Part 1

Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

A DAY IN A COLONIAL HOME

BY DELLA R. PRESCOTT

_EDITED BY JOHN COTTON DANA_

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY FRANCESTOWN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

COPYRIGHT · 1921 BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

First printing, July, 1921 Second printing, March, 1922 Third printing, September, 1922 Fourth printing, November, 1926 Fifth printing, January, 1929 Sixth printing, November, 1929 Seventh printing, November, 1938 Eighth printing, March, 1949

_To_ MY MOTHER, MARY JANE

PREFACE

The average home to-day has conveniences to meet the demands of comfortable living. The heating and lighting are good. In nearly every home may be found a living room where the family assembles for rest and recreation. Here they read, sew, chat, and discuss the news. Similar scenes occurred in the colonial days, but in quite a different room. The kitchen took the place of our modern living room. The life of the colonists centered in it, for in the kitchen was the fireplace, often the one source of heat in the whole house. Its warmth and cheer and its use as a place for cooking made it the heart of the home. Here it was that the family interests and activities were centered; all the family group collected here to share the joys and sorrows of life.

HOW THE STORY CAME TO BE WRITTEN

A Father came into the Newark Museum to ask help of the educational adviser.

"I cannot get my children interested in their ancestors," said he. "They don't feel any pride in being descended from a lady who came over in the Mayflower. They say, 'Oh, Charlie's uncle came over in a private yacht, and Mike's brother is going over in an aeroplane.' What shall I do? If we were living at the old homestead, I could show them the hole in the shutter through which the Indian shot their great-uncle, and the oven by the fireside where their great-grandmother cooked for the continental soldiers, and the wedding dress of their grandmother. But the old place was sold, and everything is scattered."

"Bring your children to the Museum," said the educational adviser. "We will show them colonial costumes and candle-molds and Indian arrows."

"I'll try it," said the father, "but it won't be the same."

Then came a teacher.

"I wish," said she, "that I could make history alive to my pupils. They don't care how many men were killed in the battle of Monmouth, or what the date was when Washington crossed the Delaware."

"We will send you some dolls in colonial costume and an old wool-carder," said the educational adviser.

"Thank you," said the teacher. "Of course, those things will be better than nothing."

It was this need to see "the real things" that caused the Museum to build in its big hall at the top of the Newark Library a colonial kitchen, and fill it with colonial furnishings. Then the students from the Normal School dressed up in colonial clothes and went to work in the kitchen, spinning, making candles, and sewing carpet rags, and explaining these things to the children who flocked in to visit them.

Next Miss Prescott began to play with the children who flocked there, and then the Andrews children of this story were born.

The six or eight thousand children who were taken by their teachers to see this kitchen during the ten weeks that it stood there, many of whom then took their parents to see it, will perhaps read this story about the labors, and the play, and the love-making of Mary Jane, with interest.

Any group of manual training boys and domestic art girls can put up such a kitchen, dress the characters, and act out such a story, and in many American neighborhoods they can borrow "real things," for their stage properties.

Of course, the story was not written to stimulate handwork or theatricals. Nor was it written to Americanize, or re-Americanize anybody. But simple stories without ingenuity of plot or striking incident have always been told by parents and grandparents and maiden aunts to the delight of children. "Tell us what happened when Grandpa was a miller"; "Tell us about when you went to school through the woods"; "Tell us how the bear frightened Great-Aunt." These are the demands of children of all nations. The peculiarity of our situation is that so many of our children are step-children, half-children, adopted children. It is a mercy that there is an inheritance not only of blood, but of memories, of ideas, and of hopes.

If this story stimulates emulation of the real virtues of our forefathers, who founded the country, and hence leads to real patriotism, it will have achieved the desire in the hearts of the authors and publishers.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE I. Colonial Kitchen in the Newark Museum _Frontispiece_ II. Colonial Fireside 16 III. Domestic Industry 32 IV. Tea Time 33

FIGURE PAGE 1. Well and Well-Sweep 3 2. Candlesticks 4 3. Porringer or Shallow Bowl 7 4. Cast-Iron Skillet 8 5. Tin Kitchen or Roaster 9 6. Plate-Warmer 10 7. Wool Spinning-Wheel 14 8. A Cradle 15 9. Wooden Churn 16 10. Flint-Lock Gun and Pistol 19 11. Warming-Pan 21 12. Snuffers 22 13. Reel for Winding Thread 25 14. Kettle 27 15. Swinging Crane 28 16. Sewing-Bird 30 17. Andirons or Fire-Dogs 32 18. Toasting-Rack 33 19. A Gridiron 33 20. Knife-Tray 34 21. Spectacles and Bible 34 22. Wheel for Spinning Flax 39 23. Powder-Horn 43 24. Swift for Winding Yarn 45 25. Spider or Skillet with Bail 66 26. Colonial House 67 27. Floor Plan 68

