggestive and emblematic,
has been coldly neglected by modern poets, as for a
while it was banished from modern town gardens ;
but it may regain its popularity in verse as it has in
cultivation. In farm gardens it has always flour
ished, and every autumn has " gone to bed with the
sun and with him risen weeping," and has given
428 Home Life in Colonial Days
forth in the autumn air its acrid odor, which to me
is not disagreeable, though my old herbal calls its
" a very naughty smell."
A favorite shrub in our garden, as in every coun
try dooryard, was southernwood, or lad s-love. A
sprig of it was carried to meeting each summer Sun
day by many old ladies, and with its finely dissected,
bluish-green foliage, and clean pungent scent, it was
pleasant to see in the meeting-house, and pleasant
to sniff at. The " virtues of flowers " took a prom
inent place in the descriptions in old-time botanies.
The southernwood had strong medicinal qualities,
and was used to cure " vanityes of the head."
u Take a quantitye of Suthernwood and put it upon
kindled coales to burn and being made into powder mix it
with the oyle of radishes and anoynt a balde place and you
shall see great experiences."
It was of power as a love charm. If you placed
a sprig in each shoe and wore it through the day
when you were in love, you would then also in some
way " see great experiences."
In the tender glamour of happy association, all
flowers in the old garden seem to have been loved
save the garish petunias, whose sickish odor grew
more offensive and more powerful at nightfall and
made me long to tear them away from their dainty
Old-time Flower Gardens 429
garden-fellows, and the portulaca with its fleshy,
worm-like stems and leaves, and its aggressively
pushing habits, " never would be missed." Per
haps its close relation to the " pusley," most
hated of weeds, makes us eye it askance.
There was one attribute of the old-time garden,
one part of nature s economy, which added much
to its charm it was the crowding abundance, the
over-fulness of leaf, bud, and blossom. Nature
there displayed no bare expanses of naked soil, as
in some too-carefully-kept modern parterres ; the
dull earth was covered with a tangle of ready-grow
ing, self-sowing, lowly flowers, that filled every
space left unoccupied by statelier garden favorites,
and crowded every corner with cheerful, though
unostentatious, bloom. And the close juxtaposition,
and even intermingling, of flowers with herbs, vege
tables, and fruits gave a sense of homely simplicity
and usefulness, as well as of beauty. The soft,
purple eyes of the mourning-bride were no less
lovely to us in " our garden " because they opened
under the shade of currant and gooseberry bushes ;
and the sweet alyssum and candytuft were no less
honey-sweet. The delicate, pinky-purple hues of
the sweet peas were not dimmed by their vivid
neighbors at the end of the row of poles the
scarlet runners. The adlumia, or mountain fringe,
430 Home Life in Colonial Days
was a special vine of our own and known by a
special name virgin s bower. With its delicate
leaves, almost as beautiful as a maidenhair fern,
and its dainty pink flower, it festooned the ripening
corn as wantonly and luxuriantly as it encircled the
snowball and lilac bushes.
Though " colored herbs " were cultivated in Eng
land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as
carefully as were flowers, striped hollies, variegated
myrtles, and bays being the gardener s pride, yet
in our old American gardens few plants were grown
for their variegated or odd-colored foliage. The
familiar and ever-present ribbon-grass, also called
striped grass, canary grass, and gardener s garters,
whose pretty expanded panicles formed an almost
tropical effect at the base of the garden hedge ;
the variegated wandering jew, the striped leaves of
some varieties of day-lilies ; the dusty-miller, with
its " frosty pow " (which was properly a house
plant), fill the short list. The box was the sole
evergreen.
And may I not enter here a plea for the preserva
tion of the box-edgings of our old garden borders ?
I know they are almost obsolete have been winter
killed and sunburned and are even in sorry dis
repute as having a graveyard association, and as
being harborers of unpleasant and unwelcome garden
Old-time Flower Gardens 431
visitors. One lover of old ways thus indignantly
mourns their passing:
"I spoke of box-edgings. We used to see them in
little country gardens, with paths of crude earth. Nowa
days, it has been discovered that box harbours slugs, and
we are beginning to have beds with tiled borders, while the
walks are of asphalt. For a pleasure-ground in Dante s
Inferno such materials might be suitable."
For its beauty in winter alone, the box should
still find a place in our gardens. It grows to great
size. Bushes of box in the deserted garden at
Vaucluse in Newport, Rhode Island, are fifteen feet
in height, and over them spread the branches of
forest trees that have sprung up in the garden beds
since that neglected pleasaunce was planted, over a
century ago. The beautiful border and hedges of
box at Mount Vernon, the home of Washington,
plead for fresh popularity for this old-time favorite.
Our mothers and grandmothers came honestly by
their love of gardens. They inherited this affection
from their Puritan, Quaker, or Dutch forbears,
perhaps from the days when the famous hanging
gardens of Babylon were made for a woman. Bacon
says : " A garden is the purest of human pleasures,
it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man."
A garden was certainly the greatest refreshment to
432
Home Life in Colonial Days
Flower Garden, Mount Vernon
the spirits of a woman in the early colonial days,
and the purest of her pleasures too often her only
pleasure.
Quickly, in tender memory of her fair English
home, the homesick goodwife, trying to create a
semblance of the birthplace she still loved, planted
the seeds and roots of homely English flowers and
herbs that grew and blossomed under bleak New
England skies, and on rocky New England shores,
as sturdily and cheerfully as they had sprung up and
bloomed by the green hedgerows and door-sides in
the home beyond the sea.
In the year 1638, and again in 1663, an English
gentleman named John Josselyn came to New
England. He published, in 1672, an account of
Old-time Flower Gardens 433
these two visits. He was a man of polite reading
and of culture, and as was the high fashion for
gentlemen of his day, had a taste for gardening and
botany. He made interesting lists of plants which
he noted in America under these heads :
" i. Such plants as are common with us in England.
" 2. Such plants as are proper to the country.
" 3. Such plants as are proper to the country and have
no names.
"4. Such plants as have sprung up since the English
planted and kept cattle in New England.
"5. Such Garden-Herbs among us as do thrive there
and of such as do not."
This last division is the one that specially inter
ests us, since it is the earliest and the fullest account
of the gardens of our forefathers, after they had
tamed the rugged shores of the New World, and
made them obey the rule of English husbandry.
They had " good store of garden vegetables and
herbs ; lettuce, sorrel, parsley, mallows, chevril,
burnet, summer savory, winter savory, thyme, sage,
carrots, parsnips, beets, radishes, purslain, beans";
"cabbidge growing exceeding well; pease of all sorts
and the best in the world ; sparagus thrives exceed
ingly, musk mellons, cucumbers, and pompions."
For grains there were wheat, rye, barley, and oats,
434 Home Life in Colonial Days
There were other garden herbs and garden flowers :
spearmint, pennyroyal, ground-ivy, coriander, dill,
tansy ; " feverfew prospereth exceedingly ; white
sattin groweth pretty well, and so doth lavender-
cotton ; gilly flowers will continue two years ; horse-
leek prospereth notably ; hollyhocks ; comferie with
white flowers ; clary lasts but one summer ; sweet-
bryer or eglantine ; celandine but slowly ; blood-
wort but sorrily, but patience and English roses
very pleasantly."
Patience and English roses very pleasantly in
truth must have shown their fair English faces to
English women in the strange land. Dearly loved
had these brier-roses or dog-roses been in England,
where, says the old herbalist, Gerard, " children with
delight make chains and pretty gewgawes of the
fruit; and cookes and gentlewomen make tarts and
suchlike dishes for pleasure thereof." Hollyhocks,
feverfew, and gillyflowers must have made a sun
shine in the shady places in the new home. Many
of these garden herbs are now common weeds or
roadside blossoms. Celandine, even a century ago,
was " common by fences and among rubbish."
Tansy and elecampane grow everywhere. Sweet-
brier is at home in New England pastures and road
sides. Spearmint edges our brooks. Ground-ivy
is a naturalized citizen. It is easy to note that the
Old-time Flower Gardens
435
flowers and herbs beloved in gardens and medicinal
waters and kitchens "at home" were the ones trans
planted here. " Clary-water " was a favorite tonic
of Englishmen of that day.
The list of " such plants as have sprung up since
the English planted " should be of interest to every
Abigail Adams Garden, Quincy, Massachusetts
one who has any sense of the sentiment of associa
tion, or interest in laws of succession. The Spanish
proverb says :
" More in the garden grows
Than the gardener sows."
The plantain has a history full of romance ; its
old Northern names Wegetritt in German, Weeg-
436 Home Life in Colonial Days
bree in Dutch, Viebred in Danish, and Weybred in
Old English, all indicating its presence in the much-
trodden paths of man were not lost in its new
home, nor were its characteristics overlooked by
the nature-noting and plant-knowing red man. It
was called by the Indian "the Englishman s foot,"
says Josselyn, and by Kalm also, a later traveller in
1740; "for they say where an Englishman trod,
there grew a plantain in each footstep." Not less
closely did such old garden weeds as motherwort,
groundsel, chickweed, and wild mustard cling to
the white man. They are old colonists, brought
over by the first settlers, and still thrive and tri
umph in every kitchen garden and back yard in the
land. Mullein and nettle, henbane and wormwood,
all are English emigrants. /
The Puritans were not the only flower-lovers
in the new land. The Pennsylvania Quakers and
Mennonites were quick to plant gardens. Pastorius
encouraged all the Germantown settlers to raise
flowers as well as fruit. Whittier says of him in his
Pennsylvania Pilgrim :
" The flowers his boyhood knew
Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue,
And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew."
It gives one a pleasant notion of the old Quaker,
Old-time Flower Gardens 437
George Fox, to read his bequest by will of a tract
of land near Philadelphia " for a playground for the
children of the town to play on and for a garden to
plant with physical plants, for lads and lassies to
know simples, and learn to make oils and oint
ments."
