Home Brewing & True Womanhood: Domesticity and Women’s Parallel Production of Beer

in Nineteenth Century New England

By

Megan Wheaton-BookJanuary 2012

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for theMaster of Arts in History

Dual-Degree Program in History and Archives ManagementSimmons College

Boston, Massachusetts

The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its Library and to make it available to the academic community for scholarly purposes.

Submitted by

Megan Wheaton-Book

Approved by:

Laura Prieto (thesis advisor) Ulli Ryder (second reader)Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies, Lecturer, Department of History and Chair of the Department of History African Studies

1

Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................3 Historiography......................................................................................................................8 Methodology......................................................................................................................14 Findings.............................................................................................................................19 Beer vs. Alcohol.................................................................................................................20Chapter 1: “The Established Historical Narrative”........................................................................22 The Move to America........................................................................................................26 Tavern Life.........................................................................................................................28 A Change In Taste..............................................................................................................32 Women’s Production..........................................................................................................33Chapter 2: “A Parallel Production” ...............................................................................................38 Two Identities Form...........................................................................................................42 Cookbooks Contribution to Parallel Industrialization.......................................................45 Women’s Role in the Early Temperance Movement..........................................................54Chapter 3: “The Rise of the Reforming Woman”..........................................................................64 The Role of the American Brewing Industry.....................................................................66 A Question of Manliness....................................................................................................69 Parallel Production Revived?.............................................................................................71 Civil War and Aftermath....................................................................................................73Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................80 Further Research................................................................................................................84Appendix 1.....................................................................................................................................87Bibliography...................................................................................................................................88

Images“Number of Beer Recipes in Cookbooks Chart”...........................................................................20“For Brewing Spruce Beer,” recipe by Amelia Simmons (1796)..................................................27“The Table” by Samuel Child (1796)............................................................................................34“Image of a Drunkard” by Mason Locke Weems (1820)..............................................................57“Image of Mr. Hayes Vomiting on Front Porch” by Mason Locke Weems(1820)........................58“German Beer Garden on a Sunday” Harper’s Weekly (1859).....................................................68“Wine is a Mockery, Strong Drink Death” by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson.....................................81

2

Introduction

“Whether they are used or not, they are not forgotten. Their existence in writing offers us a kind of permanence that, if and when we want it, is waiting for us to retrieve.”

Janet Theophano1

My relationship with beer started in 2008. I was not a heavy drinker before then, and am

still not, but my fascination with beer has grown exponentially in the intervening years. Its

history and development can be charted alongside society’s development: agriculture, writing,

and laws have all variously been linked with the production of beer. Yet when I thought of beer’s

more recent history I found it less auspicious. Changes in beer’s socioeconomic status fostered a

disreputable reputation that until recently has clouded over this beverage’s important

contributions. Middle class women’s participation in the temperance movement and prohibition

also overshadowed a long complex relationship between women and beer production. This study

is meant to clarify middle class women’s association with beer in the nineteenth century.

Specifically it examines how northern women in the rising middle class participated in home

production of beer and how the performance of domesticity changed in response to cultural

factors. This paper argues that as white middle class women’s relationship to domesticity

evolved in the nineteenth century their relationship to and participation in beer production

changed and declined.

This thesis examines changes in the presence and treatment of beer primarily through

women’s published cookbooks. The vast majority of cookbook authors were white, Protestant,

and middle class as apparent in Catherine Beecher and Lydia Maria Child’s writings and personal

papers. Beecher’s target audience for her published work was an idealized upper middle class,

3

1 Janet Theophano, Eat My Words (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 51.

where the perception was that “[u]niversally, in this country, through every class of society,

precedence is given to women, in all the comforts, conveniences, and courtesies, of life.” 2

Beecher’s statement suggests that she came from a class where a woman’s interests, comforts,

and conveniences would have been considerations to her male counterparts and where this

behavior would have been the norm.3 Later on in the same work Beecher lists her conception of a

woman, saying she has “constantly changing domestics [servants], with all the varieties of

temper and habits, whom she must govern instruct and direct.” 4 Beecher at least was not

addressing (or admitting the idea of) a lower class experience of womanhood when she described

women. Lydia Maria Child’s personal letters to her brother from the late 1810s shows her

education and class status, since she references writers like Virgil, Gibbons, and Lord Byron;

Child was a great fan of Byron until April 10, 1820, she declares herself in “anguish” at “this

shocking specimen of fearless and hardened depravity” 5 that his behavior illicited. Her early life,

at least, was solidly middle class with middle class concerns and emphasis: although later, during

her marriage, finances became more important as her middle class status grew more precarious.6

These two important writers were similar to the middle class women for whom they were

writing. In turn, their audience not only consumed cookbooks, they also influenced authors and

what was included within the works. Thus the discourse within nineteenth century middle class

women’s cookbooks is limited to one group’s comprehension and development of womanhood.

4

2 Catherine Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy (Boston: Thomas H. Webb & Co, 1843), 33.3 Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven: Yale University Press,1974) 135.4 Beecher, 144.5 Microfiche 3, Folder 8, Letters, 1828-1879 (inclusive), Lydia Maria Child, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.6 Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 81, 127.

While this thesis is restricted to middle class white women it contributes to part of the

larger community of American women’s experiences in the nineteenth century. The narrow scope

of resources examined in this study provide’s insight into a group of women that are occasionally

overlooked due to their pervasive role as the norm in America. Domesticity was not ubiquitous to

women of all classes or ethnic groups; it was centered in the experiences of the white middle

class. Rather than accepting the static self-image of the reforming middle class, this study

provides nuance into how the ideal of womanhood created by the middle class changed during

the nineteenth century.7

To understand a larger selection of middle class women’s perceptions of beer, I needed to

look beyond temperance literature, to sources which were broader in nature. Cookbooks are an

important source for women’s historians, and Sarah Hand Meacham’s recent study on gender and

alcohol utilizes them to indicate women’s participation in alcohol production.8 Thus cookbooks

were a logical place to begin, to understand women’s viewpoint on beer. The authors wrote for a

middle class audience; Lydia Maria Child used the middling class to persuade her publisher to

print her work The Frugal Housewife.9 Important public figures as well as anonymous writers

published cookbooks. This allowed me to gain perspective on women from the middle class who

wrote these books. Janet Theophano indicates that cookbooks are repositories of knowledge and

make past erudition available whenever required. Cookbooks act as information stores in two

ways: the first as usable objects within a kitchen; the second as caches of historical knowledge.

5

7 Steven Rice in Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America (Berkley: University of California Press, 2004) investigated how the middle class generated its cultural norm and how it was spread through writing in the nineteenth century United States. 8 Sarah Hand Meacham, Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake (Baltimore: Joh Hopkins University Press, 2009); also Glenna Matthews, Just A Housewife (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) and of course Janet Theophano’s work above, used cookbooks as sources for understanding women’s experiences.9 Karcher, 127.

In studying middle class women’s connection to beer, the secondary use is exposed, and

indicates a complexity to beer’s history that the established historical narrative overlooks.

Theophano also proposed that cookbooks encode “images of the feminine, some of which were

sanctioned by an authoritative culture and some of which were in opposition to normative

standards.” 10 Using Theophano’s theory as a framework, this study considers each cookbook as

a statement of its author’s understanding of what constitutes being a woman. Not all women

were producing beer in their homes during the nineteenth century, but all women in the emerging

middle class had access to home brewing through the cookbooks they read and wrote. Thus

these cookbooks give insight into topics about which middle class women may never have

written about or been conscious. They stand as declarations of what these women thought was

acceptable at the moment of publication. Theophano discusses how manuscript and published

cookbooks may be used as evidence of how groups craft communal identity for women. 11 In her

chapter on cookbooks as collective memory Theophano suggests that cookbooks may display

contemporary cultural changes and that American cookbooks act similarly to textbooks as a way

of assimilating diverse groups into an American identity. 12 As such, the cookbooks give insight

into how middle class white women’s relationship to beer may have changed through the

nineteenth century and helped create the atmosphere that clouded beer’s importance to society.

Recently Sarah Hand Meacham has argued that no evidence exists to suggest that the

temperance movement was a reaction to women’s loss of control of alcohol production in the

eighteenth century.13 This study questions Meacham’s assumption that women lost access to

alcohol production. The temperance movement had many instigating factors. Middle class

6

10Theophano, 228.11 Theophano, 6, 29.12 Theophano, 50, 62.13 Meacham, 136.

women’s participation within this movement cannot be limited to only their participation (or lack

thereof) in alcohol production. However by investigating middle class women’s connection to

beer production within the context of domesticity we may gain greater understanding of why

these women did engage with the temperance movement. I examined almost 400 cookbooks

ranging from the colonial era to 1899. The patterns that I saw were different from what the

established historical narrative of beer, and Meacham’s work, suggested. The following thesis is

my attempt to contextualize the evidence that I discovered and highlight where my research

parallels and deviates from earlier narratives of women’s brewing.

7

Historiography

The rich heritage of female brewing is somewhat missing from most of the American

historiography of beer. For the most part, when women are mentioned at all they are portrayed

in a diminished capacity, as though their participation in brewing is something of which to be

ashamed. Stanley Baron’s Brewed in America, is described as the “cornerstone” of beer history

and is one of the most cited works on the subject of beer production in American history. Yet,

Baron focuses only on women as participants in the temperance and prohibition movements.14

He acknowledges women were brewing at home in the seventeenth century,15 but this is never

the focus of his work, nor is it depicted as contributing to America’s history of brewing. Baron’s

treatment of women is particularly imperceptive. He included two photographs in his work of

factory workers at the Pabst Brewing Company and the G. Heileman Brewing Company circa

1910 and 1911. A majority of the workers in these photographs were women yet all the

examples of factory workers that Baron discusses were men. Baron ignores brewing as a

domestic task affected by the cultural and gendered context of society. It was not until Judith

Bennet’s groundbreaking investigation of female brewsters in late medieval and early modern

England that historians addressed the contributions of women to brewing. Bennet’s emphasis on

the degradation of women brewers through popular culture suggests that men’s misogyny pushed

women out of brewing in urban areas.16 Bennet’s study goes the furthest in developing a

narrative of women’s involvement in beer. However she could have built on her argument of

8

14 Stanley Wade Baron, Brewed In America; A History Of Beer And Ale In The United States (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1962), 224-228, 286-294, 311.15 Baron, 56. Baron recounts the journey of Sarah Knight who had “handsome entertainment of five or six dishes and choice beer...” from a gentlewoman who said everything was “the produce of her farm.” This depiction leaves the physical creator of the produce questionable, though it is likely that the “gentlewoman” did participate in making some of the products.16 Judith M. Bennet, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1996), 133-135.

male misogyny by identifying further the historical construction of gender, how that construction

changed gender from 1300 to 1600, and how these changes affected women’s domestic

production of beer.

Historian Gregg Smith, writing just after Bennet, created a fictionalized account of the

“happy farm wife” brewing beer for her family at the beginning of his chapter on home brewing,

but did not discuss actual women in his work Beer in America, The Early Years - 1587-1840.17

Smith must have found evidence of colonial women brewing at home to include his image of a

farm wife, or was familiar with Bennet’s work. However instead of identifying an actual woman

homebrewer he falls back onto the established assumption, started by Baron, that women were

not significantly involved with beer until the temperance movement. Sharon Salinger, in Taverns

and Drinking in Early America, is one of the few historians to address the role of women in

America’s early drinking society. Her work considers women in the public position of wife,

server, or prostitute and ignores their private role as beer producers within the home as well as

beer’s role within the home.18 Each of these writers ignored the tradition of women’s

homebrewing in early America and instead focused on the various results of brewing: drinking

habits and culture; beer legislation and regulation; nutritional value and dietary importance of

beer; technological advancements in beer production; and the budding beer industry. These

authors discuss homebrewing but only in its capacity as a man’s hobby and as a transition into

industrial production of beer but not as a domestic task.

Continuing Bennet and Salinger’s focus on gender, Sarah Hand Meacham’s examination

of colonial alcohol production in the Chesapeake Bay region of America, focused on changes in

9

17 Gregg Smith, Beer in America; the Early Years 1587-1840 (New York, NY: Siris Books, 1998), 237-250.18 Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America. (Baltimore, ML: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 225.

brewing technology as a way to explain the shift from female to male dominance of beer.

