USA > Connecticut > Colonial Days And Ways: As Gathered from Family Papers > Part 6
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On the second floor there were six rooms across the front, extending to the center of the house. The rest was left unceiled -a big open garret with square windows at each end and dormers along the sides of the roof, which sloped from the peak to the floor. In this great garret flax-hatchel- ing, wool-carding, and weaving went on almost without cessation, save in the very coldest weather,
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when the looms were abandoned to the compan- ionship of the rows of smoked hams hanging from the huge beams, the long ropes of sausage-links, the festoons of dried apples, and all the other stores which could endure the winter frosts. Those that could not do this were safely packed away in the dim recesses of the deep cellars which ran under the whole house. The latter was ventilated during the summer by leaving open the low doors, which formed a sort of sloping roof, covering the stone steps leading from the outer air on all sides of the house to the deeps below. In winter these doorways were filled in with straw and dried leaves, while earth and sods were laid over the closed doors in order to effectually exclude the frost. After this was done, late in the fall, the pitch- dark cellars could only be entered by the interior stairs.
The diamond-paned and leaded window-sashes had originally been brought from Holland; but by the time Mr. Codwise could remember them, all but a few had been replaced by other sashes filled with nearly square panes, twelve to each sash. This glass was so full of knots and streaks that no object seen through it appeared to be entire, but to be broken into disjointed parts. The glass of the imported diamond-shaped panes was much clearer.
At what time the Evertsen house was taken down, or whether it was burned, I do not know,
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but believe it to have been burned a few years before the Codwise mansion. After the destruc- tion of each of them Mr. Codwise said that in the center of the central chimney-stack, which re- mained standing like a strong tower in the midst of the ruins, was found a small, diamond-shaped chamber, across the longest diameter of which two men might have lain down side by side. The floor of this chamber was of brick, and its side walls were the stone backs of the four corner fire- places. Ceiling it had none, for the walls of the flues sloped inward as they rose, until at the top of the stack there was only a comparatively small opening, through which the noonday sun might send a blinking ray to cheer the floor beneath, or rain or snow might pitilessly descend. The little chamber was entered from opposite directions by two strait doors which formed the backs of two of the eight narrow closets flanking the four fire- places. Good and secure hiding-places these chambers were, whether for men or for treasure. My uncle said that his father had seen the one in their house used for both purposes during our Revolutionary War, and to oblige both Tories and patriots ; for his ancestors, whether the pater- nal Codwise or the maternal Beeckman, had main- tained a strict neutrality, and were able sometimes to extend a measure of protection to personal friends in either party in their times of need. It is needless to say that the cautious heads of the
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families did not confide the secret of the chimney- stack to many persons. In summer this hiding- place must have been rather damp; but in winter, when the fires were burning in all four of the fire- places which surrounded it, it may not have been an altogether uncomfortable refuge.
A long, covered passageway led from one end of the stoep to a corner of the kitchen, which then, as is still usual in our Southern States, was in a detached building. Beyond it, again, stretched away the negro quarters, built sometimes of logs and sometimes of brick or stone, and mostly of one story in height. At right angles with these were the barns and stables, low, but exceedingly broad; also a blacksmithy, where horses and oxen were shod and repairs made, and a carpenter's shop. Taken together, the outbuildings made three sides of a hollow square in which were the milking- and feeding-yards. All this, of course, was on the farmstead of the Evertsens. The owners of the Dey Street house were merchants only, and had no outbuildings save stables for a pair of horses and a cow or two. It must be remembered that nearly all well-to-do citizens kept cows enough to supply at least all the milk for family use until the very latter part of the eigh- teenth century.
Neither of these houses followed the common Dutch custom of standing with gable-end to the street. Both opened from the center of the two-
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story front almost directly upon the scantily trav- eled highway, but at the rear were surrounded by fruit-orchards and large gardens, wherein great square beds of vegetables were edged by borders of box or of flowers, as the case might be -for your true Dutchman is not confined to strict util- ity, but is a flower-lover and cultivator all his days.
