Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

Of late years the help employed in these boarding-houses, in addition to members of the family, has come to be negroes from Culpepper County, Virginia. These employees come each spring and return in the fall.

The one Irish Catholic boarding-house is for the entertainment of the hired men on the lower part of the Hill, near the Hotel. It is maintained throughout the year, with a varying number of guests, by a woman ninety years of age, who in addition to the management, does much of the hard work herself.

The conservatism of the Hill families is shown in the fact that the boarding-house business has never been extended. No house has ever been erected for that purpose alone; but the present business of that sort is carried on in the old Quaker homes, each receiving only as many paid guests as it was used to receive of its hospitable duty, when the Quarterly Meeting brought Friends from afar, once in the year.

Mizzen-Top Hotel is perhaps an exception, if, indeed, a large hotel, with quarters for two hundred and fifty guests, and at prices ranging from three dollars per day up, be an exception. It has grown out of the same conditions which transformed the farmhouses into boarding-houses, save that it has never been managed at a profit, and they never at a loss. It is, however, an institution by itself, and will be treated in another place.

The Mizzen-Top Hotel has always been a sober institution, influenced thereto by the pleasureless spirit of the Hill. Baseball, tennis, and golf in their times have had vogue there, but under every management it has been hard to arouse and maintain active interest in outdoor or indoor sports. The direct road to Hammersley Lake, formerly called Quaker Hill Pond, has made possible a moderate indulgence in carriage-driving. The laying out of the golf links in 1897 set going that dignified sport, just as the Wayside Path in 1880 occasioned some mild pedestrianism. But the Hotel diminishes rather than increases in its play-activities; and only games of cards retain a hold upon the guests, who prefer the piazza, the croquet ground, the tennis court, and the golf links in rapidly diminishing proportion.

Intemperance was common in earlier times, and drinking was universal. Every household made and stored for winter many barrels of cider. Rum and wine were freely bought at the store. Their use in the harvest field was essential to the habits of agriculture which preceded the times of the mower and reaper. This free use of cider, with accompanying intemperance, survives in only two houses on Quaker Hill.

Miss Taber's account, in "Some Glimpses of the Past," describes the drinking habits of the older period: "It was customary to have cider on the table at every meal, the ladies would have their tea, but most of the men drank cider largely, many to excess, consequently there were great quantities made in the fall and stored in the cellars during the winter. A large farmer would lay out a great deal of work, gathering from ten to twenty cartloads of apples, hooping and cleaning barrels, and many ground and pressed their own cider, then the large casks were drawn to and placed in the cellars. This usually occupied a large part of the month of October. In the spring a portion of the hard cider would be taken to a distiller, and made into cider brandy to be used in the haying and harvest field, at sheep washings, butchering, raisings, shearings and on many occasions. Some was always on the sideboard and often on the table. In most households there were sideboards well furnished with spirits, brandy, homemade wine, metheglin, etc., which were offered to guests. It was a fashion or custom to offer a drink of some kind whenever a neighbor called.

"My grandfather being obliged to have so many men at least two months each year became disgusted with the custom of furnishing so much cider and spirits to the men in the field, as many of them would come to the house at supper time without any appetite and in a quarrelsome mood. There would be wrestlings and fighting during the evening and the chain in the well could be heard rattling all night long. So one year, probably about 1835 or '36, he decided that he would do it no longer. His brother and many of his neighbors tried to dissuade him and prophesied that he would not be able to get sufficient help to secure his crops, but he declared he would give up farming before he would endure it any longer, and announced when securing his extra help for that summer that he would furnish no cider or spirits in the field, but that coffee and other drinks would be carried out and that every man should have a ration of spirits at each meal. Most of the men he had had in past years came back and seemed to be glad to be out of the way of temptation. The next year he dispensed with the ration at meal times, and the custom grew among his neighbors with surprising rapidity; it was but a few years when it became general, with a few exceptions, where the farmer himself was fond of it, until to-day such a thing is not heard of, and in fact, the farmer, like the railroads and other large corporations, do not care to employ a man that is in the habit of using spirits at all."

In the years 1890-1905 there were only two families on the Hill which followed primitive custom in "putting in cider" into the cellar in quantity for the winter. In five more a very small quantity was kept. In the other cases it was regarded as immoral to use the beverage. The writer was only once offered a drink of alcoholic beverage in six years' residence on the Hill.

In respect to the standard of living which is regarded as necessary to the maintenance of respect and social position, the Hill exhibits two strata of the population. The city people, and the farmers and laborers. The former class, besides the Hotel and its cottages, comprise seven households, who have formed their ways of living upon the city standard. The others, resident all the year round upon the Hill, live after a standard common to American country-people generally of the better class.