History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 38

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards
Number of Pages: 776

USA > Delaware > History of Delaware : 1609-1888 > Part 38

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

I Philip Van der Wert's brick house at Traders' Hook, on the Brat i. . wine, was built before Ina5. " The Reybolls.

3 Bacon's Laws of Maryland (1635-1,51) are full of statutes relating !! wild horses and their depredations, and to ear- marksand ilustres for all kitde of stock.

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bandry. Horses, cattle, sheep and hogs ran out up, with sugar and allspice,-" customary at all the time, being inclosed at night, and some- funerals ;" mulled rum hot, with eggs and all-pice ; times sheltered in severe weather. They were, however, fed with grain, such as oats, corn and buckwheat, in addition to fodder in winter, the food of milch cows being bran or other ground mill-stuff. Aerelius says, in his dry, humorous way, " the man-servant takes care of the foddering of the cattle, whilst the house-wife and women- folks roast themselves by the kitchen fire, doubt- ing whether any one can do that better than themselves."

The excellent Swedish pastor was a connoisseur in drinks as well as horse-flesh, and he has cata- logued the beverages used by the Swedes with the accuracy and minuteness of detail of a manager of a rustic fair. After enumerating the imported wines, of which Madeira was the favorite of course, he describes, like an expert, the composition of sangaree, mulled wine, cherry and currant wine, and how cider, cider royal, cider-wine and mulled cider are prepared. Our reverend observer makes the following commentary upon the text of rum : "This is made at the sugar plantations in the West India Islands. It is in quality like French brandy, but has no unpleasant odor. It makes up a large part of the English and French commerce with the West India Islands, The strongest comes from Jamaica, is called Jamaica spirits, and is the favorite article for punch. Next in quality to this is the rum from Barbadoes, then that from Antiguas, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher's, etc. The heaviest consumption is in harvest-time, when the laborers most frequently take a sup, and then immediately a drink of water, from which the body performs its work more easily and per- spires better than when rye whiskey or malt liquors are used." Rum, he tells us, was drunk raw, or as egg-nog (" egg-dram"), or in the form of cherry bounce or billberry bounce ; " punch," our learned author says, "is made of fresh spring-water, sugar, lemon-juice and Jamaica spirits. Instead of lem- ons, a West India fruit called limes, or its juice, which is imported in flasks, is used. Punch is always drunk cold; but sometimes a slice of bread is toasted and placed in it warm to moderate the cold in winter-time, or it is heated with a red-hot iron. Punch is mostly used just before dinner, and is called 'a meridian.'" + The other prepara- tions in which rum was an ingredient included Mamm (mum), made of water, sugar and rum (" is the most common drink in the interior of the country, and has set up many a tavern- keeper ") ; " Manatham," small beer, rum and sugar ; " tiff" or " flipp." same as foreroing, with the addition of a slice of toasted and buttered bread; hot rum punch, rum and water warmed

Hatt-Pat, warmed beer with rum added ; " Samp- son," warmed eider with rum added; grog ; "sling" or "long sup," half-and-half sweetened rum and water ; milk punch ; mint-water : egg-punch, etc. " Sillibab" is made like the Swedish " Oclost," of milk-warm milk, wine and water,-a cooling bev- erage in summer-time; "still liquor " was the country name for peach or apple brandy ; whiskey, our author says, "is used far up in the interior of the country, where rum is very dear on ac- count of the transportation." The people in the town drink beer and small beer; in the country, spruce, persimmon-beer and mead. Besides this

Conclus

there are numerous liquors. Tea was commonly used, but often brandy was put in it, coffee was coming into use as a breakfast beverage, the berries imported from Martinique, San Domingo and Surinam, and chocolate also was not ne- glected."

3 The subject of the sale of liquor to the Indians was before the court August 2, 16-0, when the court reaffirmed the order of Governor Andross relating to it, and prohilated any one fromu bartering or retailing less than a half-anker of strong Injuor to Iulians. The order recited that there had been sul accidents by reason of its sile to the natives. On Decema- ber 6, 1+ +1, the matter way before the conrt again and there was a divi- son of option upon it. Justier John Moll advocated that no liqnors whatever should be sold to the Indians, and Justices Alricks, semple and De Hates voted to sustain the order of Lost given above and passed an order fining all who had vi lated it.

In the eighteenth century, honor licenses were tsned by the State to those recommended as sober and ht personis to keep public-houses of et- tertainment and to sell rimi, brandy, beer, ale, caler, peity and other strong liquors, provided they should not suffer uny drunkenuess, uulaw-

: Not because it aided "navigation," but because our Swedes dined at twelve o'clock.

