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Fe reisioies asf betete Te fejtist *ielsserere eitisieseieists a itialeneld etree pied : baste fessiches peat ees teels eae: itis tay gorea Patents sre Terere eisieiesers: i SE geste erty be joreieiy a eters be hts Wee bet hae Teak Meee) He babeetet leleretsiere) sia a pied ste peze| vysisyereperersyay gt jererepeiereseysy repeisre viele sels t i Mm operererejersiere: magico beh ae Thahe Sica sen : : " cater terseseapaes epierean polite yea tae be bibs Lata Y r tee pe sT SS * Hees 1 widierbiereie gst aelte Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from , Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/colonialdamesgoo00ear|_0 vie wh re D 7 : . » i ry me Hal 7 4 j i cj ’ Hit ey x 1 AMERICAN CLASSICS COLONIAL DAMES AND ar yh an ys GOOD WIVES, Alice Morse E arle U FREDERICK UNGAR PUBLISHING CO. NEW YORK Republished 1962 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 62-9682 CONTENTS Chapter Page Lf. Consorts and Relicts . : 2 , ; : I IL. Women of Affairs , : 5 45 LILI, “ Double-Tongued and Naughty Women & tae. LV. Boston Neighbors . : . : ‘ 0g V. A Fearfull Female. T; ee lens A : ek VI. Two Colonial Adventuresses : ; : 160 VIL. The Universal Friend. : : ; Mes VIII, Eighteenth-Century Manners ; : 5 789 IX. Their Amusements and Accomplishments . 21.206 X. Daughters of Liberty . : : . - 240 XI. A Revolutionary Housewife. : . ~ 1 250 XIL, Fireside Industries : . . é : 276 oy $y a ih vy ery) U ei ‘ 4st, es ry") i ae aes _ = ch F| a age ar Ne ne im as fi | ban *) i ‘y Mes aan ais +. 1 aera ‘ eit von | a4 SAY pyres eet ‘ a yA AH “ph ri ad SPB " Re Hae. ane Heb ret < egtlanavety SDN ae wee | ee Ry i: te as, . ¥ ’ 1 v + = ¥ : COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. CHAPTER I. CONSORTS AND RELICTS. N the early days of the colony of Massa- chusetts Bay, careful lists were sent back to old England by the magistrates, tell- ing what “to provide to send to New Eng- land” in order to ensure the successful planting and tender nourishing of the new settlement. The earliest list includes such b homely items as “benes and pese,” tame turkeys, copper kettles, all kinds of useful apparel and wholesome food; but the list is headed with a most significant, a typically Puritan item, W/inzsters. The list sent to the Emigration Society by the Virginian colonists might equally well have been headed, to show their most crying need, with the word Wives. 2 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. The settlement of Virginia bore an entirely different aspect from that of New England. It was a community of men who planted Jamestown. There were few women among the early Virginians. In 1608 one Mistress Forrest came over with a maid, Anne Bur- raws, who speedily married John Laydon, the first marriage of English folk in the new world. But wives were few, save squaw-wives, therefore the, colony did (uate (htiversnoin Edwin Sandys, at a meeting of the Emigra- tion Society in London, in November, 1619, said that “though the colonists are seated there in their persons some four years, they are not settled in their minds to make it their place of rest and continuance.” They all longed to gather gold and to return to England as speedily as possible, to leave that state of “solitary uncouthness,” as one planter called it. Sandys and that delight- ful gentleman, the friend and patron of Shakespeare, the Earl of Southampton, planned, as an anchor in the new land, to send out a cargo of wives for these planters, that the plantation might “grow in genera- tions and not be pieced out from without.” In 1620 the Jonathan and the London Mer- CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 3 chant brought ninety maids to Virginia on a venture, and a most successful venture it proved. There are some scenes in colonial life which stand out of the past with much clear- ness of outline, which seem, though no details survive, to present to us a vivid pic- ture. One is this landing of ninety possi- ble wives — ninety homesick, seasick but timidly inquisitive English girls — on James- town beach, where pressed forward, eagerly and amorously waiting, about four hundred lonely emigrant bachelors — bronzed, sturdy men, in leather doublets and breeches and cavalier hats, with glittering swords and bandoleers and fowling-pieces, without doubt in their finest holiday array, to choose and secure one of these fair maids as a wife. Oh, what a glorious and all-abounding court- ing, a mating-time, was straightway begun on the Virginian shore on that happy day in May. A man needed a quick eye, a ready tongue, a manly presence, if he were to succeed against such odds in supply and demand, and obtain a fair one, or indeed any one, from this bridal array. But whoso- ever he won was indeed a prize, for all were 4 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. asserted to be “ young, handsome, honestly educated maids, of honest life and carriage”’ — what more could any man desire? Gladly did the husband pay to the Emigration Company the one hundred and twenty pounds of leaf tobacco, which formed, in one sense, the purchase money for the wife. This was then valued at about eighty dol- lars: certainly a man in that matrimonial market got his money’s worth; and the complaining colonial chronicler who asserted that ministers and milk were the only cheap things in New England, might have added —and wives the only cheap things in Virginia. It was said by old writers that some of these maids were seized by fraud, were trapanned in England, that unprincipled spirits “took up rich yeomans’ daughters to serve his Majesty as breeders in Virginia unless they paid money for their release.” This trapanning was one of the crying abuses of the day, but in this case it seems scarcely present. For the girls appear to have been given a perfectly fair showing in all this barter. They were allowed to marry no irresponsible men, to go nowhere as ser- CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 5 vants, and, indeed, were not pressed to marry at all if against their wills. They were to be “housed lodged and provided for of diet” until they decided to accept a husband. Naturally nearly all did marry, and from the unions with these young, handsome and godly-carriaged maids sprang many of our respected Virginian families. No coquetry was allowed in this mating. A girl could not promise to marry two men, under pain of fine or punishment; and at — least one presumptuous and grasping man was whipped for promising marriage to two girls at the same time —as he deserved to be when wives were so scarce. Other ship-loads of maids followed, and with the establishment of these Virginian families was dealt, as is everywhere else that the family exists, a fatal blow at a com- munity of property and interests, but the colony flourished, and the civilization of the new world was begun. For the unit of society may be the individual, but the mole- cule of civilization is the family. When men had wives and homes and children they “sett down satysfied’’ and no longer sighed for England. Others followed quickly and 6 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. eagerly ; in three years thirty-five hundred emigrants had gone from England to Vir- ginia, a marked contrast to the previous years of uncertainty and dissatisfaction. Virginia was not the only colony to import wives for its colonists. In 1706 His Majesty Louis XIV. sent a company of twenty young girls to the Governor of Louisiana, Sieur de Bienville, in order to consolidate his colony. They were to be given good homes, and to be well married, and it was thought they would soon teach the Indian squaws many useful domestic employments. These young girls