Now, although our parents lived in this plain and simple style, yet our mothers were as neat and clean housekeepers as their circumstances and business concerns would admit. They generally cleaned house every spring and fall, in which they scrubbed and washed with soap-suds the under part of the upper floor and beams, and whitewashed the walls, and every Saturday scrubbed and wiped the floors of their sitting rooms and kitchens. Floor carpets were not used in their time. The linen shirts, trowsers and frocks of the men and boys, and the linen clothes of the women worn during one week, were in the next boiled in a pot or kettle of lye, and, after a proper time, the pot was carried out to a pounding block, where, while hot, the clothes were taken out by pieces and battled on the block with a battle, and then put in a tub of soapsuds, made of soft home-made soap, in which the same was washed and thereafter rinsed in clean water and dried. Our fathers, their sons and slaves, labored hard in the hot season of the year and often wet their shirts and trowsers with the sweat of their bodies, and this manner of boiling, battling and washing those linen clothes was very effectual to clean the same.
All the travel before the war, in time of the war and for some years thereafter, was performed on foot, on horseback, and in lumber wagons and lumber sleds. In this manner people visited each other, and attended to all their religious and other meetings, and to all their traveling business concerns. Many of the women had become habituated to ride on horseback, and had their side-saddles for the same. When a dance was had, the young men fetched the girls on horseback, and the young man's horse became the carrier of him and his lady, who mounted on it behind him. In those times no paints adorned the houses of our fathers, nor articles of fancy their rooms. No fanciful tables or table furniture; no great variety of eatables and drinks were furnished for one meal; no clothing of superfine cloth or silk was worn in those times, nor even a pair of boots and rarely a fur hat. Pleasure wagons and pleasure sleighs did not ease and make comfortable the travels of our parents; no umbrellas covered their heads from the rays of the sun and the storms through which they had to pass. All of which articles are now furnished in great abundance, and generally all can enjoy more or less of them.
The buildings of those times, especially before the war, for storing grain, hay, horses and cattle, consisted of a barn and one or two barracks for each farmer, all covered with straw roofs. The barns were built nearly square on the ground, with a floor through its middle and a stable along one side for horses and one along the other side for cattle. When the barn would not contain all the grain raised on the farm, one or two barracks were erected by setting four or five long posts in the ground, hewed eight square, tapered towards the top end. Holes to contain iron bolts about an inch and a half thick were bored through each post at about one foot and a half apart, from the bottom to the top. These holes contained the bolts on which the frame of the roof laid, which was raised to the top of the poles by means of a windlass, and, after being filled with grain, whenever any of it was taken out, the roof was let down therewith to prevent rain and snow from blowing on it.
This generation generally ended their days after the commencement of a great change in our country; and by contrasting their manner of life with that of the present time (now 1858), we behold the great change made in a term of about half a century in the habits of life in this town.
Between the years 1780 and 1800 this generation of the Peenpack neighborhood, of which I am a member, and the second generation of the lower neighborhood, came on the stage of action and commenced their own business transactions, in which we generally followed in the habits of our parents in respect to labor and diet, which continued for some time after the war ended. A change from the moral behavior of our parents was generated among the young people in the time of the war, and rude, vulgar and uncivilized habits had been acquired. After the war ended West India and York rum was introduced into this part of our country after stores became established in it, and farmers generally began to use these liquors in time of harvest and haying, during which time, in the first instance, a dram was taken early in the morning and work commenced and continued until about 8 o'clock, when breakfast was taken and then a bottle which held near a quart was filled with liquor and taken to the field for about six laborers, to last that day. This had been a practice before the war commenced and was considered to be an antidote against people injuring themselves by drinking cold water when the body was much heated by labor; and as those liquors enlivened people and made them more vigorous to perform work during their operation, it was thought to be profitable in that respect. These, and the use of cider, were the first changes in this town, from the habits of the people in the time of the war.
[USE OF SPIRITS AT FUNERALS AND WEDDINGS.]
Liquor was used at funerals. The practice was to give each person a dram before entering the house in which the corpse was. This was done by two men who were placed with liquor at each door of the house or each side of one door, and was thought in those times to be an antidote against contagion, and for that purpose a dram was given to each bearer before he performed his official duty. Rum and cider were also used to treat people for their services in assisting in raising buildings after the war had ended. Rum was also used at weddings to treat the friends who attended it. In those anterior times and even within my own recollection, it was customary to invite to a wedding all the young people in this present town and some down the Delaware in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and people, after the war ended, had not the means to furnish a variety of good victuals for their friends and neighbors who, yet treated them with those liquors, which had a superior estimation in those times to that of the present. They cheered and made lively and sociable the friends and neighbors who collected together, with trifling, if any, evil consequences, for people in those days guarded themselves against drinking so much as to become intoxicated and I have never known of any farmer of the second generation becoming drunk, yet there may have been such instances, and in progress of years it became a custom to make many afternoon frolics with liquor to get different jobs of work done. This led to intemperance and their multiplicity was unprofitable in a neighborhood. The young people sometimes had rude dancing frolics, where their only beverage was rum which was used in different ways, clear, sweetened with sugar, or made into sling, milk punch, eggnog, &c. The quantity of liquor drinked at these frolics, and the rudeness of the times caused many a fist fight, and this fighting became common at other gatherings of people where liquor was drank.