young lady; for a few months after the episode Madam Coleman wrote:
"Sally won't go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and a great
many other things she don't need. I tell her fine things are cheaper in
Barbadoes. She says she will go to Barbadoes in the Spring. She is well
and brisk, says her Brother has nothing to do with her as long as her
father is alive." The same lady informs us that Sally's instruction in
writing cost one pound, seven shillings, and four pence, the entrance
fee for dancing lessons, one pound, and the bill for dancing lessons for
four months, two pounds. No doubt it was worth the price; for later
Sally became rather a dashing society belle.

One thing always emphasized in the training of the colonial girl was
manners or etiquette--the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle
says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of
etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood
life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial
miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: "Never sit down
at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for nothing; tarry
till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it.
Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold
not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of
plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is
eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not,
wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue,
Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to
thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help
him out if he tell it not right. Snigger not; never question the Truth
of it."

Girls were early taught these forms, and in addition received not only
advice but mechanical aid to insure their standing erect and sitting
upright. The average child of to-day would rebel most vigorously against
such contrivances, and justly; for in a few American schools, as in
English institutions, young ladies were literally tortured through
sitting in stocks, being strapped to backboards, and wearing stiffened
coats and stays re-inforced with strips of wood and metal. Such methods
undoubtedly made the colonial dame erect and perhaps stately in
appearance, but they contributed a certain artificial, thin-chested
structure that the healthy girl of to-day would abhor.

As we have seen, however, some women of the day contrived to pick up
unusual bits of knowledge, or made surprising expeditions into the realm
of literature and philosophy. Samuel Peters, writing in his _General
History of Connecticut_ in 1781, declared of their accomplishments:
"The women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous and to be compared to
the prude rather than the European polite lady. They are not permitted
to read plays; cannot converse about whist, quadrille or operas; but
will freely talk upon the subjects of history, geography, and
mathematics. They are great casuists and polemical divines; and I have
known not a few of them so well schooled in Greek and Latin as often to
put to the blush learned gentlemen." And yet Hannah Adams, writing in
her _Memoir_ in 1832, had this to say of educational opportunities in
Connecticut during the latter half of the eighteenth century: "My health
did not even admit of attending school with the children in the
neighborhood where I resided. The country schools, at that time, were
kept but a few months in the year, and all that was then taught in them
was reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the summer, the children were
instructed by females in reading, sewing, and other kinds of work. The
books chiefly made use of were the Bible and Psalter. Those who have had
the advantages of receiving the rudiments of their education at the
schools of the present day, can scarcely form an adequate idea of the
contrast between them, and those of an earlier age; and of the great
improvements which have been made even in the common country schools.
The disadvantages of my early education I have experienced during life;
and, among various others, the acquiring of a very faulty pronunciation;
a habit contracted so early, that I cannot wholly rectify it in later
years."

North and South women complained of the lack of educational advantages.
Madame Schuyler deplored the scarcity of books and of facilities for
womanly education, and spoke with irony of the literary tastes of the
older ladies: "Shakespeare was a questionable author at the Flatts,
where the plays were considered grossly familiar, and by no means to be
compared to 'Cato' which Madame Schuyler greatly admired. The 'Essay on
Man' was also in high esteem with this lady."[73] Many women of the day
realized their lack of systematic training, and keenly regretted the
absence of opportunity to obtain it. Abigail Adams, writing to her
husband on the subject, says, "If you complain of education in sons what
shall I say of daughters who every day experience the want of it? With
regard to the education of my own children I feel myself soon out of my
depth, destitute in every part of education. I most sincerely wish that
some more liberal plan might be laid and executed for the benefit of the
rising generation and that our new Constitution may be distinguished for
encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen,
and philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would
laugh at me, but you, I know, have a mind too enlarged and liberal to
disregard sentiment. If as much depends as is allowed upon the early
education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the
deepest root great benefit must arise from the literary accomplishments
in women."[74]

And again, Hannah Adams' _Memoir_ of 1832 expresses in the following
words the intellectual hunger of the Colonial woman: "I was very
desirous of learning the rudiments of Latin, Greek, geography, and
logic. Some gentlemen who boarded at my father's offered to instruct me
in these branches of learning gratis, and I pursued these studies with
indescribable pleasure and avidity. I still, however, sensibly felt the
want of a more systematic education, and those advantages which females
enjoy in the present day.... My reading was very desultory, and novels
engaged too much of my attention."