A peculiarity of both houses was that the only closets were those which flanked the fireplaces or surmounted the high and narrow mantels. Great carved chests of hard woods and massive mahogany structures of drawers, or combinations of shelves and drawers, were to be found in nearly every room occupied by the members of a wealthy Dutch family. Apparently clothes were never hung up, but always laid away at full length in these and similar receptacles.
In a large old mahogany wardrobe which once stood in the Evertsen house, the three drawers which form the lower half are very deep. The shelves which form the upper half are equally deep, and shove in and out like drawers, only with- out fronts, while broad doors close over them. The wood still shows its beautiful grain, though it has turned almost black with age, while the artis- tically cut brass of the handles and escutcheons responds to the labor of the polisher as brightly as it could have done two centuries ago.
Among other articles which once stood in the
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old Evertsen house is a tall mahogany structure apparently designed for many uses, whose five long and shallow drawers might have held its owner's coats and breeches of satin or velvet, his long silk stockings, his fine linen shirts frilled with costly laces, and even his voluminous wig. In the center, behind a leaf which turns down to form a desk, is the little bank of pigeonholes for holding filed papers, just as we see them in more modern desks, only that among them are secret receptacles for private papers, and two slides which, when drawn out, were intended to support candlesticks in such a way that the never too bril- liant candle-light should best fall upon the desk's contents. Above the pigeonholes, behind the doors of mahogany, rise broad, deep shelves which may have been used to hold books or clothes or bed- and table-linen. To my mind, the varied divisions of the shelf-space are not so suggestive of literature as they are both of the linen of the housewife and of the tall ledgers of the prosper- ous merchant, with long accounts to keep between the traders of the interior, his correspondents in the West Indian islands of Tobago, St. Thomas, and Santa Croix, and with the merchants and manufacturers of Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Though few books have descended to us from the ancestral homes of New Amsterdam, it does not prove that their owners were any more illit- erate than the settlers of the other colonies. The
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change of language from Dutch to English would account for the natural disappearance of many of the Dutch books. I know of one sacrilegious creature who admits that about thirty years ago she destroyed some forty Dutch volumes which she had found in a garret of a house which her husband had inherited, "to get them out of the way, though the bindings of some were so pretty it was almost a pity."
A serpentine sideboard of mahogany finely inlaid with satinwood, now in the possession of one of the Evertsen descendants, is believed also to have stood in this house. It is known to have descended through six generations to its present owner. Sideboards there must have been here, for there was much silver and china, scattered pieces of both of which still remain. It is said that there was little of the latter sold in New York city prior to 1730. However this may have been, it is certain, from the quantities that were bequeathed, that wealthy residents owned much china long before that date. Canton china was privately imported at a very early period.
Not far from the present abiding-place of the curiously decorated and really beautiful escritoire above described is a mirror in two parts, the smaller about one quarter the size of the larger, the whole, with its frame of mahogany and the carved figures of gilded wood which surround it, being about six and one half feet in height by two
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feet in width. The glass is said to be of Venetian make, and is still remarkably clear. So is that of two oval mirrors set in frames of beautifully cut brass, bearing on each side girandoles for three candles. The last two mirrors have been presented to a historical society.
Dining-tables with many slender legs, bed- steads, both of mahogany and of black oak, each with four high posts and deep side pieces, all richly carved, but too thick to be graceful, and cabinets curiously inlaid with ivory and tortoise- shell, stood in both of these old houses, and some of the fine pieces are still in existence. Tradition associates all the things we have particularly men- tioned with the old Evertsen house; but they may not have belonged to the first Niclaes and Margrietye. Many of them were probably added by their son, the second Niclaes and his wife, Susanna Reuters, the great-granddaughter of the famous Admiral De Ruyter, who had many a time fought side by side with the Admiral Evertsen who was her husband's great-grandfather. The two old sea-kings had not always been agreed in regard to the best way to serve their fatherland ; but both of them were true patriots and grand men, and did justice to each other's honesty and capacity, so we may imagine that they would have blessed the union of their descendants.