Among Pennsylvanians the art of gardening
reached the highest point. The landscape garden
ing was a reproduction of the best in England.
Our modern country places cannot equal in this
respect the colonial country seats near Philadelphia.
Woodlands and Bush Hill, the homes of the Hamil-
tons, Cliveden, of Chief Justice Chew, Fair Hill,
Belmont, the estate of Judge Peters, were splendid
examples. An ecstatic account of the glories and
wonders of some of them was written just after the
Revolution by a visitor who fully understood their
treasures, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, the clergyman,
statesman, and botanist.
In Newport, Rhode Island, where flowers ever
seem to thrive with extraordinary luxuriance, there
were handsome gardens in the eighteenth century.
A description of Mr. Bowler s garden during the
Revolution reads thus :
" It contains four acres and has a grand aisle in the
middle. Near the middle is an oval surrounded with
espaliers of fruit-trees, in the centre of which is a pedestal,
43 8 Home Life in Colonial Days
on which is an armillary sphere with an equatorial dial.
On one side of the front is a hot-house containing orange-
trees, some ripe, some green, some blooms, and various
other fruit-trees of the exotic kind and curious flowers.
At the lower end of the aisle is a large summer-house, a
long square containing three rooms, the middle paved with
marble and hung with landscapes. On the right is a large
private library adorned with curious carvings. There are
espaliers of fruit-trees at each end of the garden and curious
flowering shrubs. The room on the left is beautifully
designed for music and contains a spinnet. But the whole
garden discovered the desolations of war."
In the Southern colonies men of wealth soon had
beautiful gardens. In an early account of South
Carolina, written in 1682, we find:
u Their Gardens are supplied with such European Plants
and Herbs as are necessary for the Kitchen, and they
begin to be beautiful and adorned with such Flowers as to
the Smell or Eye are pleasing or agreeable, viz. : the Rose,
Tulip, Carnation, Lilly, etc."
By the middle of the century many exquisite
gardens could be seen in Charleston, and they
were the pride of Southern colonial dames. Those
of Mrs. Lamboll, Mrs. Hopton, and Mrs. Logan
were the largest. The latter flower-lover in 1779,
when seventy years old, wrote a treatise on flower-
raising called The Gardener s Kalendar, which was
Old-time Flower Gardens 439
read and used for many years. Mrs. Laurens had
another splendid garden. Those Southern ladies
and their gardeners constantly sent specimens to
England, and received others in return. The let
ters of the day, especially those of Eliza Lucas
Pinckney, ever interested in floriculture and arbori
culture, show a constant exchange with English
flower-lovers.
Beverley wrote of Virginia, in 1720: cc A garden
is nowhere sooner made than there." William Byrd
and other travellers, a few years later, saw many
beautiful terraced gardens in Virginian homes.
Mrs. Anne Grant writes at length of the love and
care the Dutch women of the past century had for
flowers :
u The care of plants such as needed peculiar care or
skill to rear them, was the female province. Every one
in town or country had a garden. Into the garden no foot
of man intruded after it was dug in the spring. I think I
see yet what I have so often beheld a respectable mis
tress of a family going out to her garden, in an April
morning, with her great calash, her little painted basket
of seeds, and her rake over her shoulders, to her garden
of labours. A woman in very easy circumstances and
abundantly gentle in form and manners would sow and
plant and rake incessantly."
In New York, before the Revolution, were many
44
Home Life in Colonial Days
**<&&gt; *
Old Garden, Ellenville, New York
beautiful gardens, such as that of Madam Alexander
on Broad Street, where in their proper season grew
" paus bloemen of all hues, laylocks and tall May
roses and snowballs intermixed with choice vege
tables and herbs all bounded and hemmed in by
huge rows of neatly clipped box edgings/ We
have a pretty picture also, in the letters of Catha
rine Rutherfurd, of an entire company gathering
rose-leaves in June in Madam Clark s garden, and
setting the rose-still at work to turn their sweet-
scented spoils into rose-water.
A trade in flower and vegetable seeds formed a
lucrative and popular means by which women could
earn a livelihood in colonial days. I have seen in
Old-time Flower Gardens 441
one of the dingy little newspaper sheets of those
days, in the large total of nine advertisements, con
tained therein, the announcements, by five Boston
seedswomen, of lists of their wares.
The earliest list of names of flower-seeds which
I have chanced to note was in the Boston Evening
Post of March, 1760, and is of much interest as
showing to us with exactness the flowers beloved
and sought for at that time. They were "holly-
hook, purple Stock, white Lewpins, Africans, blew
Lewpins, candy-tuff, cyanus, pink, wall-flower, double
larkin-spur, venus navelwort, brompton flock, prin
cess feather, balsam, sweet-scented pease, carnation,
sweet williams, annual stock, sweet feabus, yellow
lewpins, sunflower, convolus minor, catch-fly, ten
week stock, globe thistle, globe amaranthus, nigella,
love-lies-bleeding, casent hamen, polianthus, canter
bury bells, carnation poppy, india pink, convolus
major, Queen Margrets." This is certainly a very
pretty list of flowers, nearly all of which are still
loved, though sometimes under other names thus
the Queen Margrets are our asters. And the
homely old English names seem to bring the
flowers to our very sight, for we do not seem to be
on very friendly intimacy, on very sociable terms
with flowers, unless they have what Miss Mitford
calls "decent, well-wearing English names"; we
44 2 Home Life in Colonial Days
can have no flower memories, no affections that
cling to botanical nomenclature. Yet nothing is
more fatal to an exact flower knowledge, to an
acquaintance that shall ever be more than local, than
a too confident dependence on the folk-names of
flowers. Our bachelor s-buttons are ragged sailors
in a neighboring state; they are corn-pinks in Ply
mouth, ragged ladies in another town, blue bottles
in England, but cyanus everywhere. Ragged robin
is, in the garden of one friend, a pink, in another
it flaunts as London-pride, while the true glowing
London-pride has half a dozen pseudonyms in as
many different localities, and only really recognizes
itself in the botany. An American cowslip is not
an English cowslip, an American primrose is no
English primrose, and the English daisy is no
country friend of ours in America.
What cheerful and appropriate furnishings the
old-time gardens had ; benches full of straw bee-
skepes and wooden beehives, those homelike and
busy dwelling-places; frequently, also, a well-filled
dovecote. Sometimes was seen a sun-dial once
the every-day friend and suggestive monitor of all
who wandered among the flowers of an hour; now
known, alas ! only to the antiquary. Sentiment and
even spirituality seem suggested by the sun-dial, yet
few remain to cast their instructive shadow before
our sight.
Old-time Flower Gardens 443
One stood for years in the old box-bordered
garden at Homogansett Farm, at Wickford, in old
Narragansett. Governor Endicott s dial is in the
Essex Institute, at Salem; and my forbear, Jacob
Fairbanks, had one dated 1650, which is now in
the rooms of the Dedham Historical Society. Dr.
Bowditch, of Boston, had a sun-dial which was thus
inscribed:
" With warning hand I mark Times rapid flight
From life s glad morning to its solemn night.
And like God s love I also show
Theres light above me, by the shade below."
Another garden dial thus gives, "in long, lean
letters," its warning word :
" You ll mend your Ways To-morrow
When blooms that budded Flour ?
Mortall! Lern to your Sorrow
Death may creep with his Arrow
And pierce yo r vttall Marrow
Long ere my warning Shadow
Can mark that Hour."
These dials are all of heavy metal, usually lead;
sometimes with gnomon of brass. But I have heard
of one which was unique ; it was cut in box.
At the edge of the farm garden often stood the
well-sweep, one of the most picturesque adjuncts of
444
Home Life in Colonial Days
the country dooryard. Its successor, the roofed
well with bucket, stone, and chain, and even the
homely long-handled pump, had a certain appro
priateness as part of the garden furnishings.
Old Well-sweep
So many thoughts crowd upon us in regard to
the old garden ; one is the age of its flowers. We
have no older inhabitants than these garden plants :
they are old settlers. Clumps of flower-de-luce,
Old-time Flower Gardens 445
double buttercups, peonies, yellow day-lilies, are
certainly seventy-five years old. Many lilac bushes
a century old still bloom in New England, aad
syringas and flowering currants are as old as the
elms and locusts that shade them.
This established constancy and yearly recurrence
of bloom is one of the garden s many charms. To
those who have known and loved an old garden in
which,
cc There grow no strange flowers every year,
But when spring winds blow o er the pleasant places,
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces,"
and faithfully tell and retell the story of the chang
ing seasons by their growth, blossom, and decay,
nothing can seem more artificial than the modern
show-beds of full-grown plants which are removed
by assiduous gardeners as soon as they have flow
ered, to be replaced by others, only in turn to bloom
and disappear. These seem to form a real garden
no more than does a child s posy-bed stuck with
short-stemmed flowers to wither in a morning.
And the tiresome, tasteless ribbon-beds of our
day were preceded in earlier centuries by figured
beds of diverse-colored earths and of both we can
say with Bacon, " they be but toys, you may see as
good sights many times in tarts."
446 Home Life in Colonial Days
The promise to Noah, " while the earth remaineth
seed-time and harvest shall not cease," when heeded
in the garden, brings various interests. The seed
time, the springing-up of familiar favorites, and the
cherishing of these favorites through their in-gath
ering of seeds or bulbs or roots for another year,
bring pleasure as much as does their inflorescence.
Another pathetic trait of many of the old-time
flowers should not be overlooked their persistent
clinging to life after they had been exiled from the
trim garden borders where they first saw the chill
sun of a New England spring. You see them
growing and blooming outside the garden fence,
against old stone walls, where their up-torn roots
have been thrown to make places for new and more
popular favorites. You find them cheerfully spread
ing, pushing along the foot-paths, turning into va
grants, becoming flaunting weeds. You see them
climbing here and there, trying to hide the deserted
chimneys of their early homes, or wandering over
and hiding the untrodden foot-paths of other days.