After all, it would seem that fancy sewing was considered far more
requisite than science and literature in the training of American girls
of the eighteenth century. As soon as the little maid was able to hold a
needle she was taught to knit, and at the age of four or five commonly
made excellent mittens and stockings. A girl of fourteen made in 1760 a
pair of silk stockings with open work design and with initials knitted
on the instep, and every stage of the work from the raising and winding
of the silk to the designing and spinning was done by one so young.
Girls began to make samplers almost before they could read their
letters, and wonderful were the birds and animals and scenes depicted in
embroidery by mere children. An advertisement of the day is significant
of the admiration held for such a form of decorative work: "Martha
Gazley, late from Great Britain, now in the city of New York Makes and
Teacheth the following curious Works, viz.: Artificial Fruit and Flowers
and other Wax-works, Nuns-work, Philigre and Pencil Work upon Muslin,
all sorts of Needle-Work, and Raising of Paste, as also to paint upon
Glass, and Transparant for Sconces, with other Works. If any young
Gentlewomen, or others are inclined to learn any or all of the
above-mentioned curious Works, they may be carefully instructed in the
same by said Martha Gazley."

Thus the evidence leads us to believe that a colonial woman's education
consisted in the main of training in how to conduct and care for a home.
It was her principal business in life and for it she certainly was well
prepared. In the seventeenth century girls attended either a short term
public school or a dame's school, or, as among the better families in
the South, were taught by private tutors. In the eighteenth century they
frequently attended boarding schools or female seminaries, and here
learned--at least in the middle colonies and the South--not only reading
and writing and arithmetic, but dancing, music, drawing, French, and
"manners." In Virginia and New York, as we have seen, illiteracy among
seventeenth century women was astonishingly common; but in the
eighteenth century those above the lowest classes in all three sections
could at least read, write, and keep accounts, and some few had dared to
reach out into the sphere of higher learning. That many realized their
intellectual poverty and deplored it is evident; how many more who kept
no diaries and left no letters hungered for culture we shall never know;
but the very longing of these colonial women is probably one of the main
causes of that remarkable movement for the higher education of American
women so noticeable in the earlier years of the nineteenth century.
Their smothered ambition undoubtedly gave birth to an intellectual
advance of women unequalled elsewhere in the world.


FOOTNOTES:

[43] Vol. I, p. 231.

[44] Vol. I, p. 161.

[45] Vol. I, p. 165.

[46] Vol. I, p. 344.

[47] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 24.

[48] _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 27.

[49] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 8.

[50] Smyth: _Writings of Ben Franklin_, Vol. III, p. 203.

[51] Smyth: _Writings of Ben Franklin_, Vol. III, p. 4.

[52] Ford: _Writings of Thomas Jefferson_, Vol. III. p. 345

[53] _Selections from Fithian's Writings_, Aug. 12, 1774.

[54] _American Nation Series, England in America_, p. 116.

[55] Vol. I, p. 299.

[56] Vol. I, p. 301.

[57] Vol. I, p. 311.

[58] _Institutional History of Virginia_, Vol. I, p. 454.

[59] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 50.

[60] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 51.

[61] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 49.

[62] Turell: _Memoirs of Life and Death of Mrs. Jane Turell._

[63] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 11.

[64] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 9.

[65] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 136.

[66] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 267.

[67] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 401.

[68] Smyth: _Writings of Franklin_, Vol. I, p. 344.

[69] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 344.

[70] Smyth: Vol. III, p. 431.

[71] Smyth: Vol. V, p. 345.

[72] Quoted in Earle's _Child Life in Colonial Days_, p. 113.

[73] Humphreys; _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 75.

[74] Brooks: _Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_, p. 199.




