We all face daily struggles—tests of our talents, tolerances, commitments and fortunes. But at least we don’t have to log our own wood, dig our own wells, weave our own fabrics and whittle our own spoons.
New Haven’s early settlers did, as recounted in Stories of Old New Haven, a 1902 book by Ernest Hickock Baldwin. Baldwin taught history at both Yale and Hillhouse High, a dual arrangement that’s now a relic of the past. But in some ways Baldwin seems ahead of his time. He clearly wrote Stories of Old New Haven to be accessible, not academic, as if he’d anticipated the reasoning behind our own century’s surge in writing aimed at young adults. Moreover, after echoing in subject, if not in style, other authors’ attempts to capture the more consequential sweeps of New Haven history, he deviated further, by devoting his final chapter to the incidental minutiae of early domestic life—a coda exploring “How the People of New Haven Lived in Colonial Days.”
Floors, he writes, were “bare or sprinkled with sand. Very few people could afford carpets.” Chairs were for adults, benches for children. Windows were small and at first “covered with oiled paper. When glass could be obtained[,] it was very imperfect,” offering “blurred and indistinct” views outside. The sill of one window might possess the “noonmark,” a primitive time-telling notch marking a spot “where the shadow of the sun fell at noon.”
In winter, “it was necessary to warm [beds] with a warming pan,” which contained coals or embers fresh from the fire. The primary engine of heat in that season was a well-tended “great fire-place,” though most of it escaped through the chimney. If the fire went out, the easiest way to get it going again was “to send some one with a pan or piece of green bark to fetch glowing coals from a neighbor’s hearthfire.”
Fire could be further harnessed with “pine knots and tallow candles… A pine knot was a very dirty and smoky thing, but many an old Puritan minister wrote his long sermons with the aid of such a light.” Candle-making, meanwhile, “was an important household duty. Every bit of tallow was carefully saved and melted. The candle wicks were made of hemp or cotton, and were dipped in the hot tallow, then taken out and allowed to cool. This was done over and over again until the candle was of the right size. Sometimes the melted tallow was poured into molds. All candles were carefully laid away and sparingly used.”
To harness fire’s foil, water, wells were dug and wellsweeps built above them. Each of the latter contraptions began with “a forked stake upright in the ground a short distance from the well. Across this was fastened a long pole in such a manner that one arm was much longer than the other and reached high into the air. The shorter end was usually weighted with a heavy stone or log. On the end of the long arm was tied a slender pole to which a bucket was attached. By pulling down the tall sweep by means of the slender pole the bucket was lowered into the well; the heavy weight on the short arm of the sweep helped to raise it again.”
Dining was done with wooden vessels and spoons, not forks—nor potatoes, which “were not thought fit to eat by the New England colonists; even cattle were not allowed to have them,” Baldwin writes. Maple sugar was a staple sweetener, and though “little butter was used,” “cheese and milk were plentiful.” Quinnipiac natives “taught the white settlers how to grow corn and prepare it for eating. At first this was the ‘staff of life.’ The abundance of fish and game furnished the colonists with meat; wild turkeys and pigeons were very numerous.” (One early staple Baldwin doesn’t mention here: oysters.)
Spinning, weaving and sewing were matters of both function and form—and pride. “All cloth was made at home and all clothing made from ‘home-spun,’” Baldwin writes. “Spinning was an important part of a Puritan girl’s education and weaving was the chief home-industry. The settlers of New Haven wore finer raiment than those of the other New England colonies,” and “the New Haven Court never passed laws forbidding people to wear expensive clothes as was done in other places.”
Weekends were little refuge from the rigors of daily life. Saturday was spent busily preparing for the Sabbath, which began that night. Sunday, meanwhile, “was a day of rest but not of recreation,” involving hours of prayer and sermons at the devout Puritan settlement’s meetinghouse. Adults sat according to their standing; “it was a serious social offence for a person to sit in the wrong pew,” though not, I gather, as bad as skipping the service. “Woe to the lazy or indifferent who were missing from their pews!” Baldwin writes, with “severe sickness or accident” the only acceptable excuses. Men and women sat on separate sides, and boys, “usually [sat] on the pulpit stairs,” were assigned “a tithingman… to watch them and keep them quiet. Any noisy or unruly youngsters were sure to be prodded with a long stick by the tithingman.” In winter, the church was freezing, creating a trial of endurance for adults as well.
Sunday evenings, however, brought some relief. “Then was the time for neighbors to make friendly calls and young men to court Puritan maidens,” Baldwin writes. And at any time, the odd traveler or letter might appear, bringing a diverting story from some faraway place.
Or, like this article, from some faraway time.
Written by Dan Mims.