A vivid imagination can shape many a story of their
life in the interval between their first careful plant
ing in colonial gardens and their neglected exile
to highways and byways, where the poor bits of
depauperated earth can grow no more lucrative
harvest.
Old-time Flower Gardens 447
The sites of colonial houses which are now de
stroyed, the trend, almost the exact line of old
roads, can be traced by the cheerful faces of these
garden-strays. The situation of old Fort Nassau,
in Pennsylvania, so long a matter of uncertainty,
is said to have been definitely determined by the
familiar garden flowers found growing on one of
these disputed sites. It is a tender thought that this
indelible mark is left upon the face of our native
land through the affection of our forbears for their
gardens.
The botany tells us that bouncing-bet has "escaped
from cultivation " she has been thrust out, but
unresentfully lives and smiles ; opening her tender
pinky-opalescent flowers adown the dusty roadsides,
and even on barren gravel-beds in railroad cuts.
Butter-and-eggs, tansy, chamomile, spiked loose
strife, velvet-leaf, bladder-campion, cypress spurge,
live-for-ever, star of Bethlehem, money-vine, all
have seen better days, but now are flower-tramps.
Even the larkspur, beloved of children, the moss-
pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen
growing in country fields and byways. The homely
and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephem
eral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy
colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay their
early home now make gay many of our roadsides
448 Home Life in Colonial Days
and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our
grandmothers, which also are undaunted garden
exiles.
Driving once along a country road, I saw on the
edge of a field an expanse of yellow bloom which
seemed to be an unfamiliar field-tint. It proved to
be a vast bed of coreopsis, self-sown from year to
year ; and the blackened outlines of an old cellar
wall in its midst showed that in that field once stood
a home, once there a garden smiled.
I am always sure when I see bouncing-bet, butter-
and-eggs, and tawny lilies growing in a tangle
together that in their midst may be found an un
trodden door-stone, a fallen chimney, or a filled-in
well.
Still broader field expanses are filled with old-
country plants. In June a golden glory of bud and
blossom covers the hills and fields of Essex County
in Massachusetts from Lynn to Danvers, and Ryal
Side to Beverly ; it is the English gorse or woad-
wax, and by tradition it was first brought to this
country in spray and seed as a packing for some of
the household belongings of Governor Endicott.
Thrown out in friendly soil, the seeds took root and
there remain in the vicinity of their first American
homes. It is a stubborn squatter, yielding only to
scythe, plough, and hoe combined.
Old-time Flower Gardens
449
Chicory or blue weed was, it is said, brought from
England by Governor Bow-
doin as food for his sheep.
It has spread till its extended
presence has been a startling
surprise to all English visit
ing botanists. It hurts no
one s fields, for it invades
chiefly waste and neglected
land the "dear -common
flower " and it has re
deemed many a city sub
urb of vacant lots, many a
railroad ash heap from the
abomination of desolation.
Whiteweed or
ox-eye daisy, a far
greater pest than
gorse or chicory,
has been carried
intentionally to
many a township
by homesick set
tlers whose de
scendants to-day
rue the sentiment
of their ancestors.
Fraxinella
450 Home Life in Colonial Days
While the vallied garden of our old neighbors
was sweet with blossoms, my mother s garden bore
a still fresher fragrance that of green growing
things ; of " posies," lemon-balm, rose geranium,
mint, and sage. I always associate with it in spring
the scent of the strawberry bush, or calycanthus,
and in summer of the fraxinella, which, with its tall
stem of larkspur-like flowers, its still more graceful
seed-vessels and its shining ash-like leaves, grew
there in rich profusion and gave forth from leaf,
stem, blossom, and seed a pure, a memory-sweet
perfume half like lavender, half like anise.
Truly, much of our tenderest love of flowers
comes from association, and many are lovingly
recalled solely by their odors. Balmier breath than
was ever borne by blossom is to me the pure pun
gent perfume of ambrosia, rightly named, as fit for
the gods. Not the miserable weed ambrosia of the
botany, but a lowly herb that grew throughout the
entire summer everywhere in " our garden " ; sow
ing its seeds broadcast from year to year ; springing
up unchecked in every unoccupied corner, and
under every shrub and bushy plant; giving out
from serrated leaf and irregular raceme of tiny
pale-green flowers, a spicy aromatic fragrance if we
brushed past it, or pulled a weed from amongst it
as we strolled down the garden walk. And it is
Old-time Flower Gardens 451
our very own I have never seen it elsewhere
than at my old home, and in the gardens of neigh
bors to whom its seeds were given by the gentle
hand that planted " our garden " and made it a
delight. Goethe says, " Some flowers are lovely to
the eye, but others are lovely to the heart." Am
brosia is lovely to my heart, for it was my mother s
favorite.
And as each " spring comes slowly up the way,"
I say in the words of Solomon, " Awake, O north
wind ; and come, thou south ; blow upon my gar
den, that the spices thereof may flow out" that
the balm and mint, the thyme and southernwood,
the sweetbrier and ambrosia, may spring afresh and
shed their tender incense to the memory of my
mother, who planted them and loved their pure
fragrance, and at whose presence, as at that of Eve,
flowers ever sprung
"And touched by her fair tendance gladlier grew."
Index
Abington, church vote in, 286.
Acrelius, Dr., quoted, 146.
Adams, Abigail, garden of, 435.
Adams, John, quoted, 71, 160 ; Sunday
dinner of, 159-160; cider-drinking
of, 161.
Adams, John Quincy, Mrs., straw bon
net of, 261.
Adams family, homes of, 22.
Albany, houses at, 9 ; deer in, 109 ;
beer at, 161 ; bad boys in, 374-375 ;
first church in, 385 ; cowherding in,
399-
Alchymy, 88.
Alewives, in New England waters, 120.
Ambrosia, a flower, 450.
Ames, quoted, 136.
Amherst, sign-board at, 360.
Andirons, 62.
Andover, church vote in, 286; bad
boy in, 373.
Annapolis, dress in, 293.
Apostle spoons, 90.
Apples, culture of, 145; plenty in
Maryland, 145 ; modes of cooking,
146; in pies, 146.
Apple-butter, 146-147.
Apple-paring, 146-147.
Apple-sauce, 146-147.
Architecture, of churches, 364 et seq.;
385 et seq.
Arkamy, 88.
Axe-helves, 314-315.
Back-bar of fireplace, description, 53.
Bacon, quoted, 431.
Bagging, from coarse flax, 172.
Bake-kettle, 66.
Bake-shops, 147.
Ballots, of corn and beans, 141.
Balsam, as dye, 194.
Baltimore, dress in, 293; taverns in,
359-
Banyan, 294.
Barberry, root as dye, 194.
Basins, 106.
Bass, in New England waters, 120-121.
Bass-viols, in meeting, 378.
Bates of flax, 169.
Batteau, 329.
Batten, of loom, 220-221.
Baxter, 187.
Bayberry, description, 39; candles of,
39 ; wax of, 40 ; laws about, 40 ; soap
from, 255.
Bead bags, 263.
Beam. See Warp-beam.
Beaming, in weaving, 218.
Beans, as ballots, 141 ; mode of cook
ing, 145-
Bed coverlet. See Coverlet.
Bedstead, alcove, 55 ; turn-up, 55-56.
Beer, among Dutch, 161.
Bees, called English flies, HI.
Beehives, 442.
Beetling of flax, 172.
Bell, as summons to meeting, 368.
Belt-loom. See Tape-loom.
Bennet, quoted, 123.
Berkeley, Gov., quoted, in, 360-361
Berries, 145.
Betty lamps, 43-44.
Beverages. See Drinks.
Bible, references to flax in, 177.
453
454
Index
Biddeford, communal privileges in, 390.
Bier, in weaving, 220.
Birch-bark, doors of, 6 ; plates of, 83 ;
baskets of, cans of, 253, 310.
Birch broom, making of, 301-303 ; price
of, 302.
Blackjacks, 95-96.
Blazing, of trees, 330.
Bleaching, of flax thread, 175; of linen,
234 ; of straw bonnets, 261.
Bleeding-basins, 86.
Block-houses, 26.
Boards, scarcity of, 76.
Board cloth, 76-77.
Boardman Hill House, 22.
Bobbins, for weaving. See Quills.
Bobs, of flax, 168.
Bombards, 96.
Books of etiquette, 79.
Bore-staff of loom, 224.
Boston, fire-engine in, 19 ; early houses
of, 19, 27 ; first fork in, 77 ; pigeons
in, no; fish in, 123 ; tea in, 164-165;
coffee in, 165 ; chocolate in, 165 ;
spinning schools in, 180; fulling-
mill in, 187; dress in, 292-294;
coach in, 331 ; stage-travel from,
350-351; night watch in, 363; meet
ing-houses in, 364, 366; restrictions
of settlement in, 394; cows in, 400.
Bottles, of wood, 82 ; of pewter, 85 ; of
glass, 92-93 ; of leather, 95.
Boucher, Jonathan, quoted, 382.
Bouncing-bet, 427, 447.
Bounty coats, 248.
Bouts, in weaving, 218.
Box-borders, a plea for, 430-431.
Boxing, of maple trees, 112.
Boylston, Nicholas, banyan of, 294.
Boys, clothing of, 287-288 ; wigs of,
297 ; seats in meeting for, 372 et seq.;
misbehavior of, 372-373 ; in church,
384-
Braid-loom. See Tape-loom.
Bradford, Governor, quoted, 129-130.
Bread, white, 147 ; rye and Indian, 147,
Bread-peel, 67.
Breadtrough, 311.
Breakfast, or bread and milk, 148.
Breaking, of flax, 169-170; of hemp,
170.
Breaking out the winter roads, 412
et seq,
Breweries, in New York, 161.
Brewster, Elder, quoted, 117.
Brick, imported, 21.
British spinning and weaving school,
186.
Broach, 198.
Brooklyn, oysters in, 118-119; salting
shad in, 124-125.