CHAPTER III

COLONIAL WOMAN AND THE HOME


_I. The Charm of the Colonial Home_

After all, it is in the home that the soul of the colonial woman is
fully revealed. We may say in all truthfulness that there never was a
time when the home wielded a greater influence than during the colonial
period of American history. For the home was then indeed the center and
heart of social life. There were no men's clubs, no women's societies,
no theatres, no moving pictures, no suffrage meetings, none of the
hundred and one exterior activities that now call forth both father and
mother from the home circle. The home of pre-revolutionary days was far
more than a place where the family ate and slept. Its simplicity, its
confidence, its air of security and permanence, and its atmosphere of
refuge or haven of rest are characteristics to be grasped in their true
significance only through a thorough reading of the writings of those
early days. The colonial woman had never received a diploma in domestic
science or home economics; she had never heard of balanced diets; she
had never been taught the arrangement of color schemes; but she knew the
secret of making from four bare walls the sacred institution with all
its subtle meanings comprehended under the one word, home.

All home life, of course, was not ideal. There were idle, slovenly
women, misguided female fanatics, as there are to-day. Too often in
considering the men and women who made colonial history we are liable to
think that all were of the stamp of Winthrop, Bradford, Sewall, Adams,
and Washington. Instead, they were people like the readers of this book,
neither saints nor depraved sinners. In later chapters we shall see that
many broke the laws of man and God, enforced cruel penalties on their
brothers and sisters, frequently disobeyed the ten commandments, and
balanced their charity with malice. Then, too, there was an ungentle,
rough, coarse element in the under-strata of society--an element
accentuated under the uncouth pioneer conditions. But, in the main, we
may believe that the great majority of citizens of New England, the
substantial traders and merchants of the middle colonies, and the
planters of the South, were law-abiding, God-fearing people who believed
in the sanctity of their homes and cherished them. We shall see that
these homes were well worth cherishing.


_II. Domestic Love and Confidence_

In this discussion of the colonial home, as in previous discussions, we
must depend for information far more upon the writings by men than upon
those by women. Yet, here and there, in the diaries and letters of wives
and mothers we catch glimpses of what the institution meant to
women--glimpses of that deep, abiding love and faith that have made the
home a favorite theme of song and story. In the correspondence between
husband and wife we have conclusive evidence that woman was held in high
respect, her advice often asked, and her influence marked. The letters
of Governor Winthrop to his wife Margaret might be offered as striking
illustrations of the confidence, sympathy, and love existing in colonial
home life. Thus, he writes from England: "My Dear Wife: Commend my Love
to them all. I kisse & embrace thee, my deare wife, & all my children, &
leave thee in His armes who is able to preserve you all, & to fulfill
our joye in our happye meeting in His good time. Amen. Thy faithfull
husband." And again just before leaving England he writes to her: "I
must begin now to prepare thee for our long parting which growes very
near. I know not how to deal with thee by arguments; for if thou wert as
wise and patient as ever woman was, yet it must needs be a great trial
to thee, and the greater because I am so dear to thee. That which I must
chiefly look at in thee for thy ground of contentment is thy godliness."

Nor were the wife's replies less warm and affectionate. Hear this bit
from a letter of three centuries ago: "MY MOST SWEET HUSBAND:--How
dearely welcome thy kinde letter was to me I am not able to expresse.
The sweetnesse of it did much refresh me. What can be more pleasinge to
a wife, than to heare of the welfayre of her best beloved, and how he is
pleased with hir pore endevors.... I wish that I may be all-wayes
pleasinge to thee, and that those comforts we have in each other may be
dayly increced as far as they be pleasinge to God.... I will doe any
service whearein I may please my good Husband. I confess I cannot doe
ynough for thee...."

Is it not evident that passionate, reverent love, amounting almost to
adoration, was fairly common in those early days? Numerous other
writings of the colonial period could add their testimony. Sometimes
the proof is in the letters of men longing for home and family;
sometimes in the messages of the wife longing for the return of her
"goodman"; sometimes it is discerned in bits of verse, such as those by
Ann Bradstreet, or in an enthusiastic description of a woman, such as
that by Jonathan Edwards about his future wife. Note the fervor of this
famous eulogy by the "coldly logical" Edwards; can it be excelled in
genuine warmth by the love letters of famous men in later days?

