USA > North Carolina > Chowan County > Economic and social history of Chowan County, North Carolina, 1880-1915 > Part 16
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1 At these special meetings every one who brought dinner had some sort of fresh meat-either chicken, pork, or beef.
2 Cf. supra, p. 78.
3 Cf. table 9, p. 272.
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nor sweetening). Much of the coffee, also, was served without "trimmings." Comparatively few families milked, and as there were no dairy products brought in, except butter and cheese into Edenton, and, in the winter months, a small amount of cheese into the country, the consumption of dairy products was comparatively light.1 So few chil- dren had any milk to drink when growing up that probably more than half of the people lost the taste for it and refused it even when it was to be had.
Clothing .- Clothing was coarse, ill-fitting, and not even abundant. Practically all of it, except the Sunday suits of a few men, was home-made, and much of it was still home- spun and home-woven. There was many a man in 1880 who had never owned an overcoat, or pair of gloves, nor had on an undershirt. Overshoes were practically un- known in the rural districts. Gloves and overcoats for children, especially boys, were rare exceptions. Sometimes a child used one of his mother's or father's old coats when the weather was very cold. Most children went barefooted all the time, except during the winter months. Each child received. as a rule, only one pair of shoes a year, said shoes being turned over to him along in the latter part of Novem- ber or the first part of December. It was a common sight to see children stark barefooted running around the prem- ises on cold frosty mornings.
When a woman bought a piece of millinery in those days she did not turn over a small fortune for it, nor did she discard it for a new piece on the next change of the moon. In most cases it was worn as long as it looked fairly decent -usually for two or three years. It was only the especially favored few who could boast a new hat each year, and she who could do so each season was indeed a rarity. Not only was there saved much hard-earned cash, as compared
1 Cf. supra, pp. 68-71.
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to now, in buying millinery, but also a great deal of time. Although a woman had a new bonnet only every two or three years, she nevertheless did not spend several days picking it out and trying it on. The fact is, the bonnets of a great many of the women were selected and purchased by the men,1 or, to speak more accurately, selected by the salesman and paid for by the men. The prospective man- buyer called for a hat of either the latest, or of some special style, and, since the question of fit, then as now, rarely entered into the selection of a woman's hat, if the price could be agreed upon, the clerk wrapped it up, ac- cepted the price, and the transaction was consummated. What an enormous amount of time would be saved for both buyers and sellers to-day if such a plan were still in vogue!
THE FINE ARTS
Music .- Turning from the physical necessities of shelter, food, and clothing, to the things of a more aesthetic nature, we find the fine arts-music and painting-but meagerly represented. In the category of musical instruments, few people had anything more pretentions than an accordion, and these were found in not more than one home in thirty. Probably there were twelve or fifteen fiddles (an average of one to every hundred homes) scattered thruout the county. The principal instrumental music was that made by an ordinary ten to twenty-five cent "harp " (mouth- organ). As for a parlor organ or piano, while there were few homes with them, hundreds of people had never heard either, and scores of grown folks did not even know what they looked like.
Many in the upper end of the county well remember the
1 Rural milliners had not yet made their debut, and comparatively few women went to town, except those near-by, hence it came about that many of their hats were bought by men. Cf. supra, p. 137.
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first time they ever heard an organ. The occasion was a big Sunday-school picnic, about the middle eighties. A kind-hearted old gentleman who had recently bought an organ for his daughter allowed it to be carted to church. His daughter, who was probably the only one in the audi- ence of four or five hundred people who could perform on it, did the playing. It was a great time. The only fault that most of the audience found with the music was that the organ played scarcely any, except when the congregation was singing. Now and then one caught strains of it above the voices of the singers and fancied what it might be if only the singers would hush and allow the organ to be heard unaccompanied.