Meacham uses the term “alcohol,” though for much of the work she is discussing specifically

ales, beers, and ciders, as well as rum at the end. Like Bennet, though, Meacham fails to discuss

the cultural influences and marginalization of women as brewers.19 Meacham states that, “it was

a combination of men’s enthusiasm for newly scientific forms of production, increasing density

of population, and...supplying the Continental Army with liquor during the American Revolution

that led to the re-gendering of alcohol production during the late eighteenth century.” 20 Certainly

Meacham’s point that women were shut out of alcohol sales by the Quatermaster’s Department’s

ban of women selling alcohol to the army in 1781 is valid. Yet it seems unlikely that this ban

would have made women “happy” to give up alcohol production. Meacham argues that when

women were presented with the option of buying beer, they stopped all production of it within

the home.21 Like many other women’s historians, Meacham looked at early cookbooks and

brewing manuals to support her argument that men took over alcohol production in the

eighteenth century. Both Meacham and Bennet identified beer production as specifically

women’s work through cookbooks, court records, and popular images and stereotypes.22 Neither

author addresses how the placement of brewing within a female specific space as much “a part of

their households as cleaning and cooking” helped to construct a female identity.23

Thus far beer historians have shied away from addressing beer and brewing through

gender. The current study attempts to understand the re-gendering of brewing and offer potential

causes for this shift, by contextualizing the changes in gender and examining beer recipes. Prior

10

19 Meacham, 95-119.20 Meacham, 5.21 Meacham, 84, 86.22 Meacham, 28. Bennet, 3, 128.23 Smith, 226.

to true womanhood and the rise of the middle class, brewing was an accepted part of women’s

work.24 In Gervase Markham’s sixteenth century cookbook The English Housewife women are

depicted as the proper creators of alcohol, and it was the responsibility of women’s to brew for

their families and “to preserve health.” 25 Yet after changes in true womanhood Catherine Beecher

and other women’s cookbook authors wrote specifically against production of alcohol.

Women’s historians have studied in great detail the dynamic nature of gender within

nineteenth century, and have utilized cookbooks as important primary evidence. In this study,

gender encompasses more than a “sexed body,” rather it is used, as Joan Scott proposes, “as a

way of referring to the exclusively social origins of the subjective identities of men and

women...” 26 To put it another way, the term gender applies to the performances, tasks, work, and

behavior socially constructed to designate men and women. In this thesis women’s work and the

changing performance of gender are central to understanding how middle class women’s access

to beer changed in the nineteenth century.

The established performance of gender, in this case through brewing, changed as beer

separated from middle class women and became affiliated with men in the nineteenth century.

Beer consumption and brewing can be seen as a performance of gender, and acted as a cultural

weather balloon for the study of attitudes about acceptable behavior and gender identity. Joan

Scott’s theories on “constituting women as historical subjects”...along with the insistence “on

female agency in the making of history” 27 are important frameworks for this study of how

gender and “womanhood” was defined and changed with respect to brewing in the nineteenth

11

24 Meacham, 28.25 Gervase Markham, ed. Michael Best, The English Housewife (Quebec: McGill University Press, 1994), 180, 204.26 Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History: Revised Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 32.27 Scott, 18.

century. The female agency employed in this thesis as outlined by Scott, strays from the

established historical narrative to clarify women’s agency in affecting history, and their

experience of history.28 This thesis provides a fuller picture of brewing in the United States.

Early women’s history studies from the 1960s and 1970s posited the identity of the “cult of true

womanhood” and the separation of gender by specific spheres.29 Under this proposition society

identified activities as gendered and located them in specific spaces. As the “cult of true

womanhood” developed, it became apparent to women’s historians that both women and men

were actively involved in shaping the true woman identity. Women were not “passive receivers

of changing definitions of themselves - nor totally mistresses of their destinies.” 30 The two

gender identities supported each other, while being strictly separated into public and private

spheres. Women’s historians working in the late 1980s further developed the concept of the cult

of true womanhood. Glenna Matthews, in her ground breaking study of women’s activity,

introduces an interesting and convincing argument for the basis of the true woman’s role.

Highlighting Timothy Shay, the nineteenth century novelist, Matthews argues that the home was

given “an expressly political function” as women from the middling sort become the educators

and cultivators of future citizens.31 The political function of the home elevated women’s status

within society and may have led to an increase in artisan and low non manual women’s influence

on the sphere of work and politics.32

Three years after Matthews’ work, Jeanne Boydston suggested a different interpretation

of domesticity. Instead of contextualizing women’s identity and labor through separate spheres,

12

28 Scott, 20.29 Barbara Welter, "The Cult Of True Womanhood: 1820–1860." American Quarterly 18 no. 2, part 1 (1966), 69.30 Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 4.31 Matthews, 7.32 Matthews, 7.

as historians of domesticity before her, Boydston noted that women’s labor in the nineteenth

century was not unindustrialized. Rather, she posited that women’s labor was industrialized in a

different way. Boydston’s work is especially significant to this study due to her ideas on the

continuance of traditional labor practices after the rise of industrialism. As she states, “it may be

less the advent of commodity production per se...than the advent of commodity production in

conjunction with a parallel process of the reorganization of gender...” 33 Boydston argues that

women’s labor was tied to a devaluing of women in the role of producers and laborers as

industrialism expanded, thus they seem marginal and outside of the work sphere, even as a

parallel system of production was developed. Additionally she states that although many

products were newly available for sale, home production of those products did not immediately

or completely end.34

Working at the same time as Boydston, Joan Jensen helped to substantiate Boydston’s

argument for a parallel system of home production in the nineteenth century. Although

commercial products were available to women, and men had an increased role in the production

of butter, Jensen shows that women did participate in early capitalism, although not in an easily

identifiable way.35 Jensen illustrates that, instead of being pushed out of the newly industrialized

butter market, women continued to participate, through flexibility and ingenuity in adapting the

production of butter making to their local environments.36 Similarly, women adapted traditional

brewing practices to locally available ingredients, and continued to publish beer recipes long

after an American brewing industry was encouraged. Although women were not highly visible

13

33 Jeanne Boydston, Home And Work: Housework, Ages and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), xix.34 Boydston, 83.35 Joan Jensen, “Butter Making and Economic Development in Mid-Atlantic America from 1750 to 1850” Signs 13 no.4 (Summer, 1988), 813-829.36 Jensen, 816.

in their role as brewers (they were not the licensed sellers of beer and did not own the taverns

where beer was publicly imbibed, instead they brewed for home use or perhaps sold to their

neighbors through their husbands) they did continue to produce beer and participate in early

capitalism.

Methodology

The scholarship on the cult of true womanhood and domesticity helped establish

cookbooks as important sources for studying middle class women in the nineteenth century.

Middle class women used cookbooks as a platform for creating identity. Two extremely

important women writers, Catherine Beecher and Lydia Maria Child, used cookbooks as one

vehicle to convey their ideas. Though they also wrote in other formats, cookbooks allowed them

access to the middle class home and the women who worked in them. At the same time their

work is also a reflection of the society and audience for which they were writing. Women’s

historians have documented the economic benefits both writers acquired from publishing popular

cookbooks.37 As such these works do not just reveal their authors thoughts but also what they

thought would appeal to their chosen audience. Their writings highlight instability in what

middle class women thought about their roles within society and how their relationship to beer

affected those roles.38

The transience reflected in cookbooks suggests that women were both establishing and

reforming their standards of appropriate food production in reaction to cultural changes. This

14

37 Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, and Ann Margolis, The Limits of Sisterhood (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 2. Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 81.38 Women were not the only ones to use cookbooks as a platform. Samuel Child and William Cobbett both published works which demonstrate men’s control of brewing, but also envision women as the actual brewers.

study utilizes only published cookbooks; these works act as important and synthetic creations of

identity and show subtle shifts regarding which foods society deemed appropriate. The white

middle class woman who produced the recipes within a cookbook was usually an ideal that

might not have been realized, but who stood as a model to the actual women who read them.

This idealized woman cook was a self-conscious expression of what society considered suitable

for the woman reader and for the larger public who consumed the idealize cook’s products. Thus

the recipes included in cookbooks reflect what the larger society accepted as appropriate middle

class women’s work.

This thesis looks primarily at cookbooks, with some brewing manuals, published in the

Northern and Midwestern United States prior to 1900. I primarily used the cookbook collection

of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA and the Schlesinger Library cookbook

collection in Boston, MA. I studied 399 works in the hopes of discovering how beer production

was re-gendered, and how it became increasingly inappropriate as middle class women’s work in

the nineteenth century. I used the following criteria to analyze the cookbooks: whether the

author included beer recipes; the location of the recipe(s) within the text; the amount of detail

given within the recipes; the location where the cookbook was published; when the cookbook

was published; who wrote the cookbook; if the author mentioned beer recipe(s) in the title, table

of contents, or index; how the author organized the recipe(s) within the text; what the beer

recipes were called; any statements for or against brewing beer; if the book was addressed

toward a specific gender (as much as it was possible to tell); and whether the recipes just used

beer or included instructions for brewing. Due to the large sample size and the span of time

covered, Meacham’s conclusions about when and why Chesapeake women lost access to beer

production become questionable.

15

This thesis examines the continuance of home beer production after the rise of the

brewing industry and suggests that a parallel system of production coincided with the

regendering of brewing in the nineteenth century. As middle class women’s understanding of

domesticity and “true womanhood” changed over the course of the century, their relationship to

brewing also changed. During the first half of the century much of the discourse around and

much of the focus of middle class women’s work and domesticity was on production or the

creation of wholesome things for the home and family’s use. Middle class women’s emphasis

and discourse changed midcentury to reflect concerns about consumption. These women began

to focus on what was coming into the home, family, and body as part of domesticity. It is this

shift in middle class women’s interest away from producing and toward consuming that affect

their relationship to brewing and beer and begin the transition for white middle class women

away from home brewing. Based on my research, I place the decline of middle class women’s

access to home brewing towards the end of the nineteenth century, around 1870.

Within Chapter 1, “The Established Historical Narrative” I set out the generally accepted

interpretation of white women’s historical relationship to brewing. Starting with the English

roots of brewing in Medieval Europe I describe changes in brewing and some of the reasons

women lost their status as for-profit brewers. Then I describe how rural brewing practices were

transported to the American colonies and the role of beer in early colonial life to the American

Revolution. Throughout this chapter I argue that men’s takeover of commercial brewing did not

end low-non manual, mechanic, and artisanal women’s home brewing. Based on the work of

Stuart Blumin and David Jaffee, I identify these women as spanning the middling sort and as

precursors to the nineteenth century’s middle class. The terms artisanal, mechanic, and low-non

manual are used to describe individuals engaged in small scale manual occupations such as

16

cabinet making and blacksmithing and non manual occupations like retail and tavern keeping.39

Finally I link artisanal women’s home brewing to a system of parallel production that continued

into the nineteenth century.

In Chapter 2, “A Parallel Production” I interpret my cookbook research, which shows that

middle class white women had access to brewing through most of the nineteenth century. I place

middle class women’s brewing within the context of domesticity. To explain some of the conflict

within the sources, I distinguish two ideals within the cult of true womanhood: the domestic

woman and the reforming woman. These two types of middle class women were not fixed, and

many middle class women participated in both at different times. Both of these paradigms shared

common sources and were only different interpretations of the same force. The two archetypes

claimed power through their status as true women and the moral authority associated with it.

During the first half of the nineteenth century the domestic woman ideal asserted itself within

published cookbooks. As part of middle class women’s interpretation of the domestic woman

these works presented established middle class performances of gender including brewing. This

focus on middle class women’s production of home goods (and, with them brewing) was

important to the domestic woman conception of true womanhood and was eventually replaced, in

the latter half of the nineteenth century, by the reforming woman’s focus on activism and reform

of consumption. As middle class women’s attention moved away from producing goods like

beer, their relationship to these products was displaced. Cookbooks offer insight into how these

identities struggled against each other and how middle class women used them.40

17

39 Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social experience in the American City, 1760 -1900. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 30. David Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 66, 80, 185-187.40 Theophano, 228.

In Chapter 3, “The Rise of the Reforming Woman” I discuss the changes I saw in the

cookbooks starting in the 1850s and continuing to the 1870s. Middle class white men and

women openly debated the reforming woman’s role within the 1850s temperance movement.

This dispute was important to include because both domestic and reforming women were actively

narrowing their understanding of true womanhood and domesticity within the context of

drinking. The domestic woman argued for continuing their role as moral silent support, whereas

the reforming woman insisted that women needed a more vocal function which acknowledged

alcohol legislation’s victimization of women. I think that this argument marked an important

change. Middle class women were not clashing over producing beer, which would have been

logical since it was something middle class women participated in and could control to some

extent. Instead they called the consumption of alcohol into question, a very different action than

had marked their previous emphasis on production. This debate and the shift in discourse was

represented in the cookbooks, through specific temperance statements by well known authors

that occurred within the same work as beer recipes.

The rise of the brewing industry was also an important factor in changing middle class

women’s relationship to beer. Due to an increase in German immigration, as well as the

acceptance of brewing technology, men saw brewing as an increasingly profitable industry.

German immigrants brought with them a heritage of men brewing, as well as different tastes and

ideas on what beer should be. The domestic woman ideal reacted to the new pressure both from

the reformer woman ideal and from German and American men brewers. Authors concealed and

eventually removed beer recipes from their cookbooks.