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that
Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain
seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes
to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight and that she
hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him--that she expects
after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the
world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too
well to let her remain at a distance from him always.... Therefore, if
you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures,
she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or
affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity
in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct;
and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you
would give her all the world, lest she offend this Great Being. She is
of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind....
She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and
seems to be always full of joy and pleasure.... She loves to be alone,
walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible
always conversing with her."

In several poems Ann Bradstreet, daughter of Gov. Thomas Dudley, and
wife of Simon Bradstreet, mother of eight children, and first of the
women poets of America, expressed rather ardently for a Puritan dame,
her love for her husband. Thus:

"I crave this boon, this errand by the way:
Commend me to the man more lov'd than life,
Show him the sorrows of his widow'd wife,

*       *       *       *       *

"My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,
And, if he love, how can he there abide?"

Again, we note the following:

"If ever two were one, then surely we;
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can."[75]

"I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold,
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor aught but love from thee give recompense.
My love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray,
Then while we live in love let's persevere,
That when we live no more we may live ever."

The letters of Abigail Adams to her husband might be offered as further
evidence of the affectionate relationships existing between man and wife
in colonial days. Our text books on history so often leave the
impression that the fear of God utterly prevented the colonial home from
being a place of confident love; but it is possible that the social
restraints imposed by the church outside the home reacted in such a
manner as to compel men and women to express more fervently the
affections otherwise repressed. When we read such lines as the following
in Mrs. Adams' correspondence, we may conjecture that the years of
necessary separation from her husband during the Revolutionary days,
must have meant as much of longing and pain as a similar separation
would mean to a modern wife:

"My dearest Friend:

"...I hope soon to receive the dearest of friends, and the
tenderest of husbands, with that unabated affection which has for
years past, and will whilst the vital spark lasts, burn in the
bosom of your affectionate

A. Adams."

"Boston, 25 October, 1777.... This day, dearest of friends,
completes thirteen years since we were solemnly united in
wedlock. Three years of this time we have been cruelly separated.
I have patiently as I could, endured it, with the belief that you
were serving your country...."

"May 18, 1778.... Beneath my humble roof, blessed with the
society and tenderest affection of my dear partner, I have
enjoyed as much felicity and as exquisite happiness, as falls to
the share of mortals...."[76]

And read these snatches from the correspondence of James and Mercy
Warren. Writing to Mercy, in 1775, the husband says: "I long to see you.
I long to sit with you under our Vines & have none to make us afraid....
I intend to fly Home I mean as soon as Prudence, Duty & Honor will
permitt." Again, in 1780, he writes: "MY DEAR MERCY: ... When shall I
hear from you? My affection is strong, my anxieties are many about you.
You are alone.... If you are not well & happy, how can I be so?"[77] Her
loving solicitude for his welfare is equally evident in her reply of
December 30 1777: "Oh! these painful absences. Ten thousand anxieties
invade my Bosom on your account & some times hold my lids waking many
hours of the Cold & Lonely Night."[78]

Those heroic days tried the soul of many a wife who held the home
together amidst privation and anguish, while the husband battled for the
homeland. From the trenches as well as from the congressional hall came
many a letter fully as tender, if not so stately, as that written by
George Washington after accepting the appointment as Commander-in-Chief
of the Continental Army:

"MY DEAREST:--...You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I assure you,
in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I
have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my
unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness
of its being a trust too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy
more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most
distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times
seven years.... My unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness you will
feel from being left alone."[79]

Even the calm and matter-of-fact Franklin does not fail to express his
affection for wife and home; for, writing to his close friend, Miss Ray,
on March 4, 1755, he describes his longing in these words: "I began to
think of and wish for home, and, as I drew nearer, I found the
attraction stronger and stronger. My diligence and speed increased with
my impatience. I drove on violently, and made such long stretches that a
very few days brought me to my own house, and to the arms of my good old
wife and children, where I remain, thanks to God, at present well and
happy."[80]

