WORK BAGS AND THEIR USES©

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knitting bag, sewing bag, workbag

Gentle readers, today’s post departs from gardening and cooking as sometimes happens.  I hope that some of you find it useful.

To research an 18th or 19th century lady’s collection of sewing implements it helps to know what the collection was called during that time. While one can research individual tools, the container that held them, always ready for easy availability, was most often called a work bag. References are found from articles and books published as early as the 1700’s.

It was important that every woman knew how to sew and embroidery. More well-to-do women and girls might have worked on more delicate garments and smaller fancy items such as handkerchiefs, doll clothes, or delicate underpinnings, but they were still expected to perfect their sewing skills. Most girls learned embroidery stitches by making samplers.

Work-bags ranged from strictly utilitarian to being knitted or made of satin and decorated with tassels, embroidery, and other embellishments and were often made to give as gifts to a friend or loved one. They were often made to sell at church bazaars.

Women commonly carried work-bags with them as they visited friends, sometimes working on their needlework as they carried on their conversations. Young girls often had their own workbags.

“. . . and brought, for each of the little girls, a present of a sattin [sic] work-bag ornamented with gold. There was in each bag a needle-book, and a piece of muslin, on which was drawn a pretty design”.

In addition to sewing tools a work bag was also used to carry everyday items as one might use a tote bag today. It might have contained items such as keys, a piece of jewelry, letters or notes, money, toothpick cases, books, sewing, knitting, or embroidery projects, gloves, handkerchief, etc. or it may, on occasion, have been used to gather nuts or flowers. A housewife (a sewn sewing kit of sorts used for holding pins, needles, buttons, etc.) was often part of the contents of a workbag. In 1841 an article was published about the early use of potatoes in which a woman of 45 years said the first potato they ever saw was kept in her mother’s work-bag to await the season for planting.

Reading material and calling cards were often kept in work-bags. “I did intend reading something to the children,” said their mother, as she drew a paper from her work-bag”. The work bags also held scissors, a bodkin, and needles.

Sewing is done by choice today but in times past clothes were made and mended and the tools to do the job were in constant use. A woman valued them because replacing them was a hardship. A poem [published 1831] entitled “Careless Matilda” addresses a young lady who haphazardly leaves her sewing tools scattered about, never knowing where anything is.

“Again, Matilda, is your work astray,
Your thimble gone! Your scissors, where are they?
Your needles, pins, your thread, and tapes all lost—
Your Housewife here, and there your work bag tost [tossed]”.

The following quote demonstrates the importance of carefully storing away a work-bag for the next time it was needed. “. . . then Lucy’s mother kissed her, and said to her, put your work into your work-bag, and put your work-bag into its place, and then come back to me.”

My workbag is made of toile after a pattern published in Godey’s Lady’s Book. It is a good size with pockets sewn around for keeping various items together. It has a drawstring closure. It has held everything documented above at one time or another. Researching workbags reminded me how much I need to reorganize mine and be as faithful about keeping my sewing implements together in it as my predecessors were. At my age one would hope to be better organized than I generally am.

Soap Fit for a Queen©

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Pears Soap

Soap is a necessary item for our comfort and health yet it rarely receives notice or praise.  When made for a Queen, however, it is quite another matter.  In 1892, advertisements for Pears soap read:  “Pears Soap Makers by Special Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”, and “Pears Soap Makers by Special Appointment to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales”.

Queen Victoria conferred the original Royal warrant for the sale of soap to the royal household and the honour was renewed by Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.  Another Royal warrant was held with the King of Spain

The soap was praised by such notables as the senior surgeon at St. John’s Hospital for the Skin, London and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.  The latter wrote an endorsement on Nov. 29, 1882.  “If ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ soap must be considered as a ‘Means of Grace’—and a clergy-man who recommends moral things, should be willing to recommend Soap.  I am told that my commendation of Pears’ Soap some dozen years ago has assured for it a large sale in the U.S.  I am willing to stand by any word in favor of it that I ever uttered.  A man must be fastidious indeed who is not satisfied with it.  Henry Ward Beecher”.