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did not neglect solids. Their meals were fout a day,-breakfast, dinner, "four o'clock piere" and supper, the latter sometimes dispensed with. There was no great variety of dishes, but such as were served were substantial ; ham, beef tongue, roast beef, fowls, " with cabbage set round about," was one bill of fare; roast mutton or veal, with potatoes or turnips, another ; a third might be a pasty of deer, turkey, chickens, partridges or lamb ; a fourth, beef steak, veal cutlets, mutton-chops. or turkey, goose or fowls, with potatoes set around, "stewed green peas, Turkish beans or some other beans;" apple, peach, cherry or eranberry pie "form another course. When cheese and butter are added, one has an ordinary meal." For breakfast, tea or coffee, with chipped beef in summer, m Ik-toast and buckwheat-cakes in winter, the " four o'clock piece" being like the breakfast. Chocolate was commonly taken with supper. The Swedes used very little soup and very little fish, either fresh or cured.

" The arrangement of meals among country people is usually this : for breakfast, in summer, cold nulk and bread, rire, milk-pudding, cheese, butter and cold meat. In winter, mush and milk, unlk porridge, hominy and milk ; supper the same. For noon, in anprter 'stype' (the French bouillon, meat-broth, with bread-crumbs added, etther drunk or eaten with spoons out of common tin-cups), fresh meat, dried beef and bacon, with cabbage, apples, potatoes, Turkish beans, large beans, all kinds of roots, mashed turune, pumpkins, cashaws and Synasbes, One or more of these ate distubuted around the dish ; also boiled or baked pudding, dumplings, bacon and eggs, pies of apples, cherries, peaches, etc."1

The land was so settled in the time of Acrelius that each had his separate ground. and mostly fenced in. " So far as possible the people took up their abodes on navigable streams, so that the farms stretched from the water in small strips up into the land." The Swedes used boats a great deal. They always went to church in boats if the ice permitted, and they had a great quarrel with Franklin, to whom Penn had given the monopoly of the Schuylkill Ferry, because he would not let their boats cross without paying toll. The houses were solid ; in Aerelius' time mostly built of brick or stone, but earlier of logs, often squared oak logs, not often more than a story and a half high. The roofs were covered with oak or cedar shingles ; the walls plastered and whitewashed once a year. The windows were large, often with hinged frames, but very small panes of glass when any at all was used, ful gaming or other disorders and comply with the laws, " the State. The Court of General Sessions fixed the con-keepers rates, and one of these lists adopted in May, 1737, prescribed the prices as follows : gin, spirits and brandy, of the first quality, per gill, Ild. : do, interior quality, 9d. ; Lisbon, Teneriffe, Fayall und other inferior wines, per bottle, 58. ; sherry and port wine, per bottle. (s. ; Mubara wine, per bottle, &# 3d. ; claret. per bottle, T+ 6 . putter, ale and cyder, per bottle, 18, lod. ; dinner, 3%. ; breakfast and zupper, each, 29. 1. 4. ; Lode- lags, Is. ; oats, per gallon, ix. ; corn, lv. i.f. ; hay, fodder and stalling, 28. tid.

1 The pudding, siys Verelins in a note, was boiled in a bag ; it was called a fine goulding when fruit was added: baked pulling was the young people's pancake , dumplings and pullings were called " quakers food." Apple-pie was used all the year, -" the evening meal of children House-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor frerd from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a seugun-scheel goes over it ">

In spite of all these liquids the early Swedes and ali the chimneys smoke.l. In some hou- straw carpets were to be found. but the furnitur. was always simple and primitive, made of countr. woods, with now and then a mahogany piece. Th. clothing was plein, domestic linen being worn it summer and domestic waylens, kerseys and linsey. in winter, with some calieves and cottons of im- ported stocks. The domestic cloth was good in quality, bur badly dyed. For finer occasion- plush and satin were sometin.es worn. Our good person, by whose observations we have been profit- mg, netez the progress luxury had been making among the Swedes. He says :

" The times within fifty : ats are as changed as night is from dav . . . Formerly the church people could come some Swedish onles on foot to church ; now the young, as well as the old, must be upes horseback. Thea many a good and hope-t man rode upon a puree bear-shin ; Lov scarcely any saddle is vained unless it hitta a saddle-rh4th with ga'loon ant fringe. Then servants and girls were seen in church Latrefugi ; norv young persons will be like persons of quality in their dress; servants are sert, with perruques de crans and the like, girls with Banned shirts time staff shoes and other query. Then respectable fat- lies lived in low log houses, where the chimney was made of stick- covered with clay ; now they erert painte I houses of stone and brick in the country. Then they used ale and brandy, now wine and panch, Then they lived apon grits and noch. now upon tea, coffee and chocolate."