One possession which the first Niclaes must have guarded with the most jealous care, perhaps keeping it hidden in the secret strong room, was
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the silver-hilted sword presented by the state of Zealand to his grandfather, the brave old Admiral Jan Evertsen. The hilt of this sword, then broken from its blade, was seen in Poughkeepsie, New York, by my father when he was a boy of about fifteen, that is, in 1825 or 1826. It was then in the guardianship of a Mr. Richards, who had mar- ried a daughter of Nicholas Evertsen, the third of his name in this country, and a great-grandson of the first Niclaes. Upon the hilt was a handsomely engraved inscription in the Dutch language, which, unfortunately, the greatly interested boy could not understand; but he well remembered the names and date. The latter we do not now recall; but my brother, Gilbert Livingston Smith of Sharon, Connecticut, my sister, Mrs. Robert Clinton Geer of Brooklyn, New York, and I have all heard our father relate the incident and describe the hilt and inscription too often not to have them impressed upon our memories. The date upon the sword- hilt must have been previous to 1666, as that was the year in which the old hero died, fighting against England in a naval battle of four days' duration, on the first day of which his brother Cor- nelis, also an admiral, had perished. The hilt, my father said, was very heavy, and the size such that it could only have been wielded by an unusu- ally large hand. Almost all the men descended from the first owner of this sword have been very large and strong.
Mr. Codwise remembered having heard of this
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weapon, and also had heard his father tell of a fine gold medal which Captain Niclaes Evertsen had shown to some friends in his presence when a boy - a medal which had been presented to Admiral Evertsen by, as he believed, the States-General of Holland.
What has become of these precious articles ? Are they still in the possession of some branch of a family which has become scattered through several of the States of our Union ? Or have they,- have they - shameful thought ! - shared the fate of so many of what should have been cher- ished heirlooms, and lost their identity in the sil- versmith's hateful melting-pot ?
As all old American families too well know, there came a time when, old ideals having slipped away like children's outgrown garments, it was long esteemed a weakness to have a care for heir- looms as such. During this most deplorable in- terval, how many invaluable ancestral relics were ignobly converted into spoons and forks! An uncle of my own -a man, too, who had more than usual regard for ancestral relics - within my own recollection caused five dinner-plates of beaten silver, dating from between 1600 and 1650, to be melted to make a large pitcher! The latter is indeed much more beautiful than the plates, which were as plain as pewter and not a bit handsomer, but I never look at it without regretting its existence.
CHAPTER VI
THE CARES OF THE HUYSVROUW
CHAPTER VI.
THE CARES OF THE HUYSVROUW. 8 Every Homestead a Manufactory.
Slavery. Good Providers. Spinning and Weaving. Soap and Candle Making. Washing. Bread and Yeast. Butter Making. Nursery Lore.
I T seems to have been the rule in all the colonies that the wealthier the settler the greater the amount of labor constantly carried on under his roof. There were no manufactories, and almost everything needed for household con- sumption or service had necessarily to be either imported or made at home. The huysvrouw's labors were by no means confined to the wise dispensing of the liberally provided stores. She and her daughters were happy and contented producers, as well as dispensers and consumers. If they did not personally scrub the uncarpeted floors, or build and feed the ever-devouring flames in the enormous fireplaces, or hatchel the flax, or card the wool, or weave the heavy stuffs for household use, or make the soap, or chop the sausage-meat, or dip the candles, or wash the linen-they had to know, as only experience can know, just how each and all of these things should be done, and also how to so marshal and direct their many hand-men and -maidens that the most and best work should be accomplished with the least fric-
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tion. When reading, as one occasionally does in our day, of some " wonderful woman " who super- intends a factory, or carries on some other line of equally active business, we should remember that very likely her grandmother once had as much responsibility, and fulfilled it as well, without hav- ing to go beyond the bounds of her own house to do so.
The days of the huysvrouws were also those of negro slavery, and they display all the best and some of the worst features of the system. If, on the one hand, the house-mistress were always sure of retaining the services of a well-trained and faithful servant, on the other hand it was by no means easy to get rid of one who was sulky, stupid, or careless. In fact, the servant question was as general a topic among the interested two centuries ago as it is now. Kings may go and Presidents come, and institutions may change like the weather, but human nature remains the same, and the diaries of from ten to tenscore years ago are found full of lamentations over the shortcom- ings of domestics.