Brooms, of broom-corn, 256-257 ; of
birch, 301-304 ; of hemlock, 304-305.
Broom-corn, 256-257.
Brown University, dress of first gradu
ating class, 183.
Bucking, of flax thread, 175 ; of linen,
234-
Bull s-eye lamp, 45.
Bun, of flax, 169.
Bunch-thread, 251.
Bundling-mould. See Shingling-mould.
Burlers, in weaving, 252.
Bushnell, Horace, quoted, 246.
Busks, carved, 320.
Butter, price of, 149.
Buttermilk, for bleaching, 175.
Caches, for corn, 138.
Cage, for babies, 372; for bad boys,
385.
Calash, 289.
Calf-keeper, duties of, 400.
Cambridge, cowherding in, 399.
Campbell, Madam Angelica, coach of,
335-
Candles, cost of, 34 ; making of, 35-37 ;
materials for, 38-39, 42.
Candle-arms, 42.
Candle-beams, 42.
Candle-box, 38.
Candle-dipping, 36.
Index
455
Candle-moulds, 36-37.
Candle-prongs, 42.
Candle-rods, 36.
Candle-sticks, 42.
Candle-wood, 32.
Canoes, 325-327.
Canteens, of horn, 321.
Captain of the watch, duties of, 380.
Cards. See Wool-cards.
Carding described, 194-196.
Carding-machines, 206.
Card-setting. See Wool-cards.
Capuchins, 295.
Carolinas, sweet potatoes in, 145 ;
hand- weaving in, 249-251 ; gardens
in, 438-439.
Carpet. See Rag-carpet.
Carrots, 145.
Carving, terms in, 104-105 ; of wood,
320 ; of horn, 321-322.
Caves, description of, 2 ; for corn, 138.
Cave-dwellers, i.
Cedar tops, for dyeing, 251.
Cellar of Dutch houses, 10.
Chain in weaving, 250.
Chair-seats, 310-311.
Chaise of Brother Jonathan, 353.
" Change-work," 417.
Chap-men, 300.
Chargers, 80, 84.
Charleston, flax manufacture in, 182-
183; dress in, 293; gardens in, 438-
439-
Charlevoix, Father, on canoes, 327.
Chaucer, quoted, on spinning, 179.
Chebobbin, 415.
Cheese, making of, 150.
Cheese-basket, 150-151.
Cheese-hoop, 312.
Cheese-ladder, 150-151, 312.
Cheese-press, 150-151, 312.
Chesapeake, turkeys on, 109; wild
fowl on, 125.
Chicory, introduction of, 449.
Children, at table, 101-102; occupa
tions of, 179-180, 182, 188-189, 203-
204, 261-262; dress of, 287; in
meeting, 372 et seq. ; in noon-house,
376.
Chimney, catted, 15, 53; size of, 52,
68 ; description, 53 ; in Dutch
houses, 55.
China, early use of, 100; importation
of, 100-101.
Chinese stuffs, 294.
Chinking walls, 5.
Chopping-bee, 403 et seq.
Chorister, in Dutch churches, 386.
Churches, in Virginia, 381-383 ; in Al
bany, 385. See also Meeting-house.
Churns, few in New England, 149;
examples of, 149-150; whittling of,
312.
Cider, use by children, 148-149, 161 ;
use by students, 161 ; price of, 161 ;
manufacture of, 161-162; generous
use of, 161-163.
Clam-shells, use of, 308-309.
Clarionets, in meeting, 378.
Clavell-piece, 54.
Clay, for dyeing, 241.
Clergymen, in Virginia, 384.
Clocks, 299.
Clock-jack, 65.
Clock-reel, 174-175; price of, 177; for
yarn, 200.
Clogs, 295.
Cloth, finishing of, 231-233.
Cloth bar, 224.
Clothes, durability of, 281 ; extrava
gance in, 281; laws about, 281 et
seq. ; of Massachusetts settlers, 286-
287; of Virginia planters, 287; of
children, 288 et seq.
Coaches, in Boston, 331, 353-354; in
England, 354; Judge Sewall on, 354;
in New York, 354-355. See also
Stage-coach.
Coat-of-arms, on sampler, 267.
Coat roll, 248.
Cob irons, 62.
Cocoanut-cups, 96-97.
456
Index
Codfish, early discoverers on, 115-116;
plenty of, 115 ; in New England
waters, 120-121 ; varieties of, 121 ;
for Saturday dinner, 122; price in
Boston, 123. See Fish and Fishing.
Coffee, substitutes for, 159; early use
of, 165 ; queer mode of cooking,
165.
Colchester, girls life in, 253.
Cold houses, 70-71.
Cold party, 419.
Colored herbs, 430.
Coloring, 23.
Combing, description of, 196.
Combing machine, 230.
Combs. See Wool-combs.
Comfortier, 69.
Common crops, 130.
Common herds. See Herding.
Common lands, 398.
Communal privileges, 390 et seq.
Conch-shell, as summons to meeting,
367-368.
Concord coaches, 352-353.
Concordance, 33.
Conestoga wagon, 339-343; shape of,
339; rates on, 340; great number
of, 340.
Connecticut, tar-making in, 33; pump
kin bread in, 143; flax culture in,
179 ; straw manufacture in, 260.
Contributions in New England meet
ings, 378; in Dutch churches, 386-
387.
Cooking, influence of Indian methods,
131-136; English modes of, 151;
spices used in, 152; limitations in,
158-159.
Cooperation in olden times, 389 et seq.
Corbel roof, 9.
Coreopsis, persistence of, 448.
Corn, influence on colonists lives, 126;
in Virginia, 127-128 ; price of, 128,
138 ; scarcity of, 129 ; mode of culti
vating, 130-131; Indian foods from,
131 ; Indian modes of preparing,
131; modes of cooking, 133-136; as
currency, 138 ; profits on raising, 139;
games with, 139; shelling of, 139-140;
as ballots, 141 ; as national flower,
141.
Corn-cobs, use of, 141, 209.
Corn dances, 138.
Corn-husking, description of, 136.
Corn-sheller, 140-141.
Cotton, early use of, 206-207 cultiva
tion of, 207 ; rarity of, 207-208 ; do
mestic manufacture, 209-210 ; Golden
Age of, 230.
Cotton-gin, 208.
Cotton, John, quoted, 148, 285.
Coverlets, in Pennsylvania, 190: in
Narragansett, 242-246.
Cows, herding of, 399-401.
Cowherds, duties of, 399-400; pay of,
399-
Cowkeeps, 399.
Cow-pens, 400.
Crabs, in Virginia, 118.
Crane, 53.
Creepers, 62.
Crocus, 237.
Crofting, of linen, 234.
Crown-imperial, 425.
Cups, 85, 90, 93-96.
Currency, corn as, 138.
"Cut-down," of trees, 405.
Cutler, Dr., quoted, 159.
Cut-tails, 122-123.
Daffodils, 426-427.
Dale, Sir Thomas, on corn-growing,
127 ; on Sunday observance, 380.
Danvers, Mass., house in, 30.
Daubing walls, 5.
Daughters of Liberty, 183-184.
Day s work in spinning, 185.
Deacons, in Dutch churches, 386-387.
Deacons pew, 374.
" Deaconing" the psalm, 378.
Deaf pew, 374.
Dedham, Mass., house in, 22-23.
Index
457
Deer, abundance of, 108-109 ; descrip
tion of, 108.
Deerskin, clothing of, 288-289.
De La Warre, church attendance of,
382,
Delaware, house pie in, 146.
Delft ware, 100.
Dents, of sley, 219-220.
Designs, for weaving, 243-244, 250-
251 ; of ancient Gauls, 242 ; for quilts,
272-273 ; for paper-cutting, 278-289.
Dew-retting, 169.
Dimity, 250.
Dinner, serving of, 104 ; primitive forms,
105-106; for Saturday, 122 ; in New
York, 159; at John Adams home,
159-160.
Discomforts of temperature, 70-71.
Distaff, in India, 178.
Dogs, in meeting, 374.
Dog-pelter, 374.
Dog-whipper, 374.
Donnison family, fire buckets of, 18.
Door latch, n, 318.
Dorchester, windir.Jll at, 133 ; corpora
tion, laws in, 392, 394.
Double string-roaster, 64.
Drawing, in weaving, 219.
Drawing a bore, 224.
Dress. See Clothes.
Dresser, 68.
Drinking-cups, 85-96, 98.
Drinks, from curious materials, 163.
Drinking habits, 93-94, 161, 164.
Drinking-horns, 321.
Driver, 198.
Drugget, 250.
Drum, as summons to meeting, 367,
368.
Duck. See Wild fowl.
Duer, Colonel, dinner of, 159.
Dugouts, 326.
Dunfish, 121-122. Also see Codfish.
Durability of homespun, 238-239.
Durham, church discipline in, 372.
Dutch mode of serving meals, 106.
Dutch oven, 65.
Dyes, domestic, 155, 193-194,250-251.
Dye-flower, 251.
Earmarks, 400.
Eastern Stage Company, 351.
Economy of colonists, 42, 185, 321-324;
of Martha Washington, 237-238.
Eddis, quoted, 118.
Eels, method of catching, 117.
Egypt, flax in, 177-178 ; linen in, 178.
Embroidery. See Needlework.
Emerson, R. W., appointed hog-reeve,
403-
Endicott, Governor, sun-dial of, 443;
his introduction of woad-wax, 448.
Entering, in weaving. See Drawing.
Ernst, C. W., quoted, 343, 345.
Etiquette for children, 100-102; of
carving, 104-105.
Eye, of harness, 218.
Fairbanks, Jacob, house of, 23-33;
sun-dial of, 443.
Fairs, instituted by Penn, 190; en
couraged by Franklin, 191.
Faneuil, Miss, dress of, 292.
Fences, different varieties of, 25 ; com
mon building of, 401-402; laws
about, 401-402.