18

Findings

I started my research for this thesis on the assumption that beer recipes dropped out of

middle class women’s cookbooks during the nineteenth century. I based this focus on both

Meacham’s assertion that middle class women lacked access to recipes in cookbooks as early as

180041 as well as prior research I had done using nineteenth century cookbooks. Although I

disagreed with Meacham’s date, I was not clear about when middle class women’s cookbooks

stopped including beer recipes. My research focused on identifying when these recipes lost their

association with home production. The research criteria stated in the last section uncovered

trends within middle class women’s cookbooks that form the basis of my thesis, that their

relationship to beer continued into the nineteenth century and was (for some middle class

women) a way to perform the gender identity of domesticity, as well as participate in early forms

of industrialization. As middle class women’s understanding of domesticity evolved in the

nineteenth century so did their relationship with beer.

As stated earlier, the study is based on 399 cookbooks from 1768 to 1899 with the bulk of

works from the middle of the nineteenth century.42 Of the total works I studied, 56.1% of the

cookbooks contained beer recipes. From 1762 to 1829, 77.8% of cookbooks included beer; 25%

of the works without specific beer recipes used beer as an ingredient during this period. The

years from 1830 to 1839 show a decrease in the presence of beer recipes down to 47.1%. From

1840 to 1844 cookbooks that included beer remained relatively stable to the previous ten years at

46.1%. Cookbooks from 1845 to 1850, however, show that authors including beer recipes went

up to 63.3%. The cookbooks from the 1850s reveal swings back and forth for beer recipes; works

from 1851 to 1855 show a slight downgrade in beer recipes to 57.1%, while 1856 to 1860 beer

19

41 Meacham, 100.42 Appendix 1.

recipes went back up to 65.2%. The 1860s cookbooks show the slow decline in beer recipes

down to 57.1% during the period from 1861 to 1865, and 46.4% in the years after the Civil War

(1866 to 1870). The 1870s continued this downward trend until the end of the century with

27.8% of works in the early 1870s (1871 to 1875) including beer, and all the way down to .1% in

the years from 1876 to 1899.

These trends indicate that middle class women’s relationship to brewing and beer was not

a steady decline; instead middle class women’s access to brewing shifted throughout the

nineteenth century, becoming more acceptable in the early part of the mid-century after a period

of slight decline, and fluctuate in the years directly before and after the Civil War. Beer recipes

were less present in middle class women’s cookbooks after the war and indicate that these

women did not have the same access to brewing as earlier in the century.

Beer vs. Alcohol

This thesis focuses on middle class women’s relationship to brewing and beer rather than

their relationship to alcohol production. Women’s historical link to brewing as women’s work

0

20

40

60

80

1762-1829 1840-1844 1851-1855 1861-1865 1871-1875

Num

ber o

f Bee

r Rec

ipes

20

made it unique amongst other women’s work because of the negative associations beer gained

after middle class women lost their access to it. This relationship is unlike other women’s work

like midwifery where male control led to an elevation in its status. Beer is also unusual in its

relationship to other alcohols during the nineteenth century. Spiritous liquors, like rum,

developed a negative status early on in Colonial America, where as beer continued to be

associated with a wholesome diet into 1860 when the anonymously published The American

Practical Cookery Book, included a medicinal “strengthening beer” recipe.43 The widespread

belief that beer was healthy kept it from being linked to the harmful behavior other alcohols were

identified with. I also argue that beer’s relationship to domesticity allowed it to maintain its

distance from the negative connotations other alcohols developed. Middle class women’s aura as

virtuous and nurturing protected beer, so long as women and the home were associated with its

production. Once middle class women lost access to brewing within their cookbooks, beer

became suitable for attack along with other alcoholic beverages. By limiting my study to the

production of beer and middle class women’s access to it, I wanted to show how this group’s

perceptions about womanhood affected traditionally established women’s work.

21

43 The American Practical Cookery Book (Philadelphia: J.W. Bradley Printer, 1860), 206.

Chapter 1: “The Established Historical Narrative”

! The established narrative of women’s relationship to brewing suggests that women were

forced out of professional brewing by innovative ingredients, men’s misogyny, reorganization of

brewing labor practices in the face of separate spheres, capitalism, and even the availability of

non-alcoholic alternatives. While this narrative has strength and accounts for various changes in

women’s relationship to brewing, it ignores middle class women’s brewing activities as part of

their domestic work. Additionally, the established narrative suggests the eighteenth century as an

end date for rural middle class American women’s brewing. My research shows that this date is

much too early for middle class women to end their relationship with brewing. Instead I propose

that these women maintained their access to brewing within cookbooks until the 1870s. I base

this date on the presence and frequency of beer recipes in published cookbooks until the 1870s.

While analyzing my research data I saw that the historical narrative did not account for the

system of parallel production in which middle class women were participating. It became

apparent to me while doing my secondary research that historians have given considerable

attention to commercial production, but that home production has not been given the same level

of thought by historians. Bennet comes the closest to acknowledging women’s continued

brewing but limits women’s participation geographically to rural areas and then only to brewing

for sale. She does not account for women producing ale solely for their families. As Boydston

succinctly argues, historians have wholly accepted the nineteenth century “conclusion that

industrial capitalism removes economic production from the household and relocates it in large

22

scale, profit directed factories.” 1 Indeed, the effect of industrialization for many historians has

been to deny that housework was part of a larger economy.2

! Prior to the development of an American brewing industry, many women of the middling

sort brewed for their families and neighbors. It is important to note that people did not only

drinking beer for inebriation; they also drank beer for its nourishment and refreshment.

Homebrewing filled an important dietary gap as well as providing a safe beverage for adults (as

well as children) to drink at every meal of the day, since water was not trustworthy in many

communities.3 As a result, counting mealtime beer and social drinking at taverns or neighbors’

homes, by the 1790s the average American (aged 15 and older) drank almost 34 gallons of beer

and cider a year.4 Nevertheless, people did drink socially, as the prevalence of at least one tavern

in every New England town suggests, and they drank more than just beer. Until the eve of the

American Revolution, colonists in the Northeast considered themselves culturally British,

transporting the customs of brewing, licensing, and drinking culture from the British Isles to the

New World. They also brought traditional attitudes about beer with them. The period from 1300

to 1600 highlights the stability of women’s roles as brewers. Brewing was viewed in 1300 as a

low-skilled, low status occupation that fit with women’s domestic task of making food. It became

“women’s work” and as such few men were attracted to it.5 Women produced ale for personal

consumption, selling to neighbors when they had extra, with some women brewing regularly for

sale. Since beer was sold in alehouses, and women ran those places, brewing became an

23

1 Boydston, preface xv.2 Boydston, preface xv. It is beer historians’ assumption that housework was external to the developing economy that has caused women’s role and participation in brewing to be diminished. This concept which devalues women’s housework has been historicized by beer historians beyond industrial capitalism into the middle ages.3 Bennet, 17, 9. Meacham, 14.4 Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin. Drinking in America: a History (New York, NY: Free Press, 1982), 14.5 Bennet, 7.

occupation which generated a female archetype identified with autonomy.6 Thus beer production

allowed for social movement beyond the culturally acceptable spaces open to women.

By 1600, the value of brewing increased as more people bought ale in taverns. As ale

became a staple of the English diet, its market increased, and brewers expanded their operations

to meet the higher demand. This caused brewing to industrialize and become professional; with

larger brewing facilities and more investment into brewing, both in equipment and product.7

Instead of seeing brewing as a household chore, men increasingly saw it as a profession and

created a guild system to regulate who could or could not brew. With the addition of hops to

brewing, large scale men’s beer production began to offer more than the traditional ale produced

in the home.8 Hops were not a traditional ingredient in English ale. Dutch immigrants brought

hops over to the British Isles starting in the late fourteenth century.9 The shift to hops was

extremely important in the history of beer production because they act as a preservative. It lent a

bitter crispness to the flavor which balanced out the sweetness of malt but, made brewing more

time consuming, labor intensive, and equipment heavy. Many women, who could brew ale

relatively cheaply and quickly, did not have the capital to brew hopped beer.10 However, this did

not stop women brewing ale, and British ale continued to be the drink of choice until 1800.11

At the same moment that the guild system pushed women out of professionalized

brewing, competing male brewers began to link women brewers with obscene behavior. A stigma

against alewives developed by 1600. Men accused women of creating foul diluted beer and

fostering social problems like prostitution, gambling, and excessive drunkenness in many plays,

24

6 Bennet, 134. 7 Matthias, 5-6. Bennet, 10-11.8 Bennet, 11.9 Matthias, 3. Bennet, 80.10 Bennet, 10-11.11 Peter Matthias, 12.

songs, poems, and even cathedral decorations.12 Popular culture depicted women as disgusting,

corrupt individuals. John Skelton’s image of Elynour Rummyng in The Tunning of Elynour

Rummyng, is an a perfect example of how society portrayed alewives.13 He physically describes

the ale wife, her “lewde lyppes twayne, they slaver, men sayne, Lyke a ropy rayne, A gummy

glayre: She is ugly fayre.” 14 Skelton goes on to say that Elynour’s drool drips into her ale, and

that she harbors prostitutes. Skelton’s poem was well received and there is evidence that some

women may have been scared away from participating in commercially selling beer for fear of

being associated with such negative behavior.15 The pervasive notoriety charged against alewives

served as a vehicle for pushing women out of commercial ale brewing competition while they

were also marginalized in urban areas from commercially brewing hopped beer.

These events suggest an end to female brewing, yet women continued to brew in urban

areas for family members. Additionally women may have moved their alehouses away from the

over saturated cities into rural locations. Women were not permitted (by the guild system) to sell

the brews they made in cities; instead alehouses and brewsters continued to sell in rural areas

where regulation and authority were more easily avoided.16 The guild system only affected

women’s sale of their brews, not their home production. While no research has been done which

attempts to understand how the guild system affected women’s domestic production of beer,

there is no reason to believe that all women stopped brewing for their home once they were

pushed out of selling it. Thus, an over lapping system of beer production developed in

25

12 Bennet, 139.13 Gerald Hammond, ed. John Skelton, Selected Poems (Mancester: Routledge, 2003), 73-90. These were orignially published sometime after 1550.14 Hammond, 73-74.15 Bennet, 122-144.16 Bennet, 139.

seventeenth century England, a system in which women were not authorized to sell ale

commercially but were still brewing for personal consumption and for sale in rural areas.

The Move to America

The parallel system of brewing was effectively transplanted when British settlers

migrated to colonies in British North America. Few colonists could afford professionally brewed

or imported beer due to a lack of hard currency.17 British colonists likely also had difficulties

getting imported beer to them. William Byrd complained in 1733 that his shipment of beer had

“run out” and was ruined, a complaint that was probably just as true when the original settlers

began transporting beer to the colonies as when Bryd wrote it.18

As the British colonies became more established, brewers may have found it difficult to

produce beer because of newly imposed taxes. As early as 1692 the colony of Massachusetts had

imposed an excise tax on beer sales. A law in 1702 increased taxation, requiring brewers to pay a

shilling for every barrel brewed. Since homebrewing was excused from the excise tax, more

colonists felt encouraged to brew at home rather than buy their beer.19 British rural women’s

brewing was successfully transferred to the colonies, because of these taxes and the rural nature

of the colonies. Eighteenth century society still expected women to perform the domestic duties

of brewing as part of their gender specific obligations. Due to their isolation from Britain, the

colonies were also much slower to embrace the new brewing technologies that made female

brewing unacceptable.20

26

17 Smith, 226.18 VMHB 37, no. 2:109, John Curtis to Mr. Loyd [or Boyd] 1733, John Curtis Letter book 1717-1744, 2:131, TS, Rockefeller Library, Brown University, Providence Rhode Island.19 Smith, 191, 226. 20 Meacham, 31. In fact, Peter Mathias argues that the United States did not fully embrace the technological advancements in brewing until the middle of the nineteenth century. Mathias, Peter, The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830 (London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1959) 63-66.

Written versions of women’s recipes contained basic instructions. Amelia Simmons’

American Cookery first published in 1796, is similar to older cookbooks in recipe form and

structure. Her recipe for “Spruce Beer” does not list ingredients separately; instead she mentions

them when they are added to the pot. Simmons recipes are straight forward but assume

knowledge in the brewer, as when she states “then make a thickening as you do for starch” in the

recipe for emptins (necessary for her Spruce Beer recipe).21

Traditional ingredients were not always available to homebrewers, and innovative women

adapted recipes to locally convenient ingredients. Spruce Beer, which is named for the main

flavor ingredient of the beer, was an adaptation of a traditional recipe which utilized a native

ingredient.22 In some cases the flavoring ingredients such as spruce, had additional benefits like

27

21 Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford, CT: Printed for Simeon Butler, Northampton, 1796), 48.22 The scientific name for one of the North American Spruce Trees is Picea Breweriana, which is only an amazing coincidence because it is named for William Henry Brewer a botanist who collected samples of the tree. R. Hyam, & R.J. Pankhurst, Plants And Their Names : a Concise Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 392.

preventing scurvy, though no evidence exists to suggest that colonists knew of this advantage.23

The use of nontraditional ingredients challenged traditional conceptions of what beer was, and

show how women adapted traditional practices to new environments when the need was great

enough.