Pictures .- Few walls were adorned with pictures. Prob- ably ninety per cent of the homes in the rural districts and seventy-five per cent of those in town had no pictures in them whatsoever, other than a few small tintypes of some of their relatives and friends. There were no advertising posters, or calendars, and even few medical almanacs.1 Occasionally one might see in a home a few cheap litho- graphs of such inspiring (?) scenes as " The Separation of the Sheep from Goats at the Last Judgment," and "The Agony of Poor Damned Souls in Hell." Probably not over five per cent of the homes had any sort of framed pic- tures in them. The lack of pictures, however, was not because there was no appreciation of the beautiful. Many children saved every piece of paper with a bit of coloring on
1 In the summer of 1914, I heard a mother talking to her thirty-six- year-old son in regard to the day of his birth. She was telling him that by certain calculations, and by comparison with certain established dates, she had discovered that the date which had always been given as his birth was a day earlier than his actual birth. When asked for an explanation of this discrepancy, her reply was, "Son, when you came along we had neither clock nor almanac, and didn't have until after you were a great big boy." This was in a family of the better economic and social class.
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it that fell into their hands. Much of their time in school was spent swapping "thumb-papers." 1 Those with pic- tures on them were highly prized. Probably nothing pleased most children more than the gift of a picture thumb- paper. The little blue and red bits of cardboard with Scrip- ture texts on them, received at Sunday-school, were treasured not so much for the text as for the coloring. The grown people displayed the same keen delight in color and pictures as did the children. Anything of this nature that chanced their way they preserved, and sometimes pasted upon the walls of their homes.
TRAVEL
Travel of more than a few miles from one's residence was very light. Of the women, ninety per cent had not been over thirty miles from home more than once or twice during their entire lives, and many had lived and died with- out ever being ten miles from the place of their birth. Prob- ably seventy-five per cent of the men went to Norfolk (sixty miles distant from the upper end of the county) at least once or twice during their earthly careers, but this was as far as ninety-five per cent of them ever strayed. The majority of people had little business away from home; their social visits were largely confined to the people in their immediate neighborhood, and they had not yet acquired the habit of traveling for the mere sake of being on the move. Besides these things, the means of long-distance traveling were both meager and expensive, and most people were not able to afford such luxuries, even if they had cared for them.
1 A "thumb-paper " was a piece of cardboard, either plain or with a picture on it. Besides being attractive, if it was either colored or had on it a picture, it also served as a book-mark and as a protection to the book. Unless the child had something upon which to rest his thumb while going over his lessons, he frequently actually wore out the spot on the page where the thumb rested-a rather sad commentary on his rate of progress.
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CHAPTER XXI
NECESSARIES, COMFORTS, AND LUXURIES IN 1915
PHYSICAL COMFORTS
Many things that in 1880 were reckoned as comforts and luxuries, are to-day looked upon as necessaries. In other words, the standards of material welfare in the county have been considerably raised during the past three and a half decades, and this has been confined to no race or class. There has been a general moving up along practically the entire line, altho there has been, as one would expect, some shifting of places.
Buildings .- The barns of not a few people to-day would make fully as comfortable living quarters as did their dwel- lings thirty-five years ago. Log dwellings have disap- peared. So far as I have been able to ascertain, not a single log structure in the county is now occupied as a dwelling. Very few even (probably not over five per cent) of the log kitchens and log smoke-houses remain, and not over ten or twelve per cent of the log barns and stables. Of the white home owners, fifty per cent of those in the rural districts and ninety per cent of those in Edenton have their dwellings painted, and either ceiled or plastered. Of the colored home owners, the percentage is about five and forty per cent for the county and town, respectively.
The two-story dwelling is now all the fashion in the rural sections. Almost without exception, every one in the rural districts who has put up a dwelling of more than two rooms within the past ten years, has built it two stories. There seems to be a general feeling that a two-story house gives a certain amount of prestige that is not conferred by a one-
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story house, even tho both cost the same. Another move- ment of late years is to have the dwelling and kitchen con- nected with each other, either by joining together, or with a porch between; formerly the more usual custom was to have the kitchen set off a few paces from the dwelling.