Fence-viewers, 401.
Ferries, by canoe, 330-331.
Finlay, Hugh, postal report of, 33j
335-
Fireback, 54.
Fire-buckets, description, 16; use of,
17; of Donnison s, 18; of Quincy s,
18; of Oliver s, 19.
Fire-dogs, 62.
Fire-engine, first in Boston, 19; first in
Brooklyn, 19.
Fire-hunting, 108-109.
Fire lanes, 16.
Fire laws, 15.
Fireplace of our fathers, 53.
Fire-plate, 54-55.
458
Index
Fire-room, 7.
Fire-wardens, 15.
Fish, plenty of, 115-125; varieties of,
in New England waters, 117; in
Virginia waters, 119 ; in New York
waters, 120 ; salted, 124-125 ; as fer
tilizer, 130 ; poisoned by flax, 169.
Fishing, King James on, 116; ill-suc
cess in, 117; supplies for, 117; in
Virginia, 119-120; encouragement
of, 121 ; laws on, 121 ; division of
profit, 122, 123.
Fish-weirs, 121.
Flag, as summons to meeting, 368.
Flails, making of, 312; use of, 313-314.
Flannel sheets, 238.
Flax, patch of, 167 ; blossom of, 167 ;
growth of, 168 ; weeding, of, 168 ;
ripening of, 168 ; pulling of, 168 ;
spreading of, 168 ; rippling, of, 168-
169; wateringjof, 169; stacking of,
169; breaking of, 169-170; tenacity
of, 171; swingling of, 171-172; beet
ling of, 172; hetcheling of, 172-173;
spreading and drawing, 173 ; many
manipulations of, 173 ; spinning of,
174; in Bible, 177; in Egypt, 177-
178; in New England, 179-181, 186;
in Pennsylvania, 181; in Virginia,
181, 182; in South Carolina, 182-
183 ; in Ireland, 186 ; in Courtrai,
186; in England, 186.
Flax basket, 173..
Flax-brake, 169-170.
Flax hetchels, 172.
Flaxseed, how sown, 167; how gath
ered, 168, 176 ; how stored, 176.
Flax-thread, spinning of, 174 ; knot
ting of, 175 ; reeling of, 175 ; bleach
ing of, 175 ; backing of, 175.
Flax-wheel, revival of, 167 ; use of, 174 ;
price of, 177.
Flint and steel, 48.
Flower, a national, 141.
Flowers, in churches, 383 ; old-time,
421 et seq. ; folk-names of, 448; age
of, 443-445; persistency of. 447;
escaped from cultivation, 448.
Flower-seeds, sold by women, 440-
441 ; old list of, 441.
Flutes, in meeting, 378.
Flying-machine, 345.
Fly-shuttle, 228.
Food, from forests, 108-114; from sea
and river, 114-125; transportation
of, 143 ; entirely from farm, 158 ;
substitutes, 158-159.
Foot-mantle, 295.
Foot-paths, 329.
Foot-stoves, 375, 385.
Foot-treadle, of loom, 219.
Foot-wheel. See Flax-wheel.
Foote, Abigail, diary of, 253.
Forefathers Dinner, 129.
Forests, destruction of, 52; riches of,
108-114.
Forms, 101.
Forks, use of, 77 ; first, 77.
Forts, as churches, 365, 385.
Fox, George, bequest of, 437.
Franklin, quoted, 53, 181 ; fairs en
couraged by, 191 ; advertisement of,
292-293 ; as postmaster, 333 ; set mile
stones, 335 ; cyclometer of, 335-336 ;
on canals, 353; in sedan-chair, 356.
Franklin stove, 70.
Fraxinella, 449.
Fringe-lqom, 227.
Frocking, striped, 237.
Fulling-mill, in Boston, 188.
Fulling-stocks, 232.
Fulham jugs, 98.
Funerals, rings at, 298; gloves at, 298-
299.
Furs, search for, 115.
Fustian, in America, 237; in Europe,
237-
Gallows-balke, 53.
Gallows-crooks, 53.
Gallows-frame. See Tape-loom.
Gambrels, 310.
Index
459
Gambrel roof, description, 22.
Games, with corn, 139.
Garden, an old-time, 419 et seq.; in
New England, 419 etseq.; in southern
colonies, 438-439; in New York,
439-440.
Garnish of pewter, 85.
Garrison house, 26.
Garter-loom. See Tape-loom.
Geese, raising of, 257-258 ; pickings of,
257-259; noise of, 258.
Georgia, deer in, 109; turkeys in, no;
hand-weaving in, 249-251.
Georgius Rex jug, 99.
Germantown, flax-raising at, 181 ; flax-
workers at, 181; seal of, 181; wool
manufacture at, 190.
Gibcrokes, 53.
Gimlet, 305.
Giotto, loom of, 213.
Girdling, of trees, 403.
Girls, dress of, 289-292; seats in meet
ing for, 372.
Giskins, 96.
Glass, in windows, 23, 366 ; nailed in,
366 ; for lamps, 46 ; early use of, 92.
Gloucester, old house at, 70; fishing
at, 122-123; communal privileges
in, 390.
Gloves, given at funerals, 298-299.
Going a-leafing, 67.
Goldenrod, as dye, 193.
Goloe-shoes, 295.
Gookin, quoted, 137.
Goose-basket, 258.
Goose-neck andirons, 62.
Goose yoke, 258.
Gorse. See Woad-wax.
Gourds, cups of, 96; utensils of, 309.
Grant, Mrs. Anne, on Dutch gardens,
439-
Grapes, 145.
Grassing, of linen, 234.
Greeley, Horace, on canal-travel, 353.
Gridirons, 61.
Grist-mill, earliest, 133.
Guinea wheat, 129. See Corn.
Gun, as summons to meeting, 368.
Gundalow, 329.
Gutters of houses, 9.
Hackling. See Hetcheling.
Hadley, shad in, 123-124; potatoes in,
144 ; broom-making in, 256-257 ; re
strictions of settlement in, 392-393;
hay-ward in, 402.
Hakes, 53.
Half-faced camp, 3.
Hammond, John, quoted, 395.
Hamor, Ralph, quoted, 143.
Hancock House, knocker of, 28; on
sampler, 268.
Hancock, John, hatred of pewter, 85;
drinking cup of, 97 ; dress of, 293.
Hand-distaff. See Distaff.
Hand-loom. See Loom.
Hand-reel. See Niddy-noddy.
Hap-harlot, 242.
Harness. See Heddle.
Harvard College, standing salt of, 78-
79; trenchers at, 81.
Hasty pudding, 135.
Hats, worn in meeting, 285; church
votes about, 286.
Hay-wards, 402.
Heddle of loom, 219.
Heddle-frame. See Tape-loom.
Heel-pegs. See Shoe-pegs.
Hemlock, brooms of, 304-305 ; boxes
of, 310.
Hemp, blossom of, 167; breaking of,
169.
Herding, of cows, 399-401 ; of sheep,
401 ; of swine, 403.
Hetcheling of flax, 172.
Hexe, of flax, 169.
Hides, use of, 109 ; tax on, 109.
Higginson, quoted, 33, 35, 117, 148.
Hind s-foot handle, 90.
Hinges, material of, 9, 318.
Hingham, church at, 365.
Hogarth, loom of, 213-214.
460
Index
Hogs, as scavengers, 125; yokes of,
311 ; laws about, 402-403.
Hog-reeves, 402-403.
Homespun industries, 167 ; beneficent
effect of, 179 ; foundation of liberty,
189.
Hominy, 131.
Honey, plenty of, HI.
Honey-locust, 163.
Horn, spoons of, 88; cups of, 96; as
summons to meeting, 368.
Horse-blocks, in front of churches, 367.
Horse-bridges, 331.
Horse-laurel, as dye, 194.
Hose. See Stockings.
Hospitality, in Southern colonies, 395
et seq.
Hound handle, 100.
Hour-glass, in meeting, 376.
Housekeeper, qualifications of, 252-
253-
House pie, 146.
House-raising. See Raising.
Hyperion tea, 165.
India china, 100.
Indians, houses of, 3-4 ; caves of, 138 ;
corn dances of, 138 ; cultivation of
corn by, 126-131; endurance of,
137 ; mode of cooking corn, 131-
135 ; names of corn foods, 131-
137 ; mode of drying pumpkins, 143 ;
spoons of, 88 ; mode of cooking
beans, 145 ; brooms of, 301-304 ;
four best things, 304; modes of
travel of, 325 ; boats of, 325 ; paths
of, 329-330.
Indian corn. See Corn.
Indian pudding, 135.
Indigo, as dye, 193.
Inns. See Taverns.
Invention, of cotton-gin, 208; of fly-
shuttle, 228 ; of spinning-jenny, 229 ;
of throstle-spun yarn, 229; of comb-
ing-machine, 230; of flax-spinning
machine, 230-231.
Ipswich, grist-mill at, 133.
Iris, as dye, 193.
Itineracies, old-time, 176, 300-301.
Jack-knife, 307-308.
Jacks, 64.
James I. on fishing, 116.
Jamestown, spinning-schools at, 182;
summons to meeting at, 367.
Jeans, 250.
Jefferson, Thomas, quoted, 207, 256 ;
hospitality of, 397; impoverishment
of, 397-398.
Jewellery, slight wear of, 297.
Johnson, quoted, 143, 145, 188.
Johnson, Governor, baby clothes of,
265.
Johnny-cakes, 135.
Josselyn, quoted, 117; his list of plants
in New England, 432 et seq.
Judd, Sylvester, quoted, 216, 237.
Jugs, of stoneware, 98.
Jumel, Madame, cave house of, 3.
Kalm, quoted, 39-40; on squirrels,
no; on bees, in; on maize bread,
134; on canoes, 326-327; on the
plantain, 436.
Kearsarge, Mount, romance of, 405.
Kentucky, hand-weaving in, 249.
Ketch, 328.
