Of somewhat later date was the toast rack, also standing on its little spindling legs.
No better list can be given of the kitchen utensils of earliest colonial days in America than those found in the inventories of the estates of the dead immigrants. These inventories are, in some cases, still preserved in the Colonial Court Records. We find that Madam Olmstead, of Hartford, Conn., had, in 1640, in her kitchen:—
| 2 Brasse Skillets 1 Ladle 1 candlestick one mortar all of brasse 1 brasse pott | 5. |
| 7 Small peuter dishes 1 peuter bason 6 porringers 2 peuter candlesticks 1 frudishe 2 little sasers 1 smale plate. | 1. 10. |
| 7 biger peuter dishes 1 salt 2 peuter cupps 1 peuter dram 1 peuter bottel 1 Warmeing pan 13 peuter spoons | 2. 12. |
| 1 Stupan 3 bowles & a tunnel 7 dishes 10 spoones one Wooddin cupp 1 Wooddin platter with three old latten panns Two dozen and a halfe trenchers two wyer candlesticks | 11. |
| 2 Jacks 2 Bottels 2 drinking hornes 1 little pott | 10. |
| 2 beare hogsheads 2 beare barrels 2 powdering tubs 4 brueing vessels 1 cowle 2 firkins | 2. |
This was certainly a very good outfit. The utensils for the manufacture and storage of beer did not probably stand in the kitchen, but in the lean-to or brew-house. A “cowl” was a large tub with ears; in it liquids could be carried by two persons, who bore the ends of a pole thrust through the ears or handles. Often with the cowl was specified a pail with iron bail. William Harris, of Pawtuxet, R. I., had, in 1681, “two Payles and one jron Bayle” worth three shillings. This naming of the pail-bail marked the change in the form of pail handles; originally, pails were carried by sticks thrust through ears on either side of the vessel.
The jacks were waxed leather jugs or drinking horns, much used in English alehouses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose use gave rise to the singular notion of the French that Englishmen drank their ale out of their boots. Governor Winthrop had jacks and leather bottles; but both names disappear from inventories by the year 1700, in New England.
These leather bottles were in universal use in England “among shepherds and harvest-people in the countrey.” They were also called bombards. Their praises were sung in a very spirited ballad, of which I give a few lines:—
I wish in heaven his soul may dwell
Who first found out the leather bottell.
A leather bottell we know is good
Far better than glasses or cases of wood,