USA > Connecticut > Colonial Days And Ways: As Gathered from Family Papers > Part 12
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The diverse housewifely cares indicated in the foregoing extracts show but a few of the many which fell to the lot of all colonial women of the better classes. Upon the minister's wife devolved still other duties. She was expected to assist at all the births, weddings, and funerals, not only in the French sense, but as an active helper. It is related of Madam Smith that for thirty years it was into her hands that most of the new-born babies of her husband's parish were committed for their first rob- ings. And there being then, in country places at least, no undertakers, as we now understand the term, but in their stead only cabinet-makers who made coffins as well as cradles, chairs, and tables, Mrs. Smith shared with other ladies the last sad offices for friends and neighbors.
In times of general sickness - which were much more frequent than now, owing to the ignorance of sanitary precautions and all means for controlling contagious disease - both the pastor and his wife were ever at the service of the flock. It is re- corded in Sedgwick's valuable history of Sharon that in the winter of 1784-85 there was "a three months' visitation of the town by the small-pox, during which seven hundred persons out of a population of about two thousand had the dreaded disease, either naturally or by inoculation," and that throughout this time of distress Parson Smith and his wife "spent their entire time in close atten- dance upon the sick and dying."
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The entertainment of strangers was a duty which perhaps devolved more frequently upon the family of a country pastor than it should have been per- mitted to do, but there were occasions when the hosts felt themselves much more than repaid.
Such an occasion came to Parson and Mrs. Smith in the month of June in 1770. On the 18th of this month came the Rev. George White- field on his last and greatest preaching tour. He had passed up the Hudson River, stopping to preach at all towns which would give him a hear- ing, including Albany, whence he passed onward to Schenectady. Turning at this point, he had come southward again, visiting townships from twenty to thirty or more miles back from the east- ern bank of the river, and preaching wherever al- lowed to do so in the churches, otherwise in the open air, until he reached Sharon. Here, as had happened in many other places, " there was," says Mr. Sedgwick, “ considerable opposition to his being permitted to preach in the meeting-house," but Parson Smith's influence, always inclined to the liberal side on any question, prevailed, and the church doors were opened, and, "that all the hearers from this and the neighboring towns might be well accommodated with seats, extensive scaf- folds were erected all around the house."
A few of the children and many of the grand- children of those who had heard Whitefield in Sharon on this occasion were living in my girl-
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hood, and marvelous indeed must have been the eloquence that was followed by such deep and far- reaching results, and was remembered so long.
Most marvelous must the preacher's successful efforts have seemed to one who, like Madam Smith, had spent the entire previous night by his bedside, burning dried stramonium-leaves that he might inhale the smoke, and in various other ways doing her utmost to enable the sufferer to get his breath, under the violent attacks of asthma which, three months later, ended his career.
Mrs. Smith and others had feared, all through this anxious night, that their revered patient would pass from earth before the morning's sun should rise, yet as it rose his sufferings became gradually less. He had two or three hours of refreshing sleep, followed by draughts of strong coffee, and before the noon came he was able to preach such a sermon as even he could seldom do, while his grand voice, " as soft as a flute and as piercing as a fife," carried for almost incredible distances, not only his text, " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again," but all save the finer shadings of his message.
The letter of thanks and farewell sent by Mr. Whitefield from his dying bed at Newburyport, Massachusetts, did not reach Parson and Mrs. Smith until more than a month after its writer had there drawn his last agonized breath; but it was long cherished as a token from an angel visitant.
CHAPTER XV SUNDAYS AND OTHER DAYS IN THE PARSONAGE
CHAPTER XV.
SUNDAYS AND OTHER DAYS IN THE PAR- SONAGE. 8
From Sunset to Sunset. The Weekly Ablution. Care of the Teeth. Long Services. Catechizing. Sunday Night. Fashions and Clothes. An Evening of Sacrifice.
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ROM the beginning of the New- F Englander's Sabbath, at sunset on Saturday evening, the housewife must have found that portion of sacred time anything but a period of rest. The Saturday evening meal must be hastened, that the dishes might be washed in secu- lar time. Personal ablutions were held to be labor not unbefitting the holy day, and from the earliest times in the New England colonies, the Saturday evenings were devoted, first to an hour's catechiz- ing, and then to the conscientious scrubbing (this word sounds a little harsh, but it is probably the correct one to describe the process) of each person in the family, beginning with the youngest and con- cluding with the oldest members of the household.