Not only has a great improvement taken place in dwell- ings, but the same is true of the outbuildings, as above in- timated. As many as thirty or forty per cent of the farm- owners now have fairly decent barns and shelters. Thirty- five years ago it would not have run over eight or ten per cent. As many farmers now have painted barns as in 1880 had painted dwellings.
Comparatively few wooden hinges now remain, and most home-made fastenings, especially for dwellings, have been supplanted by the factory-made article. Most barns and kitchens are now fitted with locks, tho many of them are seldom used.
Household and Kitchen Furniture .- Household and kit- chen furniture has increased in variety, quantity, and ele- gance, tho in many cases where the factory product has been substituted for the home-made, elegance has been purchased at the price of durability. Probably ninety per cent of home owners and fifty per cent of all other families now have sewing machines; for cook-stoves, the percentage is about ninety-eight and seventy-five, respectively. As for time- pieces and lamps, they are in practically every home.
Food .- In the matter of food there has also been con- siderable advancement. The variety has been increased, and such things as coffee, sugar, and flour, which were the luxuries of the comparatively few well-to-do families, are now consumed by all, and by many, about as freely as de- sired. The introduction of home-canning makes it possible for all farmers to have their own fruit and vegetables the year round, but the possibility is all too little appreciated.
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Less than five per cent of the families can any vegetables other than tomatoes; and while, perhaps, eighty per cent of the white families and fifteen per cent of the colored can some fruit each year, probably less than ten per cent of the families can as much as ten gallons of fruit an- nually. A majority of the white families and a few of the colored put up a gallon or two of preserves each year. These, as well as the canned fruit, rarely ever see the light except on Sundays or when company is around. Preserves seem to be considered a greater delicacy than plain fruit. In fact, they are frequently served during the height of the fruit season by those who have an abundance of fruit, in preference to the fresh fruit. Comparatively little fruit is eaten, except in fruit season, and then between meals just as it is gathered. Raw fruit is almost never seen on the table, and the little cooked fruit served, is mostly in the shape of pies or preserves, especially in the rural districts. The wholesome, easily prepared, stewed fruit or fruit sauce, is very rarely served. For weeks at a time many people never taste fruit of any sort.
The present small consumption of cooked fruit is due probably to habits formed in less prosperous times, rather than to any dislike of fruit. Unsweetened cooked fruit is not relished by many, and so in earlier days when sweeten- ing, especially sugar, was expensive and the purchasing power of most people small, it was quite natural that little fruit should be cooked; and the habit of regarding sugar as a luxury became so fixed that now, under vastly changed conditions where sugar is one of our cheapest energy-pro- ducing foods, the idea that sugar is an expensive delicacy still prevails even in many of the better-class homes.
Vegetables, like fruit, are used but comparatively little by the rural population, except in season, and then by many only sparingly. Many people make little or no pretense
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whatever of having any garden, and the gardens of a majority are comparatively inferior. For weeks at a time during the season in which vegetables may be grown, many a so-called farmer gathers absolutely nothing in the way of garden stuff. As above noted, hardly any vegetables are canned, and, excepting sweet potatoes, almost none stored; the farmer hates to buy from the stores anything that he himself produces; hence it comes about that vegetables out of season are especially rare in the rural districts. There is still very little milk and butter produced 1 or consumed. For months at a time sixty per cent of the people never taste butter, and most of the poultry and eggs are sold. By March the sweet potatoes (except those for planting) of a great many families have been either eaten or sold, or else have rotted, and so, for many of the people much of the time, the principal diet is cheap flour, made into poorly cooked biscuits, corn-bread, salt pork or bacon, and herring.