Pears’ Soap took the highest prizes at International Exhibitions around the world – Paris, London, Philadelphia, Melbourne, Adelaide, Chicago, Santiago, Edinburgh, etc.

Pears Soap had humble beginnings but through keen marketing strategy it has remained popular into its third century of manufacturing.  Andrew Pears began making soap in London in 1789 and it is still available today.  Andrew took his grandson, Mr. Francis Pears, as a partner in 1835 and The House of Pears became A. & F. Pears.  Andrew left Francis to work alone in 1838 making a modest living but the soap wasn’t quite living up to its potential until 1865 when he was joined by Mr. Thomas J. Barratt and a young Mr. Andrew Pears (son of Francis and great-grandson of the original owner, Andrew Pears.  Francis Pears retired in 1875.

Thomas Barratt’s contribution to the success of Pears’ Soap was his persistence advertising it.  He was responsible for soliciting the endorsement of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and others and made sure it was featured in magazines and newspapers in Britain and the U.S.  The soap, as developed initially in 1792, was good enough in quality that all that was needed to make it a household item was acquainting the masses with the product.

“Each cake of Pears’ Soap goes through a drying process for a full year before leaving the works, which removes every particle of water.  A cake of Pears is all soap and only soap, that is why it lasts so much longer than ordinary kinds”.

So successful was Barratt’s advertising campaign that Pears Soap was truly, “in leading hotels, banks, clubs, steamship lines and hospitals throughout the world”.

Blissful Meals, thehistoricfoodie, aka Vickie Brady.©

 

Witch Hazel, a True North American Plant

“Witch hazel is a shrub that everybody in New England, who goes into the woodland, knows by sight.  Its botanical term is Hamamelis Virginica, given it many years ago in honor of the early settlers of Virginia, who, before ascertaining the medical worth of the leaves and bark, used the twigs with success as divining rods”.  Witch hazel was described as growing from eight to fifteen feet by the age of five or six years.   It was not to be confused with a much shorter shrub (rarely more than five feet tall) by the name of hazel – the latter was the nut-bearing hazelnut.  The two are not related although witch hazel seeds/nuts are also edible.

The plant goes by several other names including spotted alder, striped alder, tobacco-wood, winter-bloom, snapping-hazel, and, of course, Southern witch-hazel.

The latter was not thought to possess any of the qualities of the true witch hazel though that writer noted that unscrupulous gatherers of the witch-hazel leaves and bark did often try to pass of the one for the other.  “…the fraud is detected at once by the taste.  There is a similarity in appearance of the leaves and bark, but the flavor is almost as different as chalk from cheese.”

About November witch hazel trees have tiny yellow flowers emerge that expand throughout winter.  There are “nubbins”, one might refer to as nuts or seeds, which are interspersed amongst the blooms.

Witch hazel has a rather unusual way of dispersing its seed.   The seeds are kept over winter and ripen them the next fall when its flowers are expanding… “when the pod bursts open, snapping them several feet away.  If the branches are gathered before the seeds are scattered the pods will open in the house and throw their seeds across the room.”  Most sources noted seeds being flung 10 to 20 feet, but Gibson claimed he’d seen them thrown up to 45 feet away from the host shrub.  – Dowd, Mary Alice.  Our Common Wild Flowers at Springtime and Autumn.  1906.  Boston.

After an encounter with it William Hamilton Gibson said of witch hazel:  “I had been attracted by a bush which showed an unusual profusion of bloom and while standing close beside it in admiration I was suddenly stung on the cheek by some missile and the next instant shot in the eye by another, the mysterious marksman having apparently let go both barrels of his little gun directly in my face.  I soon discovered him, an army of them,–in fact a saucy legion, all grinning with open mouths and white teeth exposed and their double-barreled guns loaded to the muzzle ready to shoot whenever the whim should take them”.  – The Nature Study Review.  Nov. 1919.