Tavern Life

Beer was consumed in different spaces. Although many women brewed and beer was

drunk in the home by all family members, it was also consumed outside of the home in taverns.

Taverns held an important position in colonial society as small businesses and as a way for town

authorities to curtail public drunkenness.24 Taverns helped the emerging brewing industry, and

beer imports by selling both local and English made beer.25 Once the Colonies became more

established and hard currency was more readily available, local breweries attempted to supply

taverns with traditional tasting beer. The results were mixed, as some new beer recipes proved

unpopular and the importation of beer became a trusted method of obtaining a drink.26 Imported

brews however were unpredictable for settlers, sometimes becoming undrinkable during the

voyage from England. A warning from the Joseph and William Cunningham & Co. brewery

included instructions for storing and managing imported beer and stated that, “It sometimes

happens, that Strong Beer (tho’ perfectly fine when bottled) by the effect the different climates it

goes through has on it, throws up.” 27 By the 1720s, a new English beer style called porter made

it easier for English breweries to manufacture larger quantities of beer. This caused brewers to

28

23 Spruce was historically used as a substitute for citrus in preventing scurvy. Brett J. Stubbs,"Captain Cook's Beer: The Antiscorbutic Use of Malt and Beer in Late 18th Century Sea Voyages" Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (apjcn.nhri.org.tw) 12 no.2: June 2003, 129–137.24 Salinger, 18.25 Baron, 58.26 Lender & Martin, 5.27 Letter March 3, 1767, Box 39, Folder 13, Nicholas Brown and Company Papers 1762-1783 (bulk 1762-1774), John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

revise the beer manufacturing process, and helped to further professionalize the English brewing

industry. In the Colonies however, porter was unpopular and as a result, mechanization took

longer to be established.28 It is possible that the added cost of producing porter acted as a

deterrent for colonists, since porter utilizes multiple styles of malt and added to the overall price;

likewise porter may not have been popular with colonists because it is more bitter than

traditional ales and beers.

As the population of the Colonies increased, the tavern became an important social

meeting place for men. Starting in the 1650s a majority of the towns commerce was conducted

by men in taverns.29 By the American Revolution in the 1760s and 1770s, the tavern had also

become an important gathering place for men to discuss politics. 30 This public space became

increasingly gendered toward men, as capitalism and politics became important parts of

performing identity for men during the early eighteenth century. Indeed, Puritan leaders viewed

tavern drinking as a harmless activity until the pervasiveness of rum and the practice of

“toasting” increased public drunkenness, crime, and disorder.31 Colonial leaders did not view

taverns as encouraging obscene or immoral behavior while beer was being drunk. Legislation

and eventually “tithingmen” were implemented in every colony to help control excessive

drinking and impose fines.32As taverns became important cultural spaces, beer started to be

delineated into different strengths. The terms strong beer, table beer, ships beer, and small beer

come into use sometime after 1692, indicating that the concept of beer was becoming more

29

28 Baron, 58.29 Baron, 23.30 Smith, 205-206. Meacham, 67.31 Salinger, 136-137. This practice called for one person to drink to another’s health or prosperity, and was seen as evidence of polite behavior. However the Puritans began to discourage it when everyone present at the tavern gave a “toast” and drinking became excessive. 32 Lender & Martin, 17.

narrow as taverns became more prevalent.33 In Virginia in the 1730s, tavern keepers were made

accountable for selling alcohol on credit to the poor,34 legislators feared that unscrupulous tavern

owners would encourage people to drink away all of their money and increase the poor rolls.

Although society saw taverns as increasingly associated with men, colonial women did

participate in tavern culture. The women from the middling sort maintained their earlier role as

English alewives and proprietors of rural ale houses when they emigrated. Although men

received the official licenses for tavern keeping, the women in the family ran the tavern.35

Meacham suggests that this division of labor is due to men having other occupations which took

them away from the household where the tavern was located. Artisanal women were already

working within the home, doing piece work, laundry, and cooking; it is logical that women

would also manage the refreshments and foodstuffs any paying guests would require. As such

some women were able to operate taverns out of their homes while doing their other domestic

work.36 The dual responsibilities of women tavern keepers suggests again that parallel production

was occurring in the face of men’s commercial brewing. While taverns gained in importance as a

place for men to gather and contribute to local society, artisanal women’s other domestic tasks

limited their participation. Alice Thomas, the first licensed woman tavern keeper in Boston was

exiled, jailed, flogged and fined for permitting extremely sordid behavior in her tavern in the

early 1670s.37 Thomas’ situation is important to highlight because unlike earlier alewives she

30

33 Baron, 16. Strong beer as the name implies is strong, with the highest level alcohol content. This beer would have been imbibed to get intoxicated. Table beer would have been drunk at meal times, and had a lower alcohol content than strong beer. Ships beer, was used on ships and had enough alcohol in it to preserve the beverage over long journeys. Small beer had the lowest alcohol content and would have been available throughout the day. 34 William Walter Hening, “August 1734,” The Statutes at Larges Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (New York: 1819-1823), 428.35 Meacham, 70-72.36 Meacham, 72.37 Lender and Martin, 17.

was censured only for allowing immoral behavior. Her punishment was not linked with the

earlier accusations of adulterating beer. Thomas retained the autonomy of earlier English

alewives and shows that artisanal women were participating in commercial beer production in

the late seventeenth century.

Women’s participation in tavern culture continued into the 1720s. Massachusetts

encouraged women to brew by issuing licenses to poor women, in the hopes of generating

income and reducing the levels of poverty in the colony.38 It is difficult to identify where women

homebrewers fit within society prior to the rise of the industrialization. Based on some of the

values expressed in cookery books, however it is possible that women homebrewer’s ascribed to

artisanal and low non manual values like frugality, industry, and lowered levels of ambition.39

Women homebrewers may have spanned the ambiguous lines between different middling sort

groups depending on their resources. The targeting of women as unskilled brewers may indicate

that not only were artisanal and low non manual women acting as homebrewers during the end of

the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but that these women competed with men’s

brewing. Although society had not developed the idea of “classes” yet, social differences among

31

38 Meacham, 65.39 Blumin, 41-65. Blumin identifies divisions between the middling sort, including artisans, mechanics, and non manuals. These groups spanned the middling sort prior to the rise of the class system, but they aspired to the same values. Blumin compared the Federal Direct Tax of 1798 to city directories to establish occupations and household sizes. While he categorizes occupations like innkeepers, tavernkeepers, and brewers as low non manuals it is possibly that the the wives of artisans and mechanics (cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, and coopers) also could have brewed in their homes. Jaffee, 66, 80. Jaffee describes artisans and mechanics as individuals who traded in “skilled work.”Richard Briggs, The New Art of Cookery (Philadelphia: Printed for W. Spotswood, R. Campbell, and B. Johnson, 1792), 3. Briggs states that, “To waste language and high terms on such subjects, appears to me to render the Art of Cookery embarrassing, and to throw difficulties in the way of the learner- nor can the reader reasonably expect and superfluous embellishments of style from one whose habits of life have been active, and not studious.” Briggs identifies himself as living an active life, employed in the “practice of cookery.” His work indicates that he is part of the artisanal or mechanic sorts, as described by Blumin, and proudly invokes the middling folks values of simplicity and limited ambition.

poor, artisanal, and elite women may have made it uncomfortable for some women to participate

in tavern life as customers.

A Change in Taste

Though beer was an important part of tavern culture, a growing preference for rum and

whiskey caused beer to become less prevalent in social drinking.40 During the American

Revolution rum and whiskey were increasingly given out by the Continental Army as rations

over beer.41 As these new beverages became more available, concerns over excessive drinking

and health started to emerge. Additionally, in the late eighteenth century, Americans had more

access to non-alcoholic drink options, specifically coffee and tea. The availability of sweeteners,

like sugar, may have encouraged Americans to expand their accepted beverage alternatives. This

gave them more freedom to choose what to drink.42 Serving tea and coffee became recognized as

status symbols, with elaborate etiquette and expensive additives, that further encouraged

Americans to reevaluate the role of alcohol in their diet. These changes in taste pushed beer into

the background of America’s culinary palate, and allowed it to continue within the home un-

persecuted.

As beer faded from the fore and other potables superseded it, there was an effort by

doctors to restore it to its original status. Doctors and reformers observed an increase in drinking

“spiritous liquors” which went against a developing mentality that promoted sober industrious

workers.43 Many Americans felt that sobriety was fundamental to creating an ideal republic and

strong capitalist economy. These reformers felt that drinking rum and other liquors endangered

32

40 Baron, 56. Meacham, 112.41 Meacham, 114.42 Meacham, 127.43 Holly Berkley Fletcher, Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2008), 9-15.

the economic progress of the new country, since workers would not be able to work efficiently

and provide for their families.44 In a pamphlet from 1784, Dr. Benjamin Rush described the

detrimental effects of imbibing too many spirits and recommends substituting beer to get

nourishment.45 The exchange Dr. Rush recommended indicated how strongly society felt about

beer; the substitution of “wholesome” beer for malicious liquor, set the precedent for beer’s

status as medicinal. Yet beer was so unpopular as a commercial drink, that the General Court of

Massachusetts enacted a tax cut in 1789. The act exempted breweries from taxes for five years if

they brewed a certain amount of beer. 46 This was an abrupt shift from the earlier excise taxes

placed on beer and other alcoholic beverages; it thus displayed a concerted effort by American

political leaders to promote beer production.

Women’s Production

Women’s participation as commercial brewers came under attack at the same time that

American political leaders began to encourage beer production. Brewing-manual authors may

have criticized middle income women brewers as a way to minimize their association with

brewing and to encourage more men into joining the trade. Late eighteenth century brewing

33

44 Fletcher, 15.45 Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind (Brookfield: MA, 1784), 17. Dr. Rush was the surgeon general to the Continental Army, and signed the Declaration of Independence. Dave R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2006), 282. Though he was not a well remembered founding father, Dr. Rush was a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has been called the “Father of American Psychiatry.” “Benjamin Rush (1746-1813),” accessed January 2012, University Archives, University of Pennsylvania, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rush_benj.html.46 An Act to Encourage the Manufacture and Consumption of Strong beer, Ale and Other Malt Liquors. The Perpetual Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; The Establishment of its Constitution to the Second Session of the General Court, 1798. 2 Vol., Worcester, 1799.

manuals targeted men, indicating men’s assumption of brewing.47 Samuel Child’s Everyman His

Own Brewer, published in 1796, like many male specific brewing manuals, reframed traditional

brewing recipes with a scientific spin, utilizing chemistry as a way of understanding how beer

and other alcohols were made.48 Child’s work is different from earlier women’s beer recipes in

that the process is described in acute detail, describing all the equipment, providing definitions

for brewing terms, discussions of outside factors such as water quality and brewery location.

Child’s scientific tone is best expressed in his use of tables, like the one below which shows

when a beer is drinkable.49

34

47 Meacham, 97.48 Samuel Child, Everyman His Own Brewer (Philadelphia: Printed for T. Condie, no. 20, Carter's Alley, 1796), 48.49 Child, 37.

Additionally Child’s work focused on new technologies like thermometers50 and

saccharometers51 that had been developed by brewers to help the brewing process.

Thermometers and saccharometers allowed greater control over the level of alcohol created in a

brew, making beer regularized. Men also began to deprecate women’s skills as brewers,

suggesting that women could not be counted on to brew correctly according to the new

advancements in brewing science.52 Although the title clearly indicated a male audience and

Child criticized women’s brewing his work clung to the concept of women’s production of beer.

Samuel Child stated that, “a few hours of a woman’s time is sufficient for the whole operation [of

brewing], when in the same time she may not be able to earn 25 cents but by this plan earns D. 5

20. for money saved is money earned.” 53 Samuel Child utilized scientific terms and more exact

measurements within his description of the brewing process but was unable to imagine men as

the primary brewers. Although some men participated in brewing, Samuel Child could not fully

conceptualize what men’s brewing would look like at the beginning of the nineteenth century,

because it was so strongly associated with women's labor, and the tradition of women home

brewing.