were of unspotted reputation, and up- right lives, but they did not love their new homes; a dispatch of the Governor says : — 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 kind of food a dogged aversion which has not been sub- dued. Hence 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. I don’t know how this venture succeeded, but I cannot fancy anything more like the CONSORTS AND RELICTS. y) personification of incompatibility, of inevita- ble failure, than to place these young Paris- ian women (who had certainly known of the manner of living of the court of Louis XIV.) in a wild frontier settlement, and to expect them to teach Western squaws any domes- tic or civilized employment, and then to make them eat Indian corn, which they loathed as do the Irish peasants. Indeed, they were to be pitied. They rebelled and threatened to run away — whither I cannot guess, nor what they would eat save Indian corn if they did run away — and they stirred up such a dissatisfaction that the imbroglio was known as the Petticoat Rebellion, and the governor was much jeered at for his un- successful wardship and his attempted matri- monial agency. In 1721 eighty young girls were landed in Louisiana as wives, but these were not godly-carriaged young maids ; they had been taken from Houses of Correction, especially from Paris. In 1728 came another company known as filles a la cassette, or casket girls, for each was given by the French govern- ment a casket of clothing to carry to the new home; and in later years it became a matter 8 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. of much pride to Louisianians that their descent was from the casket-girls, rather than from the correction-girls. Another wife-market for the poorer class of wifeless colonists was afforded through the white bond-servants who came in such numbers to the colonies. They were of three classes; convicts, free-willers or re- demptioners, and “kids’’ who had been stolen and sent to the new world, and sold often for a ten years’ term of service. Maryland, under the Baltimores, was the sole colony that not only admitted convicts, but welcomed them. The labor of the branded hand of the malefactor, the educa- tion and accomplishments of the social out- cast, the acquirements and skill of the intem- perate or over-competed tradesman, all were welcome to the Maryland tobacco-planters ; and the possibilities of rehabilitation of for- tune, health, reputation, or reéstablishment of rectitude, made the custom not unwel- come to the convict or to the redemptioner. Were the undoubted servant no rogue, but an honest tradesman, crimped in English coast-towns and haled off to Chesapeake tobacco fields, he did not travel or sojourn, CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 9 perforce, in low company. He might find himself in as choice companionship, with ladies and gentlemen of as high quality, albeit of the same character, as graced those other English harbors of ne’er-do-weels, Newgate or the Fleet Prison. Convicts came to other colonies, but not so openly nor with so much welcome as to Maryland. All the convicts who came to the colonies were not rogues, though they might be con- demned persons. The first record in Talbot © County, Maryland, of the sale of a convict, was in September, 1716, “in the third Yeare of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King George.”’ And it was for rebellion and trea- son against his Majesty that this convict, Alexander MacQueen, was taken in Lanca- shire and transported to America, and sold to Mr. Daniel Sherwood for seven years of service. With him were transported two shiploads of fellow-culprits, Jacobites, on the Friendship and Goodspeed. The London Public Record Office (on American and West India matters, No. 27) records this transpor- tation and says the men were “Scotts Reb- ells.” [Earlier still, many of the rebels of Monmouth’s rebellion had been sold for 10 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. transportation, and the ladies of the court of James had eagerly snatched at the profits of the sale. Even William Penn begged for twenty of these rebels for the Philadelphia market. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to see in them good stock for successful citi- zens. Were the convict a condemned crimi- nal, it did not necessarily follow that he or she was thoroughly vicious. One English husband is found petitioning on behalf of his wife, sentenced to death for stealing but three shillings and sixpence, that her sen- tence be changed to transportation to Vir- ginia. The redemptioners were willing immi- grants, who contracted to serve for a period of time to pay the cost of their passage, which usually had been prepaid to the mas- ter of the ship on which they came across- seas. At first the state of these free-willers was not unbearable. Alsop, who was a re- demptioner, has left on record that the work required was not excessive : — Five dayes and a halfe in the summer is the allotted time that they worke, and for two months, when the Sun is predominate in the highest pitch of his heat, they claim an antient and customary CONSORTS ANDIRELICTS: II Priviledge to repose themselves three hours in the day within the house. In Winter they do little but hunt and build fires. and he adds, “the four years I served there were not to me so slavish as a two-year’s servitude of a handicraft apprenticeship in London.” Many examples can be given where these redemptioners rose to respected social posi- tions. In 1654, in the Virginia Assembly were two members and one Burgess who had been bond-servants. Many women-servants married into the family of their employers. Alsop said it was the rule for them to marry well. The niece of Daniel Defoe ran away to escape a marriage entanglement in Eng- land, sold herself on board ship as a redemp- tioner when but eighteen years old, was bought by a Mr. Job of Cecil County, Mary- land, and soon married her employer’s son. Defoe himself said that so many good maid- servants were sold to America that there was a lack for domestic service in England. Through the stealing of children and youths to sell in the plantations, it can plainly be seen that many a wife of respect- able birth was furnished to the colonists. I2 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. This trade, by which, as Lionel Gatford wrote in 1657, young people were “cheat- ingly duckoyed by Poestigeous Plagiaries,”’ grew to a vast extent, and in it, emulating the noble ladies of the court, women of lower rank souzht a degrading profit. In 1655, in Middlesex, England, one Chris- tian Sacrett was called to answer the com- plaint of Dorothy Perkins :— She accuseth her fora spirit, one that takes upp men women and children, and sells them a-shipp to be conveyed beyond the sea, having inticed and inveigled one Edward Furnifall and Anna his wife with her infant to the waterside, and putt them aboard the ship called the Planter to be conveied to Virginia. Sarah Sharp was also asserted to be a “common taker of children and setter to Betray young men and maydens to be con- veyed to ships.” The life of that famous rogue, Bamfylde- Moore Carew, shows the method by which servants were sold in the plantations. The captain,with his cargo of trapanned English- men, among whom was Carew, cast anchor at Miles River in Talbot County, Maryland, ordered a gun to be fired, and a hogshead CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 13 of rum sent on board. On the day of the sale the men prisoners were all shaved, the women dressed in their best garments, their neatest caps, and brought on deck. Each prisoner, when put up for sale, told his trade. Carew said he was a good rat-catcher, beggar, and dog-trader, “upon which the Captain hearing takes the planter aside, and tells him he did but jest, being a man of humour, and would make an excellent school- master.” Carew escaped before being sold, was captured,* whipped, and had a heavy iron collar, ‘‘called in Maryland a pot-hook,”’ riveted about his neck; but he again fled to the Indians, and returned to England. Kidnapped in Bristol a second time, he was nearly sold on Kent Island to Mr. Dulaney, but again escaped. He stole from a house “jolly cake, powell, a sort of Indian corn bread, and good omani, which is kidney beans ground with Indian corn, sifted, put into a pot to boil, and eaten with molasses.’ Jolly cake was doubtless johnny cake; omani, hominy ; but powell is a puzzle. He made his way by begging to Boston, and shipped to England, from whence he was again tra- panned. 14 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. In the Sot-Weed Factor are found some very coarse but graphic pictures of the wo- men emigrants of the day. When the factor asks the name of “one who passed for cham- bermaid” in one planter’s house in “ Mary- Land,” she answered with an affected blush and simper : — In better Times, ere to this Land I was unhappily Trapanned, Perchance as well I did appear As any lord or lady here. Not then a slave for twice two year. My cloaths were fashionably new, Nor were my shifts of Linnen blue; But things are changed, now at the Hoe I daily work, and barefoot go. In weeding corn, or feeding swine, I spend my melancholy time. Kidnap’d and fool’d I hither fled, To shun a hated nuptial Bed. And to my cost already find Worse Plagues than those I left behind. Another time, being disturbed in his sleep, the factor finds that in an adjoining room, — . a jolly Female Crew Were Deep engaged in Lanctie Loo. Soon quarreling over their cards, the plant- ers’ wives fall into abuse, and one says scorn- fully to the other : — CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 15 . tho now so brave, I knew you late a Four Years Slave, What if for planters wife you go, Nature designed you for the Hoe. The other makes, in turn, still more bitter accusations. It can plainly be seen that such social and domestic relations might readily produce similar scenes, and afford opportu- nity for “crimination and recrimination.” Still we must not give the Sot-Weed Factor as sole or indeed as entirely unbiased authority. The testimony to the house- wifely virtues of the Maryland women by other writers is almost universal. In the London Magazine of 1745 a traveler writes, and his word is similar to that of many others : — The women are very handsome in general and most notable housewives ; everything wears the Marks of Cleanliness and Industry in their Houses, and their behavior to their Husbands and Families is very edifying. You cant help observing, however, an Air of Reserve and some- what that looks at first to a Stranger like Unsoci- ableness, which is barely the effect of living at a great Distance from frequent Society and their Thorough Attention to the Duties of their Sta- 16 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. tions. Their Amusements are quite Innocent and within the Circle of a Plantation or two. They exercise all the Virtues that can raise Ones Opinion of too light a Sex. The girls under such good Mothers generally have twice the Sense and Discretion of the Boys. Their Dress is neat and Clean and not much bordering upon the Ridiculous Humour of the Mother Country where the Daughters seem Dress’d up for a Market. Wives were just as eagerly desired in New England as in Virginia, and a married estate was just as essential toa man of dignity. As a rule, emigration thereto was in families, but when New England men came to the New World, leaving their families behind them until they had prepared a suitable home for their reception, the husbands were most impatient to send speedily for their consorts. Letters such as this, of Mr. Eyre from England to Mr. Gibb in Piscataquay, in 1631, show the sentiment of the settlers in the matter :— I hope by this both your wives are with you according to your desire. I wish all your wives were with you, and that so many of you as desire wives had such as they desire. Your wife, Roger CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 17 Knight’s wife, and one wife more we have already sent you and more you shall have as you wish for them. This sentence, though apparently polyga- mous in sentiment, does not indicate an in- tent to establish a Mormon settlement in New Hampshire, but is simply somewhat shaky in grammatical construction, and erra- tic in rhetorical expression. Occasionally, though rarely, there was found a wife who did not long for a New England home. Governor Winthrop wrote to England on July 4, 1632 :— I have much difficultye to keepe John Gal- lope heere by reason his wife will not come. I marvayle at her womans weaknesse, that she will live myserably with her children there when she might live comfortably with her husband here. I pray perswade and further her coming by all means. If she will come let her have the re- mainder of his wages, if not let it be bestowed to bring over his children for soe he desires. Even the ministers’ wives did not all sigh for the New World. The removal of Rev. Mr. Wilson to New England “ was rendered difficult by the indisposition of his dearest 18 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. consort thereto.” He very shrewdly inter- preted a dream to her in favor of emigration, with but scant and fleeting influence upon her, and he sent over to her from America encouraging accounts of the new home, and he finally returned to England for her, and after much fasting and prayer she consented to ‘accompany him over an ocean to a wilderness.” Margaret Winthrop, that undaunted yet gentle woman, wrote of her at this date (and it gives us a glimpse of a latent element of Madam Winthrop’s character), “ Mr. Wilson cannot yet persuade his wife to go, for all he hath taken this pains to come and fetch her. I marvel what mettle she is made of. Sure she will yield at last.” She did yield, and she did not go uncomforted. Cotton Mather wrote past Mrs. Wilson being thus perswaded over into the difficulties of an American desart, her kins- man Old Mr. Dod, for her consolation under those difficulties did send her a present with an advice which had in it something of curiosity. He sent her a dvass counter, a sé/ver crown, and a gold jacobus, all severally wrapped up; with this instruction unto the gentleman who carried CONSORTS AND RELICTS. I9 it; that he should first of all deliver only the counter, and if she received it with any shew of discontent, he should then take no notice of her ; but if she gratefully resented that small thing for the sake of the hand it came from, he should then go on to deliver the silver and so the gold, but withal assure her that such would be the dis- pensations to her and the good people of New England. If they would be content and thank- ful with such little things as God at first bestowed upon them, they should, in time, have silver and gold enough. Mrs. Wilson accordingly by her cheerful entertainment of the least remembrance from good old Mr. Dod, gave the gentleman occasion to go through with his whole present and the annexed advice. We could not feel surprised if poor home- sick, heartsick, terrified Mrs. Wilson had “eratefully resented”? Mr. Dod’s apparently mean gift to her on the eve of exile in our modern sense of resentment; but the mean- ing of resent in those days was to perceive with a lively sense of pleasure. I do not know whether this old Mr. Dod was the poet whose book entitled A Poste from Old Mr. Dods Garden was one of the first rare books of poetry printed in New England in colonial days. 20 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. We truly cannot from our point of view “ marvayle”’ that these consorts did not long to come to the strange, sad, foreign shore, but wonder that they were any of them ever willing to come; for to the loneliness of an unknown world was added the dread horror of encounter with a new and almost myste- rious race, the blood-thirsty Indians, and if the poor dames turned from the woods to the shore, they were menaced by “ murther- ing pyrates.”’ Gurdon Saltonstall, in a letter to John Winthrop of Connecticut, as late as 1690, tells in a few spirited and racy sentences of the life the women lead in an unprotected coast town. It was sad and terrifying in reality, but there is a certain quaintness of expression and metaphor in the narrative, and asly and demure thrusting at Mr. James, that give it an element of humor. It was written of the approach of a foe ‘ whose entrance was as formidable and swaggering as their exit was sneaking and shamefull.”’ Saltonstall says :— My Wife & family was posted at your Hons a considerable while, it being thought to be ye most convenient place for ye feminine Rendez- CONSORTS AND RELICTS. 21 vous. Mr James who Commands in Chiefe among them, upon ye coast alarum given, faceth to ye Mill, gathers like a Snow ball as he goes, makes a Generall Muster at yor Honrs, and so posts away with ye greatest speed, to take advan- tage of ye neighboring rocky hills, craggy, inac- cessible mountains; so that W'tever els is lost Mr James and ye Women are safe. All women did not run at the approach of the foe. A marked trait of the settlers’ wives was their courage; and, indeed, oppor- tunities were plentiful for them to show their daring, their fortitude, and their ready in- genuity. Hannah Bradley, of Haverhill, Mass., killed one Indian by throwing boiling soap upon him. This same domestic weapon _ was also used by some Swedish women near Philadelphia to telling, indeed to killing advantage. A young girl in the Minot House in Dorchester, Mass., shovelled live coals on an Indian invader, and drove him off. ) oh Sees g ed ance O's eae ane ee 2; Tubbs pales churnes butter barrels & other: woodin impléments/o-:-. orem a The “two Brandii” were brand-irons or brond-yrons, a kind of trivet or support to set on the andirons. Sometimes they held brands or logs in place, or upon them dishes could be placed. Toasting-irons and _ broil- ing-irons are named. ‘‘Scieufes,’’ or sieves, were worth a shilling apiece. FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 285 Eleazer Lusher, of Dedham, Mass., in 1672, owned cob-irons, trammels, firepans, gridirons, toasting-fork, salt pan, brand pan, mortar, pestle, box iron heaters, kettles, skil- lets, spits, frying-pan, ladles, skimmers, chaf- ing-dishes, pots, pot-hooks, and creepers. The name creeper brings to our considera- tion one of the homeliest charms of the fire- place —the andirons. Creepers were the lower and smaller andirons placed between the great firedogs. The word is also applied to a low cooking spider, which could be pushed in among the embers. Cob-irons were the simplest form of andirons, and usu- ally were used merely to support the spit; sometimes they had hooks to hold a dripping- pan under the spit. Sometimes a fireplace showed three pairs of andirons, on which logs could be laid at various heights. Some- times a single pair of andirons had three sets of hooks or branches for the same pur- pose. They were made of iron, copper, steel, or brass, often cast in a handsome design. The andirons played an important part in the construction and preservation of a fire. And the construction of one of these great fires was no light or careless matter. Whit- 286 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. tier, in his Szow-Bound, thus tells of the making of the fire in his home : — 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 forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush ; then hovering near We watched the first red blaze appear. Often the great backlog had to be rolled in with handspikes, sometimes drawn in by a chain and yoke of oxen. The making of the fire and its preservation from day to day were of equal importance. The covering of the brands at night was one of the domestic duties, whose non-fulfillment in those match- less days often rendered necessary a journey with fire shovel to the house of the nearest neighbor to obtain glowing coals to start again the kitchen frre. A domestic luxury seen in well-to-do homes was a tin kitchen, a box-like arrangement open on one side, which was set next the blaze. It stood on four legs, In it bread was baked or voasted. Through the kitchen passed a spit, which could be turned by an FIRESTIDE INDUSTRIES. 287 external handle ; on it meat was spitted to be roasted. The brick oven was not used so fre- quently, usually but once a week. This was a permanent furnishing. When the great chimney was built, a solid heap of stones was placed for its foundation, and a vast and massive structure was reared upon it. On one side of the kitchen fireplace, but really a part of the chimney whole, was an oven which opened at one side into the chimney, and below an ash pit with swinging iron doors with a damper. To heat this ovena great fire of dry wood was kindled within it, and kept burning fiercely for some hours. Then the coal and ashes were removed, the chimney draught and damper were closed, and the food to be cooked was placed in the heated oven. Great pans of brown bread, pots of pork and beans, an Indian pudding, a dozen pies, all went into the fiery furnace together. On Thanksgiving week the great oven was heated night and morning for several days. To place edibles at the rear of the glowing oven, it is plain some kind of a shovel must be used; and an abnormally long-handled 288 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. one was universally found by the oven-side. It was called a slice or peel, or fire-peel or bread-peel. Such an emblem was it of do- mestic utility and unity that a peel and a strong pair of tongs were a universal and luck-bearing gift to a bride. A good iron peel and tongs cost about a dollar and a half. The name occurs constantly in old wills among kitchen properties. We read of “the oven, the mawkin, the bavin, the peel.” Sometimes, when the oven was heated, the peel was besprinkled with meal, and great heaps of rye and Indian dough were placed thereon, and by a dextrous and indescriba- ble twist thrown upon cabbage leaves on the oven-bottom, and thus baked in a haycock shape. “Shepherd Tom” Hazard, in his inimita- ble Founy Cake Papers, thus speaks of the old-time methods of baking : — Rhineinjun bread, vulgarly called nowadays rye and Indian bread, in the olden time was al- ways made of one quart of unbolted Rhode Is- land rye meal to two quarts of the coarser grained parts of Ambrosia (Narragansett corn meal) well kneaded and made into large round loaves of the FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 289 size of a half-peck measure. There are two ways of baking it. One way was to fill two large iron basins with the kneaded dough and, late in the evening, when the logs were well burned down, to clear a place in the middle of the fire and place the two basins of bread, one on top of the other, so as to inclose their contents and press them into one loaf. The whole was then care- fully covered with hot ashes, with coals on top, and left until morning. Another way was to place a number of loaves in iron basins in a long-heated and well-tempered brick oven — stone would not answer as the heat is too brittle — into which a cup of water