Kill-devil. See Rum.
Killing time, 153.
King Hooper house, 30.
Kitchen, description, 52; in rhyme,
73^75-
Knife. See Jack-knife.
Knife-racks, 68.
Knights, Madame, quoted, 8 ; on
canoes, 327-328 ; journey of, 332 ;
on sleighs, 355.
Knitting, 190 ; yarn for, 201 ; by chil
dren, 261-262; elaborate designs,
262.
Knitting machine, 190.
Knives, of flax brake, 170.
Index
461
Knocker, Hancock house, 28; Wins-
low house, 29.
Knots, of flax thread, 175.
Krankbesoeckers, 385.
Labadist missionaries, quoted, 118-
119.
Lad s lore, 428.
Lamps, 43-45.
Lathe. See Batten.
Latten ware, 58.
Laws, about flax culture, 179-180;
about dress, 282-284; about ferries,
330-33* about mail, 334; about
taverns, 357 ; on observance of Sun
day, 378-379 ; of warning out, 392 et
seq. ; about fences, 401-402.
Lay, of loom. See Batten.
Laying a fire, 74.
Lays, of flax thread, 175.
Lean-to, description, 22.
Leashes, of heddle, 219.
Leather, utensils of, 95-96.
Letters. See Post.
Liberty Tea, 165.
Lincoln, Abraham, early home of, 4;
rail-splitting, 25.
Linden, fibre from, 211.
Linen, manipulations of, 234; clothing
of, 234; sentiment of, 234; price of,
234 ; checked, 238.
Lining the psalm, 378.
Litster, 187,
Livingstone, John, clothing of, 288.
Loaf-sugar. See Sugar-cones.
Lobsters, plenty of, 117; vast size of,
118.
Logan, Mrs., on flower-raising, 438.
Log cabin, forms of, 5.
Logging-bee, 416, 417.
Log-rolling, 389, 404, 406.
Longfellow, quoted, 327.
Long Island, bayberries on, 40; samp-
mortars on, 133; wool raising on,
191 ; bad boys on, 373 ; Sunday ob
servance on, 385 ; cowherding on, 400.
Long-short, 236-237.
Loom, antiquity of, 213-214; of Giotto,
213 ; of Hogarth, 213-214 ; descrip
tion of, 214. See Power-loom, Tape-
loom.
Loom-room, 212.
Louisiana, corn in, 128 ; petticoat re
bellion in, 128 ; hand-weaving in,
250.
Lowell, quoted, 73.
Lucas, Governor, quoted, 182-183.
Lug-pole, 53.
Luxury, after the Revolution, 159-160.
Lye, making of, 254.
MacMaster, quoted, 207.
Madison, Dolly, dress of, 290.
Mail, of heddle, 219.
Mail. See Post.
Mail coaches, 344, 350.
Maine, windows in, 23; candle-wood
in, 32; churns in, 149; axe-making
in, 315-
Maize. See Corn.
Mandillion, 287.
Manhattan, bark houses on, 4; pali
sades on, 24.
Manners. See Etiquette.
Maple sugar, old description of, in;
manufacture of, 111-112.
Maple-wood, bowls of, 82, 318-320.
Marblehead, fishing at, 122-123.
Marigolds, 427.
Marmalades, 152.
Maryland, houses in, n; wild fowl in,
125 ; apples in, 145 ; hospitality in,
396-397.
Masks, 290.
Massachusetts, cave dwellings in, i ;
palisados in, 24; venison in, 109;
fish in, 123 ; flax culture in, 179-180;
wool-raising in, 188 ; bounty in, 205;
sumptuary laws in, 281-284 ; outfit for
settlers, 286-287 ; ferries in, 330-331.
Matches, first, 50-51.
Mazer, 319.
462
Index
Mead, 163.
Meeting-house, in Boston, 364, 366 ; in
Salem, 364; in Hingham, 365 ; de
scriptions of, 364, 366-369.
Metheglin, 163.
Metheglin cups, 85.
Lletzel-soup, 419.
Milestones, 335-336.
Milford, Conn., palisados in, 24.
Milk, price of, 148 ; use as food, 148.
Milk pitchers, names of, 106.
Milkweed, for candle wicks, 35, 211.
Mill, Indian, 132.
Mince-pies, pioneer, 159.
Ministers, encourage fisheries, 121.
Mittens, fine knitting of, 262; quick
knitting of, 262.
Modesty-piece, 270-271.
Molasses, for New England slave-
trade, 163.
Monkey spoons, 90.
Moore, Thomas, quoted, 348.
Mortar, Indian, 132.
Morton, quoted, 120-121.
Moss-pink, 423.
Mount Vernon, description of, 13;
weaving at, 237 ; garden at, 431.
Mourning rings. See Rings.
Mourning samplers, 268-269.
Muffs, worn by men, 298, 386.
Mutton, its disuse previous to Revolu
tion, 189, 191.
Nails, scarcity of, n.
Napkins, use of, 77.
Narragansett, hand-weaving in, 241-
244; shift marriages in, 241-242;
old quilt in, 275-276; threshing in,
3I3-3I4-
Needlework, stitches in, 264-265; deli
cacy of, 265 ; rules for, 265.
Neighborhood, title of settlement, 391.
Neighbors, old-time, 388 et seq. t 395 et
seq.
Netting, 263-264.
Nettles, fibre spun, 211.
New Amsterdam, first church in, 385 ;
laws about fences in, 401-402.
Newman, Rev. Mr., manner of work,
33-
Newburyport, house at, 27; straw
bleaching at, 261; sumptuary laws
in, 283 ; fines in, 374.
New England, houses in, 15 ; candle-
wood in, 32; lobsters in, 117; fish
eries in, 117-124; Indian corn in,
127-136; mills in, 131-133; pump
kins in, 142-143; potatoes in, 144;
squashes in, 144; milk and ministers
in, 148; churns in, 149; cider in,
161-162; rum in, 163-164; slavery
in, 164; wool-raising in, 188-189;
taverns in, 356-357 ; watchmen in,
363; meeting-houses in, 365 et seq.;
summons to meeting in, 368 ; Sunday
observance in, 378 et seq.; "taste of
dinner in," 418 ; old-time gardens in,
421 ct seq.
New Hampshire, candle-wood in, 32;
potatoes in, 144; pioneer mince-pies
in, 159; wheelwrights in, 176; flax
manufacture in, 180, 236; fine knit
ting in, 269 ; birch brooms in, 304.
New Haven, restrictions in, 392.
New London, mill at, 133.
Newport, box plants at, 430; garden
in, 437-438.
New York, houses in, 8 ; candle-wood
in, 32; first fork in, 78; venison in,
109; lobsters at, 118; fish in, 120;
salting shad in, 124-125 ; suppawn
in, 133; ale and beer in, 161 ; wool-
raising in, 191; dress in, 292; turn
pikes in, 349-350; coaches in, 354-
355; sleighs in, 355; street lighting
in, 362; watch in, 363; Sunday ob
servance in, 384; cow-herding in,
3991 gardens in, 439-440.
Niddy-noddy, 200-201 ; carved, 320.
Nightgowns, 294.
Nocake, description of, 137; use ot,
137; Eliot s use of word, 137-138.
Index
463
Noggins, 82.
Noil, 196.
Nokick. See Nocake.
Noon-houses, 374-375.
Noon-marks, 299.
Norridgewock, life-work of a citizen of,
407-408.
Northampton, sumptuary laws in, 283-
284.
Northboro, spinning match at, 184.
North Saugus, house in, 21.
Norwich, naughty girl in, 373.
Notices, nailed on church doors, 367.
Nott, President, story of boyhood, 202-
203.
Occamy, 88.
Occupations, of children, 179, 180, 182,
186,437; of women, 187.
Oiled paper for windows, 23, 366.
Old South Church, on sampler, 268.
Old Ship, 365.
Old South, 366.
Opening in land, clearing, 406.
Ordinary, name for tavern, 356.
Osenbrigs, 288.
Otis, Hannah, sampler of, 268.
Overhang, in walls, 19-20.
Ovens, 67.
Ox-bows, 311.
Oxen, sign of distress in, 413.
Oysters, in Brooklyn, 118-119; * n
Virginia, 119; vast size of, 119.
Pace-weight, of loom, 224.
Pack-horses, use of, 336-339; pay for,
337 ; load of, 337-338.
Pails, early, 58.
Paint, not used, 23.
Pales. See Fences.
Palfrey, quoted, 122.
Palisado, description of, 24.
Pansy, folk-names of, 425-426.
Paper-cutting. See Papyrotamia.
Papyrotamia, 277-278.
Parley, Peter, reminiscence of, 140.
Parsnips, 145.
Pastorius, Father, his choice for seal,
181; his encouragement of garden
ing, 436.
Patchwork. See Quilt-piecing.
Patent, first to Americans, 138-139,
260.
Pattens, 295.
Paupers, in Narragansett, 313; treat
ment of, in New England, 324.
Pawn, 55.
Pawtucket, cotton thread in, 207.
Pay, for spinning, 185 ; for weaving,
230, 250; for cow-herding, 399; of
swineherds, 403.
Peabody, Francis, house of, 31.
Peachy, 163.
Peas, 145.
Peel, 67.
Pegging, 262.
Pelisses, 295.
Penn, William, fairs instituted by, 190.
Pennsylvania, cave-dwellers in, 2;
stoves in, 69; squirrels in, no;
wool manufacture in, 190; dress in,
292-293; mail in, 333; post-rider,
335 ; transportation in, 335-344 ;
roads in, 339 ; turnpikes in, 349 ;
coaching in, 350-351; metzel-soup
in, 419; gardens in, 436-437.
Peonies, 421.
Perfumes, in cooking, 152; of old
garden flowers, 424; of sweet-scented
leaves, 449 et seq.
Periagua, 329.
Perry, 163.
Peter, Hugh, encourages fisheries, 121.
Petticoat rebellion, 128.