As special rooms for bathing, with hot and cold water to be had with the turning of the faucet, were then undreamed-of luxuries, some have sup- posed that in the frequently excessive cold, and under the lack of all conveniences, our ancestors were neglectful of the grace of personal cleanliness. This is, in all probability, a grave mistake. Both
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tradition and written contemporary evidence go to prove that personal cleanliness was enjoined as a religious duty, and that it was a duty religiously fulfilled, under whatever difficulties.
Hot water could only be procured by heating in great iron pots over the open fires, and the tubs employed for bathing were in general the same which were used for the clothes-washings on Mon- days, but not always. Some tubs were made for bathing purposes only, of cedar, and large enough for a tall man to lie in at full length. When the mother of the Rev. C. M. Smith came to Sharon from Suffield, Connecticut, about 1770, she brought with her a tub of this sort. As there were no stated rooms for bathing, the tubs were usually left in the cellars through the week, that they might not be- come dry enough to leak. If a fire were not kept in the best room all the rest of the week, one would be lighted there on every Saturday during the cold season, and maintained until late on Sunday night. This left free the fires in the kitchens for the ser- vants, and those in the living-rooms for the family. Here the carpets, if any, were protected, and the tubs were set, each one shielded from view on all sides, save that nearest the fire, by heavy woolen coverlets or blankets hung over clothes-horses. With the generous size of the fireplaces of those days, as many as three or even more such curtained cabinets might be made in front of each fire. As much cold water as was desired was poured into
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each tub and was then brought to the required temperature by the addition of boiling water from the great iron or brass kettles.
The carrying out the water that had been used by each bather, and emptying the tubs at a little distance from the house, occasionally into a sub- surface drain, as at the parsonage, or, as in most cases, into shallow ditches, and of refilling the tubs, was severe labor, and would probably devolve upon the strongest of the servants or members of the family.
Certainly much, and probably all, of the soap used in the colonies was of home manufacture, and was so harsh in its quality that as little of it as possible was used upon the person. Those who were careful for their complexions rarely used any soap about their faces, but instead softened the water by a very little lye made from the ashes of hard woods. Rose-water of home distillation and various unguents were then applied to heal the smart. In warm weather buttermilk was con- sidered excellent for the complexion, and in severe winter weather cider brandy was used by some, and an ointment of mutton tallow and lard by others.
The house-mistress had not only to see that all was in readiness for this great weekly ablution, but that none for whom she was responsible should es- cape it. Nothing but a case of severe illness was allowed to excuse any inmate of a self-respecting
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household. This state of things lasted until within my mother's remembrance. She was born in 1810, and one of her earliest recollections was of seeing old "Kongo Sally," armed with a stout switch, driving the young darkies, some of whom were her own grandchildren, in from the outbuildings in which they sought refuge, to undergo their weekly scrubbing from her merciless hands and those of one or two assistants.
As dentistry was an art still in the future, de- cayed teeth were the rule rather than the excep- tion among adults until well into the present century ; yet persons of refined instincts never omit- ted cleansing the teeth. Juliana Smith, writing to her brother in 1782, says : "Peggy Evertson has showed me a present her father brought her from Albany. It is a brush for the teeth made of fine, stiff, white bristles set in a back of mother of pearl. It is better than the sassafras twigs which Tite Cæsar fringes out for us, because with the brush you can better cleanse the backs of the teeth. You wanted to know what you should bring me from New Haven when you come back, so I write about this, if so be you might find me one. Only it need not have so fine a back, one of wood or horn would please me as well." Tooth-brushes are mentioned in the Verney papers, about 1650, as "elegant tri- fles now used by the ladies of the French Capital." But smoothly rounded bits of wood, sharpened at one end, and at the other finely splintered and then
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pounded into the semblance of a round paint- brush, were in use in England long before that, and washes for " cleanseing the teeth and sweetning the breath " are mentioned in the outfit of the child- bride of Richard II.