“Medicinally, witch hazel is an astringent.  Both bark and leaves contain tannic acid in large quantities, but the greater percentage is in the bark.”  The bark was stripped off and distilled for its oil.  It was used for treating acute derangements of the stomach.  How often was it taken?  “People do not buy it by the four or eight-ounce bottle now, but by the quart or gallon, and every medicine chest is not properly equipped unless it has a liberal supply…”.  – Good Housekeeping.  Aug. 1894.

North American witch hazel was named for its resemblance to the English and Scottish Witch or Wych elm which produced a rather large, though seldom straight tree.  The Witch elm was used for bent-wood work, boat frames, etc.  The wych-elm or Eurasian elm Ulmus glabra, has large rough leaves, grows primarily in woodlands or near flowing water.   It has clusters of flowers and winged fruits.  The old English prefix wych, or witch meant “bend”)so named because the tree had pliant branches.

There are accounts of hazel and witch hazel being used for fishing rods or poles, and it is difficult to know from many accounts whether the writer meant the hazel [hazelnut], the witch hazel, or the wych-elm that was used in olden times in England.  While witch hazel is native to North America (with versions also native to Japan and China) it put in an appearance across the pond early on.

“Hamamelis virginiana was one of the first New World plants to be adopted for ornamental use by European horticulturists. As early as the mid-17th century, the plant was growing in private botanical collections in London. And it’s been a perennial favorite ever since.”  – The Brooklyn Botanic Garden website.  http://www.bbg.org/gardening/article/winsome_witch-hazel.

The Positive Medicine web site in the UK noted a collaborative effort between John Bartram  and an English gardener to distribute witch hazel in England.  Peter Collinson, an English cloth trader and avid gardener bought various plants and seeds from America and distributed them to English botanical gardens.

“The Father of Fishing, Izaac Walton, can be consulted for an account of making rods.  By Walton’s time  hazel as in hazelnut, witch hazel, and the wych elm for which the North American witch hazel is named were all growing in England.

An account of rod-making in England from April 22, 1870 may be of interest.  “I have been told, very good fly rods may be made of mountain ash, also of wych elm and of hazel…”.  – English Mechanic and Mirror of Science.

An American writer thought witch hazel wasn’t of much interest to the professional rod maker or fisherman, but that, “many a witch hazel fish-pole has augmented the truant boy’s strong of forbidden fruit down the creek bank in the first warm days of spring.  Down South where witch hazel is scarce and scrubby, its cousin, the famous red gum, is cut short in its career and lifts fish from the ‘Swanee’ river and other southern streams famous in song and story.”  – Hardwood Record.  June 10, 1917.

Another American wrote, “He had a witch-hazel pole which he had cut in the winter and from which he had scraped the bark, to make it look nice.  He kept it on the rafters of the woodshed…”.  Munn, Charles Clark.  Boyhood Days on the Farm:  A Story for Young and Old Boys.  1907.  Boston.

Because the forked branches were thought to possess magical powers of pointing to hidden streams or veins of metal [gold, silver, coal] they were used as divining rods by well diggers and would-be miners.  It was sometimes referred to as the witch of the woods because it bloomed out of cycle with most other plants and shrubs.

By the turn of the century infusions of witch hazel were being combined with alcohol to make an astringent lotion for external inflammations.  An advertisement in the Index of Diseases and Remedies claimed it was the best preparation for use in sprains, bruises, prevention of ecchymosis, leucorrhea, etc.  “It [miscible with water] may be used internally in the same doses as the fluid extract.”

