Home Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

John Adams probably lived as well as any New Englander of similar position and means. A Sunday dinner at his house was thus described by a visitor: the first course was a pudding of Indian meal, molasses, and butter; then came a course of veal and bacon, neck of mutton, and vegetables. When the New Englander went to Philadelphia, his eyes opened wide at the luxury and extravagance of fare. He has given in his diary some accounts of the lavishness of the Philadelphia larder. Such entries as these are found:—

(Of the home of Miers Fisher, a young Quaker lawyer.) "This plain Friend, with his plain but pretty wife with her Thees and Thous, had provided us a costly entertainment; ducks, hams, chickens, beef, pig, tarts, creams, custards, jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, porter, punch, wine and a long, etc."

(At the home of Chief Justice Chew.) "About four o'clock we were called to dinner. Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweetmeats of twenty sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., with a dessert of fruits, raisins, almonds, pears, peaches."

"A most sinful feast again! everything which could delight the eye or allure the taste; curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty kinds of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands, whipped sillabubs, etc. Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, beer."

By which lists may plainly be seen that our second President had somewhat of a sweet tooth.

The Dutch were great beer-drinkers and quickly established breweries at Albany and New York. But before the century had ended New Englanders had abandoned the constant drinking of ale and beer for cider. Cider was very cheap; but a few shillings a barrel. It was supplied in large amounts to students at college, and even very little children drank it. President John Adams was an early and earnest wisher for temperance reform; but to the end of his life he drank a large tankard of hard cider every morning when he first got up. It was free in every farmhouse to all travellers and tramps.

A cider-mill was usually built on a hillside so the building could be one story high in front and two in the back. Thus carts could easily unload the apples on the upper level and take away the barrels of cider on the lower. Standing below on the lower floor you could see two upright wooden cylinders, set a little way apart, with knobs, or nuts as they were called, on one cylinder which fitted loosely into holes on the other. The cylinders worked in opposite directions and drew in and crushed the apples poured down between them. The nuts and holes frequently clogged with the pomace. Then the mill was stopped and a boy scraped out with a stick or hook the crushed apples. A horse walking in a small circle moved a lever which turned the motor wheel. It was slow work; it took three hours to grind a cart-load of apples; but the machinery was efficient and simple. The pomace fell into a large shallow vat or tank, and if it could lie in the vat overnight it was a benefit. Then the pomace was put in a press. This was simple in construction. At the bottom was a platform grooved in channels; a sheaf of clean straw was spread on the platform, and with wooden shovels the pomace was spread thick over it. Then a layer of straw was laid at right angles with the first, and more pomace, and so on till the form was about three feet high; the top board was put on as a cover; the screw turned and blocks pressed down, usually with a long wooden hand-lever, very slowly at first, then harder, until the mass was solid and every drop of juice had trickled into the channels of the platform and thence to the pan below. Within the last two or three years I have seen those cider-mills at work in the country back of old Plymouth and in Narragansett, sending afar their sourly fruity odors. And though apple orchards are running out, and few new trees are planted, and the apple crop in those districts is growing smaller and smaller, yet is the sweet cider of country cider-mills as free and plentiful a gift to any passer-by as the water from the well or the air we breathe. Perry was made from pears, as cider is from apples, and peachy from peaches. Metheglin and mead, drinks of the old Druids in England, were made from honey, yeast, and water, and were popular everywhere. In Virginia whole plantations of the honey-locust furnished locust beans for making metheglin. From persimmons, elderberries, juniper berries, pumpkins, corn-stalks, hickory nuts, sassafras bark, birch bark, and many other leaves, roots, and barks, various light drinks were made. An old song boasted:—

"Oh, we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips."

Many other stronger and more intoxicating liquors were made in large quantities, among them enormous amounts of rum, which was called often "kill-devil." The making of rum aided and almost supported the slave-trade in this country. The poor negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea-captains and merchants and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves were then carried on slave-ships to the West Indies, and sold at a large profit to planters and slave-dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa. Thus the circle of molasses, rum, and slaves was completed. Many slaves were also landed in New England, but there was no crop there that needed negroes to raise it. So slavery never was as common in New England as in the South, where the tropical tobacco and rice fields needed negro labor. But New England's share in promoting negro slavery in America was just as great as was Virginia's.

Besides all the rum that was sent to Africa, much was drunk by Americans at home. At weddings, funerals, christenings, at all public meetings and private feasts, New England rum was ever present. In nothing is more contrast shown between our present day and colonial times than in the habits of liquor-drinking. We cannot be grateful enough for the temperance reform, which began at the early part of this century, and was so sadly needed.