The Sharon parsonage was distinguished above many others of its time in that the best of water for all purposes was brought into the house from a dis- tant spring by a primitive aqueduct of cedar logs, bored through their length to form tubes, then tightly fitted together, and laid at a depth of several feet beneath the surface to protect them from the frost, while the refuse water was discharged in a similar way in the opposite direction at a distance from any dwelling. Within a few years some of these logs have been dug up, still in a state of fair preservation, while the decaying remains of others lay near by. From the same spring which supplied the parsonage the delicious water was similarly conducted into the stone mansion of Dr. Simeon Smith. There still remains the basin which once received and discharged the water in this house. It is of smooth and finely grained limestone, about fourteen inches in diameter at the top, and of equal depth. Since the introduction of modern plumb- ing this basin has been used as a pot to hold growing plants out of doors.
Of course the Puritan parson's wife was expected to attend every Sabbath service as strictly as him- self, and perhaps it was not always either pleasant
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or convenient for her to do so; but it is not neces- sary to dwell upon that part. Quite enough has been said by the last generation or two of persons who, judging others by themselves, fancy that two long sermons and a prayer-meeting must have wearied both the souls and the bodies of our an- cestors, as they would our own. This is not at all probable. They really liked the long preachments, the endless prayers, the unmusical singing. Nay, more, they loved all of them. They saw and heard with spiritual eyes and ears, with an inner uplifting which imparted light, perfume, and har- mony to their barren surroundings. I do not say that there were not many who inwardly and some who openly rebelled at these things, but they were in a minority. There is every proof that the majority really enjoyed what we should now consider as very tiresome Sundays.
To walk, to ride on horseback, or to drive in springless wagons over miles of often intolerable roads, and then spend two hours in a fireless church on a winter day, and, after an hour's interval, to spend another two hours in the same way, does not seem very inviting to us; but, in addition to the strong religious motives to sustain them, these people had social motives as well. The Sunday services were pleasures all the more valuable because they were shared in common. The noon intermission was a season of social communion most keenly en- joyed, and the still later adjournment of all to the
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catechizing at the parsonage was made interesting by the permitted freedom of discussion, and the subsequent interchange of views and friendly greet- ings. Books were scarce; newspapers, in our sense, were non-existent ; and of such periodicals as there were, but few would be taken in a small township. Any new books or papers would first find their way to the parson, and every intelligent stranger passing through the place would call at the parsonage, paying for his entertainment by bringing as much news from the outside world as he had been able to collect on his journey, and re- ceiving as much local information as he could get to carry away with him and distribute as he pro- ceeded on his travels. The parsonage was an in- telligence exchange, and the parson was expected to give from the pulpit any new religious or politi- cal information that he had gained through the week, and, after the Sunday afternoon catechizing, his family shared with him the pleasure and duty of imparting any bits of more personal interest that had come to their knowledge.
It was fortunate for the madam that Puritan usage required that as little cooking as might be should be done on the Sabbath, for otherwise time and strength would both have failed her; but the sacred hours ended with the setting of the sun, and after this there was cooked and served the best meal of the week, which was made an occasion of real festivity, and enjoyed with the keen zest im-
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parted by long anticipation, by the easy assurance that it had been well earned, and by the certainty that, though the morrow's toils were lying in wait, they could not spoil the pleasures of this hour.
During this privileged time after the "Sunday night supper," the young folks separated into groups, unrebuked by their elders. The children ; played games, elderly men talked of theological dogmas, politics, and crops, and women of their household employments and clothes.
Fashions, like materials, were then much more durable than now. As there were no fashion- papers, intelligence on this subject could only be transmitted from mouth to mouth. A new paper or cloth pattern was a treasure indeed. It must not be supposed that these notable women talked only about their own clothes, and exchanged only the patterns of women's and infants' apparel. The attire of husbands and brothers was a matter of equally practical concern to them. The parson's preaching-suit -black cloth knee-breeches and straight-cut coat - might be made by some itine- rant tailor, passing from house to house during the winter, as was the custom of the day, or might in a few instances have been bought in distant New York or New Haven; and the sheer linen for his bands was probably imported from Holland: but all his other garments (and those of most of the men in his parish), including the long, knitted silk stockings (worn over woolen ones in winter), were
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necessarily of home manufacture. Besides the linen for the minister's bands, the silk for his stock- ings was imported; but every thread of the rest of his apparel, from the finest linen for his handker- chiefs and shirts, to the woolen yarn for his under- clothes, was grown or raised upon his own ground, tilled and cared for, harvested and cured if it were flax, or sheared and carded if it were wool, by his own hands or those of his employees, at least some of whom must have been slaves; and their clothing also had to be provided for by his labor and foresight.