35

50 The thermometer was adapted for brewing purposes in the 1760s. Peter Mathias’ concluded in The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830 that use of the thermometer in brewing was embraced and unremarked on. The earliest mention of a brewer purchasing a thermometer was in 1768 by a small scale brewer named Hoddesdon outside of London. Mathias, 67.51 A saccharometer measures the amount of saccharine (or “fermentable matter”) within a liquid wort, this indicates the potential amount of alcohol in a beer. The saccharometer was an adaptation of the hydrometer (which measures the specific gravity of a liquid- or the density of the liquid compared to the density of water). Definitions from: Dave Miller, Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 1995), 338-346. The inventor of the saccharometer has been debated but John Richardson is usually given credit for it in 1784. James Braverstock experimented with an adaption of a hydrometer as early as 1768 but published his results in 1785. “Brewing” Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature. Eighth Edition, volume 5 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black,1855), 319. 52 Meacham, 97-98.53 Samuel Child, Everyman his Own Brewer, (Philadelphia: printed by T. Condie, and H. Kammerer, 1796), 7. Emphasis added. “D. 5 20” means 20 shillings and 5 pence.

Samuel Child’s insistence on women as brewers indicates that a system of parallel

production developed at the beginning of the nineteenth century wherein middle class men and

women both participated in brewing. Samuel Child directly linked middle class women’s

production of beer with commerce, yet as emerging middling sort social norms developed

women lost their overt connection with commercial sale of their beer.

Alexander Morrice’s A Treatise on Brewing explicitly calls women’s skills as brewers

into question in his preface. He states that although it was acknowledged that every old woman

knew how to brew, “through their not knowing the proper Heats that are required to extract the

greatest Quantity of Saccharine from the Malt...they are giving Goods instead of Grains to the

Pigs.” 54 Morrice recognized that the alcohol level in brews made by women were not as high as

they could be if they had utilized the new brewing technology. Morrice thought women brewers

were throwing out viable wort due to ignorance.55 The downgrading of women’s skill as brewers

shows that men were claiming expert status over the traditional position of artisanal women

brewers.

Morrice’s remarks help situate low-non manual and artisanal women’s homebrewing

within the nineteenth century’s emphasis on science in all areas of life that occurred in reaction

to the Enlightenment. His comments may also suggest an early push to create separate spheres

in brewing.56 It may indicate that artisanal and low non manual women were moving out of

public commercial spaces and into domestically focused spaces. Once men began to assert their

36

54 Alexander Morrice, A Treatise on Brewing, wherein is Exhibited the Whole Process of the Art and Mystery of Brewing the Various Sorts of Malt Liquor; With Practical Examples Upon Each Species (London: For The Author: Sold By H.D. Symonds, Paternoster Row, 1802), vi.55 Wort, at its most basic, is a sugar and water boiled together. The sugar can be malt or in the case of many 19th century home brewers molasses. Malt is made from dried barley, that is then soaked in water. Malt or molasses acts as a food source for yeast during fermentation, and helps create alcohol.56 Meacham, 135. Meacham argues that late eighteenth century American women gave up their role as brewers willingly to men due to the large number of other household duties and lack of compensation for their brewing.

role as professional and scientific brewers, artisanal and low non manual women gave up the

practice of selling beer; not as because it held little profit, but rather because of major gender

changes that were beginning to develop. The scientific emphasis inspired by the Enlightenment

and coupled with artisanal and low non manual women’s increased focus on domestic

responsibilities, created an opening for these women to get out of commercial beer and alcohol

production.

The established historical narrative assumes that as brewing increasingly employed

industrialization and mechanization, women released their responsibility willingly to men at the

end of the eighteenth century. My research indicates that artisanal and low non manual women

did not entirely give up their participation in brewing; instead commercial production was

replaced by domestic home brewing. The abundance of beer recipes in cookbooks implies that

women participated in a form of parallel production during the early nineteenth century.

Americans did not widely embrace industrialization and technological advancements until the

middle of the nineteenth century. Instead of integrating these technologies brewers adapted their

practices to reflect changes in environment. These adaptations reflect early nineteenth century

artisanal and low-non manual women’s alterations to beer recipes. Although difficult to gauge,

artisanal and low-non manual women chronicled their relationship to brewing through the

cookbooks that they published. While artisanal and low-non manual women gave up their overt

roles as commercial producers of beer, they maintained their link with beer through home

production.

37

Chapter 2: A Parallel ProductionApplying Gender History to Beer

Middle class women’s production of beer in the nineteenth century shows continuity with

earlier brewing behaviors. Emerging middle class women did not stop brewing for home

consumption with the rise of industrialization; rather these women continued to make beer

through most of the nineteenth century. Middle class women published beer recipes

continuously within cookbooks until the 1830s, and even from the late 1840s to the 1860s

cookbooks were just as likely as not to include beer recipes. It was not until the late 1860s that

the number of beer recipes in middle class women’s cookbooks declined noticeably.

Commercial production of beer had been available to women since the beginning of the

nineteenth century, and these recipes persisted within published cookbooks, suggesting that

domestic production may have been more than just a household task.

Northerners’ taste and preference in beverages changed after the Revolution. The demand

for beer began to decline as a result; the government’s encouragement of brewing, along with

important physicians advocacy of drinking beer, ensured however that this drink did not

disappear from American diets. Although these factors might have ended middle class women’s

homebrewing, the availability of beer recipes to middle class women indicates that access to

commercially produced beer did not end women’s production. It is difficult to determine middle

class women’s feelings and thoughts on beer for most of the nineteenth century. However, the

presence of beer recipes in cookbooks suggests that some middle class women maintained their

connection to brewing in the face of strong opposition from other middle class women. Thus,

what developed within middle class women’s cookbooks was an almost unconscious debate over

their relationship to beer, and the proper role of women.

38

In fact, domesticity may have been a more important factor than mechanization in

transforming middle class women's relationship to beer in nineteenth century America.

Domesticity based on religious sensibilities, overturned the traditional understanding of virtue.

Initially virtue was only associated with men, and connoted strength and moral uprightness in

public spaces.1 In the 1790s, the image of middling women as naturally wanton began to

dissipate and be replaced by their increased status and power through the association of mothers

teaching children to be citizens.2 The enlarged role for women was partially a reaction to

women’s participation in post-Revolutionary politics. Middling women’s involvement in

partisanship directly after the war threaten newly formed ideas of exclusively male citizenship.

The concept of “Republican Mothers” developed as an alternative that encouraged women to

influence politics through their male relatives rather than through their own overt participation.

Middling women’s new role challenged traditional gender norms while it reinforced the social

hierarchy and the new political state.3

However in the 1820s, middle class women began to take on more of the attribute of

moral uprightness as part of the emerging cult of true womanhood, while the risk of “Women

Politicians” ebbed.4 Women assumed the role of spiritual protectors of the home and family,5

embodying moral excellence and the new understanding of virtue. Society began expecting all

women, as mothers, to instill morals in their children and be a positive influence over those

within the home.6 This influence extended over domestic servants as well as over their

39

1 Myles McDonnell, Roman Manliness (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 165-167. 2 Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 37.3 Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 5-6.4 Zagarri, 6.5 Ruth Bordin, Women and Temperance (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 8.6 Zagarri, 19.

husbands. This is not to say middle women gained power through their own agency; rather it

was only through their ability to persuade the male figures in their lives that these women

expanded their roles in society.7 Middle class women’s expanded moral role was displayed

within the home through their daily tasks of caring for children, cooking, and cleaning; identified

as domesticity. Additionally middle class women began to concentrate on all aspects within the

home and family elevating domesticity in the eyes of middle class women. As domesticity

became a fundamental aspect of the home, society constructed a new identity which supported

the home as a stable location. Women’s historians have termed this new identity “true

womanhood.” 8 The cult of true womanhood has been discussed and developed at length,

however it was not static.

True womanhood evolved out of different social and cultural impulses. Over the course

of the nineteenth century true womanhood evolved from a patriotic response to the American

Revolution, to a religiously focused reform (both inside and outside the home), into the

beginnings of consumerism and capitalism. Over the course of one hundred years the meaning of

true woman and its performance shifted; however underlying all of these shifts was true

womanhood’s role as moral champion and guide. Middle class women embraced the cult of true

womanhood but interpreted it in different ways.

In the early nineteenth century at least two different ideals of true womanhood developed

as outgrowths of the same impulse: women’s inward focus on the home and family. In one

vision, middle class women were domestic producers, mistresses of every aspect within the

home, though still subordinate to their husbands, adult male relatives, and ministers. Under this

interpretation of true womanhood, middle class women assumed greater influence from their

40

7 Zagarri, 5.8 Welter, 151–174.

long established ability to produce and purchase goods for the home. The impulse to produce

more goods for the home caused middle class women to develop, purchase, and equip their

kitchens with new technology and tools that showed their prowess in making the home’s

necessities.9 I have termed this understanding of true womanhood, the domestic woman. During

the preindustrial period, from the end of the American Revolution to 1810, artisanal women

participated in the production of commercial goods alongside their male family members.10

Women from the emerging middle class contributed within the home and were geographically

separate from the work of men. After 1810, low non manual women’s involvement in

commercial work moved into the wage labor market and factory work. In the case of shoemakers

in New England, younger unmarried women participated in early factory work that separated

them from the domestic sphere but still reinforced a gendered separation of work. 11 Many young

women found work in the textile industry, while others worked as “shoebinders.” These types of

industry employments had roots in artisan women’s labor. By the late 1830s lower middle class

women’s work moved back into the home as capitalist work bosses began to recruit women in

rural areas who could perform outwork;12 this pushed middle class women out of centralized

factory work. As the cult of domesticity became increasingly important to middle class women,

wage labor became predominantly male.

The second model of true womanhood emphasized middle class women as moral

influencers. Middle class women under this view also grounded their authority in the home and

family, but increasingly saw it as their duty to influence and reform society as a way to protect

the home, though they were still subordinate to male authority. I have termed this interpretation

41

9 Matthews, 12-13. Matthews cited one hardware store that advertised 250 different kitchen tools.10 Blewitt, 15 -19.11 Blewitt, 39-41.12 Blewitt, 43.

of true womanhood the reforming woman. The reforming woman used her position as a

domestic producer and the virtue associated with this work to support her reforms and eventually

participated less in home production. The reforming woman stressed Christian morality as its

inspiration for activism. The reforming woman identity influenced and silently participated in

various types of reform movements, including Sunday schools, temperance societies like the

Martha Washingtons, Religious revivals, abolition, and women’s rights. The reforming woman

ideal attempted to refashion society to fit into the developing social ideas of the middle class.

Thus she focused on groups that either threatened the ideals of Christian temperance, industry

and frugality (drunkards, laggards, and profligates) or groups who undermined the new American

goal of equality (politically unrepresented women and blacks).

Both portrayals claimed their power from within the home, but their perception of true

womanhood differed over middle class women’s role within society. These two groups used

cookbooks as a platform to define and argue for their specific positions on middle class women’s

roles and their relationship to beer.

Two Identities Defined

Two cookbooks published in 1830 demonstrate middle class women’s feelings on beer.

While one promoted beer and its beneficial qualities the other ignored beer. Lydia Maria Child

wrote the first, The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who are Not Ashamed of Economy, in

Boston, Massachusetts. This work included a detailed description of the brewing process and

beer recipes. The second work, The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery: Being a Collection of

42

Original and Selected Receipts,13 was published by Knowlton and Rice in Watertown, New York.

This second work did not mention brewing or beer and did not discuss alcohol at all. Both texts

addressed middle class women, yet they treated brewing and beer differently. Child’s work

suggested that beer was “a good family drink” and made a “good and healthy diet-drink.” It

placed some beer recipes within her medicinal recipes section.14 Child was repeating the

sentiments of Dr. Benjamin Rush from 1784, and indicates the acceptance of beer as a healthy

beverage. Child’s work highlights the use of beer within the Northern cupboard by using beer as

an ingredient in pancake batter.15 The Cook Not Mad, on the other hand, was completely silent

on this subject. This seems odd based on the work’s purported scope of “Cooking in its general

acceptation, to the taste, habits, and degrees of luxury, prevalent with the American Publick, in

Town and Country;” the work goes on to state that it includes the “directions for preparing the

comfort for the SICKROOM.” 16 The lack of beer in this section indicates that although Dr.

Rush’s statements on beer’s health benefits were known to Child, it may not have reached the

unknown author, or the author did not agree with it. The Cook Not Mad’s author’s silence on

beer suggests that beer was not the universally preferred beverage it once was and that beer was

not necessarily produced in the home. The Cook Not Mad’s author may not have known how to

brew but instead of printing a relative’s or acquaintance’s beer recipe, this author made a choice

43

13 The title of this work is intriguing, it implies that the author was attempting to over come society’s popular view of women as irrational or mentally unsound. This was a popular idea in the nineteenth century since men were associated with rational thought and women with emotions. By linking cooking with rationality the author is trying to refute this popular trope. Elizabeth D. Harvey and Kathleen Okruhlik ed., Women and Reason (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 115.14 Lydia Maria Child, The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated To Those Who Are Not Ashamed Of Economy (Boston: Carter, Hendee, and Babcock, 1830), 91. This work was first published in 1829.15 Lydia Maria Child, 78. This is a section on pancakes, and beer is recommended as part of the batter. “In this case nothing is done but to sweeten your mug of beer with molasses; put in one glass of N.E. rum; heat it till it foams, by putting in a hot poker; and stir it up with flour as thick as other pancakes.” 16 The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery: Being a Collection of Original and Selected Receipts...(Watertown, NY: Knowlton and Rice, 1830), title page.

not to include beer. The Cook Not Mad’s author was not writing in a vacuum, she could have

asked family and friends or consulted printed materials if she felt beer recipes were needed in

this cookbook.

