This I quote to execrate the memory of Mr. Houston and express my sympathy for his daughters.
There were no entertainments more popular, from the middle of the past century to the early years of this one, than “turtle frolics,” what Burnaby called turtle-feasts. Every sea-captain who sailed to the West Indies intended and was expected to bring home a turtle on the return voyage; and if he were only to touch at the West Indies and thence pass on to more distant shores, he still tried, if possible, to secure a turtle and send it home by some returning vessel. In no seaport town did the turtle frolic come to a higher state of perfection than in Newport. Scores of turtles were borne to that welcoming shore. In 1752 George Bresett, a Newport gentleman, sailed to the West Indies, and promptly did a neighborly and civic duty by sending home to his friend Samuel Freebody, a gallant turtle and a generous keg of limes. Lime juice was the fashionable and favorite “souring” of the day, to combine with arrack and Barbadoes rum into a glorious punch. The turtle arrived in prime condition, and Freebody handed the prize over to a slave-body named Cuffy Cockroach. He was a Guinea Coast negro, of a race who were (as I have noted before) the most intelligent of all the Africans brought as slaves to these shores. Any negro who acquired a position of dignity or trust or skill in this country, in colonial days, was sure to be a Guinea-boy. Cuffy Cockroach followed the rule, by filling a position of much dignity and trust and skill—as turtle-cook. He was a slave of Jaheel Brenton, but he cooked turtle for the entire town. The frolic was held at Fort George, on Goat Island, on December 23. The guests, fifty ladies and gentlemen, sailed over in a sloop, and were welcomed with hoisted flag and salute of cannon. The dinner was served at two, tea at five, and then dancing begun. Pea Straw, Faithful Shepherd, Arcadian Nuptials, were allemanded and footed, and the keg of limes and its fellow-ingredients kept pace with the turtle. The moon was at the full when the party landed at the Newport wharf at eleven, but the frolic was not ended. For instead of the jolly crowd separating, they went the rounds, leaving one member of the party at a time at his own door, and then serenading him or her, till the whole company had been honored in succession. When Sammy wrote to Mr. Bresett he said:—
Upon the whole the entertainment had the preference over all turtle frolics before it, and Mr George Bresetts health with “Honest George” was freely drank in a cheerful glass by every person; and at the request of the company I return you their compliments for the foundation of so agreeable an entertainment.
We find even so staid and dignified a minister and legislator as Manasseh Cutler writing thus in Providence in 1787:—
This morning I received a polite invitation from Govenor Bowen in the name of a large company to join them in a Turtle Frolic about six miles out of town. Mr Hitchcock and other clergymen of the town were of the party but much against my inclination I was obliged to excuse myself.
The traveller who drives through the by-roads of New England to-day is almost ready to assert that there is no dwelling too poor or too lonely to contain a piano, or at the very least a melodeon or parlor organ. The sounds of Czerny’s exercises issue from every farmhouse. There may be no new farm implements, no sewing-machine, but there will surely be a piano. This love of music has ever existed on those rock-bound shores, though in early days it found a stunted and sad expression in hymn tunes only, and the performance of music could scarce be called a colonial accomplishment. The first musical instruments were martial, drums and fifes and hautboys. I have never seen, in any personal inventory, the notice of a “gitterne” as in similar Virginian lists.
But in the early years of the eighteenth century a few spinets must have been exported to Boston and Philadelphia, and perhaps to Virginia. In 1712 an advertisement was placed in the Boston News-Letter that the Spinet would be taught, and on April 23, 1716, appeared in the same paper:—
Note that any Persons may have all Instruments of Music mended or Virginalls or Spinnets Strung & Tun’d, at a Reasonable Rate & likewise may be taught to play on any of the Instruments above mentioned.
In August, 1740, a “Good Spinnet” was offered for sale, and soon after a second-hand “Spinnet,” and in January, 1750, “Spinnet wire.”
On September 18, 1769, this notice appeared in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal:—