was also placed to make the crust soft. The difference between brown bread baked in this way, with its thick, soft, sweet crust, from that baked in the oven of an iron stove I leave to abler pens than mine to portray. In friendly chimney corners there stood a jovial companion of the peel and tongs, the flip iron, or loggerhead, or flip-dog, or hottle. Lowell wrote :— Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip. 290 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. Flip was a drink of vast popularity, and I believe of potent benefit in those days when fierce winters and cold houses made hot drinks more necessary to the preservation of health than nowadays. I have drunk flip, but, like many a much-vaunted luxury of the olden time, I prefer to read of it. It is inde- scribably burnt and bitter in flavor. It may be noted in nearly all old inven- tories that a warming-pan is a part of the kitchen furnishing. Wood wrote in 1634 of exportation to the New England colony, “Warming pannes & stewing pannes are of necessary use and very good traffick there.” One was invoiced in 1642 at 3s. 6d., another in 1654 at 5s. A warming-pan was a shallow pan of metal, usually brass or iron, about a foot in diameter and three or four inches deep, with a pierced brass or copper cover. It was fitted with a long wooden handle. When used, it was filled with coals, and when thoroughly heated, was thrust between the icy sheets of the bed, and moved up and down to give warmth to every corner. Its fireside neighbor was the footstove, a box of perforated metal in a wooden frame, within which hot coals could be placed to warm the TIRESIDE INDUSTRIES: 291 feet of the goodwife during a long winter’s drive, or to render endurable the arctic atmos- phere of the unheated churches. Often a lantern of pierced metal hung near the warm- ing-pan. The old-time lanterns, still occa- sionally found in New England kitchens or barns, form a most interesting study for the antiquary, and a much neglected fad for the collector. I have one of Elizabethan shape, to which, when I found it, fragments of thin sheets of horn still clung—the remains of the horn slides which originally were en- closed in the metal frame. High up on the heavy beam over the fire- place stood usually a candlestick, an old lamp, perhaps a sausage stuffer, or a spice-mill, or a candle mold, a couple of wooden noggins, sometimes a pipe-tongs. By the side of the fireplace hung the soot-blackened, smoke- dried almanac, and near it often hung a betty-lamp, whose ill-smelling flame could supply for conning the pages a closer though scarce brighter light than the flickering hearth flame. By the hearth, sometimes in the chimney corner, stood the high-backed settle, a shel- 292 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. tered seat, while the family dye-pot often was used by the children as a chimney bench. Many household utensils once in common use in New England are now nearly obsolete. In many cases the old-time names are disused and forgotton, while the object itself may still be found with some modern appellation. In reading old wills, inventories, and enroll- ments, and the advertisements in old news- papers, I have made many notes of these old names, and have sometimes succeeded, though with difficulty, in identifying the utensils thus designated. Of course the different English shire dialects supply a va- riety of local names. In some cases good old English words have been retained in constant use in New England, while wholly archaic in the fatherland. In every thrifty New England home there stood a tub containing a pickle for salting meat. It was called a powdering-tub, or powdering-trough. This use of the word ‘“‘pnowder”’ for salt dates even before Shake- speare’s day. Grains is an obsolete word for tines or prongs. Winthrop wrote in 1643 that a snake crawled in the Assembly room, and FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 293 a parson “held it with his foot and staff with a small pair of grains and killed it.” Spenser used the word “flasket” thus: “In which to gather flowers to fill their flas- ket.”’ It was a basket, or hamper, made of woven wicker. John Hull, writing in 1675, asks that “ Wikker Flasketts”’ be brought to him on the Sea Flower. A skeel was a small, shallow wooden tub, principally used for holding milk to stand for cream. It sometimes had one handle. The word is now used in Yorkshire. Akin | to itis the word keeler, a small wooden tub, which is still constantly heard in New Eng- land, especially in application to a tub in which dishes are washed. Originally, cedar keelers were made to hold milk, and a losset was also a large flat wooden dish used for the same purpose. A skippet was a vessel much like a dipper, small and round, with long handle, and used for ladling liquids. A quarn was a hand-mill for grinding meal, and sometimes it stood in a room by itself. It was a step in domestic progress beyond pounding grain with a pestle in a mortar, and was of earlier date than the windmill or water-mill. In Wiclif’s translation we read 294. COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. in Matthew xxiv: ‘‘Two wymmen schalen be gryndynge in quern,” etc. This word is also used by Shakespeare in Mzdsummer Night's Dream. In early New England wills the word is found, as in one of 1671: “I paire Quarnes and Lumber in the quarne house, 1os.”’ It was sometimes spelled “ cairn,” as in a Windham will, and also “quern” and jequinie Sometimes a most puzzling term will be found in one of these old inventories, one which appears absolutely incomprehensible. Here is one which seems like a riddle of which the answer is irrevocably lost: “One Billy bassha Pan.” It is found in the kitchen list of the rich possessions of Madam De Peyster, in 1774, which inventory is pre- served.in the family archives at the Van Cortlandt Manor House, at Croton-on-Hud- son. You can give any answer you please to the riddle; but my answer is this, in slightly altered verse. I think that Madam De Peyster’s cook used that dish to serve :— A sort of soup or broth or stew Or hotchpot of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo, Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 295 Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace ; All these were cooked in the Manor kitchen, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. The early settlers were largely indebted to various forest trees for cheap, available, and utilizable material for the manufacture of both kitchen utensils and tableware. Wood- turning was for many years a recognized trade; dish-turner a business title. We find Lion Gardiner writing to John Winthrop, Jr., in 1652, “My wyfe desireth Mistress Lake to get her a dozen of trays for shee - hearith that there is a good tray-maker with you.” Governor Bradford found the Indians using wooden bowls, trays, and dishes, and the “ In- dian bowls,’ trees, were much sought after by housekeep- ’ made from the knots of maple- ers till this century. A fine specimen of these bowls is now in the Massachusetts Historical Society. It was originally taken from the wigwam of King Philip. Wooden noggins (low bowls with handles) are con- stantly named in early inventories, and Mary Ring, of Plymouth, thought, in 1633, that a “wodden cupp” was valuable enough to leave by will as a token of friendship. 