AESTHETICS
Dress .- When it comes to dress, the transformation that has taken place here within the last three and a half dec- ades is probably greater than that in any other phase of the economic or social life. Even the day-laborer now dis- ports himself in tailored-to-measure garments of the latest cut and pattern. When buying wearing apparel now, the questions of fit and fashion are ones uppermost in the per- son's mind, those of comfort and warmth coming in only as secondary considerations. Silk hosiery, fancy lingerie, and the latest Paris creations in frocks and millinery may now be seen at any public gathering, even in the rural dis- tricts. The vast majority of both white and colored, dress well.
Music .- One who presumes to sing something other than
1 Cf. table 9, p. 272.
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a " sacred song " is no longer, by reason of the fact, con- sidered hellward bound. Instrumental music is coming to be fairly common, and not infrequently fairly good. Most of those desiring piano lessons can have them at from twenty-five to forty cents apiece.1 Of the home owners with daughters from ten to twenty years old, probably fifty per cent of the white and twenty per cent of the colored have either a parlor organ or a piano. There are also many other families that have one or both of these instruments.
Pictures .- Pictures are still few. In less than ten per cent of the rural homes will there be found anything more pretentious than advertising picture-calendars and enlarged tintypes and photographs of relatives. These latter are probably in seventy per cent of the homes of whites and forty per cent of those of colored, in both town and country. They are cheap, blown-crayon reproductions put in by trav- eling picture agents who succeed largely by working on the feelings of the women. For the most part, they are woe- fully poor-the very antithesis of anything aesthetic or artistic. However, they probably serve one useful end- by constantly reminding one of from what hard-looking ancestors he sprang, they may tend to mitigate that affection commonly known as the "swell-head." In Edenton, twenty per cent of the families may have pictures, other than the above-mentioned enlarged portraits, which they think enough of to frame. The probable reason for such a slight mani- festation in this direction of the love of art is that pictures have not become the fashion. It is another case of habits having been formed under different conditions and not being altered when the conditions changed. As is well-known, pretty fair reproductions of the works of many of the best
1 These are usually given by the public-school teachers who happen to know a little music. This is in no way, however, connected with the public-school work.
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artists can be purchased for a few cents each, and there are scarcely any people who could not have some of these neatly framed in their homes, if they were really anxious for them.
Other Expressions of the Artistic Sense .- The hanging of pictures on the walls of one's home, however, happens to be only one of the many ways in which one may display his aesthetic tastes. With the coming of better times to nearly every one in Chowan, the artistic instinct has been expressed in various ways. Attention has already been called to the remarkable improvement in dress, dwellings, school houses, church buildings, and the furnishings of homes. The prem- ises now are better kept and meals more appetizingly served than formerly; and fine-looking horses and rigs are vastly more abundant, to say nothing of the numerous automobiles. It may not always be possible to distinguish the love of mere display, the desire to outdo one's neighbors, and the tendency to imitate, from the true love of art; but the same is the case everywhere else, and so if the marks of an aes- thetic nature are present, who would presume to say that they are due to other than aesthetic sentiments?
TRAVEL
With the coming of the railroads and of better economic conditons, travel has both greatly increased and become far more general. While, in 1880, comparatively few women and children under eighteen had ever visited Norfolk (the nearest seaport and trade center), probably a majority of the adults now fifty have at some time or other made the trip and gotten a glimpse of the outside world. Many of those who grew up under the old conditions, however, have never undertaken the journey, and for eighty-five per cent or more of the people Norfolk still stands as the farthest limit of their wanderings from home. Some few have traveled rather widely.
PART IV CONCLUSIONS
CHAPTER XXII
PROGRESSIVE AND RETROGRESSIVE FACTORS AFFECTING THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
It is the purpose of this chapter to point out some of the most influential forces, both physical and psychological, which at various times have played upon the people of the county. It may be well, however, first to review the situ- ation briefly.