Petunias, 428.
Pews, described, 368 et seq.
Pewter, for lamps, 44-45 ; for utensils,
84-85 ; on dresser, 68 ; lids of, 100.
Phoebe-lamps, 44.
Philadelphia, early houses in, 15 ; luxu
rious dinners in, 160; straw manu
facture in, 260 ; travel from, 347-350;
4 6 4
Index
taverns in, 359; cow-herding in, 400-
401.
Pickling, old-time, 152.
Pierce Garrison House, 26.
Pierpont, Rev. John, verses of, 306-307.
Pies, 146.
Pigeons, plenty of, no; price of, no.
Pilgrims, starvation of, 129;
Piling-bee, 406.
Pillions, 331-332.
Pillory, location of, 367.
Pinckney, Mrs., exchange of flowers of,
439-
Pinehurst, hand-weaving in, 250-251.
Pine-knots, use of, 32-33.
Pink, name of vessel, 328.
Pinks, varieties of, 427.
Pipe shelves, 68.
Pipe-tongs, 68-69.
Pitch-pipes, in meeting, 378.
Plantain, romance of, 435-436.
Plate-racks, 68.
Plate-warmer, 61.
Plymouth, vacant fields at, 130; sam
pler at, 266.
Pokeberry, as dye, 193.
Pompion. See Pumpkin.
Pones, 134.
Pop-corn, 135.
Poplar wood, use of, 81-82.
Porcelain. See China.
Porringers, 85-86.
Porter s fluid, 45.
Portsmouth, old house at, 21.
Portulaca, 429.
Posnet, 87.
Possing, of linen, 234.
Post, first, 332 ; duties of, 332-333 ; in
Virginia, 333 ; report about, 333-335.
Potatoes, in New England, 144 ; queer
modes of cooking, 144-145. See
Sweet potatoes.
Potato-boiler, 57.
Pot-brakes, 53.
Pot-clips, 53.
Pot-crooks, 53.
Pot-hangers, 53.
Pothooks, 53.
Pots, cost of, 56 ; size of, 56.
Pound-keepers, 400.
Powder-horns, 320-321.
Powdering of hair, 297.
Powdering tub, 153.
Power-loom, 230.
Powhatan, teaches corn-planting, 127.
Prairie-schooner. See Conestoga
wagon.
Prayers, length of, 376; with the sick,
419.
Preserving, old-time, 152.
Printer, dress of, 293.
Providence, straw manufacture in, 260;
restrictions in, 392.
Psalm-singing, 376 et seq.
Puddings, of corn, 135.
Pudding-time, 104, 160.
Pue. See Pews.
Pulling of flax, 168.
Pulpits, 368, 385.
Pumpkin, tributes to, 143 ; modes of
cooking, 143 ; their plenty, 143 ; shells
of, 309.
Puncheon floor, 6.
Quakers, dress of, 258, 292.
Quarels, ot glass, 9.
Quarnes, 133.
Quiddonies, 152.
Quills, for weaving, 216; from geese,
259.
Quiiling-wheel, 216, 229.
Quilts, piecing of, 270-275; materials
for, 272-274 ; patterns for, 272-275 :
quilting of, 273-274.
Quince drink, 96.
Quincy family, fire-buckets of, 18 ;
samplers of, 266-267.
Quincy, Josiah, quoted, 341-342, 346.
Raddle, of loom, 219.
Rag carpet, 239-240.
Rail-fence, 25.
Index
465
Raising, of a house, 408 et seq.
Rake. See Raddle.
Ramsay, quoted, 395-396.
Randolph, John, quoted, 205.
Raspberry leaves for tea, 158, 165.
Rattle-watch, 362.
Ravel. See Raddle.
Reading, communal privileges in, 391.
Recons, 53.
Reed. See Sley.
Reed-hook. See Sley-hook.
Reel, triple, 200. See Clock-reel and
Niddy-noddy.
Revolution, influences towards success,
166-167, l8 9-
Rhode Island, stage-coach in, 346.
Rhode Island College. See Brown
University.
Ribbon-beds, 445.
Ribbon-grass, 430.
Ride-and-tie system, 332.
Rings, wearing of, 297; at funerals,
298.
Rippling of flax, 168-169; f hemp,
169.
Rippling-comb, 168 ; of Egyptians, 178.
Roasting ears, 134.
Roasting-kitchens, 65.
Rock for spinning, in Egypt, 178 ; in
India, 178 ; in New England, 179.
Rock-candy, 157.
Rocking-tree, of loom, 220.
Rochester, house-raising at, 410.
Rolliches, 154.
Rolling-roads, 330.
Rolling-up a house, 6.
Roof, of Dutch houses, 10; gambrel,
22.
Roquelaure, 295.
Rosselini, quoted, 178.
Roving, of yarn, 201.
Rowley, spinning match at, 184.
Ruffler for flax, 172.
Rum, manufacture of, 163; in New
England, 163 ; in slave-trade, 163-
164 ; at house-raisings, 410.
Rush, for scouring, 85.
Rushlight, 38.
Rutland, cave-dwellers in, 3.
Sabba-day house. See Noon-house.
Sabin Hall, 14.
Sack, law of sale, 357.
Sacjes, 386-387.
Saco, communal privileges in, 390
Safeguards, 295.
Salem, coloring houses at, 23 ; lob
sters at, 117; fisheries at, 121; milk
in, 148; sumptuary laws in, 283;
taverns at, 356-357 ; night-watch in,
363; meeting-house in, 364; seats
for boys at meeting in, 372 ; swine
herds in, 403.
Saler, 78.
Salisbury, meeting-house at, 369.
Salmon, price in Boston, 123; low re
gard of, 123 ; fishing for, 124.
Salt-cellar, 78-79.
Salting offish, 124; of meat, 153.
Samp, mode of preparing, 131-132,
134; porridge of, 134.
Samplers, 265-268.
Samp-mills, 133.
Samp-mortars, 133.
Sap-buckets, 112.
Sap-yoke, 113.
Sassafras, as dye, 194 ; for soap, 255.
Sausages, making of, 154-155.
Sausage-gun, 154.
Save-alls, 42.
Scaffold, name for pulpit, 368.
Scarne. See Skarne.
Sconces, 42.
Scouring-rush, 85.
Scutching. See Swingling.
Scythe snathe, 309-312.
Seal of Germantown, 181.
Seating the meeting, 370-371.
Seats, at table, 101 ; in New England
meetings, 369 ; in Virginia churches,
383-384; in Dutch churches, 386-
387.
4 66
Index
Section. See Bout.
Sedan-chairs, 356.
Sermons, length of, 376.
Sewall, Samuel, quoted, 354-356;
character of, 418.
Shad, low regard of, 123-124; price
of, 124; fishing for, 124; salting of,
124.
Shallop, 328,
Shed, in weaving, 221.
Sheep, in Massachusetts, 188; laws
about, 188, 189; herding of, 409.
Sheep-folds, 401.
Sheep-herds, 401.
Sheep-ranges, 401.
Shelburne, girls work in, 262.
Shepster, 187.
Sherry-vallies, 296.
Shingles, making of, 316-317.
Shingle-bolts, 318.
Shingle-mould, 317.
Shoe-pegs, 315-316.
Shuttles, for loom, 224-225.
Sign-boards, name on, 358-359; his
torical value of, 359; of Philadel
phia, 359 ; of Baltimore, 359.
Sigourney, Mrs., quoted, 277-278.
Silk-grass, 211.
Silver, use of, 89-92.
Skarne, 216-217.
Skeins, of flax thread, 175.
Skillet, 50.
Skilts, 236.
Slave-kitchen, 54.
Slave quarters, 14.
Slavery, in New England, 163 ; in Vir
ginia, 164.
Sleds, 343.
Sleighs, in New York, 355.
Sley, of loom, 219-220; price of, 224.
Slice, 67.
Slippings, of flax thread, 175.
Smith, John, quoted, 115-116; plants
corn, 127 ; description of first Vir
ginia church, 381-382.
Smoke-house, 153.
Smoke-jack, 65.
Smoking tongs, 68-69.
Snake-fence, 25.
Sneak-cups, 106.
Snow, name of vessel, 328.
Snowstorm, in New England, qioetseq.
Snuffers, 42.
Snuffers tray, 42.
Soap, making of, 253-255.
Society house, 396.
Sorrel, as dye, 194.
South Carolina. See Carolinas.
Southernwood, 428.
Spatter-dashes, 296.
Spelling, varied, of squashes, 144.
Spenser, quoted, 319.
Spermaceti, 42.
Spices, in cooking, 153; ground at
home, 158.
Spice-mills, 158.
Spice-mortars, 158.
Spinning, of flax, 174, 230; pay for,
175 ; in Egypt,* 178 ; in India, 17*8 ;
in New England, 179-180; in Penn
sylvania, 181 ; in France, 230-231;
day s work in, 185 ; in modern tiihes,
186; of wool, 1916-198,229-230; new
materials for, 211 ;_^race between
weaving and, 228-229; a by-indus
try, 228.
Spinning classes, 180.
Spinning-cup, 174.
Spinning-jenny, 229.
Spinning-matches, 184-185.
Spinning-school, 180, 182.
Spinning-wheel. See Flax-wheel and
Wool-wheft.
Spinster, legal title ofwomen, 187.
Splint brooms. See Birch brooms.
Spool-holder. See Skarne.
Spoons, use of, 87 ; material of, 87-88 ;
types of, 89-90.
Spoon-moulds, 87-88.
Spoon-racks, 68.
Spreading of flax, 168.
Spunks, 50.
Index
467
Squadrons, of spinners, 189.
Squanto, teaches fishing, 117; teaches
corn-planting, 130.
Squashes, varied names of, 144.
Squirrels, abundance of, no ; premium
on, no.
Stage-coaches, in Great Britain, 331,
345-346 ; in America, 345~346.
Stage-wagon, 345.
Staircases, 27.