296 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. Wooden trenchers, also made by hand, were used on the table for more than a century, and were universally bequeathed by will, as by that of Miles Standish. White pop- lar wood made specially handsome dishes. Wooden pans were made in which to set milk. Wooden bread troughs were used in every home. These were oblong, trencher- shaped bowls, about a foot and a half in length, hollowed and shaped by hand from a log of wood. Across the trough ran length- wise a stick or rod, on which the flour was sifted in a temse, or searce, or sieve. The saying, “‘set the Thames on fire,’ is said to have been originally “set the temse on fire,” meaning that hard labor would, by the friction of constant turning, set the wooden temse, or sieve, on fire. It was not necessary to apply to the wood- turner to manufacture these simply shaped dishes. Every winter the men and boys of the household manufactured every kind of domestic utensils and portions of farm imple- ments that could be whittled or made from wood with simple tools. By the cheerful kitchen fireside much of this work was done. Indeed, the winter picture of the fireside FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 297 should always show the figure of a whittling boy. They made butter paddles of red cherry, salt mortars, pig troughs, pokes, sled neaps, ax helves, which were sawn, whittled, and carefully scraped with glass; box traps and ‘figure 4”’ traps, noggins, keelers, rund- lets, flails, cheese-hoops, cheese-ladders, stan- chions, handles for all kinds of farm imple- ments, and niddy-noddys. Strange to say, the latter word is not found in any of our dictionaries, though the word is as well known in country vernacular as the article itself —a hand-reel —or as the old riddle : — Niddy-noddy, Two heads and one body. There were still other wooden vessels. In his Philocothonista, or The Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized (1635), Thomas Heywood, gives for “carouseing-bowles of wood”’ these names: ‘“‘mazers, noggins, whis- kins, piggins, cruizes, wassel-bowles, ale- bowles, court-dishes, tankards, kannes.”’ There were many ways of usefully em- ploying the winter evening hours. Some thrifty folk a hundred years ago occupied spare time in sticking card-teeth in wool- 208 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. cards. The strips of pierced leather and the wire teeth bent in proper shape were sup- plied to them by the card manufacturer. The long leather strips and boxes filled with the bent wire teeth might be seen standing in many a country home, and many an even- ing by the light of the blazing fire, — for the work required little eyesight or dexterity, — sat the children on dye-pot, crickets, and logs of wood, earning a scant sum to add to their ‘‘ broom-money.” By the side of the chimney, in New Eng- land country houses, always hung a broom or besom of peeled birch. These birch brooms were a characteristic New England production. To make one a straight birch- tree from three to four inches in diameter was chosen, and about five feet of the trunk was cut off. Ten inches from the larger end a notch was cut around the stick, and the bark peeled off from thence to the end. Then with a sharp knife the bared end was care- fully split up to the notch in slender slivers, which were held back by the broom-maker’s left hand until they became too many and too bulky to restrain, when they were tied back with a string. As the tendency of the sliv- FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 299 ers or splints was to grow slightly thinner toward the notch, there was left in the heart of the growing broom a short core, which had to be whittled off. When this was done the splints were all turned back to their first and natural position, a second notch was cut an inch above the first one, leaving a strip of bark an inch in diameter; the bark was peeled off from what was destined to be the broom handle, and a series of splints was shaved down toward the second notch. Enough of the stick was left to form the handle; this was carefully whittled until an inch or so in diameter, was smoothed, and furnished with a hole in the end in which to place a string or a strip of leather for sus- pension. The second series of splints from the handle end was firmly turned down and tied with hempen twine over the wholly splintered end, and all the splints cut off the same length. The inch of bark which remained of the original tree helped to hold the broom-splints firmly in place. When these brooms were partly worn, the restraining string could be removed, and the flaring splints formed an ideal oven-besom, spreading and cleaning the ashes from every 300 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. corner and crevice. Corn brooms were un- known in these country neighborhoods until about the middle of the present century. A century, and even as late as half a cen- tury ago, many a farmer’s son (and daughter too) throughout New England earned his or her first spending-money by making birch brooms for the country stores, from whence they were sent to the large cities, especially Boston, where there was a constant demand forthem. In Northampton, about 1790, one shopkeeper kept as many as seven or eight hundred of these brooms on hand at one time. The boys and girls did not grow rich very fast at broom-making. Throughout Ver- mont, fifty years ago, the uniform price paid to the maker for these brooms was but six cents apiece, and as he had to work at least three evenings to make one broom, — to say nothing of the time spent in selecting and cutting the birch-tree,— it was not so pro- fitable an industry as gathering beech-nuts at a dollara bushel. Major Robert Randolph told in fashionable London circles, that about the year 1750, he carried many a loadof these birch brooms on his back ten FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 301 miles to Concord, that he might thus earn a few shillings. Such brooms were known by different names in different localities : birch brooms, splinter brooms, and Indian brooms. The Indians were very proficient in making them, and it is said invented them. This can readily be believed, for like birch-bark canoes and snowshoes, they are examples of perfection in utility and in the employment of native materials. Squaws wandered over certain portions of the country bearing brooms on their backs, peddling them from house to house for ninepence apiece and a drink of cider. In 1806, one minister of Haverhill, New Hampshire, had two of these brooms given to him as a marriage fee. When a Hadley man planted broom corn in 1797, and made corn brooms to sell, he was scornfully met with the remark that broom- making was work for Indians and boys. It was long ere his industry crowded out the sturdy birch brooms. There were many domestic duties which did not waft sweet “odors of Araby ;” the annual spring manufacture of soft soap for home consumption was one of them, and also one of the most important and most 302 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. trying of all the household industries. The refuse grease from the family cooking was stowed away in tubs and barrels through the cool winter months in unsavory masses, and the wood-ashes from the great fireplaces were also thriftily stored until the carefully chosen time arrived. The day was selected with much deliberation, after close con- sultation with that family counselor, the almanac, for the moon must be in the right quarter, and the tide at the flood, if the soap were to “come right.” Then the leach was was set outside the kitchen door. Some families owned a strongly made leach-tub, some used a barrel, others cut a section from a great birch-tree, and removed the bark to form a tub, which was placed loosely in a circular groove in a base made of wood or, preferably, of stone. This was not set hori- zontally, but was slightly inclined. The tub was filled with ashes, and water was scantily poured in until the lye trickled or leached out of an outlet cut in the groove at the