Colonial days in old New York

by Alice Morse Earle

CHAPTER VI
DUTCH FARMHOUSES

The old Dutch homestead of colonial times fitted the place and the race for which it was built. There was plenty of solid level earth for it to stand on,—so it spread out, sunny and long. The men who built it had never climbed hills or lived on mountain-tops, nor did they mean to climb many stairs in their houses. The ceilings were low, the stairs short and steep, and the stories few; a story and a half were enough for nearly every one. The heavy roof, curving slightly inward, often stretched out in front at the eaves to form a shelter for the front stoop. Sometimes in the rear it ran out and down over a lean-to to within six or eight feet from the ground. Sometimes dormer windows broke the long roof-slope and gave light to the bedrooms or garret within. This long roof contracted the walls of the second-story bedrooms, but it afforded a generous, useful garret, which to the Dutch housekeeper was one of the best rooms in the house.

The long side of the house was usually set to receive the southern sunshine; if convenient, the gable-end was turned to the street or lane; for, being built when there were poor roads and comparatively little travel, and when the settlers were few in number, each house was not isolated in lonesome woods or in the middle of each farm, but was set cosily and neighborly just as close to those of the other settlers as the extent of each farm would allow, and thus formed a little village street.

The windows of these houses were small and had solid wooden shutters, heavily hinged with black-painted iron hinges. Sometimes a small crescent-shaped opening cut in the upper portion of the shutter let in a little dancing ray of light at early dawn into the darkened room. In the village as in the city the stoop was an important feature of the house and of home life. Through the summer months the family gathered on this out-door sitting-room at the close of day. The neighbors talked politics as they smoked their evening pipes, and the young folk did some mild visiting and courting. As the evening and pipes waned, little negro slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal dishes of living coals, to start the smouldering tobacco afresh in the long Dutch pipes.

The cellar of these old farmhouses was a carefully built apartment, for it played a most important part in the orderly round, in the machinery of household affairs. It was built with thought, for it had to be cool in summer and warm in winter. To accomplish the latter result, its few small windows and gratings were carefully closed and packed with salt hay in the autumn, and a single trap-door opening outside the house furnished winter entrance. Within this darkened cellar were vast food-stores which put to shame our modern petty purchases of weekly supplies. There were always found great bins of apples, potatoes, turnips, and parsnips. These vegetables always rotted a little toward spring and sprouted, and though carefully sorted out and picked over sent up to the kamer above a semi-musty, damp-earthy, rotten-appley, mouldy-potatoey smell which, all who have encountered will agree, is unique and indescribable. Strongly bound barrels of vinegar and cider and often of rum lay in firm racks in this cellar; and sometimes they leaked a little at the spigot, and added their sharply alcoholic fumes to the other cellar-smells. Great hogsheads of corned beef, barrels of salt pork, hams seething in brine ere being smoked, tonnekens of salted shad and mackerel, firkins of butter, kilderkins of home-made lard, jars of pickles, kegs of pigs’ feet, or souse, tumblers of spiced fruits, graced this noble cellar. On a swing-shelf were rolliches and head-cheese and festoons of sausages. On such a solid foundation, over such a storage-room of plenty, thrift, and prudence, stood that sturdy edifice,—the home-comfort of the New York farmer.

On the ground-floor above were low-studded rooms, one called the kamer, which was the parlor and spare bedroom as well; for on its clean sanded floor often stood the best bedstead, of handsome carved mahogany posts, with splendid high-piled feather-beds, heavy hangings, and homespun linen sheets and pillow-cases. Back of this kamer, in the linter, was the milk-room. The spinning-room with its spinning-wheels was the sitting-room, or occasionally the kitchen, and the bedroom adjoining was called the spinning-room kametje. There were often four or five spinning-wheels in a family, and their merry hum meant lively work. The furniture of these rooms was in character much like that of townhouses, and all had sanded floors. Above these rooms were comfortable chambers; and above the chambers the garret.

A more loving pen than mine has drawn the old garrets of the Flatbush farmhouses, with their cast-off furniture, old trunks, and bandboxes; the unused cradle and crib; the little end window with its spider-webs and yellow wasps buzzing angrily, and beating with extended wings against the dingy panes, or sitting in dull clusters, motionless and silent, along the moulding; the rough chimneys; the spinning-wheels and looms, the wooden pegs with discarded clothing. Mrs. Vanderbilt says:—

“The shingled roof which overarched the garret in all its length and breadth was discolored by time, and streaked and stained with the leakage caused by hard northeast storms; there were tin-pans and sea-shells apparently placed at random over the floor in a purposeless way, but which were intended to catch the drip when the warped shingles admitted the rain. In winter there were little drifts of snow here and there which had sifted through the nail-holes and cracks.”

The garret was a famous drying-place in winter-time for the vast washings. Often long adjustable poles were fitted from rafter to rafter to hold the hanging garments.

In the garret, beside the chimney and opening into it, was the smokehouse, sometimes shaped like a cask. Too heavy and big to have been brought in and up to the garret, it was probably built in it. Around this smokehouse were hung hams and sausages, and sides of bacon and dried beef. These usually were not cured in this garret smokehouse; that was simply a storage-place, in which they could be kept properly dry and a little smoked.