A Bit of Etiquette from a Teenage George Washington

by Denise Weimer

Who knew that at the tender age of roughly fourteen, the future president, George Washington, took the time to pen 110 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation”? Apparently, a lot of people, as an internet search reveals. I, however, did not know until finding a 1988 Applewood Books reprint in my parents’ library.

Washington is believed to have adapted these rules, likely at the behest of a schoolmaster, from a book printed by French Jesuits in 1595. Records differ as to whether he was thirteen, fourteen, or sixteen when he did this, but an 1888 version, “copied from the original” by J.M. Toner, M.D., places him at thirteen using a date of 1745 on one of the pages. Though one source credits an even younger Francis Hawkins with the first English translation in 1640, Toner also avows that his extensive study of the Library of Congress revealed no similar printings.

Let’s take a glimpse inside, as so many of these polite considerations have flown out the window in the twenty-first century.

1st Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.

7th Put not off your clothes in the presence of others, nor go out your chamber half dressed. (I had to include this one in light of all the “Wal-Mart people” out there.)

22nd Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy.

29th When you meet with one of greater quality than yourself, stop, and retire, especially if it be a door or any straight place to give way for him to pass.

40th Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.

42nd Let thy ceremonies in courtesy be proper to the dignity of his place with who thou converses, for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince.

44th When a man does all he can though it succeeds not well blame not him that did it.

47th Mock not nor jest at any thing of importance; break no jests that are sharp biting; and if you deliver any thing witty and pleasant, abstain from laughing thereat yourself.

50th Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.

56th Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

60th Be not immodest in urging your friends to discover a secret.

81st Be not curious to know the affairs of others; neither approach those that speak in private.

89th Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.

108th When you speak of God or his attributes, let it be seriously & with reverence. Honour & obey your natural parents although they be poor.

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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Early American Woodworking

by Denise Weimer

During early Colonial times, American woodworkers relied heavily on British tools for their trade. While English woodworking items might be of superior manufacture, importing and distribution costs made them prohibitive for many.

As the colonies separated from England, Americans dedicated themselves more and more to making their own implements. Some, such as wooden squares, bevels, and gauges, proved easier to construct than others. Artisans also made their own vises, sawhorses, lathes, tool chests, and benches and called on blacksmiths for additional items. Plane-making surged in New England, saw-making both there and in Philadelphia, and the Kern family of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, grew a reputation for both tool-smithing and plane-making during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 

Traditionally, the carpenter cut and joined lumber into buildings; the joiner fitted pieces of wood to create farm and kitchen implements, window frames, staircases, and cabinetry; the turner worked with the turner to fashion chair and table legs on a lathe; and cabinetmakers taught apprentices to master techniques such as the dovetail and mortise and tenon and applied finishes to furniture.

However, woodworkers in rural areas might do everything from barn-building to farm equipment repair to making furniture. Some supplemented their incomes with farming. While the contents of their tool chests limited many of these Early American woodworkers, the demand for less practical furniture grew.

The ladder-back chair was the easiest chair style to produce, although its cylindrical parts called for chisels and gouges as the wood was spun on the lathe, its splats required several saws and a plane, and its seat was formed with a drawknife. Maple was a favorite for chair legs, as it was easily turned. As you might recall from the opening of the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, the Windsor chair was among the most difficult to construct properly. And formal side chairs were even more time-consuming and necessitated special tools.

Blanket chests were made by dovetailing flat boards together to form a box to which a top and feet were added. On desks and chest-of-drawers, the visible surfaces were often made of fine hardwoods such as walnut or mahogany, while drawer interiors and the back of furniture might be constructed of softwoods such as pine or poplar. Carpenters favored pine for house interiors since it could be sawn, planed, and carved quickly, while they often employed easily split oak for barrels and wagon parts.

What tools were used? The list would be so exhaustive, we can merely skim the surface here. The axe and the saw were, of course, staples of the woodworker. The crosscut saw required two laborers for coarse work such as felling trees and sawing logs and beams to length. Pitsaws sawed logs into boards, a job soon mostly overtaken by sawmills. Americans preferred open-style saws to frame saws. Open handsaw styles included dovetail, panel, tenon, coarse, carcass, and sash.