Stray Hints of the simple manners of these primi- tive dimes, and of the honesty, ingenuousness and quaint religious, faith of the people, crop out now and then in the accounts which Aerelius gives of the churches and his predecessors in their pulpits. When the " upper settlers" and "lower settlers" quarreled about the place for their new church, and Wieaeo carried the day, the lower settlers were plaeated with a flat-boat, maintained at the expense of the congregation, to ferry them over the Schuylkill. The church wardens kept the keys of the boat. This was the beginning of the church " Gloria Dei," so venerable in the eyes of Philadelphians. The pastor's pay was sixty pounds, the sexton's eight pounds. If a man came drunk to church he was fined forty shillings aud made to do public penance. The penalty for " making sport of God's word or sacraments" was five pounds fine and penance. For untimely ,sing- ing, five shillings fine. If one refused to sub- mit to this kind of discipline he was excluded from the society and his body could not be buried in the churchyard. The pastor and wardens looked care- fully after betrothals and marriages. The whole congregation were catechized and also examined upon the contents of the sermon. There were also " spiritual examinations" made once a year in families. Each church had its glebe, the income from which was the pastor's, who also received a considerable sum from funerals, marriages, etc. The church bell was swung in a tree. Among the fixtures of the pre-onage was a negro woman he- longing to the congregation and included in the inventory of el be property. When she grew okl. " contrary " and " u-eless," she was sold for seven shillings. When the Christina Church was restored there was a great feast and a general revival of in-

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te rest in the ancient Swedish ways. Matins were clay, or sandstone blocks, generally built outside held at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost ; gar- the house. The first Swede settlers imitated the Indians by dressing in skins and wearing moccasins. The women's jackets and petticoats and the bed- clothes were of the same materials. The furs were by and by superseded by leather breeches and jerkins, while the women spun, wove or knit their own woolen wear, as well as the linen for sun- mer. The women, okl and married, wore hood- in winter, linen caps for summer, but the unmarried girls went uncovered except in the hot sun, dress- ing their abundant yellow hair in long, broad plaits. landed lights and side lights of pine wood for Christmas services, and bridal pairs came to the wrvices in the church with crowns and garlands, their hair dressed after the old-time Swedish cus- tom. Among the new regulations of Pastor Hes- selius was one to prevent people from driving across the churchyard, another forbidding them to -ing as if they were calling their cows. People with harsh voices were ordered to stand mute or " sing softly." The Christina Church owned town lots in Wilmington, and used to hire out its " pall- cloth " for tive shillings each funeral. The charge for burying a grown person was twelve shillings, children half-price.

The Swedish pastors were generally learned and accomplished men, who exerted themselves success- fully in directing the minds of their congregations to the necessity of education. The original settlers were ignorant people, few of whom could write their names. Even Lasse Cock, agent for Penn and Markham for twenty years, could not at first do better than sign his " mark" to writings. The pastors, however, always made a brave stand for education, and were the means of preventing the Swedish tongue in America from sinking into oblivion. They also maintained as many of the old observances and religious ceremonies as possi- ble, such as baptism soon after birth, an actual instead of formal sponsorship on the part of the wod-parents, the old service of the churching of women, a general attendance upon the service and sacrament of the altar and a return to the ancient forms of betrothal and marriage. " The old speak of the joy," says Aerelius, " with which their bridal parties formerly came to church and sat during the whole service before the altar." Burials were solemn occasions, but had their feasts as well. The corpse was borne to the grave on a bier, the pall-bearers, chosen from those of the same sex and age of the deceased, walking close alongside and holding up the corners of the pall.

