Colonial LifeEverything you wanted to know about living in colonial times.

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Colonial KitchenThe kitchen is a separate building because it keeps the cooking odors and heat away from the house. On one wall there is a massive fireplace. The fireplace is used to cook food and heat the small room on cold days.

On the other three walls there are tons of cupboards, barrels, and chests where my family stores many things. Wood is placed over these things to act like tables so that we have a workspace. To keep the room cool there are windows on every wall and a tall ceiling. That makes the room comfortable on summer days and on cooking days. The ceiling is higher than the main house. We make our windows out of oilpaper. The floor in the kitchen is either brick or packed earth. The reason we don’t have wood is because wood is a fire hazard. People with a brick floor have to scrub it every day with soft soap and sand water.  Floors made of packed earth are swept every day. 

Sometimes the house gets over crowded, so the kitchen is also used for visits, study, and needle work.

Men’s Colonial ClothingLet me tell you about the different kinds of clothes they normally wear.  The father doesn’t wear long pants. His pants are called breeches, which come just below the knees. He has buttons instead of zippers on our breeches. Under his breeches are woolen stockings. He wears his shirt very loose with some ruffles at his neck and cuffs. He wears a waistcoat over his shirt. He will sometimes wear a cloak over his waistcoat. At home the dad wears a tri-corner hat instead of a wig. A tri-corner hat is a hat with three corners. It doesn’t matter which shoe he puts on which foot because they’re all the same. Rich people have clothes made of silk brocade lace. Young kids wear a loose dress until he becomes five or six years old.

Women’s Colonial ClothingThe Mom’s clothes are very beautiful but she says they are very uncomfortable to wear.  She wears a long dress, but some wear a petticoat.  Moms only have two sets of clothes, one set for weekdays and one set for Sunday. They wear a corset around their waist. It is laced around their waist almost to the point were she can’t breath. Ribs can even be broken because corsets are so tight. Women wear clogs around her shoes so she doesn’t get them muddy. A pocket-hoop farthingale make women's waist look thin and her stomach look flat. To keep my hand warm, many wore a muff over them, which was a cloth wrapped around hands. Also, when a lady travels they wear a cloak. It covers their hair and dress, also it keeps her warm. When kids get to be five or six she wears the same thing as my mom.

JobsI would like to tell you about daily life.  Men and boys hunt lots of wild birds and animals for our meat and cut down trees for our firewood. They hunt birds and animals for food our family eats each day. Boys also plant and harvest crops with others. They harvest in the fall because if they wait until winter, the frost will kill the crops. When boys are nine years old they will be an apprentice to a Cooper or a Silversmith. A Cooper is someone who works with wood and fixes chairs or anything else made from wood.  Boys will be an apprentice for about seven years. Women make our soaps and candles. They make candles by tying string to a stick and we put the strings into a pot of boiling wax and tallow. These candles give them light at nighttime, which is very important!

They spin wool with a spinning wheel and weave it into cloth. They get the wool from sheep. They shear the wool off the sheep. You may think that this hurts the sheep but it doesn’t. It feels like getting a haircut. Girls also cut and prepare the meat for eating. They get the meat from my father and brothers. 

ChurchSunday is the Lord’s Day. It is the day to worship God. In the beginning the church services were held outdoors. They simply draped a rail over some trees for shade, and then nailed rails of wood to trees to make walls. They go to church (sometimes called a meetinghouse) for several hours in the morning and again for several hours in the afternoon every Sunday. They also worship God at home. Kids are only allowed to play with one toy on Sunday. It is a wooden Noah’s ark.

Most family practices the Quaker religion. The Quakers were the first religious group in the eastern part of Pennsylvania. Some families are Episcopalian. Some of the other families in this area are Presbyterian, Baptist, Mennonite and Schwenkfelder.

RecreationOne of the kids favorite things to do is play stick and ball games.  One of them is called "Rounders" and it is very similar to a game you know as baseball.  On summer days they go outside to play the game to get fresh air and clear our heads.  They have to get a group of our friends together to play the game so it is a special time when we get to play. Many other popular games that you may play now, are games that they played in Colonial times. They played many  games that are still favorites like checkers, tag, marbles, leapfrog and hopscotch. On windy days they really enjoy flying kites, and in the winter when they can't play outside, we play cats cradle and spin tops.

Kids often make up our own games and toys at home. Sometimes if they are really lucky we have our own wrestling occasions, or fox hunts for trophies-or just for fun.

SchoolAt school they are taught to read, write, and do some arithmetic which is like math. We need to learn this because then they can read the bible, write letters to people and keep track of our amount of money.  The town is considered lucky to have a schoolhouse because most towns don’t have one. If they didn’t have a school our parents would teach them some things.  Then the kids would probably have the same job that their dad has when they grow up.

School HouseThe schoolhouse consists of one room and one teacher. They use the room as a place to learn and in the winter they eat inside and in the summer they eat outside. A wooden stove heats the room and they have to bring in a log to put on the fire. The kids that are in the classroom are from the ages of six to twelve. They all have to learn our lessons by repeating them over and over. This way helps them remember the lessons better. We learn from a hornbook. It looks like a wooden paddle with a paper attached to it with letters, numbers and maybe a verse from the bible on the paper, kids are able to hold it in their hand so it is pretty small.

TravelThey use horses, sleds, wagons, a Conestoga wagon, boats, but we mostly walk. Traveling is very difficult and slow. People who live in the town don’t really go far except for government officials, merchants, and planters. Traveling by boat in lakes, rivers, and oceans is the easiest. This is because the paths and roads are difficult to travel on and you can go faster in a boat. If you need to travel a long distance we use a Conestoga Wagon. It is very big and is like a house on wheels. Sometimes we would also use the Conestoga Wagon to move crops that they’ve harvested, and to take it to market.

References http://

library.thinkquest.org/J002611F/introduction.htm

http://www.kidinfo.com/american_history/colonization_colonial_life.html

http://www.history.org/kids/

Glossary Anvil: A heavy steel faced iron block where metal is shapes Apprentice: Someone who works for a Cooper, Silversmith, etc. for

a period of time until he is trained enough to become what ever he studied in this time. Arithmetic: The mathematics of solving addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. Card: A wire-toothed brush or a machine fitted with rows of wire teeth, used to disentangle fibers, as of wool, prior to spinning. Craftsman: A workman in any skilled occupation Dutch Oven: A cast iron usually a three legged kettle with a thight cover, where coals may be heaped that is used for baking in

a open fire. Flax Brake: A tool used to take off the outer shaft of flax Harvest: The time when people go and gather their crops before winter. Hogshead: A large barrel that hols from 63 to 140 gallons Hornbook: A wooden paddle that has a piece of paper attached to it that says the alphabet and possibly a verse from the bible. Keg: A small barrel having a capacity of 30 gallons or less Loft: A low space or attic directly under a roof. Rhetting: The process of taking off the outer part of flax by laying flax in water Salamander: A metal disk or plate heated and held over a food to heat the food item up Scour: To clean, polish, or wash something Shear: To cut off the sheep’s wool Silversmith: Someone who works with silver and makes silverware, plates, bowls, etc. Spit: A long wooden stick that is turned to have all sides of the food item cooked Statement: A short expression of a idea or act Tallow: The fat of animals that is white and is tasteless Tavern: An inn Threshed Grain: Grain that is beat with a flail so as to separate the grain from the husk Wash tub: A tub that colonists would wash in Weave: To make a fabric by interlacing threads or yarns on a loom