And sprightly Eliza Pinckney expresses her admiration for her husband
with her characteristic frankness, when she writes: "I am married, and
the gentleman I have made choice of comes up to my plan in every title."
Years later, after his death, she writes with the same frankness to her
mother: "I was for more than 14 years the happiest mortal upon Earth!
Heaven had blessed me beyond the lott of Mortals & left me nothing to
wish for.... I had not a desire beyond him."[81]

If the letters and other writings describing home life in those old days
may be accepted as true, it is not to be wondered at that husbands
longed so intensely to rejoin the domestic circle. The atmosphere of the
colonial household will be more minutely described when we come to
consider the social life of the women of the times; but at this point we
may well hear a few descriptions of the quaint and thoroughly lovable
homes of our forefathers. William Byrd, the Virginia scholar, statesman,
and wit, tells in some detail of the home of Colonel Spotswood, which he
visited in 1732:

"In the Evening the noble Colo. came home from his Mines, who
saluted me very civily, and Mrs. Spotswood's Sister, Miss Theky,
who had been to meet him en Cavalier, was so kind too as to bid
me welcome. We talkt over a legend of old Storys, supp'd about 9
and then prattl'd with the Ladys, til twas time for a Travellour
to retire. In the meantime I observ'd my old Friend to be very
Uxorious, and exceedingly fond of his Children. This was so
opposite to the Maxims he us'd to preach up before he was
marry'd, that I you'd not forbear rubbing up the Memory of them.
But he gave a very good-natur'd turn to his Change of Sentiments,
by alleging that who ever brings a poor Gentlewoman into so
solitary a place, from all her Friends and acquaintance, wou'd be
ungrateful not to use her and all that belongs to her with all
possible Tenderness."

"...At Nine we met over a Pot of Coffee, which was not quite
strong enough to give us the Palsy. After Breakfast the Colo. and
I left the Ladys to their Domestick Affairs.... Dinner was both
elegant and plentifull. The afternoon was devoted to the Ladys,
who shew'd me one of their most beautiful Walks. They conducted
me thro' a Shady Lane to the Landing, and by the way made me
drink some very fine Water that issued from a Marble Fountain,
and ran incessantly. Just behind it was a cover'd Bench, where
Miss Theky often sat and bewail'd her fate as an unmarried woman."

"...In the afternoon the Ladys walkt me about amongst all their
little Animals, with which they amuse themselves, and furnish the
Table.... Our Ladys overslept themselves this Morning, so that
we did not break our Fast till Ten."[82]

We are so accustomed to look upon George Washington as a godlike man of
austere grandeur, that we seldom or never think of him as lover or
husband. But see how home-like the life at Mount Vernon was, as
described by a young Fredericksburg woman who visited the Washingtons
one Christmas week: "I must tell you what a charming day I spent at
Mount Vernon with mama and Sally. The Gen'l and Madame came home on
Christmas Eve, and such a racket the Servants made, for they were glad
of their coming! Three handsome young officers came with them. All
Christmas afternoon people came to pay their respects and duty. Among
them were stately dames and gay young women. The Gen'l seemed very
happy, and Mistress Washington was from Daybreake making everything as
agreeable as possible for everybody."[83]

Alexander Hamilton found life in his domestic circle so pleasant that he
declared he resigned his seat in Washington's cabinet to enjoy more
freely such happiness. Brooks in her _Dames and Daughters of Colonial
Days_,[84] gives us a pleasing picture of Mrs. Hamilton, "seated at the
table cutting slices of bread and spreading them with butter for the
younger boys, who, standing by her side, read in turn a chapter in the
Bible or a portion of Goldsmith's _Rome_. When the lessons were finished
the father and the elder children were called to breakfast, after which
the boys were packed off to school." "You cannot imagine how domestic I
am becoming," Hamilton writes. "I sigh for nothing but the society of my
wife and baby."