The change in Rundell’s relationship to brewing within The Experienced American

Housekeeper, and the author of The Cook Not Mad’s avoidance of brewing indicate the

beginning of a shift in middle class women’s perspective on brewing. From 1800 to 1830, 86.7%

of general cookbooks included beer recipes or beer as an ingredient.17 Of the works examined,

only one other author, Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell, did not include beer (as a recipe or an

ingredient) in her published general recipe cookbooks, The Experienced American Housekeeper,

or Domestic Cookery. But Rundell’s early works did include beer recipes. The first printing of

her The Experienced American Housekeeper, and in all versions of A New System Of Domestic

Cookery, devoted a chapter to how to brew until 1823.18

The author of The Cook Not Mad wrote from the perspective of a domestic woman, but

there were also markers of the reforming woman model. The author states, “...let it be

remembered that not a few young women enter upon the duties of the wedded life without

having been scarcely initiated into the mysteries of the eating department, and therefore to them

the most trivial matters on this head become of importance.--The health of a family, in fact,

greatly depends upon its cookery.” 19 Here the author expresses herself as a domestic woman.

This statement in the preface indicates that the author is elevating women’s domestic tasks from

the most trivial to one of the most significant roles for women. Yet the author adds that proper

44

17 I use the term “general cookbooks” to mean cookbooks without a focus on one specific aspect of cooking, for instance desserts or preserve and canning. These works would not include beer making or other beverages due to the focus of the author. 18 Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell, A New System of Domestic Cookery (Boston: W. Andrews, 1807), 247-248.19 The Cook Not Mad, iv.

cooking is a financial matter that, “some overly genteel folks may smile at the supposed interest

the wife, or female head of a family must take in all these concerns; but, suffer the remark, where

this is not the state of things, a ruinous waste is the consequence.” 20 The Cook Not Mad’s author

was hinting that her cooking responsibilities spilled over into financial concerns, and that it was

appropriate for women to be interested in these matters. Expressing her responsibility for the

financial cost of spoilage shows that this author, at least, was moving toward an expanded role

for the domestic woman and the beginnings of the reforming woman ideal. But Child’s

cookbook highlighted her continued support for middle class women’s brewing from the

perspective of providing for her family all its domestic requirements. Both works played up

middle class women’s role as care takers and nurturers to fulfill their understanding of true

womanhood.

Cookbooks’ Contribution to Parallel Industrialization

Child’s Frugal Housewife suggests a continuity with previous brewing practices in the

face of industrialization. The use of beer in various recipes, along with the discussion of how to

brew indicates that beer was a regular ingredient in the American cupboard. Beer was not only

drunk, it was a multitask ingredient, thrown into various recipes for the sick as well as everyday

recipes like pancakes. The description of how to brew is brief. The instructions are laid out in

four sentences, which are not detailed but imply a level of assumed knowledge in the audience.

Child states, “The rule is about the same for all beer. Boil the ingredients two or three hours,

pour in a half-pint of molasses to a pailful, while the beer is scalding hot. Strain the beer, and

when about lukewarm, put a pint of live yeast to a barrel. Leave the bung loose till the beer is

45

20 The Cook Not Mad, iv.

done working; you can ascertain this by observing when the froth subsides.” 21 For individuals

who did not know how to make beer, these instructions made the task seem extraordinarily

simple; yet the measurements seem woefully inexact and the whole endeavor seems likely to end

badly. Yet, this was typical of the instructions middle class women cooks found when they

looked at early cookbooks.22 As Jensen tells us, women conveyed self-help information verbally,

through informal settings and gatherings.23 The lack of precision in cookbooks would not have

been disconcerting to them, both because they would have been familiar with the process (by

watching other women) and also because they could have asked other women for advice. This

process of shared knowledge and practice suggested a continuation of earlier forms of work and

a system of parallel production. It is possible that this shared knowledge was disrupted by

westward expansion and urbanization that was occurring in the early nineteenth century. Some

middle class women may have lost the necessary social contacts essential to fill in the gaps of

published cookbooks and could not acquire the necessary clarification to brew. For middle class

women, the process of brewing was not as affected by advances in brewing technology at the

beginning of the nineteenth century;24 instead authors of beer recipes assume stability in

Northern middle class women’s knowledge of brewing.

46

21 Lydia Maria Child, 49. These recipe instructions would probably make a low alcohol content beer, something like a small beer or table beer. 22 Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad (New York: North Point Press, 1986), 85. By the end of the nineteenth century this style of recipe with “little more than a comfortable hint about the main ingredients” would be driving cooks mad as traditional avenues of shared knowledge were disrupted and cooks were left without any elaboration on how to prepare a recipe. Cooks did not have standard measurements for a pint or a pailful as today’s teaspoon or cup are; although Child gave relative measurements for brewing, there was still a lot of room for variation in her recipes. 23 Joan Jensen, “Butter Making and Economic Development in Mid-Atlantic America from 1750 to 1850” Signs 13 no.4 (Summer, 1988), 820.24 Meacham 94, 135. Meacham states that advancements in brewing moved Chesapeake women out of the process, since they did not have the access or funds to use new ingredients or technology in the late eighteenth century.

Lydia Maria Child’s experiences with home production highlight the early middle class

woman’s changing understanding of womanhood. Her personal letters show that she was

concerned with what would happen to her if she never married, and that she accepted the idea of

keeping her father’s home, in 1822. Lydia Maria Child’s may have seen this decision as a way to

maintain some stability and influence within her father’s home.25 This early portion of her adult

life indicates her strong link to the domestic woman ideal. Lydia Maria Child was preoccupied

with economy after her marriage. Her personal life was often stressed due to her husband’s debt

and anxiety over their income which caused her to live separately from him for many years, and

try to support herself through writing children’s books. Lydia Maria Child’s later abolitionist

sentiments tied her to the reforming woman model more closely, but during the early years of her

life and marriage she balanced both interpretations of true womanhood.

Lydia Maria Child’s experience was similar to many in the new middle class. In a letter to

her sister-in-law, Lydia Bigelow Child, in 1830 she stated, “I feel in a discouraged mood today.

Every thing we can earn goes to paying debts - and yet it seems as if we never should get out of

difficulty.” 26 This fear and threat of poverty was reflected in her preface of The Frugal

Housewife, “[s]elf denial, in proportion to the narrowness of your income will eventually be the

happiest and most respectable course for you and yours...if you are not prosperous, it will be well

for your children that they have not been educated to higher hopes than they will ever realize.”

Lydia Maria Child used her cookbooks not only as a platform to share her personal “economical

hints” but also as a means of supplementing her income. Her realistic and somewhat pessimistic

advice was well received, as shown by the 33 editions of her work from 1829 through 1855. By

47

25 Microfiche 3, letter 10-2, Folder 8, Lydia Maria Child Letters 1828-1879, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.26 Microfiche 3, letter 50, Folder 8, Lydia Maria Child Letters 1828-1879, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.

1830, works whose focus was on economy and thrift, as in The Frugal Housewife, no longer

encouraged middle class women to sell their extra brew. In The Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria

Child discussed the sale of thread and the opening of the home to boarders as acceptable options

for families in need of money.27 Lydia Maria Child discussed beer in various sections within the

work but did not include it as a way to raise funds. This indicated a shift in middle class

women’s perception of the respectability of selling beer.

Middle class women’s roles within commercial production may have been hidden by

their association with men’s production. Studies of the participation of men and women in rural

labor have shown that women’s roles were often overshadowed by their male partners or that

women took on hidden responsibilities.28 It is possible that middle class women were producing

beer and participating in its sale, but that it was becoming inappropriate for them to discuss that

activity. As Lydia Maria Child stated in The Frugal Housewife, “If your family be large, and the

beer will be drank [sic] rapidly, it may as well remain in the barrel...A raw potato or two, cut

up...is said to make the beer spirited.” 29 These instructions could have been adapted easily and

quickly for public houses, taverns, or saloons because it gave instructions on how to brew a

higher alcohol content beer which would have been in demand in social drinking establishments.

Lydia Maria Child also gave relative measurements, rather than specific ones, allowing middle

class women to increase or decrease the recipe without complicated calculations.30

48

27 Lydia Maria Child, 102, 107.28 Boydston, 95.29 Lydia Maria Child, 49.30 Lydia Maria Child, 49.

The system of parallel production displayed in nineteenth century cookbooks intimates a

reorganization of domestic labor.31 This reorganization took the form of increased focus on

minute details, and the systematizing of tasks. Catherine Beecher’s Miss Beecher’s Domestic

Receipt-Book illustrates how domesticity developed in the mid nineteenth century. Beecher’s

work was encyclopedic in scope, with minute details and descriptions not only for preparing

food, but also on how to organize the reader’s day to accomplish the most amount of work.32

Beecher also organized and described the correct way to set a table, indicating that middle class

women should recognize standards within housework. Beecher’s work demonstrated a near

professionalization of housework.33 Beecher uses scientific technology (hydrostatic couches to

relieve pain from emaciation)34 and engraved figures to depict housework. Her cookbooks

highlight women’s housework as a specialization of work, rather than as drudgery. Middle class

women’s domestic work in this period shows how these women participated in and were affected

by the industrialization that was occurring outside of the home.

Catherine Beecher was also an important female author in the nineteenth century. She

wrote primarily on food and the American home. She championed middle and upper class

women’s role as educators, and crafters of morality and virtue.35 Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley,

and Ann Margolis have argued that Beecher’s careers as educator and writer were “dual

aspects” 36 of a lifelong goal: “to train woman for her true business and then pay her so liberally

49

31 Boydston discusses further how parallel production of labor relates to industrialization, and suggests that domestic work is more a reorganization of women’s labor as part of industrialization, rather than the isolation of domestic work from industrialization. 32 Catherine Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book (New York, Harper & brothers, 1847).33 It is only near professionalization because women were not paid for their work.34 Beecher, 213. 35 Jeanne Boydston, et al., 2.36 Boydston et al., 13.

that she can have a house of her own whether married or single.” 37 The cult of domesticity was

pervasive in Beecher’s work, and the perspective in her writing was firmly within the domestic

woman model. Her depiction of middle class women within the home was that of a perfected and

idealized expert in housework. Beecher states “a habit of doing everything in the best manner, is

of unspeakable importance to a housekeeper, and every woman ought to aim at it, however great

the difficulties she may have to meet.” 38 This sense of perfectionism made sense when placed

against the backdrop of industrialization. Industry was beginning to streamline work and focus

on efficiency while utilizing new tools to increase production. Similarly, domesticity called for

middle class women’s perfection of housework.

Beecher felt strongly that domesticity and the uplift of women’s work would lead to

increased influence for women. In a letter to Angelina Grimke on women’s role in the abolitionist

movement, she clearly identifies the domestic woman’s rationale. She states that,

...all the power, and all the conquests that are lawful to a woman, are those only which

appeal to kindly, generous, peaceful and benevolent principles. Woman is to win

everything by...making herself so respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her

opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. But this is to

be accomplished in the domestic and social circle.39

Clearly Beecher advocated for middle class women’s subtle influence of society, but only

through accepted middle class behaviors. These performances were not limiting to Beecher

rather she saw them as a way to expand and cultivate middle class women’s power.40 Included in

50

37 Catherine Beecher to My Dear Lizzie, July 24, 1867, Folder 19, Box 1, Beecher Stowe Family Papers 1798-1956, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.38 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, 217.39 Catherine Beecher, An Essay On Slavery and Abolitionism, With Reference To The Duty Of American Females (Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1837), 100-109.40 Catherine Beecher, The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Woman (Boston: Philips, Sampson, and Company, 1851), 32-33.

this extension of authority were physical manifestations of middle class women’s abilities like

new tools, experimental ingredients, and elaborately prepared meals. 41 In the 1830s, middle

class women were maintaining accepted social norms through parallel production; by the end of

the 1840s these women had found innovative methods to expand their roles beyond home

production and consumption.

Beecher makes an interesting case for using innovation to carry out established middle

class behavior. Beecher’s life shows the competing social ideas of the nineteenth century.

Although her early experienced in establishing a women’s seminary place her with the domestic

woman ideal, her own behavior suggests that she had a more nuanced understanding of true

womanhood. Her school was meant to train young women to be teachers and to manage the

home, which were acceptable roles for middle class women. However Beecher’s work as a writer

indicates that she navigated between the domestic woman and the reforming woman; by

publishing her domestic advice and cookbooks she helped to expand middle class social norms

for women. Like Lydia Maria Child, Beecher’s perspective was that of a domestic woman and

this is what she focused her writings on; however by earning a wage from her writing she was

subverting the social norms that she promoted in Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book.