base. The “first run”’ of lye was not strong enough to be of use, and was poured again upon the ashes. The wasted ashes were re- plenished again and again, and water poured FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 303 in small quantities on them, and the lye accumulated in a receptacle placed for it. It was a universal test that when the lye was strong enough to hold up an egg, it was also strong enough to use for the soap boiling. In the largest iron pot the grease and lye were boiled together, often over a great fire built in the open air. The leached ashes were not deemed refuse and waste; they were used by the farmer as a fertilizer. Soap made in this way, while rank and strong, is so pure and clean that it seems almost like a jelly, and shows no trace of the vile grease that helped to form it. The dancing firelight shone out on no busier scene than on the grand candle-dip- ping. It had taken weeks to prepare for this domestic industry, which was the great household event of the late autumn, as soap- making was of the spring. Tallow had been carefully saved from the domestic animals killed on the farm, the honeyed store of the patient bee had been robbed of wax to furnish materials, and there was still another source of supply. The summer air of the coast of New Eng- land still is sweet with one of the freshest, 304. COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. purest plant-perfumes in the world — the scent of bayberry. These dense woody shrubs bear profusely a tiny, spicy, wax- coated berry; and the earliest colonists quickly learned that from this plentiful berry could be obtained an inflammable wax, which would replace and supplement any lack of tallow. The name so universally applied to the plant — candleberry — commemorates its employment for this purpose. I never pass the clumps of bayberry bushes in the early autumn without eagerly picking and crush- ing the perfumed leaves and berries; and the clean, fresh scent seems to awaken a dim recollection, —a hereditary memory, — and I see, as in a vision, the sober little chil- dren of the Puritans standing in the clear glowing sunlight, and faithfully stripping from the gnarled bushes the waxy candle- berries ; not only affording through this occu- pation material assistance to the household supplies, but finding therein health, and I am sure happiness, if they loved the bay- berries as I, their descendant, do. The method of preparing this wax was simple; it still exists in a few Plymouth County households. ‘The berries are simply FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 305 boiled with hot water in a kettle, and the resolved wax skimmed off the top, refined, and permitted to harden into cakes or can- dles. The references in old-time records to this bayberry wax are too numerous to be recounted. A Virginian governor, Robert Beverley (for the bayberry and its wax was known also in the South as myrtleberry wax), gave, perhaps, the clearest description of it:— A pale green brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining becomes almost trans- parent. Of this they made candles which are never greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow candle ; but instead of being disagreeable, 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. It is true that the balmy breath of the bayberry is exhaled even on its funeral pyre. A bayberry candle burns like incense ; and I always think of its perfume as truly the incense to the household hearth-gods of an old New England home. 306 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. Bayberry wax was a standard farm-product, a staple article of traffic, till this century, and it was constantly advertised in the newspa- pers. As early as 1712, Thomas Lechmere wrote to John Winthrop, Jr. :— I am now to beg one favour of you, that you secure for me all the bayberry wax you can pos- sibly lay yor hands on. What charge you shall be at securing it shall be thankfully paid you. You must take a care that they do not putt too much tallow among it, being a custome and cheate they have gott. When the candle-dipping began, a fierce fire was built in the fireplace, and over it was hung the largest house kettle, half filled with water and melted tallow, or wax. Candle- rods were brought down from the attic, or pulled out from under the edge of beams, and placed about a foot and a half apart, reaching from chair to chair. Boards were placed underneath to save the spotless floor from greasy drippings. Across these rods were laid, like the rounds of a ladder, shorter sticks or reeds to which the wicks were attached at intervals of a few inches. The wicks of loosely spun cotton or tow were dipped time and time again into the FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES, 307 melted tallow, and left to harden between each dipping. Of course, if the end of the kitchen (where stood the rods and hung the wicks) were very cold, the candles grew quickly, since they hardened quickly; but they were then more apt to crack. When they were of proper size, they were cut off, spread in a sunny place in the garret to bleach, and finally stored away in candle- boxes. Sometimes the tallow was poured into molds; when, of course, comparatively few candles could be made ina day. In some communities itinerant candle-makers carried molds from house to house, and assisted in the candle manufacture. These candles were placed in candle- sticks, or in large rooms were set in rude chandeliers of strips of metal with sockets, called candle-beams. Handsome rooms had sconces, and the kitchen often had a sliding stand by which the candle could be adjusted at a desired height. Snuffers were as indis- pensable as candlesticks, and were some- times called snuffing-iron, or snit—a word not in the Century Dictionary —from the old English verb, “snyten,” to blow out. The snuffers lay in a little tray called a snuffer- 308 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. tray, snuffer-dish, snuffer-boat, snuffer-slice, or snuffer-pan. Save-alls, a little wire frame to hold up the last burning end of candle, were another contrivance of our frugal an- cestors. In no way was a thrifty housewife better known than through her abundant stock of symmetrical candles; and nowhere was a skilful and dextrous hand more needed than in shaping’ them. Still, candles were not very costly if the careless housewife chose to purchase them. The Boston Evening Post of October 5, 1767, has this advertise- ment: ‘“ Dip’d Tallow Candles Half a Pis- tareen the single Pound & Cheaper by Cwt.” In many a country household some old- time frugalities linger, but the bounteous oil-wells of Pennsylvania have rendered can- dles not only obsolete, but too costly for country use, and by a turn of fashion they have become comparatively an article of luxury, but still seem to throw an old-time refinement wherever their soft rays shine. An account of housewifely duties in my great-grandmother’s home was thus written, in halting rhyme, by one of her sons when he too was old : — FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 309 The boys dressed the flax, the girls spun the tow, The music of mother’s footwheel was not slow. The flax on the bended pine distaff was spread, With squash shell of water to moisten the thread. Such were the pianos our mothers did keep Which they played on while spinning their children to sleep. My mother I’m sure must have borne off the medal, For she always was placing her foot on the pedal. The warp and the filling were piled in the room, Till the web was completed and fit for the loom, Then labor was pleasure, and industry smiled, And the wheel and the loom every trouble beguiled, And there at the distaff the good