Every farmstead of any pretension had to be, at the same time, a manufactory of almost all the things required for daily use. It is not probable that at the beginning of the eighteenth century there were many meat markets (or " fleshers ") to be found, even in the cities, and supplies of fowls and meat of all sorts save game were produced
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on the farms, where all that could not be economi- cally disposed of while fresh was preserved by drying or spicing or salting or smoking for win- ter use. Several weeks of steady labor were re- quired in each autumn to prepare the barrels of salted pork and of corned beef, to cure the scores of hams and sides of bacon, to prepare the miles of sausage-links, to try out and preserve the many stone jars full of lard so nicely that it would keep sweet the year round, to prepare the souse, the headcheese, and the rollichies. These last were made of chopped beef rolled in tripe and smoked. When desired for the table the little rolls were boiled and served cold, or fried and eaten hot. Besides all these, each in its proper season, were prepared stores of fish of various sorts, pickled, dried, or spiced, and great quantities of winter vegetables, as well as such fruits as could be kept for winter use by drying, or by preserving with sugar by the pound-for-pound method, so solidly sweet that the descendants of those who ate them must envy the grandparents' powers of digestion.
Of all the colonies, the Dutch were the most famous for these delicious (and indigestible) con- serves. More than the others also did they distil and prepare an endless variety of cordials and fragrant waters for drinks or for flavoring to dainty dishes. Their mince-pies, fairly tipsy with their liberal allowances of hard cider or brandy, or both, their famous supplies of cookies, of crullers, of
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olekoeks (doughnuts), and of spiced cakes, were regularly made once or twice a week. Waffles, wafers, raised muffins, and griddle-cakes of various sorts were in daily tea-table use. Supawn, made of corn-meal boiled in water, salted and stirred the while with a wooden spoon till thick and smooth, took the place of modern cereals, and was served on every breakfast-table the year round. It was eaten either with butter and that good, old-fash- ioned West India molasses which no searching can now discover, or with milk. Sometimes, when the weather was too hot or too cold to make good butter, there was cream used, but usually this had to be saved to make butter; at the same time, skimmed milk would have been considered too mean a portion to offer to the cats. Dried fruits which had been previously soaked overnight were often cooked with and stirred through the supawn, giving an added flavor which was much relished.
The poultry-yard was every huysvrouw's pride. Even the wife of the importer, banker, or profes- sional man living in the city kept flocks of hens, geese, ducks, and sometimes turkeys; but as the turkey was a notorious wanderer, and its eggs were not prized for eating, nor its feathers for beds, it was never very plentiful in the New Amsterdam poultry-yards.
Oysters and clams were brought in large quan- tities in the late autumn, and buried in beds of
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clean sea-sand, mixed with Indian meal, in the cellars, where they were profusely watered twice a week with water brought in tubs from the bay or river. In this way they were said to keep fat and good until the ice had broken up in the early spring, and the vast beds of native shell-fish which lay beneath the waters surrounding Man- hattan Island were again accessible. It must be remembered that these waters were then frozen a great part of the winter, there not being sufficient traffic to keep the ice broken as now.
Game of all kinds, from deer to quails, was abundant for many years, and for at least twenty years subsequent to our Revolutionary War was both plentiful and cheap in the markets.
For many years there were no public bakeries, and the family bread-making was no inconsidera- ble toil. Even in the days of Margrietye Evert- sen's granddaughters there was less yeast used than leaven. The latter is a lump of the latest baking buried in flour and kept in a cool, dry place until needed for the next baking. Number- less were the accidents which might happen to this. A degree too cold or a trifle too damp, and the leaven would not rise, so the bread was heavy ; or a degree too hot, and the leaven would ferment, and so the bread was sour. If the sponge stood too short or too long a time, or its tempera- ture was not just right, again there was trouble. If the big brick oven was under-heated, the well-
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made loaves would over-rise and sour before they were sufficiently baked, or they might be removed too quickly from the oven, and the half-baked dough would fall into flat and solid masses. If the oven was over-heated, the loaves would again be heavy, for the crust would form before the bread had had time to take its last rising in the oven as it should. The only wonder is that in those days there was ever any good bread; but the testimony is ample that among the Dutch huysvrouws good bread was rather the rule than the exception.