A few of the log cabins occupied by the primi- tive Swedes are said to be still standing. Wat-on, in his " Annals," describes one of the better class in Swanson's house, near Wicaco. John Hill Martin, in his " History of Chester." recalls two or three of these ancient houses. They were very rude affair -. with seldom more than a living room with a loft over it, doer so low that one had to enter -tooping, windows small square holes eut in the logs, protected by isinglass or ofled paper, or thin stretched blad- ders, often with nothing but a sliding board shut- ter .! The chimney was in the corner, of sticks and 1 on November 2, 1679, Messrs. Dankers and Sluyter, on their voyage to Maryland, stopged over night At Cydand. Tu their journal they say, " We were taken to a plaire to sleep directly before an open window, to slu h there was no shutter, so that it could not be closed ; and as the til_ht was very cold, and it froze hard, we coubl scarcely keep ourselves warm." When they arrived at New Castle, on the 25th, they went out

The proof of the industry of the early Swedes is to be sought in their works. They were a scattered, ignorant race, with no capital, few tools and no occupations but those of husbandry and hunting. They were only a thousand strong when Penn came over, yet they had extended their settlements over a tract nearly two hundred miles long and seven or eight miles deep, building three churches and five or six block-houses and forts, clearing up forests and draining swamps to convert them into meadow land. They had discovered and worked the iron deposits of Maryland in two or three places. They had built about a hundred houses, fenced in much of their land and made all their own clothes, importing nothing but the merest trifles, besides arm- and ammunition, hymn-books and catechisms. They had built grist-mills and saw-mills, having at least four of the latter in operation before Penn's arrival .: According to Ferris, however, the frame house in which Gor- ernor Lovelace entertained George Fox in 1672 was made entirely of hewn timbers, none of the stuff being sawed, the mortar and cement being made of oyster-shell lime; the house itself was built of briek. Governor Printz found a wind-mill at Christiana in 1643, but he says it never would work. On the other side of the river there were horse-mills. One at South Amboy in 1685, it was estimated, would clear the owner €100 a year, the toll for grinding a " Scotch bel! " (six bushels ) of Indian corn being two shillings sterling, equal to one bushel in every four and a half. But prob- ably more than half the early settlers had to do as a primitive denizen in Burlington reports himself to view the place, which con-ited " of only forty or fifty houses." They visited the plantation of John M. H and found his house very badly ap- pointed for such a man of pronnnence. " There was no place to retire to, nor a chair tusit on, or a bed to sleep on, For their usual food the servants have nothing but mitize btend to pat, and water to drink, whirl. sometimes is rot very good and waterly enough for life, yet they ste compelled to work hard. They are bought from England in great numbers into Maryland, Virginia and Me and s and sold out habe accord- ing to his condition, for a verhun term of years, four, five, six, seven of more And thus they are by hundreds of thousands compelled to spend their lives here and in Virginia, and elsewhere in planting that vila theo. . . . After we had suppe 1 Mr Molt, who would be cisi, wish- el ns to he upon a bed that was there, and he would he nyon a bench, which we declined; and as this continued some length of time, I lay down on a Ir ap of maize, and he and my contrade afterwards both did the same. This was very uncomfortable amt chilly, but it had to

- Bishop, " History of Manufactufes, " i. 110.

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as doing, pounding Indian corn one day for the and had a French vigneron to tend it, but th next. In 1680, two years before Penn, Thomas experiment failed. He had a brew-house, hos, ever, at Pennsbury, still standing, which w ... more successful. Olive had finished his water-mill at Rancocas Creek, and Robert Stacey his at Trenton. Printz mill on Cobb's Creek was built in 1643, and Cam- panins reports it as doing admirable work. Joost Andriansen & Co. built a grist-mill at New Castle in 1662. In 1671 there was a proposition made by New Castle to erect a distillery for grain, but the eourt negatived it. except the grain be " unfit to grind and boult," because the process of distilling consumed such "an immense amount of grain."

Hallam is right in saying that " No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to domestic architecture." After the saw-mill the brick-kiln follows naturally and rapidly. Hazard produces a petition to New Amstel

WILLIAM PENN'S OLD BREW-HOUSE, NEAR BRISTOL, BUCKS COUNTY, PA.

court, in 1656, from Jacobus Crabbe, referring to and near Wicaco. Before the end of his first year a plantation "near the corner where bricks and in the province eighty houses had been built in the stones are made and baked." The Dutch intro- duced briek-making on the Delaware, the Swedes being used to wooden houses in their own country. The court-house at Upland, in which. it is said, Penn's first Assembly was held, was of brick.