Standing salt, 78-79.
Standish, Lorea, sampler of, 266.
Starting a fire, 48-50.
Starving times, in Virginia, 127; in
New England, 129.
Staves, 316.
Stays, 291.
Steeples, 366.
Steep-pool, for flax, 169.
Stepping-stones. See Horse-blocks.
Stitches, names of, 264-265.
St.-John s-Wort, as dye, 194.
Stockings, knitting of, 190, 262-263 ;
weaving of, 190.
Stocks, location of, 367.
Stone-bee, 407.
Stone-hauling, 407.
Stone walls, 407.
Stoves, first, 69 ; in Dutch churches, 385.
Strachey, quoted, 119.
Strangers, harboring of, forbidden in
New England, 393~394-
Stratford, tithing-man in, 372.
Straw manufacture, 259-261.
Streets, condition of, 362; lighting of,
362 ; washing of, 363.
Strikes, of flax, 172.
Striking a light, 47.
Stump-pulling, 407.
Sturgeon, great catch of, 120; in New
York, 120.
Substitutes for imported foods, 158-159.
Succotash, 134.
Sudbury, tavern at, 357-358.
Sugar, substitutes for, no, in, 147,
157, 158 ; cutting of, 155-156.
Sugar-bowls, names for, 106.
Sugar-cones, 155.
Sugar-cutters, 155-156.
Summer-piece, 8.
Sunday, observance of, by Puritans,
378 et seq. ; by Rev. John Cotton,
379; by Virginians, 380; by the
Dutch, 384 ; duration of, 379.
Sun-dials, 299, 442-443; inscriptions
on, 443 ; materials of, 443.
Suppawn, use of, 133.
Sweep and mortar mill, 132.
Sweet potatoes, modes of cooking, 145.
Swifts, 215-216.
Swineherds. See Hog-reeves.
Swingling of flax, 171-172.
Swingling block, 171.
Swingling knives, 171, 312.
Swingle-tree hurds, 172.
Swingling tow, bonfires of, 177.
Swing-sign. See Sign-board.
Table, description of, 76.
Table-board, 76, 81.
Table-cloths, 77.
Tallow, lack of, 34.
Tambour work, 269.
Tankards, original meaning, 83 ; of
wood, 83-84 ; of silver, 99.
Tapping-gauge, 112.
Tape-loom, various names of, 225 ; de
scribed, 225-227.
Tap-room, of Wayside Inn, 357-358.
Tarboggin. See Chebobbin.
Tar-making, 33.
Taste of a dinner, 418.
Tasters, 86-87.
Taverns, establishment of, 356; titles
for, 356 ; prices at, 357 ; values about,
357 ; names of rooms at, 357 ; in
southern colonies, 360; in New
Netherland, 361.
Tea, substitutes for, 158-159 ; first sales
of, 164 ; queer mode of cooking, 165.
Teazels, 232.
Teazeling, of cloth, 232.
4 68
Index
Temperature, of houses, 70-71 ; of
churches, 374.
Temple, of loom, 223.
Tennessee, hand-weaving in, 249.
Tenting, of cloth, 232.
Terbobbin. See Chebobbin.
Terrapin, 120.
Thatch, for roofs, 15.
Threshing, 313-314.
Thumbing, in weaving, 218.
Thumb-rings, 298.
Tin, slight use of, 58.
Tinder, 48.
Tinder-box, 48.
Tinder-mill, 50.
Tinder-wheel, 49.
Tithing-men, 372, 373.
Titles, old-time, for women, 187.
Toasting-forks, 60.
Tobacco, as currency, 189; use forbid
den near meeting-house, 379.
Tomble. See Temple.
Tongs, 236.
Tow, garments of, 235-236.
Town, unit in New England, 390 ; nar
row feeling of, 391.
Townsend, revolutionary story of, 203.
Toys, of wood, 306.
Trammels, 53.
Transportation, on horseback, 176, 336
et seq. ; by wagons, 339 et seg.
Trees, girdling of, 403; drive 0^404;
under-cutting of, 404.
Trenchers, description, 80; material,
82.
Trivets, 60.
Troughs, making of, 311.
Trumbull, Jonathan, chaise of, 353.
Trunks, 348.
Trunk pedler, 300.
Tumble. See Temple.
Tummings, 195.
Turkeys, wild, 109; size of, 109-110;
price of, no.
Turkey wheat, 129. See Corn.
Turkey-wings, 309.
Turnips, 145.
Turnpikes, 349-350.
Turnspit dog, 65.
Tusser, Thomas, quoted, 35, 168, 255,
321-322.
Twifflers, 106.
Van der Donck, quoted, 118, 119, 120.
Van Tienhoven, quoted, 2.
Veils, interference about, 285.
Venison. See Deer.
Vermont, candle-wood in, 32 ; broom-
making in, 303.
Victualling, name for tavern, 356.
Violins, in meeting, 378.
Virginia, early houses in, n ; palisados
in, 24; candle-wood in, 32; first fork
in, 78 ; silver in, 91 ; table furnish
ings in, 104 ; deer in, 108-109 1 birds
and fowl in, no; lobsters in, 118 ;
crabs in, 118 ; oysters in, 119 ; plenty
of fish in, 118-119; corn m . I2 7 .
massacre in, 127; windmills in, 133;
toll in, 133; starvation in, 127, 144;
pumpkins in, 143; locust groves in,
163; flax culture in, 181-182; wool
culture in, 189-190; cloths in, 237;
broom-corn in, 256 ; sumptuary laws
in, 285 ; outfit of settlers, 289 ; roads
in, 331 ; taverns in, 361 ; Sunday ob
servance in, 380; churches in, 381-
382; cows in, 400; fences in, 402.
Virginia fence, 25.
Voiders, 106-107.
Voorleezer, duties of, 386.
Waffle-irons, 61.
Wagon. See Conestoga wagon.
Warming-pans, 72.
Warning out, 392; a mystery in, 393.
Warp, 218.
Warp-beam, 214.
Warping, 217-218.
Warping-bars, 217-218.
Warping-needle, 219.
Warp-threads. See Warp.
Index
469
Washing, domestic, 255.
Washington, George, home of, 13; out
fit of his stepdaughter, 291 ; dress of,
293 ; as canal promoter, 353.
Washington, Martha, thrift of, 237-238 ;
netting of, 265.
Watches, 299.
Watch-chains, 263.
Water, as beverage, 147.
Watering of flax, 169.
Water-fowl, plenty of, 125 ; enumerated,
125.
Watertown, windmill at, 133 ; restric
tions of settlement in, 393.
Wax, candles of, 37; bayberry, 39-40.
Waynesville, hand-weaving in, 250.
Wayside Inn, 357-358.
Weather-skirt, 295.
Weavers, status of, 212-213; seat f>
221 ; working-hours of, 228 ; in Nar-
ragansett, 241-244.
Weaving, noise of, 212, 220; three
motions in, 221-222 ; disappearance
of, 227 ; on tape-looms, 225-227 ;
race between spinning and, 228-230 ;
of linens, 230-231 ; of rag-carpet,
239-240; of coverlets, 242-246; dur
ing Civil War, 249. See Loom.
Weaving-room. See Loom-room.
Webster, 187.
Weeds, once garden flowers, 435-436,
447-449.
Weight-timbers, n.
Weld, quoted, 348-349.
Well-sweep, 443-444.
Westmoreland Revival, 227.
Whale-fishing, 41.
" Whang," 417.
Wheat, planting of, 147.
Wheel. See Flax-wheel and Wool-
wheel.
Wheel-peg, 198.
Wheelwrights, early use of wood, 176.
Whipping-post, location of, 367.
White-Ellery House, 19.
White-weed, in America, 449.
Whitney, Eli, invention of, 208.
Whittemore, Amos, invention of, 205.
Whittier, quoted, 73-74, 181, 370, 413,
436 ; homespun attire of, 248.
Whittling, 321-323.
Wicks for candles, 34, 45.
Wigs, wearing of, 296-297 ; denounced,
296; names of, 296-299; cost of,
297.
Wigwams, 3.
William and Mary College, tax for,
109.
Williams, Roger, quoted, 134, 137, 285.
Windmills, Indian fear of, 130; first
erected, 133 ; of John Winthrop,
133 ; in Virginia, 133.
Windows, of glass, 23 ; of oiled paper,
23-
Windsor, boys pews in, 372.
Wine-taster, 87.
Winslow house, knocker of, 29.
Winthrop, John, fork of, 77 ; jug of,
98 ; his use of water as beverage,
148 ; pick-a-back, 329 ; sedan-chair
of, 356.
Winthrop, John, Jr., quoted, 32; mill
of, 133-
Woad-wax, in Massachusetts, 448.
Woburn, long services at, 376.
Wolfskin bags in meeting, 374.
Wolves heads, nailed on meeting-
houses, 364-365.
Wood, trenchers of, 80-81 ; utensils of,
82 ; spoons of, 88 ; for shuttles, 225 ;
unusual uses of, 305 ; toys of, 306;
natural shapes in, 308-311.
Wood, quoted, 32-33, 137.
Wool, an ancient industry, 187 ; early
culture of, 187-193 ; manufacture of,
187-193; restraints on manufacture,
191-192; in England, 192; prepara
tion of, 193; dyeing of, 193-194;
carding of, 194-195 ; combing of,
196 ; spinning of, 1.96-198. See Yarn.
Wool-cards, described, 194-195 ; his
tory of, 204-206.
470
Index
Wool-combs, 196.
Wool-wheel, price-o^ 177.
Wordsworth, quoted, on spinning, 179.
Worsted stuffs, 233.
Wrathe. See Raddle.
Yarn, spinning of, 197-198, 201- 229;
winding of, 198; skeining of, 199;
cleansing of, 202 ; water-twist, 229.
Yarn beam. See Warp-beam.
Yarn roll. See Warp-beam.
GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY
BDDD^SbSTD