_III. Domestic Toil and Strain_

Despite the charm of colonial home life, however, the strain of that
life upon womankind was far greater than is the strain of modern
domestic duties. In New England this was probably more true than in the
South; for servants were far less plentiful in the North than in
Virginia and the Carolinas. But, on the other hand, the very number of
the domestics in the slave colonies added to the duties and anxieties of
the Southern woman; for genuine executive ability was required in
maintaining order and in feeding, clothing, and caring for the childish,
shiftless, unthinking negroes of the plantation. In the South the slaves
relieved the women of the middle and upper classes of almost manual
labor, and in spite of the constant watchfulness and tact required of
the Southern colonial dame, she possibly found domestic life somewhat
easier than did her sister to the North. The dreary drudgery, the
intense physical labor required of the colonial housewife was of such a
nature that the woman of to-day can scarcely comprehend it. Aside from
the astonishing number of child-births and child-deaths, aside too from
the natural privations, dangers, ravages of war, accidents and diseases,
incident to the settlement of a new country, there was the constant
drain upon the woman's physical strength through lack of those household
conveniences which every home maker now considers mere necessities. It
was a day of polished and sanded floors, and the proverbial neatness of
the colonial woman demanded that these be kept as bright as a mirror.
Many a hundred miles over those floors did the colonial dame travel--on
her knees. Then too every reputable household possessed its abundance of
pewter or silver, and such ware had to be polished with painstaking
regularity. Indeed the wealth of many a dame of those old days consisted
mainly of silver, pewter, and linen, and her pride in these possessions
was almost as vast as the labor she expended in caring for them. What a
collection was in those old-time linen chests! Humphreys, in her
_Catherine Schuyler_, copies the inventory of articles in one: "35
homespun Sheets, 9 Fine sheets, 12 Tow Sheets, 13 bolster-cases, 6
pillow-biers, 9 diaper brakefast cloathes, 17 Table cloathes, 12 damask
Napkins, 27 homespun Napkins, 31 Pillow-cases, 11 dresser Cloathes and a
damask Cupboard Cloate." And this too before the day of the
washing-machine, the steam laundry, and the electric iron! The mere
energy lost through slow hand-work in those times, if transformed into
electrical power, would probably have run all the mills and factories in
America previous to 1800.

There is a decided tendency among modern housewives to take a hostile
view of the ever recurring task of preparing food for the family; but if
these housewives were compelled suddenly to revert to the method and
amount of cooking of colonial days, there would be universal rebellion.
Apparently indigestion was little known among the colonists--at least
among the men, and the amount of heavy food consumed by the average
individual is astounding to the modern reader. The caterer's bill for a
banquet given by the corporation of New York to Lord Cornberry may help
us to realize the gastronomic ability of our ancestors:

"Mayor ... Dr.
To a piece of beef and cabbage,
To a dish of tripe and cowheel
To a leg of pork and turnips
To 2 puddings
To a surloyn of beef
To a turkey and onions
To a leg mutton and pickles
To a dish chickens
To minced pyes
To fruit, cheese, bread, etc.
To butter for sauce
To dressing dinner,
To 31 bottles wine
To beer and syder."

We must remember, moreover, that the greater part of all food consumed
in a family was prepared through its every stage by that family. No
factory-canned goods, no ready-to-warm soups, no evaporated fruits, no
potted meats stood upon the grocers' shelves as a very present help in
time of need. On the farm or plantation and even in the smaller towns
the meat was raised, slaughtered, and cured at home, the wheat, oats,
and corn grown, threshed, and frequently made into flour and meal by the
family, the fruit dried or preserved by the housewife. Molasses, sugar,
spices, and rum might be imported from the West Indies, but the everyday
foods must come from the local neighborhood, and through the hard manual
efforts of the consumer. An old farmer declared in the _American
Museum_ in 1787: "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 very building of a fire to cook the food was a laborious task with
flint and steel, one generally avoided by never allowing the embers on
the family hearth to die. Fire was indeed a precious gift in that day,
and that the methods sometimes used in obtaining it were truly
primitive, may be conjectured from the following extract from Prince's
_Annals of New England_: "April 21, 1631. The house of John Page of
Waterton burnt by carrying a few coals from one house to another. A coal
fell by the way and kindled the leaves."[85]

Over those great fire-places of colonial times many a wife presented
herself as a burnt offering to her lord and master, the goodman of the
house. The pots and kettles that ornamented the kitchen walls were
implements for pre-historic giants rather than for frail women. The
brass or copper kettles often holding fifteen gallons, and the huge iron
pots weighing forty pounds, were lugged hither and thither by women
whose every ounce of strength was needed for the too frequent pangs of
child-birth. The colonists boasted of the number of generations a kettle
would outlast; but perhaps the generations were too short--thanks to the
size of the kettle.