Probably the experienced cooks could never have told how they did it; but practice had made them so perfect that they knew to a second and a degree just the time and the heat required. A relative of my mother had married a wife of unbroken Dutch descent, and, with a tenacity characteristic of her progenitors in clinging to all old ways that had been proved to be good (and even, it must be confessed, to some that had not), she continued to use the old brick oven as long as she lived, and everything baked in it seemed to my childish taste to be perfection of its kind. She superintended every step of the long opera- tion, from the setting of the sponge overnight (with yeast, though, instead of leaven : she had been induced to consent to this innovation) to the removal of the sweet, light loaves from the oven sometime during the next forenoon. Full, round
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loaves of a brown so light as to be almost golden, I can see them now, standing in rows slightly aslant so that air could pass beneath, and covered loosely with spotless cloths of coarse linen, which last was as home-made as the bread, only not in her own time, but in that of her mother. Poor Auntie Aaltje (Aletta) would never have believed it possible, but after her death it was discovered that the dark-faced, white-turbaned old Chloe, who for so many years had patiently called her mistress to test the oven, and without a word (but some- times with a covert smile) had accepted the pa- tronizing verdict that " it would do," required no " superintending." But the huysvrouw who did not personally oversee all the important operations of housekeeping would have seemed to herself and to others to have failed in her vocation.
One of the most troublesome of all the house- wife's duties was the quarterly soap-making. I can remember this function as performed at this house. Ugh! what a troublesome thing it was, and unsavory! For several weeks the "leach-tubs" stood in an outhouse filled with tightly packed hard wood-ashes from the big fireplaces, where wood was always burned during my kinswoman's life. The tubs, or rather big barrels, being filled to within about eight inches of the top with the ashes, were supported upon frames, beneath which stood small wooden tubs. Twice a day the vacant space left above the ashes was filled with
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boiling water. This, after it had slowly filtered through the ashes, became lye. Its strength was tested by an egg or by a potato about the size of an egg. If these would float about one third of their size above the lye, it was deemed strong enough; if not, it was poured through the ashes again ; if found too strong, water was added.
When enough lye of the right strength had been collected, it was put into enormous iron pots and hung from the cranes over the open fire; and though my relative had come to endure a cook-stove for ordinary things, she always used the fireplace for making soap. The fragments of grease which accumulate in every household had been tried out while fresh, and reduced to cakes like tallow, only not so hard. These were now cut up and put into the kettles, apparently by guess. Then the boil- ing went on. If it was all right the soap would " come " in half an hour. If not, it might be many hours, or even days, during which water, or stronger lye, or weaker lye, or more grease might be added, also apparently by guess. The soap, when at last successfully produced, was in substance like a good, firm jelly; in color, a marbled brown; its odor that of a clear, clean alkali. It was very good for scrubbing and also for laundry purposes, though it must not be used too freely or it would yellow the clothes. It never made holes in them, as some of the modern sorts do. The husband was of Hugue- not descent, and progressive in all things, so that
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the quarterly soap-making ended in his house after his wife's death.
This Auntie Aaltje was as decidedly Dutch in her ways as if she had been her own grandmother. While she lived there must no churn be used save the tall stoneware jar, perhaps the same one-at any rate, one probably just like it-which her old grand- mother had caused her maids to fill to one half its capacity with good, rich, yellow cream, and place, according to the season, in a tub of ice-cold or of hot water. One of the maids meanwhile stood patiently beside the jar, plying the dasher up and down with rapid, even strokes until the butter "came." This also was done by guess; but if the huysvrouw's "guessery " was good - in other words, if she were an expert - the cream would have been skimmed and put into the churn at pre- cisely the right moment and at the right tempera- ture; then, in from twenty minutes to half an hour, the golden globules would have formed and gathered, and the butter would be ready to be skimmed out into a round tray of maple-wood, beautifully white, and made cold with well-water and " sweet with salt." Then with a water-soaked ladle the buttermilk was pressed out and salt added. This was the butter's first working. After a few hours it was again worked, and the next morning for the third time. The huysvrouw did not wash her butter. To extract the buttermilk she depended upon the conscientious muscular
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