Native Americans, “put great faith in it as a sedative and application to external hurts and inflammations.  They still the leaves and bark, and bathe sprained joints and muscles.  They apply it for all their burns, bruises, and aches.  It quickly takes out the smart and sting and allays the inflammation, lessening the swelling and restoring the hurt to a normal condition.  Likewise I have seen them use it for weak and sore eyes, sores in the ear, nose, throat, or mouth, and for sore throat too.  As a relief to the bites of insects most of us are familiar with it, while many of us have used it with good results for our lame backs and rheumatism…”.  The penner of those lines noted Indian women mixed it with oil and used it as a beauty product for the skin.  – Life and Health Magazine.  April 1912.

The following description may help interested parties to find the bush in the wild or to know when purchasing if they are indeed purchasing true witch hazel.  “The witch hazel leaf is nearly as broad as it is long, bluntly pointed at its tip, with a stem generally less than one-half inch in length.  The sides are unequal in size and shape and the edges are roughly scalloped.”.

Witch hazel tea may be purchased as can the dried leaves.  Leaves can be gathered from nature and stored away to make tea and poultices as needed.  It’s hard to beat a plant that can supply you with medicine, fishing poles, and winter blooms.  Blissful meals yall, – thehistoricfoodie©

ROASTIT BUBBLY JOCK©

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18th century Scottish food, bubbly-jock, roasted bubbly-jock

For those who haven’t studied historic foods, a bubbly-jock is a turkey – that traditional bird of the holiday table. To be precise, it is a turkey-cock, and it has been found on Scottish tables since the 17th century, and probably before. A meal served in the presence of King James I while on his way to Scotland included roast turkey in 1617. In the Calendar of State Papers as related to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scotts, is found mention of “turkey cockis”.

References are found in early Scottish publications to a person acting as a bubbly-jock. Such is to ridicule someone whose behavior resembles the strutting and noisy displays of a male turkey. For those who have seen a male turkey drop his wings, fan out his tail, ruffle his feathers, and make his drumming sound, the reference will be abundantly clear.

The term bubbly-jock dates from at least as early as the 1700’s. Earlier references from the Scottish Historical Review talk about a “twrkie” [1671] or “turkie cock” [1688], therefore, Outlander fans may wisely choose to serve a, “roastit bubbly-jock” for Christmas dinner this year.

For an idea what was served with the roastit bubbly-jock we look to Susanna MacIver [1789]. She operated a cooking school from her home in Edinburgh during the 18th century. Her “Cookery and Pastry” as taught and practiced by Mrs. MacIver was first published in 1773. She claimed to have frequently made every dish in the book. Not much else is known about her except Florence White said in “Good Things in England” that her father was an impoverished Highland laird. She sold the book from her home for use by the middle and upper classes. The Bills of Fare were added after the first edition at the request of her students and were mere suggestions of what one might find in a dinner served in courses.

In one Bill of Fare she suggested boiled pork, roast turkey, greens, soup, and pease pudding. For a more elaborate dinner with roast turkey she advised potatoes, pickles, and stewed celery along with jugged hare, saddle of mutton, and a variety of tarts and puddings.

Vegetables she included in her Bills of Fare with other meats, and which many a maid or housewife may have served up with turkey as well, included kidney beans, broccoli, spinach, peas, carrots, salad, cauliflower, mushrooms, stewed lettuce and peas, asparagus, artichokes, and sorrel with poached eggs. In her list of garden fare she listed additionally coleworts, sprouts, cardoons, parsnips, turnips, endive, leeks, cresses, mustard, onions, beets, salsify, scorzonera, Jerusalem artichokes, purslane, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, skirrets, “all sorts of small salad”, and a long list of pot herbs.

Before one might enjoy, “a bubbly-jock garnished with links of sausages”, the cook might boldly ask, “have ye killed the auld bubbly-jock, as ye threatened this morning?” Once the bird has been dispatched and cleaned it would have been prepared as follows or it was often boiled, especially if the turkey was older and tougher than might be desired.