Beecher’s use of the reforming woman model indicates that the two ideals were closely linked

and could be mutually supporting. Beecher’s writings commercially promote the domestic

woman ideal perhaps even encouraging women who did not fit her ideal of the domestic

housewife to “reform” and accept middle class social norms. Beecher used the tenant of publicly

or overtly influencing women, associated with the reforming woman, to increase the authority of

the domestic woman through her cookbooks. Although she leaned more toward the domestic

51

41 Matthews, 12.

woman ideal, Beecher like many of the middle class women she was writing for balanced these

two competing impulses.

Beecher included a section titled Temperance Drinks within Miss Beecher’s Domestic

Receipt-Book which highlights how she negotiated true womanhood. She prefaces these recipes

by describing three types of Temperance activists.42 The first group of women argued that

imbibing alcohol was sinful, and alcohol should never be ingested. The second group asserted

that alcohol may have given the appearance of “evil,” and should not be drunk or used in

cooking. Finally, the third group maintained that it was acceptable to use alcohol in cooking.43

Beecher stated that she was part of the third group.

Yet Catherine Beecher’s cookbook accepted beer as part of a temperate lifestyle. The

Temperance Drinks chapter shows that Beecher did imbibe alcohol; she included two recipes for

Ginger Beer. The first was Simple Ginger Beer, and states, “One great spoonful of ginger and

one of cream tartar. One pint of home-brewed yeast and one pint of molasses. Six quarts of

water. When it begins to ferment bottle it, and it will be ready for use in eight hours.” 44 This

would have produced a lightly alcoholic drink similar to small beer. The second beer recipe was

called Superior Ginger Beer, is also clearly an alcoholic beverage. It states, “Ten pounds of

Sugar. Nine ounces of Lemon. Half a pound of honey. Eleven ounces of bruised ginger root.

Nine Gallons of water. Three pints of yeast. Boil the ginger half an hour in a gallon and a half of

water, then add the rest of the water and the other ingredients, and strain it when cold, add the

white of one egg beaten, and half an ounce of essence of lemon. Let it stand four days then bottle

it, and it will keep many good months.” 45 This recipe would have created a large amount of

52

42 Beecher was unique in identifying different types of temperance in her cookbooks.43 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, 183.44 Beecher, 186.45 Beecher, 187.

small beer.46 The process of boiling and letting the brew sit until cold would have generated

some alcohol before the yeast was strained out. This beer recipe made a drink which would not

have looked or tasted like beer; however the egg white would have acted as a clarifying agent,

and the lemon and ginger would have masked any alcoholic taste. What did this mean for

Beecher?

Beecher clearly stated her views on temperance in the preface of the chapter, but she also

included two drink recipes that created alcoholic drinks. It is possible that she may not have

understood when alcohol was produced in the brewing process, though with her interest in and

promotion of science within in her cookbooks, it seems unlikely that she didn’t make this

connection.47 It is also plausible that Beecher so strongly associated beer with the home, and the

performance of domesticity, that she did not consider it part of the alcohol problem, while still

recognizing its status as an alcoholic beverage. Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book is

important because it highlights the domestic woman’s reluctance to give up the tradition of

brewing, even as this ideal accepts more of the reforming woman’s activism against alcohol.

Beecher’s acknowledgement of the reforming woman is also present in the recipes listed before

Simple Ginger Beer which are all non alcoholic beverages. Additionally Beecher included

alternatives to beer, including Ginger Beer Powders, which could be “kept on hand... and thus

make a fine drink for hot weather.” 48 The powders created effervescent creamy drinks that

mimicked the carbonation of beer, but without the creation of alcohol. By including these

substitutes and beer recipes together Beecher was balancing the desires of her audience and her

own understanding of acceptable beverages. Beecher’s unwillingness to forgo brewing in the

53

46 By straining the liquid once it is cool, Beecher is removing the yeast and essentially stopping alcohol production after a very short time. 47 Beecher, 213.48 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, 184.

1830s indicates that the parallel production of beer continued to be pertinent to her understanding

of domesticity.

It is conceivable that Beecher’s inclusion of the Superior Ginger Beer recipe indicated an

early hesitation over and change in beer’s status within society. Beer was not a viable industry in

the United States until the 1850s and 1860s, when large numbers of German immigrants

established breweries.49 Additionally most of the early temperance movement’s focus was on

rum and whiskey, not beer.50 Thus it is likely that beer did not carry with it the threat that other

distilled liquors posed. Why then did Beecher use the egg white and lemon to cover up the

alcohol in her beer? Certainly nineteenth century Americans enjoyed the artifice of making one

thing look like another. However if beer had been considered a threat to the home and something

to abstain from as Beecher’s preface indicated she would not have utilized it in her recipe, and if

craftiness was her goal she would not have called it Superior Ginger Beer (which would have

given away the deception). Instead, I think that beer’s status as a product of the home placed it

under the protection of the home, yet it was also a threat to home because of its alcohol content.

Beecher’s inclusion of the beer recipes shows how the domestic woman ideal maintained its

women’s role as a home brewer’s while also acknowledging the new concept of temperance,

through innovative use of ingredients.

Women’s Role in the Early Temperance Movement

Catherine Beecher was not the only cookbook author to include alcohol recipes next to

temperance ones. Ruth M. Baker’s The Cook's Manual, and American Housekeeper sandwiched

54

49 Baron, 211-214.50 Fletcher, 11; Mari Jo Buhle, et al. Women and the Making of America (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009), 213.

her temperance drink recipe between recipes for Spruce Beer and Ginger Beer.51 Eliza Leslie,

another well known cookbook writer, included in her Ladies Receipt Book a temperance pudding

recipe and a section on Domestic Liquors.52 This inconsistent inclusion of beer and temperance

recipes within the same cookbook could have been an attempt to cover their entire audience base.

But, it also seems to show a contradiction for various middle class women on their relationship

to beer production, and beer’s status within society. Could this discrepancy be symptomatic of

larger concerns over middle class women’s roles? Beecher certainly went to some lengths to

disguise and augment her beer recipes. In the 1850s middle class American women were also

beginning to use soda powders which created sodas, and mimicked the carbonation in beer. Ruth

M. Baker not only included traditional beer recipes but also a Ginger Beer made with ginger beer

soda powder.53 A decade later the anonymous author of The Book of One Hundred Beverages

published three traditional ginger beer recipes and two traditional spruce beer recipes as well as

one ginger soda powder beer and one spruce soda powder beer.54 All of these authors were taking

popular ideas about the role of middle class women and beer, and adapting them to reconcile

competing social norms.

In the mid 1840s a trend emerged which suggests that brewing was becoming less

acceptable for middle class women. Beer recipes as a section dropped from the indices and table

of contents of cookbooks. Beer recipes were still present but they were singled out under the

specific recipe or under larger umbrella sections for Drinks, Common Drinks, and even (as in

Beecher’s work) Temperance Drinks. The recipes became more difficult to find, as if middle

55

51 Ruth M. Baker, The Cook's Manual, and American Housekeeper (New York: T.W. Strong; Boston: G.W. Cottrell & Co., 1851), 130.52 Eliza Leslie, Ladies Receipt Book (Philadelphia: Carey And Hart, 1847), 121, 230-251. The Domestic Liquors section started with a discussion of brewing and beer recipes.53 Baker, 129. Also The Book of One Hundred Beverages included soda powders for beer.54 The Book of One Hundred Beverages (New York: C.S. Francis & Co. Publishers, 1860), 30.

class women’s brewing was less important to their interpretation of domesticity. Additionally the

introductory information on how to brew was not usually included in middle class women’s

cookbooks after the mid 1840s. When Beecher published Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book

she was reflecting a shift within the true womanhood identity toward the second strain. The

reforming woman ideal had increasingly associated itself with reform movements. Beecher’s

almost self conscious identification of three distinct levels of temperance highlight how

important this movement was becoming to both strains of the true womanhood identity. Parallel

production and home production was, conversely, becoming less important as temperance

displaced it. Why was northern society preoccupied with temperance in the mid nineteenth

century?

After 1800 the country saw a surge in the use of alcohol.55 There was a widespread belief

that alcohol promoted good health, as seen in Lydia Maria Child’s recommendation to drink beer

as part of a healthy diet. Additionally, Americans increasingly saw it as patriotic to drink locally

produced American beer, and to boycott imports.56 George Washington and other founding

fathers signed a petitioned in 1770 stating that the merchants of Williamsburg, Virginia would no

longer import goods from Great Britain “either for sale or for our own use” including “beer, ale,

porter, [or] malt.”57 This created a larger market for locally brewed beer. As the doctrine of

separate spheres developed and men saw themselves as solely responsible for financially

supporting their families, men’s use of alcohol started to become a concern.58 Men were seen as

56

55 Alexander Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: an American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 10. The total quantity of alcohol consumed increased starting in 1800 to almost 4 gallons per capita by 1830.56 Carol Mattingly, Well Tempered Women: Nineteenth Century Temperance Rhetoric (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1998), 13. 57 Virginia General Assembly. House of Burgesses. The Association Entered into Last Friday, the 22nd Instant, by the Gentlemen of the House of Burgess, and the Body of Merchants Assembled in this City (Williamsburg, VA: Printed by William Rind, 1770). http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb333016558 Fletcher, 14.

being unable to participate fully in the new industrial economy when under the influence of

strong alcohol. The description of an intoxicated husband as a “ferocious beast” expressed

concern about moral decay within the family.59 Mason Locke Weems was an ordained minister

of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was best known for his biography of George

Washington, The life of Washington. He also wrote other moralistic works including God’s

Revenge against Adultery, and God’s revenge against Murder. Throughout his works Weems

generated images of Americans as industrious, temperate, and moral. He was a popular writer

with a large readership, over a million copies of his works were sold, and he was one of the most

popular writers of his day.60 Weems’ Drunkard’s Looking Glass, demonstrated clearly that men’s

drinking threatened middle class women and the home. In the Drunkard’s Looking Glass, Weems

depicted men as unable to control their drinking which always ended with death (either of the

protagonist or his wife or children) and usually

ended with financial ruin. Weems created a vivid

image of the drunkard as a half shaved fellow,

with stinking breath, staring, and grinning, with

“a pair of monstrous cheeks...a nose, of size

enormous stuck full of angry carbuncles big as

nutmegs...spotted over with fiery blotches red as

crimson-and then his eyes!...blood-shotten, they

57

59Jerome Nadelhaft, “Alcohol and Wife abuse in Antebellum Male Temperance Literature,” Canadian Review of American Studies 25 (1995):15-43. 60 American National Biography, vol. 22 ed. John A. Garraty and Mark Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), s.v. "Mason Locke Weems."

rolled...” he is a monster, half man-half beast.61 Weem even included an engraving of a

drunkard, in case his audience was still unsure from the descriptions of what to look for.

The unfortunate Mr. and Mrs. Hay

would have been a warning to Weems’ readers.

The couple started their married life very

happily, but as Weems explained, Mr. Hay took

to drinking. This caused his wife and young

child great distress, and although Mr. Hay

promised repeatedly not to drink anymore, he

eventually died, unconscious and intoxicated in

a barn fire, and left his wife and child financially destitute and forced to fend for themselves.62

Weems depiction of drunkards established men as the primary users of alcohol and middle class

women as the victims of men’s alcohol consumption, an image that the temperance movement

would later use.63

The threat of moral decay, which the Temperance movement employed, appealed

particularly to the campaign. Moral decay would have lessened middle class women’s recently

developed influence within the home; thus intemperance threatened society in multiple ways.64

Although middle class women were not at first allowed to participate fully within the

Temperance movement, they were seen as important silent partners, lending their moral suasion

and disinterested virtue to the cause. The middle class women who rallied under temperance

58

61 Mason Locke Weems, The Drunkard’s Looking Glass (District of Pennsylvania, 1818) 5. Image of Weem’s drunkard.62 Weems, 38-44. Image of Mrs. Hay and child discovering Mr. Hay vomiting on his front porch.63 Fletcher, 19.64 Fletcher, 18.

represented the reforming woman impulse of true womanhood, defending their influence within

the home. However as temperance gained a larger following of women, this reforming woman

model began to shift its focus beyond influence into activism. The activism of the reforming

woman began to manifest itself just as Beecher, Baker, and Leslie were writing their cookbooks.

Women who adhered to the reforming woman model would have been an important audience for

these cookbook writers, and they would have catered (to some extent) to their desires for

temperance recipes. The extent to which authors accommodated their audience most likely

varied. Lydia Maria Child who wrote her works as a source of income may have been more

aware than some of what her audience would buy and took that into account during her writings.