And yet with such cumbersome utensils, the good wives of all the
colonies prepared meals that would drive the modern cook to distraction.
Hear these eighteenth century comments on Philadelphia menus:

"This plain Friend [Miers Fisher, a young Quaker lawyer], with
his plain but pretty wife with her Thees and Thous, had provided
us a costly entertainment: ducks, hams, chickens, beef, pig,
tarts, creams, custards, jellies, fools, trifles, floating
islands, beer, porter, punch, wine and along, 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 dessert of fruits, raisins,
almonds, pears, peaches.

"A most sinful feast again! everything which could delight 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."[86]

To be a housewife in colonial days evidently required the strength of
Hercules, the skill of Tubal Cain, and the patience of Job. Such an
advertisement as that appearing in the _Pennsylvania Packet_ of
September 23, 1780, was not an exceptional challenge to female
ingenuity and perseverance:

"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on
which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied
Reputation, an affiable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition;
cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the
female Concerns 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 treated with respect and esteem, and
meet with every encouragement due to such a character."

It is apparent that besides the work now commonly carried on in the
household, colonial women performed many a duty now abrogated to the
factory. In fact, so far are we removed from the industrial customs of
the era that many of the terms then common in every home have lost all
meaning for the average modern housewife. For nearly two centuries the
greater part of the preparation of material for clothing was done by the
family; the spinning, the weaving, the dyeing, the making of thread,
these and many similar domestic activities preceded the fashion of a
garment. When we remember that the sewing machine was unknown we may
comprehend to some extent the immense amount of labor performed by women
and girls of those early days. The possession of many slaves or servants
offered but little if any relief; for such ownership involved, of
course, the manufacture of additional clothing. Humphreys in her
_Catherine Schuyler_ presents this quotation commenting upon a skilled
housewife: "Notwithstanding they have so large a family to regulate
(from 50 to 60 blacks) Mrs. Schuyler seeth to the Manufacturing of
suitable Cloathing for all her family, all of which is the produce of
her plantation in which she is helped by her Mama & Miss Polly and the
whole is done with less Combustion & noise than in many Families who
have not more than 4 or 5 Persons in the whole Family."


_IV. Domestic Pride_

Of course the well-to-do Americans of the eighteenth century at length
adopted the custom of importing the finer cloth, silk, satin and
brocade; but after the middle of the century the anti-British sentiment
impelled even the wealthiest either to make or to buy the coarser
American cloth. Indeed, it became a matter of genuine pride to many a
patriotic dame that she could thus use the spinning wheel in behalf of
her country. Daughters of Liberty, having agreed to drink no tea and to
wear no garments of foreign make, had spinning circles similar to the
quilting bees of later days, and it was no uncommon sight between 1770
and 1785 to see groups of women, carrying spinning wheels through the
streets, going to such assemblies. See this bit of description of such a
meeting held at Rowley, Massachusetts: "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 Jedekiah 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...."[87]

If the modern woman had to labor for clothing as did her
great-great-grandmother, styles in dress would become astonishingly
simple. After the spinning and weaving, the cloth was dyed or
bleached, and this in itself was a task to try the fortitude of a
strong soul. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the
importation of silks and finer materials somewhat lessened this form
of work; but even through the first decade of the nineteenth century
spinning and weaving continued to be a part of the work of many a
household. The Revolution, as we have seen, gave a new impetus to this
art, and the first ladies of the land proudly exhibited their skill.
As Wharton remarks in her _Martha Washington_: "Mrs. Washington, who
would not have the heart to starve her direst foe within her own
gates, heartily co-operated with her husband and his colleagues. The
spinning wheels and carding and weaving machines were set to work with
fresh spirit at Mt. Vernon.... Some years later, in New Jersey, Mrs.
Washington told a friend that she often kept sixteen spinning wheels
in constant operation, and at one time Lund Washington spoke of a
larger number. Two of her own dresses of cotton striped with silk Mrs.