Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

My tender wife keeps busily engaged and looks upon every Philadelphian who comes to us as a person suffering in a righteous cause; and entitled to partake of her hospitality which she administers with her labor and attendance with great freedom and alacrity....

My dear wife meets little respite all the day, the proverb being verified, that Woman’s Work is never done.

I owe my health to the vigilance, industry and care of my wife who really has been and is a blessing unto me. For the constant assiduity and press of her daily and painful labor in the kitchen, the Great Lord of the Household will reward her in due time.

It seems that so generous and noble a woman should have had a reward in this world, as well as the next, for, besides her kitchen duties, she was a “nonsuch gardner, working bravely in her garden,” and a first class butter-maker, who constantly supplied her poor neighbors with milk, and yet always had cream to spare for her dairy.

Far be it from me to cast even the slightest reflection, to express the vaguest doubt, as to the industry, energy, and application of so pious, so estimable an old gentleman as Mr. Marshall, but he was, as he says, “easily tired”—“the little I do tires and fatigues me”—“the grasshopper seems a burden.” So, even to our prosaic and somewhat emancipated nineteenth century notions as to women’s rights and their assumption of men’s duties, it does appear that so patient, industrious, and overworked a consort might have been spared some of the burdensome duties which devolved upon her, and which are popularly supposed not to belong to the distaff side of the house. An elderly milk-man might have occasionally milked the cow for that elderly weary milkmaid. And it does seem just a little strange that a hearty old fellow, who could eat gammons and drink punch at every occasion of sober enjoyment and innocent revelry to which he was invited, should let his aged spouse rise at daybreak and go to the wharves to buy loads of wood from the bargemen; and also complacently record that the horse would have died had not the ever-energetic wife gone out and by dint of hard work and good management succeeded in buying in the barren city a load of hay for provender. However, he never fails to do her justice in commendatory words in the pages of his Remembrancer, thus proving himself more thoughtful than that Yankee husband who said to a neighbor that his wife was such a good worker and a good cook, and so pleasant and kept everything so neat and nice around the house, that sometimes it seemed as if he couldn’t help telling her so.

One of the important housewifely cares of Philadelphia women was their marketing, and Madam Marshall was faithful in this duty also. We find her attending market as early as four o’clock upon a winter’s morning. In 1690, there were two market days weekly in Philadelphia, and nearly all the early writers note the attendance thereat of the ladies residing in the town. In 1744, these markets were held on Tuesday and Friday. William Black, a travelling Virginian, wrote that year with admiration of this custom:—

I got to the market by 7, and had no small Satisfaction in seeing the pretty Creatures, the Young Ladies, traversing the place from Stall to Stall where they could make the best Market, some with their maid behind them with a Basket to carry home the Purchase, others that were design’d to buy but trifles, as a little fresh Butter, a Dish of Green Peas or the like, had Good Nature & Humility enough to be their own Porters. I have so much regard for the fair Sex that I imagin’d like the Woman of the Holy Writ some charm in touching even the Hem of their Garments. After I made my Market, which was one pennyworth of Whey and a Nosegay, I disengag’d myself.

It would appear also that a simple and appropriate garment was donned for this homely occupation. We find Sarah Eve and others writing of wearing a “market cloke.”

It is with a keen thrill of sympathy that we read of all the torment that Mistress Marshall, that household saint, had to endure in the domestic service rendered to her—or perhaps I should say through the lack of service in her home. A special thorn in the flesh was one Poll, a bound girl. On September 13, 1775, Mr. Marshall wrote:—

After my wife came from market (she went past 5) she ordered her girl Poll to carry the basket with some necessaries to the place, as she was coming after her, they intending to iron the clothes. Poll accordingly went, set down the basket, came back, went and dressed herself all clean, short calico gown, and said she was going to school; but presently after the negro woman Dinah came to look for her, her mistress having mistrusted she had a mind to play truant. This was about nine, but madam took her walk, but where—she is not come back to tell.