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    Life in COLONIAL DAYS
    by ALICE MORSE EARLE




    Home Life in
    COLONIAL
    DAYS

    Written by
    ALICE MORSE EARLE
    in the year 1898

    THE BERKSHIRE TRAVELLER PRESS
    Stockbridge, Massachusetts

    _THIS BOOK IS BEGUN
    AS IT IS ENDED
    IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER_




    _Foreword_


    _The illustrations for this book are in every case from real articles
    and scenes, usually from those still in existence--rare relics of past
    days. The pictures are the symbols of years of careful search, patient
    investigation, and constant watchfulness. Many a curious article as
    nameless and incomprehensible as the totem of an extinct Indian tribe
    has been studied, compared, inquired and written about, and finally
    triumphantly 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 Bostonian Society, of the American Antiquarian Society, and
    many State Historical Societies have been freely searched; and to the
    officers of these societies I give cordial thanks for their coöperation
    and assistance in my work._

    _The artistic and correct photographic representation of many of these
    objects I owe to Mr. William F. 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 obtained, 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 implements 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 spinning, weaving, and kindred occupations, and now half forgotten,
    might be given the descriptive title, a "homespun 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

    I. Homes of the Colonists 1

    II. The Light of Other Days 32

    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




    Home Life in Colonial Days




    CHAPTER I

    HOMES OF THE COLONISTS


    When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in
    finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical 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
    immediate shelter, were baffled by pioneer conditions, and had to turn
    to many poor expedients, and be satisfied 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 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 _Wonder-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 Pennsylvania caves were used by newcomers
    as homes for a long time, certainly half a century. They generally were
    formed by digging into the ground about four feet in depth on the banks
    or low cliffs near the river front. The walls were then built up of sods
    or earth laid on poles or brush; thus half only of the chamber was
    really under ground. If dug into a side hill, the earth formed at least
    two walls. The roofs were layers of tree limbs covered over with sod, or
    bark, or rushes and bark. The chimneys were laid of cobblestone or
    sticks of wood mortared with clay and grass. The settlers were thankful
    even for these poor shelters, and 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 Abraham
    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 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 substantial 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 puncheons,
    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

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