Mary Eaton instructed her readers to stuff the turkey with sausage meat unless sausages were to be served separately in a dish in which case it could be stuffed with bread stuffing. “As this makes a large addition to the size of the fowl, observe that the heat of the fire is constantly to that part for the breast is often not done enough. A little strip of paper should be put on the bone, to prevent its being scorched while the other parts are roasting. Baste it well…serve with gravy in the dish and plenty of bread sauce in a sauce tureen. Add a few crumbs and a beaten egg to the stuffing of sausage meat.”

TO ROAST TURKEY POU[L]TS. Mary Smith. “The Complete House-keeper”. 1772. Newcastle.
Take young turkeys, rather larger than a half-grown fowl, scald and draw them clean, skewer them with their heads down to their sides, spit them, and lay them down to a clear fire for twenty minutes; baste them well with butter, and dust them with flour, let them be plump, and of a nice brown, lay them in a dish, with some brown gravy under them, and serve them up hot for a second course, with some bread sauce in a boat.

For the BREAD SAUCE.
Put the crumbs of a halfpenny roll into a sauce-pan with some water and some peppercorns, one onion cut in slices, two ounces of butter, let it boil ‘till the bread is soft, beat it up, and add three spoonfuls of thick cream to make it white, let it just simmer, pour it in a boat, and serve it up. This is a proper sauce for roast turkey, pheasant, or partridge.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, & may God Bless.
– TheHistoricFoodie is a copyrighted site.©

See:
Galt, John. “The Last of the Laird”. 1826. Edinburgh.
“Tait’s Edinburgh Matazine. Oct. 1834.
Whittle, Peter. “A Topographical, Statistical, & Historical Account of the Borough of Preston”. 1821. Preston.
Eaton, Mary. “The Cook and Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal Dictionary”. 1822. Bungay.
MacIver, Susannah. “Cookery and Pastry”. 1789. London.

Indentured or Redemptioner: White Slavery in the Colonies©

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indentured servant; redemptioner, Pennsylvania Dutch

My topic today with regard to Pennsylvania Dutch history, is the enslavement of white adults and children as a method of paying for passage to America. It is meant only as a brief glimpse into the lives of hard-working individuals who appreciated an opportunity to change their destiny in a new world.

The terms indentured and redemptioner refer to white Europeans who bound themselves to someone in return for payment of their passage to America. The difference in the two is that indentures were negotiated and approved by a magistrate or other official prior to the passage while a redemptioner sailed first and had to reach an agreement as to the terms of servitude upon reaching their destination and before they were allowed to leave the ship. Redemptioners had little to no ability to negotiate the terms of service.

Indentured servants were not paid a salary and could not travel or marry without the consent of their master. They ate what was provided, however coarse it might be, and worked whatever hours were demanded of them.

“About 1720, German immigrants began coming to Philadelphia in great numbers by the way of Rotterdam and other Dutch seaports. Some of them had money enough to pay their passage, but very many of them, when they landed at Philadelphia, found themselves indebted to the master of the ship, or, more often, absolutely penniless in a strange land. They sold their services to the first person who would pay their debts and provide them with food and shelter.

Men made a regular business of going to Philadelphia and buying the services of these German laborers, whom they took into the interior to sell to farmers. Often families were obliged to separate, the parents going in one direction and the children in another; sometimes they would never see each other again.”

Landlords in Europe could sell impoverished tenants into servitude to men who made their living trafficking in human cargo with the intent of reselling the individuals upon arrival in America. Such “entrepreneurs” who profited from the misfortune of those less fortunate were referred to as, “Soul-sellers”.

Various accounts published just after the turn of the 20th century state that children were often bound out to pay for their passage as well as that of their parents. They could be bound out as small children and sometimes served their masters until they turned 21.

A high percentage of the Palatines who came over did so as redemptioners due to the harsh circumstances in their native land, especially Mennonites who had suffered from religious persecution, but after, “ten or a dozen”, years many were prosperous farmers and property owners. “They settled in the central and southern parts of Pennsylvania…”, and thus began the legacy of the Pennsylvania-Dutch.