A DAY IN A COLONIAL HOME

_A Day in a Colonial Home_

Mary Jane awoke, startled. Had she overslept and not heeded her father's call? She jumped out of bed on to the strip of rag carpet laid on the cold floor. The chill of the early May morning made her shiver, and, with motherly care, she turned and straightened the patchwork quilt on her two sisters, mischievous Abigail and gentle little Dorothy, who were sleeping warmly in their feather bed. The world was a-quiver with life and sound. Mary Jane looked anxiously through the small-paned window. Surely, Providence would grant a pleasant day for the last of the housecleaning! Her mother was ill with the new baby brother and the kitchen must be cleaned before she was about again. It was not easy to do the work as well as her mother would have done it, but a bright, sunshiny day would help.

The sun was just rising and a cool, northwest breeze was blowing the mist from the pond and gully. The sunlight sparkled on the pond which lay across the foot of the field and the breeze blew it into dark blue ripples. Mary Jane dreamed a minute. John Lewis must be in port, she thought, and perhaps he would be home to-day. His father's whaler, the _Breezy Belle_, had reached Gloucester the first of the week. If she planned well and hurried the work she might be able to go down to Jenny Lewis's in the afternoon to see her new dresses. Jenny Lewis was John's sister, and she had more pretty clothes than any girl in town. It would be a welcome change to visit her before supper. The past week of housecleaning had been a busy one, for the girls had cleaned the dooryard and the entry as well as the back room and the loft bedroom. Their mother, before her illness, had cleaned and aired her best front room and put back in their places the few pieces of furniture which stood in this cold and little-used room.

The well-sweep creaked in the breeze, and a whiff of the smoke of the kitchen fire, pouring out of the chimney, blew up the stairway. Mary Jane straightened her simple gray dress, folding a fresh white kerchief across her breast. The neighbors called her smart and comely. She was sixteen, and tall and strong, the oldest of eight children. Her brothers and sisters knew her to be gentle as well as firm and just. They never shirked Mary Jane's orders, but they carried to her their bruised toes and cut fingers, the stitches dropped in their knitting, the knots tied in their patchwork. She bound up their hurts and set them to work again.

"Daughter," called her father from the foot of the stairs, "the day comes on apace, and it promises a clear sky for your cleaning. Grandmother is tending your mother and the new babe, but John and I will need the porridge hot when we come back from foddering."

Mary Jane answered her father gravely and picked up the candle to take with her to the kitchen. She called the older of her sisters. The three all slept in the low-ceilinged upstairs chamber. "Come Abigail! You are in truth a sleepyhead. Come! Everything's awake, and we have much to do! Father has called and indeed you must hurry."

In the kitchen a glowing bed of red-hot coals burned on the hearth, streaks of sunlight glanced through the eastern windows and touched the snowy, coarse cloth on the large dinner-table. Soft reflections shone from the pewter porringers hanging on the dresser; a sunbeam flecked with bright light the brass candlestick which Mary Jane set near its mate on the mantel over the hearth. In the south windows red geraniums blossomed and there was an atmosphere of homely cheer and comfort in the room. All winter, the family had gathered in the kitchen and, in its warm cosiness, Mary Jane had spun, darned mittens and knit stockings. She loved the kitchen, and she worked there happily and energetically, putting into her tasks that same heartfelt devotion to duty that her great-grandfather had brought across the sea to the Massachusetts colony more than a hundred years before.

Her mother called quietly from the nearby bedroom, and Mary Jane tiptoed in. The baby was asleep and the sight of him in his helplessness and of her mother, always so strong and active, lying now so quiet and helpless at the beginning of a busy day, stirred her strangely. She bent awkwardly and kissed them, and blushed as she straightened up. Kisses were rare in her home, and she was surprised at herself. Her grandmother came in, and a commotion from the kitchen warned her that the boys were awake. Her three younger brothers, steady Thomas, and the twins, Asa and George, slept in the turn-down bed in the corner of the kitchen. They tumbled out and helped and punched each other into their clothes.

"No shoes and stockings to-day, boys," Mary Jane called. "Housecleaning time, and shoes have barely lasted through the frost."

Going to the table in the corner, she poured water into the wash basin. She washed her face and hands in the cold water, newly drawn from the well, gasping with the shock of its coldness, and rubbed her face briskly with the linen towel which hung over a roller on the door.

Suddenly the back entry door swung open, and roly-poly Sam Dodd came in, swinging an iron pot.