All New England ministers were to a certain extent farmers as well as pastors, and where the parson's labors ceased those of the madam and her daughters and women began. Men hatcheled the flax, and both men and women carded wool. The spinning was always the work of women, while weaving was done principally by men. Between them they spun, knitted, wove, fulled and dyed, cut, fitted, and adorned all the textile fabrics worn. Carpets were seldom woven at home, and damask table-linen, if not imported, was usually the work of a professional weaver. So, too, were the blue- and-white or green-and-white all wool or cotton- and-wool coverlets of elaborate patterns of which so many still remain; but the yarn or thread for them all, whether linen, cotton, or wool, was spun at home. Sheets, blankets, and all simply striped or checked table-linen and bed-hangings were woven as well as spun at home.
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The summers were especially busy, neither men nor women, bond nor free, those in the prime of life nor the aged, nor children, could idle away the long summer days. The great grain-fields of the West were still unawakened from their ages of slumber. Wheat, rye, buckwheat, corn, oats, must all be raised here.
With agricultural implements so imperfect that no modern farmer would condescend to use them, the labors of planting, sowing, haying, and harvest- ing were great. In these days we know the evils of competition and the nervous strain from the perpetual unrest of our lives, but we know neither the disadvantages of severe manual labor nor much about the ceaseless toil necessary in summer to provide for winter's daily physical needs. These labors were healthful in their nature, but pitiless in their exactions.
Winter's toils were sufficiently arduous. Pro- viding the fuel for the indispensable and endlessly craving open wood fires was alone a heavy task, and there were many others, such as the daily care of the horses, sheep, swine, and fowls; yet in winter it was possible to find time to read, write, and study, as well as to enjoy such social gather -. ings as might combine amusement with work. What some of these pleasures were may be seen in other chapters. Here we will only glance at one which was peculiar to the Revolutionary period.
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Bullets had become very scarce. Madam Smith, like most well-to-do matrons of her time, possessed a goodly store of pewter plates, platters, cups, bowls, and porringers. Several of the neighboring ladies were equally well supplied. On a certain early spring evening in 1777 Madam Smith invited all to come and bring with them every pewter dish which they could spare. Before the time for separation came many gallons of good bullets had been made from the cherished pewter articles, which had been melted and merrily run through bullet molds, and a good supper had been heartily en- joyed. For many evenings after this one of cheer- ful sacrifice, there were held from house to house so-called " trencher bees," whereat the young men cut and shaped maple and poplar wood into dishes, which the women made smooth by scraping with broken glass, and polished with the clean white sand of powdered limestone. Madam Smith, and probably most of the other contributors to the bul- let fund, possessed a good deal of pretty Lowestoft and Delft, as well as Canton blue china, but the every-day use of such fragile dishes was not to be thought of, especially in war-time, when they could in nowise be replaced; hence the necessity for the return to the primitive wooden dishes of the sev- enteenth century.
All existing records of Madam Smith - and they are many - prove her to have been one of those noble women, a few of whom are to be found in all
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countries and in every age, who are so cheerfully brave that they face suffering and danger in all forms, unconscious that they are doing anything more than any other would do, yet so lovable and so gracious in their strength that they are mourned until the last one who knew them has himself passed from earthly scenes. Madam Smith died in 1800, and for all the years after her decease until her husband and the latest lingerer of her children had departed to join her, the letters which passed between the survivors are filled with touching references to the beloved wife and revered mother.
CHAPTER XVI
MANOR LADIES AS REFUGEES
CHAPTER XVI.