Measuring and marking tools included carpenter’s squares, folding rules, mortising and marking gauges, compasses and calipers, and bevels.

Carpenters used augers, large reamers, small gimlets, brad awls, bow drills, and braces with bits to bore holes in furniture. They employed bench planes to reduce, flatten, or curve wood to the needed size and shape, joining planes to cut grooves or interlocking parts, and molding plans for decorative shapes.

Chisels and gouges were used to pare wood to size, shape joints or the wood on a lathe, and create designs. Chisels might be either tanged (tapered) or socket (heavy-duty) style. Gouges came in both tanged and socketed designs with curved-out blades.

Today, we can deeply appreciate the woodworkers who forged a living from the native forests of America and the beautiful pieces they left behind. I took the photos accompanying this article at the woodworking shop in Old Salem, North Carolina, when I was researching my novel, The Witness Tree. The hero in an upcoming novel, A Secondhand Betrothal, is a woodworker, scout, and farmer on the Georgia frontier. 

 

For more information: With These Hands They Built a Nation: The Story of Colonial Arts and Crafts by Lois Lazarus and Tools: Working Wood in Eighteenth-Century America by James M. Gaynor and Nancy L. Hagedorn.

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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Early American Autumn Chores

by Denise Weimer

As we ease into October, follow the wood smoke on a leaf-laden, cool breeze back to a homestead on the Colonial or Federal frontier. We’d probably pass the men and boys in the field, busy with the harvest of whatever crop might be grown in that area. If we stuck our head in the door of the cabin, what would the women be up to? I came up with a few fall chores they might be about. Can you think of more?

Preserving – Meats were smoked, salted, and pickled for winter. The women turned fruit into jellies and jams and also pickled peas, carrots, turnips, and parsnips. Pumpkins might even be dried and hung from the rafters.

Soap-making – This task used grease saved from butchering and cooking and lye, which came from ashes kept in a large barrel. When these were boiled together with constant stirring in an outdoor pot, the whole yard would smell horrible. Lye from six bushels of ashes and twenty pounds of grease only yielded a small barrel of jelly-like soap.

Candle-making – Stinky, rancid deer suet or bear grease was uncovered after being saved for several months and placed in an iron kettle on the fireplace. It took about six hours to melt. Tallow was rendered through a cheesecloth, straining out the solid particles. It was then either stored for future use or transferred to another pot for reheating and dipping candles. Some families had large, tin candle-makers. Wick strings were doubled and strung over a narrow stick called a candle rod, then twisted tightly. The housewife dipped the wick into the melted tallow, then rested the rod on a rack until it cooled and grew hard. This was repeated over and over—often over the course of days—until the candle grew thick enough. Families might hang candles from the rafters until they were needed.

Beef-buying – Those who raised beef cattle might expect a buyer between the end of summer and September each year.

Corn-shucking – Separating the ear from the husk could call for a bit of merriment, with neighbors joining together to visit over the chore, feast, quilt, and sometimes, dance. Finding a red ear of corn could mean a chance to steal a kiss from one’s favored belle.

Baking – Let’s clear out the memory of all that grease and tallow and scent the air with a pumpkin and apple pie as we close today’s visit to the past. From The Compleat American Housewife 1776 by Julianne Belote:

Pare a pumpkin, and take the seedy part of it out; then cut it in slices; Pare and core a quarter of an hundred of apples, and cut them in slices. Make some good paste with an Egg, and lay some all around the Brim of the Dish; lay half of a pound of good, clean Sugar over the bottom of your Dish, over that a Layer of apples; then a Layer of Pumpkin, and again so untill the Pie is full, observing to put Sugar between every two layers, and all the remaining Sugar on top. Bake it half an hour, and before you send it to the Table, cut it open and put in some good fresh butter.

Other sources: Revolutionary War Journal Online, “Lighting Colonial Homes – Candles & Much More.” With These Hands They Built a Nation: The Story of Colonial Arts and Crafts by Lois Lazarus.