The Swedes not only made tea of the sassafras, but they made both beer and brandy from the per- simmon, and small beer from Indian corn. Kalm says that the brewing and distilling were conducted by the women. The Dutch had several breweries in the settlement about 1662. Coffee was too high to be mueh used in the seventeenth century. Penn's books show that it cost eighteen shillings and six- pence per pound in New York, and that would buy nearly a barrel of rum. Tea fetelied from twenty- two to fifty shillings, eurrepey, a pound. Wil- liam Peun set-out a vineyard at Springettsbury,

Governor Printz was expressly instructed to co courage all sorts of domestic manufactures at . the propagation of sheep. There were eighty . : these animals in New Sweden in 1663, and th. people made enough woolen and linen cloth ! supplement their furs and give them bed and tab . linen. They also tanned their own leather, and made their own boots and shoes, when they wor- any. Hemp was almost as much spun and woven as flax. The Swedes who had the land owned large herds of eattle, forty and sixty head in a herd. The Dutch commissaries were enjoined to search closely for all sorts of mineral wealth on the South River, and those who discovered valuable metal of any kind were allowed the sole use of it for ten years. The Dutch discovered and worked iron in the Kittatinny Mountains, and, as has already been shown, the Swedes opened iron ore pits in Cecil County, Md. Charles Piekering found the copper with which he debased the Spanish reals and the Massachusetts pine-tree shillings on land of his own in Chester County.

When William Penn arrived in the Delaware in 1682, on October 27th, there were probably 3500 white people in the province and territories and on the eastern bank of the Delaware from Trenton to Salem. A few wigwams and not over twenty houses were to be found within the entire limits of what is now Philadelphia County. There were small towns at ITorekills, New Castle, Chris- tiana, Upland, Burlington and Trenton, and a Swedish hamlet or two at Tinieun

new eity of Philadelphia, various industrial pursuit- had been inaugurated' and a fair and paying trade was opened with the Indians. When Penn left the province in 1684 his government was fully estab- lished, his chief town laid out, his provinee divided into six counties and twenty-two townships. II- had sold 600,000 acres of land for $20,000 cash. und annual quit-rents of $500. The population exceeded 7000 souls, of whom 2500 resided in Philadelphia, which had already 300 houses built, and had established considerable trade with the West Indies, South America, England and the Mediterranean. When Penn returned again in 1699, the population of the province exceeded 20,000, and Philadelphia and its liberties had nigh 5000 people .. It was a very strange population moreover. Not gathered together by the foree of material and

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temporary inducements, not drawn on by commun- ity of interests nor the desire of betterments in-tinet- ive in the human heart, with no homogeneoushess of race, religion, eustom and habit, one common principle attracted them to the spot, and that was The desire of religious liberty, the intense longing to escape from under the baneful, withering shadow of politico-religious perseention to which the chief tenet of their faith, non-resistance and submission to the civil authority, prevented them from offering any opposition. They desired to flee because their religious opinions bound them not to fight. They were not of the church militant, like the Puritans and Huguenots and Anabaptists, and so it became them to join the church migratory and seek in un- inhabited wilds the freedom of conscience denied them among the communities of men. They were radicals and revolutionists in the highest degree, for they upheld, and died on the scaffold and at the stake sooner than cease to maintain, the right of the people to think for themselves, and think their own thoughts instead of what their self-constituted rulers and teachers commanded them to think. But they did not resist authority : when the statute and their consciences were at variance they calmly obeyed the latter and took the consequences. They knew themselves to be abused and shamefully mis- used, but they believed in the final supremacy of moral and intellectual forces over despotie forces. They believed with Wielif that " Dominion belongs to grace," and they waited hopefully for the coming of the period of intellectual freedom which should justify their action before men and prove the cor- rectness of their faith in human progress. But all this trust in themselves and the future did not contribute materially to lighten the burden of per- secution in the present, and they sought with anxiety for a place which would give them rest from the weariness of man's injustice. They became pilgrims, and gathered their little congregation to- gether wherever a faint lifting in the black cloud of persecution could be discerned. Thus it was that they dritted into Holland and the lower Ithine provinces of Germany, and became wanderers everywhere, seeking an asylum for conscience' sake, -a lodge in some wilderness, where "rumor of op- pression and deceit might never reach," and where they might await in comparative peace the better time that was coming. The great King Gustavus Adolphus perhaps meant to offer them such an asylum in America, but his message was sent in the hurry of war and it was not audible in the din of battles. When, however, this offer was renewed and repeated in the plain language of the Quakers by William Penn, it was both heard and under- stood, and the persecuted peoples made haste to accept the generous asylum and avail themselves of the liberal offer. They did so in a spirit of per- fret faith that is creditable both to their own

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History of Delaware : 1609-1888, Part 38

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards Number of Pages: 776

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. J. Richards
Number of Pages: 776