MANOR LADIES AS REFUGEES. 08 Flight of the Livingstons from Kingston and Cler- mont to Litchfield County, Connecticut. The Young Van Rens- selaer.
Westerlo. Vaughan's Raid. Ladies as Hostlers. Husking Bees.
D URING the War of the Revolu- tion those manors which were situated on or near the Hudson River were exposed to the ravages of both parties in the struggle - some from the British forces and some from the Continental armies, according to the side which had been espoused by the respective owners of the manors. The De Lanceys were not techni- cally manor-holders, but their estates were so large that they were popularly reckoned as such, and they, with the family from the Phillipse Patent, sought refuge within the British lines, while the patriotic Van Rensselaers, Van Cortlandts, and Livingstons retired to regions that were so far from the harassed territory as to promise compara- tive safety.
First, the Van Cortlandts fled from the Neutral Ground, carrying as many of their household pos- sessions as they could by sloops, and having their flocks and herds driven up through the country in patriarchal fashion, to seek refuge among Mrs. Van Cortlandt's relatives, the Livingstons, in Co-
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lumbia and Dutchess counties. But by the autumn of 1777 this neighborhood had become almost as full of danger as the lower counties, and all promi- nent persons, both refugees and natives, were obliged to strike their tents and seek shelter in happier regions.
For many of them the new haven of refuge ex- isted in the northwestern corner of the State of Con- necticut, about midway between the Hudson and Connecticut rivers, and from eighty to one hundred miles from salt water. Here, at a safe distance from water-highways, in one of the healthfulest and most placidly beautiful of highlands, the horrors of war never penetrated, though its terrors were abundantly known to those - and they were a majority of the inhabitants - who had sent their best beloved to battle for the cause which they held dearer than life or estates.
The earliest of the manor families to take ad- vantage of this haven of rest among the hills ap- pears to have been that of Mrs. Van Rensselaer, widow of the sixth patroon, and mother of the deli- cate boy who afterward became the honored General Van Rensselaer, and who, even after the new state of things had relegated such titles to the realm of the past, was by courtesy styled the seventh pa- troon. The lad's mother was a daughter of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, and upon this grandfather the general care of the promising boy's education devolved
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until Mr. Livingston's death in June of 1778. Singularly enough, there appears to be no published reference to the sojourn of young Van Rensselaer in Connecticut, it being stated that he went directly from Kingston, New York, to Harvard College. Yet the proof is positive that during the summer of 1777 the young patroon and his mother, who had first retired to Philip Livingston's temporary residence at Kingston, finding the dangers to which the young heir was there exposed, retreated to Con- necticut in the safer recesses of the Litchfield County hills. Here they continued to reside dur- ing much, if not all, of the following year. Prob- ably they were led to the beautiful village of Sharon by the previous friendship of Mrs. Van Rensselaer with the wife of the Rev. Cotton Mather Smith, who was pastor there. When the first of these ladies was Catherine Livingston of New York city, and the second was Temperance Worthing- ton of Saybrook, Connecticut, the two had some- where become intimate friends - possibly at school in New Rochelle, where there were at that time several rather noted private schools conducted by the refugee Huguenots or their immediate descendants.
Sometime during 1775 the widowed Mrs. Van Rensselaer had married her second husband, the Rev. Eilardus Westerlo of the Reformed Dutch Church. In the papers at my command she is never called Mrs. Westerlo, but, probably from
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habit, is indifferently referred to as " Mrs. Van R." or as the "Mother of the young Patroon" or as " Catherine Livingston," though there is little doubt that Mr. Westerlo was of the party, for I find that one of that name occupied Mr. Smith's pulpit twice in November of 1777; but I find no other mention of him, while it is recorded that "young Van R. and his mother," and a little later the Rev. John Rodgers of the Brick Church of New York city, were received into the family of the Rev. C. M. Smith, under whose direction young Stephen Van Rensselaer and the " Parson's son," afterward Gov- ernor John Cotton Smith of Connecticut, prosecuted their studies for college as diligently as if such a thing as war was never heard of. The first inten- tion of young Van Rensselaer's guardians had been that he should enter Yale College, of which his grandfather and the latter's four brothers had been graduates, but eventually Harvard was chosen as being safer from the raids of the enemy.
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