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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Of Flip and Syllabub

Old Salem Tavern

by Denise Weimer

Some of the spirituous liquors favored by our forefathers remind me of our modern coffee craze. According to a sweet little book in my parents’ possession, Little Pilgrimages Among Old New England Inns by Mary Caroline Crawford, copyright 1907, “Our forefathers, it must be remembered in explanation of this, knew nothing of the luxury of hot tea and coffee and so if they would drink anything but water [often unsanitary], malt beer and other spirituous drinks had to be supplied and dispensed by somebody.” 

Taverns rose to this occasion, often famed far and wide for particular drinks. Brigham’s Tavern in Westborough, Massachusetts, made mulled wine of a quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of boiling water, and six frothed eggs, sweetened and spiced. “Nutmeg was a favourite flavoring and fashionable young ladies and elegant gallants always carried the delicate dainty in their pockets.” The Shepard Inn of Bath, Maine’s shipping city, served hot toddies and gin fizzes at a little window in the front hall. Other taverns concocted beers boiled with roots and herbs, spruce or sassafras bark, or pumpkin and apple.

Every landlord swore by his way of making flip. The Compleat American Housewife 1776 by Julianne Belote gives one recipe. In a pitcher, mix 2/3 full of strong beer, adding enough sugar or molasses to sweeten. Fill with about half a pint of rum, then heat the mixture by stirring with a red-hot poker. Says Pilgrimages: “The loggerhead, more commonly called the flip iron, was a regular part of the chimney furniture in ‘ye olden time:’ it was constantly kept warm in the ashes all ready to impart at short notice the puckering bitterness and curious scorched taste beloved of our ancestors.”

Tavern dining

The Compleat American Housewife highlights another sweet Colonial libation, syllabub, a Christmas favorite. Amelia Simmons’ recipe called for sweetening a quart of “cyder” with sugar, grating in nutmeg, and then milking your cow directly into the liquor! Next, pour half a pint or more of sweet cream over it. Those who are financially able may use white wine instead of “cyder” and beat it with their cream for half an hour.

I experienced my first syllabub at the Moravian tavern in Old Salem, North Carolina. I must say, I wasn’t expecting quite so much “cyder.” LOL!

How about if I close today’s post with a sneak peek of a scene from A Secondhand Betrothal, my romance set on the Georgia frontier which my agent is currently shopping? Incidentally, it mentions both syllabub and nutmeg in this scene where the heroine, Esther, is Christmas shopping for the family that has taken her in after a tragedy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can I help you, ma’am?” Mr. Moore gave no indication he recognized her as the daughter of his previous competitor. Just as well. She’d rather him assume she was a guest of the Lockridges, perhaps a relative.

“Have you white sugar and wheat flour?” She whispered the question. Tabitha’s dried apples would make a wonderful cake, and Esther had not forgotten Jared’s reference to syllabub. While the Lockridges took their corn to the grist mill on the Apalachee—a luxury compared to the hand mill Liam had expected Esther to use to grind their dried corn, and acorns when that meager supply dwindled—even they seldom acquired wheat flour on the frontier. The best gift she could give this family would be something they would all enjoy.

Mr. Moore caught onto her secrecy, his bushy brows shooting up, then nesting above his shining eyes as he whispered back. “I do, but it comes very dear.” He named the price, and Esther swallowed hard.

She twisted the ring off her finger. She’d gained enough weight that it no longer threatened to fall off. “Would this be enough for a pound of each … and one of those?” She nodded toward several nutmegs displayed in a nearby wooden bowl.

“Why … I’d say so. I don’t get much jewelry here, and rings that can be used for weddings are even rarer, but ma’am …” He took the circlet to examine it. “Are you sure?”

Esther nodded. “I am sure.” She picked up the top nutmeg and shook it, satisfied by the rattle of kernels in the shells covered by their streaked reddish coat of mace. The seeds had sufficiently dried to make their highly prized powder.

“Have you something we can hide your purchases in?”

She held out a cloth satchel looped over her shoulder, strung under her cloak.

“Very good. One moment while I fill your order.”

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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