wives were made. Thus Solomon’s precepts were fully obeyed. The manufacture of the farm-reared wool was not so burdensome and tedious a pro- cess as that of flax, but it was far from pleasant. The fleeces of wool had to be opened out and cleaned of all sticks, burrs, leaves, feltings, tar-marks, and the dirt which always remained after months’ wear by the sheep; then it had to be sorted out for dyeing, which latter was a most unpleasant process. Layers of the various colors of wools after being dyed were rolled together and carded on coarse wool-cards, again and again, then slightly greased by a disagree- able and tiresome method, then run into rolls. The wool was spun on the great wheel 310 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. which stood in the kitchen with the reel and swifts, and often by the glowing firelight the mother spun. A tender and beautiful picture of this domestic scene has been drawn by Dr. Gurdon Russell, of Hartford, in his Up Neck in 1825. My mother was spinning with the great wheel, the white rolls of wool lay upon the platform, and as they were spun upon the spindle, she turning the wheel with one hand, and with ex- tended arm and delicate fingers holding the roll in the other, stepping backwards and forwards lightly till it was spun into yarn, it formed a picture to me, sitting upon a low stool, which can never be forgotten. Her movements were every grace, her form all of beauty to me who opposite sat and was watching her dextrous fingers. The manufacture of flax into linen mate- rial was ever felt to be of vast importance, and was encouraged by legislation from ear- liest colonial days, but it received a fresh impulse in New England through the im- migration of about one hundred Irish fam- ilies from Londonderry. They settled in New Hampshire on the Merrimac about 1719. They spun and wove by hand, but FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 31I with far more skill than prevailed among those English settlers who had already be- come Americans. They established a manu- factory according to Irish methods, and at- tempts at a similar establishment were made in Boston. There was much public excite- ment over spinning. Women, rich as well aS poor, appeared on Boston Common with their wheels, thus making spinning a pop- ular holiday recreation. A brick building was erected as a spinning-school, and a tax was placed in 1737 to support it. But this was not an industrial success, the ex- citement died out, the public spinning-school lost its ephemeral popularity, and the wheel became again simply a domestic duty and pride. For many years after this, housewives had everywhere flax and hemp to spin and weave in their homes, and the preparation of these staples seems to us to-day a monumental labor. On almost every farm might be seen a patch of the pretty flax, ripening for the hard work of pulling, rippling, rotting, break- ing, swingling, and combing, which all had to be done before it came to the women’s hands for spinning. The seed was sown broad- 312 COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. cast, and allowed to grow till the bobs or bolls were ripe. The flax was then pulled and spread neatly in rows to dry. This work could be done by boys. Then men whipped or threshed or rippled out all the seed to use for meal; afterwards the flax stalks were allowed to le for some time in water until the shives were thoroughly rot- ten, when they were cleaned and once more thoroughly dried and tied in bundles. Then came work for strong men, to break the flax on the ponderous flaxbreak, to get out the hard “hexe” or “ bun,’ and to swingle it with a swingle knife, which was somewhat like a wooden dagger. Active men could swingle forty pounds a day on the swingling- board. It was then hetchelled or combed or hackled by the housewife, and thus the rough tow was gotten out, when it was straightened and made ready for the spruce distaff, round which it was finally wrapped. The hatchelling was tedious work and irri- tating to the lungs, for the air was filled with the fluffy particles which penetrated everywhere. The thread was then spun on a “little wheel.” It was thought that to spin two double skeins of linen, or four FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 313 double skeins of tow, or to weave six yards of linen, was a good day’s work. For a week’s work a girl received fifty cents and Penerikcep, 9) She’ thus sotsless than a cent and a half a yard for weaving. The skeins of linen thread went through many tedious processes of washing and bleaching before being ready for weaving ; and after the cloth was woven it was “bucked” in a strong lye, time and time again, and washed out an equal number of times. Then it was ‘belted’ with a maple beetle on a smooth, flat stone; then washed and spread out to bleach in the pure sunlight. Sometimes the thread, after being spun and woven, had been washed and belted a score of times ere it was deemed white and soft enough to use. The little girls could spin the “swingling tow’’ into coarse twine, and the older ones make “all tow” and “tow and linen” and “harden’”’ stuffs to sell. To show the various duties attending the manufacture of these domestic textiles by a Boston woman of intelligence and social standing, as late as 1788, let me quote a few entries from the diary of the wife of Col. John May :— 314. COLONIAL DAMES AND GOODWIVES. A large kettle of yarn to attend upon. Lucre- tia and self rinse our through many waters, get out, dry, attend to, bring in, do up and sort 110 score of yarn, this with baking and ironing. Went to hackling flax. Rose early to help Ruth warp and put a piece in the loom. Baking and hackling yarn. A long web of tow to whiten and weave. The wringing out of this linen yarn was most exhausting, and the rinsing in various waters was no simple matter in those days, for the water did not conveniently run into the houses through pipes and conduits, but had to be laboriously carried in pailfuls from a pump, or more frequently raised in a bucket from a well. I am always touched, when handling the homespun linens of olden times, with a sense that the vitality and strength of those endur- ing women, through the many tedious and exhausting processes which they had _ be- stowed, were woven into the warp and woof with the flax, and gave to the old webs of linen their permanence and their beautiful texture. How firm they are, and how lus- trous! And how exquisitely quaint and fine FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES. 315 are their designs ; sometimes even Scriptural designs and lessons are woven into them. They are, indeed, a beautiful expression of old-time home and farm life. With their close-woven, honest threads runs this finer beauty, which may be impalpable and imper- ceptible to a stranger, but which to me is real and ever-present, and puts me truly in touch with the life of my forbears. But, alas, it is through intuition we must learn of this old-time home life, for it has vanished from our sight, and much that is beautiful and good has vanished with it. The associations of the kitchen fireside that linger in the hearts of those who are now old can find no counterpart in our domestic surroundings to-day. The welcome cheer of the open fire, which graced and beautified even the humblest room, is lost forever with the close gatherings of the family, the household occupations, the home- spun industries which formed and im- printed in the mind of every child the picture of a home. DATE DUE GAYLORD i } PRINTEDINU.S A, Library IAT eesti oe 1528 : oF pyesren ge) sisperapaps ives hetrey otvas Bat) rete br Se Se be hy s and good w | dame slate ate ara! 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