"Good-morrow, neighbors! Can you lend us a coal? As the weather grows milder I fear we tend our fire none too carefully."

"Did you know John Lewis had come home?" he called to Mary Jane. "Some of us stopped to see him last night and Jenny came out and two or three of the neighbors. Mother says it is ungodly the way Cap'n Lewis dresses Jenny. 'Fine feathers don't make fine birds,' she says, and Jenny doesn't work enough to pay the Cap'n. She's a fair gad-about. He toils mightily to get the whale oil to buy her gowns. John seems real pleased to be home, Mary Jane. He asked where you were."

Grandmother came into the kitchen as Sam started out with his borrowed fire.

"Pray tell thy mother, Sam, that the candles she helped us to make last fall are lasting well. We have treasured the choice green bayberry candles. Your mother will remember the day she helped me pick the bayberries for them. Now we do not need so much candle light, as the days grow longer. Thank her kindly for the bowl of rich soup she sent Daughter Andrews. Daughter will soon be up and about. Our new babe is six days old and strong and lusty. Hear how he cries."

Sam grinned and bore off his coals fallen from the burning sticks; while Grandmother took the bowl of porridge in to her daughter.

Drawing the settles up to the table Mary Jane placed her father's chair at one end and her mother's at the other for Grandmother. Abigail and Dorothy seized the small brothers and sisters and scrubbed them clean. Whereupon the children took their porringers and wooden bowls from the dresser and stood in their places behind the settles. Abigail strained into a pail the warm, frothy milk which John, the oldest brother, had brought in, and Dorothy filled the large pewter tankard with cool milk from the cellar way. Mary Jane bustled about. She dished up from the steaming kettle on the hearth the corn meal mush, or hasty pudding, and added a large, thin Johnny cake, which she had browned in the skillet. The children folded their hands and bowed their heads. Grandmother had returned to the table. Father leaned over the high back of his chair and asked the Heavenly Father's blessing on home and family and sought guidance in the tasks of the day.

Mary Jane admired her father more than anyone else in the world. Wasn't he always right? She wondered. This morning while she sat with bowed head she asked herself, wistfully, if her father ever found it hard to decide between pleasure and duty. What would he say if he knew how much she wanted to see Jenny Lewis's new clothes? Would he think her frivolous? As she raised her eyes, she found her father looking quietly at her. Somehow, she seemed to feel as if he understood her better than she did herself and she sat up straight and proud because he was her father. She felt certain that he would choose his duty however hard he found it.

As Mary Jane ate her mush and milk, she planned her day and thought occasionally of Jenny Lewis. In Jenny's home they used a tin kitchen, or roaster, for their goose. But Mary Jane's family were poor, and they used a home-made device for roasting their goose. To a string hung in the fireplace Mary Jane would tie the goose's leg and Asa would sit in front of the fire and twist the string, so that the goose might become evenly browned. Jenny's mother used a plate-warmer, made with one side open to the heat, but Mary Jane would dip her plates into a kettle of hot water and never envy her friends their extra comforts and luxuries. However, Mary Jane _did_ have a lively interest in new things and pretty clothes, and she said to herself that she would get through her work and have an hour or two before supper to visit Jenny whether or no.

Her father had set the churn near the hearth and the cream was warm enough for Thomas to beat. The brick oven was well heated, and she could bake apple pies, using the last of the dried apples. George should take down the few strings of apples which were left hanging on the kitchen rafters, and Dorothy should wash them at the well. It would not take long for Dorothy to clear away the dishes and fold the table-cloth and napkins. The family had few dishes and most of these were pewter bowls and porringers. A few blue dishes of Grandmother's, that she had brought from England, were left. These were used only on rare occasions. Mary Jane would wash them herself. The silver spoons and Mother's white-handled knives must be scoured with care. Abigail should attend to them and the pewter and the tin-lined copper kettles. Abigail liked to make them shine and Mary Jane knew that when one's heart is in a task the work goes quickly. There was always wool to card, and the small boys might do this in odd moments. When the fireplace was cleaned out, one of the boys must empty all the ashes into the leach barrel. Through the winter the family had saved the ashes and all grease from cooking and butchering and, in the fall, Mother would make soft soap. Mary Jane's mother and grandmother always had good luck with their soft soap, and in the clear jelly-like substance there remained little trace of the rancid grease and strong lye from which it had been made.

The simple but nourishing breakfast was soon over. Father spoke occasionally to John about the work of the day. "The flax patch must be harrowed and sowed and the sods turned for the corn," he said.