Germans from the Rhine provinces and the Swiss who came prior to 1717-20 were usually able to pay their own passage and make a meager start at life, but those who came afterward often came as redemptioners after being impoverished by wars and decades of conflict.

“In 1722, the Palatine servants were disposed of at £10 each, for five years of servitude.” Benjamin Franklin noted in 1759 that, “the labor of the plantations is performed chiefly by indentured servants, brought from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany; because of the high price it bears, it cannot be performed any other way”.

Conditions varied but were generally poor for, “…non-English-speaking individuals and families…whose time was not their own during the years of their involuntary servitude”.

Failure to fulfill the terms of a contract or running away before the contract expired were met with punishment yet the papers are filled with run-away ads and the offer of reward for information leading to the return of such a servant.

Many of the redemptioners were farmers whose skills propelled Pennsylvania to the forefront of the American agricultural movement, but as the following advertisement will demonstrate, tradesmen also sought their fortune in the colonies.

“Just arrived from London, in the ship “Borden”, William Harbert, Commander, a parcel of young likely men-servants, consisting of Husbandmen, Joyners, Shoemakers, Weavers, Smiths, Brick-makers, Bricklayers, Sawyers, Taylers [sic], stay-makers, Butchers, Chair-makers, and several other trades, and are to be sold very reasonable either for ready money, wheat Bread, or Flour, by Edward Hoone, in Philadelphia”. – The American Weekly Mercury, Nov. 7, 1728.

On Jan. 18, 1774, notice was published in the Pennsylvania Staatsbote saying, “There are still 50 or 60 German persons newly arrived from Germany. They can be found with the widow Kriderin, at the sign of the Golden Swan. Among them are two Schoolmasters, Mechanics, Farmers, also young children as well as boys and girls.”

Newspapers contained notices of masters who wanted to re-sell a servant such as this one published in The Pennsylvania Messenger. “A young girl and maid servant, strong and healthy; no fault. She is not qualified for the service now demanded. Five years to serve”.

Another ad from the Pittsburgh Gazette notified the public of an opportunity to obtain for ready money, “A German woman servant. She has near three years to serve, is well qualified for all household work; would recommend her to her own country people particularly, as her present master has found great inconvenience from his not being acquainted with their manners, customs, and language…”. Was this a mother being sold away from her children or husband? We’ll never know because familial relationships were of no concern to those negotiating such sales and certainly wouldn’t have been publicized.

Another form of servitude was apprenticeship where a youth or adult bound themselves to someone in exchange for learning a trade. Apprentices were servants and could be punished and returned if they decided to leave prior to the date specified in their contract and they could be sold if their master so chose.

Upon completion of an apprenticeship, individuals might expect to be supplied with a new set of clothing, shoes, and perhaps enough simple tools with which to eke out a living. In some ads, it was stipulated that the servant was to be taught to read and write before setting out on his own. Unless specified in the contract, indentured servants and redemptioners had no such expectations.

Names of the thousands of individual servants are so poorly documented it would be extremely difficult to know if an ancestor who came to America did so under these circumstances, however, for those like Martin whose early 18th century immigrant ancestral lines all converge in the Palatinate and Switzerland chances are pretty high that someone did. By the late 18th century, prosperous Pennsylvanians who knew their parents or grandparents had been indentured proudly acknowledged their descent from hard-working people who not only improved their own circumstances, but also contributed to the prosperity of the state. ©

Fanning, John Watson. “Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in Olden Time.” 1830.
The Advocate: America’s Jewish Journal. Vol. 47. April 18, 1914.
Channing, Edward. Elements of United States History. 1763
An Account of the Manners of the German Inhabitants of Pennsylvania.
Swank, James Moore. Progressive Pennsylvania. 1908. Philadelphia.