SITUATION REVIEWED
The Eighties .- Domiciled upon a territory with a soil most of which was easily drained and easily cultivated, and much of which was of high natural fertility, with a climate having an abundance of both rainfall and sunshine fairly well distributed thruout the year, and lacking the extremes of both heat and cold yet at the same time possessing ample variety for the highest mental and physical stimulation- domiciled amid these favorable surroundings was a group of people (for the most part native-born of native stock that came originally from either Africa or the British Isles) many of whom in the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury were living, in numerous respects, in a manner very similar to that in which their forbears had lived two cen- turies before. There was comparatively little division of labor and the majority of the white families were to a re- markable degree individually self-sufficient. To the great mass of the people luxuries were almost unknown, com- forts were few, and many lacked even the bare physical necessities-lacked the necessary food and clothing to per- form the amount of common labor which they were poten- tially capable of. Excepting a very small per cent, they had
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little knowledge of, or communication with, the outside world. A large percentage of the whites-to say nothing of the blacks, the vast majority of whom could neither read nor write-were illiterate, and judging from the small amount of money spent on education and the small school- attendance, it would seem that the majority were satisfied to have their children grow up knowing just as little as they themselves knew.
Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen .- The picture we get a third of a century later is quite different. It is probable that greater economic development was experienced during this short period of three and a half decades than in the previous two centuries. With this development has come the attendant results of material prosperity. Modern con- ditions are being ushered in on all sides. That the general economic welfare is tremendously improved over what it was, is evidenced by the fact that many of the luxuries which only a very few affected in the eighties, are now considered among the necessaries even of the poorer economic classes. Illiteracy has been cut down until it is probably not over one-fifth what it was in 1880, and the general public are now taking an interest in, and learning of, things and events beyond their immediate surroundings.
QUERIES REGARDING THE LONG PERIOD OF SLOW GROWTH AND THE RECENT TRANSFORMATION -
The long period of little or no progress, and the radical transformation since the eighties, can hardly fail to impress even the most casual reader, and to raise in his mind ques- tions as to the causes of these seemingly anomalous facts. Why did this community so long remain in a compara- tively static state? What was the principal cause or causes of the great awakening? Have the factors which so long delayed progress ceased to operate? What are the
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chief drawbacks of the present day? To him who has studied at all attentively the pen pictures sketched in the preceding pages, the answers to these queries, if not in full at least in part, are doubtless already quite patent. Out of consideration, however, for that class of readers which usually takes time only for the statement of a thesis and the final conclusions, and in order to set forth concisely just what I myself consider the broad, general influences shaping the life of the people here depicted, I have appended the discussions following.
ALLEGED CAUSES OF THE SLOW DEVELOPMENT EXAMINED AND EVALUATED
Agrarian Policy of the Lords Proprietors .- One of the two facts which have been the most frequently claimed by Carolinians themselves to have been the chief drawbacks to the state's early development, and which were especially applicable to Chowan, was the general policy of the Lords Proprietors to grant to any one person only about what land they thought there was a possibility of his putting to some practical use. The excerpts following are typical of the writings on this point:
Two forces tended to keep it [North Carolina] a poor colony, thus giving a turn to its later character. In the first place,1 it was the policy of the proprietors to grant the land in small holdings, 640 acres being the usual maximum quantity .. .
It is ... probable that the economic disadvantage of small estates and of the lack of commerce [due to the lack of har- bors] induced the better class of immigrants to go to Virginia and South Carolina, thus leaving North Carolina for less sub- stantial settlers.2
1 The second force he considered to be the lack of harbors, cf. infra, p. 243.
2 Bassett, J. S., Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina, Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. xii, pp. 110-12.
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The basis for the notion that the agrarian policy of the Proprietors was detrimental to the Albermarle region, is probably a letter by Tho. Woodard, appointed by the Lords Proprietors to be " Surveyor for the Countie of Albemarle." Writing to Collaton (a Lord Proprietor) in June 1665, he said, among other things:
.. . The Proportione of Land you have allotted with the Rent and Conditione are by most People not well resented and the very Rumor of them dis-courages many who had intentions to have removed from Virginia hether ... .
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