"This is a likely drying day, John; the wind and sun will draw the dampness from the earth, and take the dust from your rugs, too, Daughter," he added, as he rose and picked up his broad, soft hat.

"Remember, children, that your mother has taught you to work quickly and with care. Show that you have learned your lesson well. Boys, stand ready to handle the dasher, or turn the roast. Come, John."

Breakfast finished, all became bustle and stir. Grandmother slipped briskly to her large, wool spinning-wheel. She was white-haired and full of years, but still she plied her task of spinning energetically and skilfully. She had learned it long before in a shire of England where wool was raised and made into cloth. Grandmother was graceful and dignified in carriage; for many years of her life she had walked back and forth at her wheel, lightly poised and alert. She lifted her spinning-wheel, and, with awkward help from Thomas, carried it into Mother Andrew's room.

"I must needs be out of thy way, Mary Jane, and will spin in thy mother's room to-day."

But Grandmother soon returned, holding the baby in the crook of her left arm. She seated herself near the fire and unwrapped many layers of soft woolen covers from little Samuel. Dipping her elbow into the basin of warm water at her side, she found it just right and bathed the baby quickly, wrapped him again in the folds of the flannel, and retied his little cap. She then put him in the cradle, and called Thomas to rock him to sleep.

Mary Jane told her brothers and sisters what she expected of each of them before she pulled out her rolling-board and started to make pie-crust.

Abigail banged the churn dasher up and down and thought eagerly of the pewter and brasses to be polished.

"Thomas, methinks the wee child must be asleep. Stretch up to this churn dasher and prove yourself a dashing knave," she said.

"Abigail, teach not to children such play on words," chided Mary Jane.

Abigail frowned and said, "You were not always so proper in your speech, Mary Jane, before John Lewis came a-courting."

Mary Jane, flushed and flustered, knocked her cap awry, and accidentally wiped a floury hand across her cheek.

"Do you suppose that I shall be thus improved when someone comes a-courting me?" Abigail went on. "What do you think John Lewis may have made you? He has had time enough for many a turn of the hand. It is full three months since the whaler put out from Gloucester. Do you think that even a slow-witted fellow like your John may have speed in his fingers? Perchance he whittles faster than he talks?"

"Abigail," Mary Jane interrupted, "the butter must have come. Run out to the well for fresh water. I will gather the butter while you are gone. Curb your saucy tongue, sister. Mistress Dodd is coming up the road with her pot of beans, and I would not have her hear your foolish gossip."

"John wants the flint-lock, Mary Jane. Pass it down to me quickly. Oh hurry, kindly," Abigail called as she tumbled in at the doorway. The little boys followed close at her heels. "The dog has dug out a woodchuck in the stone wall, near the flax patch, and John thinks he can pot him. Do hasten, Mary Jane! Your fingers were not always thumbs."

The gun was loaded, for when it was wanted it was wanted quickly, and loading was no quick matter. Throwing it over her shoulder as John would have done, Abigail ran from the house.

Dorothy could not bear to have killed even a woodchuck who ate the flax plants. Mary Jane knew how the child loved all dumb creatures, and she sent her out into the south door-yard, patchwork in hand. Dorothy sat down on the door-step and sewed. She was setting patchwork blocks for Mary Jane's new quilt. It was a "Job's Trouble" pattern and there were in it many hexagonal blocks of real India chintz, and French calicoes that Jenny Lewis had given Mary Jane. Dorothy sewed over and over with painstakingly small stitches. But the spring day enticed her, and she stole away from her stint. She poked with a stick among the roots and dried leaves in the garden border, and thought eagerly of the colors and sweet odors soon to awaken there: hollyhocks and purple stocks, candytuft and pinks, Sweet William, by the door-step, and love-lies-a-bleeding, Queen Margarets, larkspur, tiger lilies and bouncing-bet, and sunflowers to be planted here and there with corn. Dorothy played only a few minutes, for conscience urged her to pick up the unfinished square of patchwork, and she soon went back into the house. Mary Jane bade her show Mistress Dodd into their mother's room, for her own arms were deep in the butter-bowl.

After Abigail had helped dig out the woodchuck, she brought in the two pails of clear rinsing water for the butter, and hastened to start her own task of the day. The pewter and copper should be made to shine as never before. She arranged on the far end of the dinner-table, pewter porringers, solid silver spoons, the pewter tankard and one large pewter plate and several small ones, the long-handled brass warming pan, two tall brass candlesticks and the snuffers from the mantel. She even removed the flint-lock pistols from their holsters beneath the mantel. Their brass mountings were dull and lustreless. She looked longingly at the brass clasps of Father's large Bible. When Mary Jane was elsewhere it might be possible to make them shine as they should.