Catherine Beecher, who also wrote as a a way to supplement her income, may have viewed her

writings as a platform to promote women’s education and elevate women’s status,65 and may not

have adapt her works to her audience as much. Regardless of the amount of alteration done to a

work, the middle class women who produced and who bought these cookbooks were

participating in a discourse about womanhood. The cookbooks’ readership helped (through what

they chose to buy or not buy) to shape the works, in this way middle class women’s cookbooks

were as much a creation of cultural ideas as they were a reflection of it.

Temperance challenged both the domestic woman model and the reforming woman ideal.

The reforming woman advocated more and more for middle class women’s control of

temperance activities, based on concerns for children, women, and the poor (socially acceptable

groups for middle class women to champion).66 This position was difficult for the domestic

59

65 Catherine Beecher, True Remedy for the Wrongs of Woman (Boston: Philips, Samson, and Company, 1851), 27. Beecher states that someday the “domestic, the nurse, and the teacher, will become the most honorable...” and that, “all women will be educated...”Her works all seem to advocate for women’s status to elevated but remain within the bounds of traditional women’s work and domesticity. 66 Mattingly, 97

woman to argue against hence Beecher’s identification with limited temperance. Although

complete temperance was not wholly accepted either, critics of middle class women’s overt

involvement with temperance claimed that the behavior associated with their temperance actions

was selfish.67 The reforming woman archetype depended on women’s domestic status as

uninterested, moral, and selfless for their power, yet it was attacked when they acted beyond the

accepted realm of the domestic woman’s behavior and sphere.

In 1850 a trend away from beer recipes and parallel production started. The beer recipes

which were included in cookbooks were less elaborate, often appeared as singles or doubles, or

as in Catherine Beecher’s cookbook, disguised.68 As part of this shift cookbooks were just as

likely to have beer recipes as not to, suggesting that the reforming woman ideal was beginning to

utilize cookbooks as a platform. The reforming woman began to write cookbooks which pushed

her understanding of true womanhood and the evils of alcohol. The Maine Law, passed in 1851

by men, prohibited the production and limited the sale of alcohol, creating precedence for other

states to ban the creation of alcohol.69 These steps were in reaction to the same cultural and

social changes occurring in the late 1840s and 1850s. Additionally with the passage of the Maine

law, middle class society shifted the focus of temperance from individual abstinence to societal

prohibition; women’s established role as protectors of the home started to move into the public

sphere in reaction to this change in emphasis.70 The reforming woman model asserted itself by

actively calling for change through consumption rather than home or family production. These

middle class women wanted to secure their newly gained power, by removing the risk of moral

60

67 Mattingly, 97. Mari Jo Buhle, et al., 245.68 Eliza Actor authored Modern Cookery, in All its Branches in 1854, and included a recipe for Ginger Wine which is made exactly like Ginger Beer. 69 Mattingly, 97.70 Bordin, Women and Temperance, 8.

and economic decline. The temperance movement, still predominantly led by men, was exerting

its power to create legislation that reflected concerns over the use of alcohol. Men were

responding to fears over their inability to control their behavior when intoxicated and the

potential loss of economic stability. Both the reforming woman’s use of cookbooks and the

Maine Law, were manifestations of the need to limit and end the perceived threat of alcohol.

In 1855 Sylvia Cambell published The Practical Cookbook which included an article on

“The Importance of Pure Water,” 71 an alternative drink which was popular in temperance works

and supported the temperance movement’s understanding of how food and drink influenced

behavior. Prior to the Civil War the identity of men as breadwinners and self-made men was in

part measured by their ability to abstain from alcohol, which undermined their roles as

providers.72 Temperance literature touted water as an acceptable beverage alternative. Potable

water, or drinking water, was more common in cities after 1842 with the construction of the

Croton Aqueduct System in New York City which provided buildings with running water.73

Originally available only to the wealthy, as demand for drinking water increased cities and towns

built sewer systems that made potable water available to more people. The presence of articles

on the positive nature of water in middle class women’s cookbooks suggests that the reforming

woman model was using the format of cookbooks to reach a larger audience.

Water was not the only drink given as an appropriate substitute within cookbooks in the

mid 1850s; there was also an increase in tea recipes.74 The tea recipes included in Mrs. Bliss’ The

Practical Cook Book, published at various points from 1850 to 1860, appeared in the medicinal

61

71 Sylvia Cambell, The Practical Cook-book (Cincinnati: Longley, 1855), 100.72 Fletcher, 59.73 “Old Croton Aqueduct Trail,” accessed January12, 2012. New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/virtual-tours/old-croton-aqueduct-trail. 74 Mrs. Bliss, The Practical Cook Book, (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1857), 251.

section of the cookbook and replaced beer and other alcohol recipes to care for the sick. Bliss’

work indicates that the second strain identity was reaffirming its hold on the domestic aspect of

true womanhood while arguing for a temperance lifestyle.

Middle class women were not the only ones participating in the discussion over the status

of beer. William Cobbett, an English author of two instructional manuals and cookbooks

published in the United States, also discussed alcohol and tea. In Cottage Economy within his

chapter on brewing, Cobbett argued against the drinking of tea within the home variously stating

that tea made working men weak, idle, effeminate, and more susceptible to bad weather, and that

for young girls the tea table was “no bad preparatory school for the brothel.” 75 Cobbett

suggested that a man’s life expectancy went up if his wife brewed beer instead of tea.76 He also

contrasted the nutritious benefits of beer to the unhealthy effects of tea, implying that beer made

men better workers and was more economical.77 The audience for this work was ambiguous; he

wavered between addressing men and using male pronouns and discussing women’s work and

time demands. Cottage Economy’s unclear audience indicates that men and women were both

participating in the production of beer.

Cottage Economy was republished unchanged in 1850. Cobbett’s negative depiction of

tea drinking in Cottage Economy was strengthened in his publication Ladies Parlor Book and

Domestic Keepsake; beer was not discussed at all, but tea was further disparaged as encouraging

“female acquaintances and intruders” to crowd into the home.78 It seems that Cobbett accepted

62

75 William Cobbett, Cottage Economy: Containing Information Relative to the Brewing of Beer, Making of Bread, Keeping of Cows, Pigs, Bees...(New York: William Cobbett, 1833) xxxi.76 Cobbett, xxxiii.77 Cobbett, xxx.78 William Cobbett, Ladies Parlor Book and Domestic Keepsake (New York: William Cobbett, 1851)xi. Cobbett also expressed this sentiment in Advice to Young Men and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life...(London: Mills, Jowett, and Mills, 1829) vi. His statements against tea do no pertain to medicinal tea, only tea drunk for refreshment.

and encouraged middle class women’s brewing, but that he associated women and feminine

behavior more strongly with tea. For him beer held masculinizing and healthy effects necessary

for men to stay manly, and he was accustomed to middle class women engaged in parallel

production. Cobbett’s acceptance of middle class women brewing in the 1830s and 1850s and his

connection of beer to masculinity reinforces that society incorporated multiple social norms in

middle class women’s relationship to brewing.

The large number of interpretations of middle class women’s relationship to beer in the

mid nineteenth century suggests that true womanhood was ambiguous. The two models of true

womanhood were actively participating in a discussion about middle class women’s role in

society through their cookbooks. They were also defining middle class women’s relationship to

beer. In the 1830s the domestic woman ideal bolstered their connection to brewing through beer

recipes. Starting in the late eighteenth century commercial production altered women from the

middling sort’s brewing, but it did not end their brewing. Instead these women continued to brew

as part of a parallel brewing system that was focused on domestic consumption. As the doctrine

of true womanhood developed, the tradition of middle class women’s brewing remained stable

because it promoted women as experts in the home. When the reforming woman model began to

assert itself in the late 1840s and 1850s, middle class women’s parallel production of beer was

displaced by a focus on consumption and temperance. Since there was no single understanding

of true womanhood, both interpretations of domesticity were able to refine their relationship to

brewing. The doctrine of true womanhood encouraged middle class women to influence their

households through their kitchens both in what they produced for their families and in what they

allowed to enter into the home.

63

Chapter 3: “The Rise of the Reforming Woman”

The negotiation of true womanhood in American cookbooks was also present in the

Temperance movement. Two separate Temperance conventions occurred in September of 1853,

the World’s Temperance Convention and the Whole World’s Temperance Convention. The first

upheld the traditional role of middle class women as moral supporters and silent participants in

temperance. The second argued for a more vocal participation by middle class women that

acknowledged women as victims of alcohol; not because of an innate inferiority, but because

society’s laws had classified them into an inferior status.1 The second convention argued that

men’s intemperance had made men inappropriate guardians for women and that men’s authority

should be removed from middle class women. The second convention aligned itself with the

reforming woman’s ideal under true womanhood.2 Their argument expanded middle class

women’s claims to the right to participate equally in the temperance movement and solidified the

reforming woman model under the true womanhood identity.

By 1855, the reforming woman archetype had gained momentum, backed by state

legislation prohibiting the production and sale of beer and alcohol in 13 different states.3 Middle

class women who embraced this ideology had already begun to act publicly to defend against

what they perceived as a threat to the home. Middle class women’s sometimes violent attacks on

saloons and alcohol sellers also began in the 1850s. Men justified these attacks through

portraying middle and lower class women as victims of alcohol, who were acting out of

frustration and desperation.4

64

1 Fletcher, 54.2 Fletcher, 54. Mattingly, 97.3 Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart, ed. Cyclopedia of American Government, volume 3 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1914) 77.4 Mattingly, 97.

As the country moved closer to the Civil War, the reforming woman’s cookbooks started

to reflect their changing relationship to beer production. The beer recipes that middle class

women had included in the 1850s became more difficult to find and were no longer grouped

together under umbrella topics, as had been the case in the 1840s. Building on the previous

decade’s camouflaging of beer recipes in the indices, cookbooks from the 1850s included beer

recipes under the main ingredient rather than under beer. Instead of finding the three or four

recipes placed together in the index, a reader would have to search for the specific recipe, as in

Mrs. L. G. Abell’s 1855 The Skilful Housewife's Book Or Complete Guide To Domestic Cookery,

Taste, Comfort, And Economy, which included recipes for Ginger Beer and Molasses Beer listed

under the main ingredient, i.e. ginger and molasses.5 Although not a “code” which readers would

need to break, these recipes do not stand out and would have gone unnoticed without a careful

reading of the index. Beer recipes were still printed in middle class women’s cookbooks but the

domestic woman was increasingly trying to hide her involvement, perhaps in reaction to shifts

within this identity. It is possible that the authors were attempting to obscure beer recipes from

the more temperance minded women consumers, and from men buying for these women.

The reforming woman ideal was becoming more assertive, participating in its own

temperance convention, and aligning itself with middle class women’s rights. The domestic

woman model was in contrast losing ground to the reforming woman as the decade wore on. The

true womanhood ideology was increasingly associated with temperance in the 1850s, as

Catherine Beecher’s statements on temperance suggested. Nonetheless middle class women did

not eliminate beer recipes from cookbooks, indicating that the practice of making beer was still

acceptable as part of performing domesticity. The continued appearance of beer recipes

65

5 Mrs. L.G. Abell, The Skilful Housewife's Book Or Complete Guide To Domestic Cookery, Taste, Comfort, And Economy (New York: Orange Judd, 1855) index.

highlights the domestic woman’s persistence of parallel production. Although the brewing

industry was beginning to blossom in the late 1850s, middle class women still had access to

brewing.

The Role of the American Brewing Industry

I have already discussed potential reasons why beer was not the focus of the Temperance

movement until after the Civil War, including the substitution of different beverages and the

protected nature of homebrewing. With the increased immigration of Germans to the U.S.,

however it is possible that beer drinkers wanted a new style of beer. Germans began immigrating

to the U.S. in significant numbers with over 376,434 Germans moving to the U.S. from 1840 to

1850, and 654,251 more Germans during the next five years.6 Lagers had become a popular style

of beer in Germany and were successfully transplanted to the U.S. by immigrants starting in the

1840s.7 New immigrants may also have helped to change beer production’s gender; German

immigrants brought a form of brewing with them that was limited to men. Culturally, German

women did not participate in production of beer; instead they purchased beer.8 Since Germans

constructed the brewing identity differently, it may have changed the way gender was associated

with the production of beer within America.

The emergence of hopped beer in England in the late fourteenth century, as part of Dutch

and German immigrants settlement in England, started changes in the way society gendered

66

6 Susan Carter, et all, ed. “Table ad106-120 Immigrants, by country of last residence - Europe: 1820-1997,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, Millennial Edition, Vol. 1, Part A: Population (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1-560 (Series Ad106-120).7 Baron, 176.8 Bennet, 82. German men dominated professional brewing as early as the fourteenth century, which suggests that German women may have lost any tradition of homebrewing that they may have had prior to immigrating. In contrast English women were still recognized brewers when they began colonizing America in the seventeenth century. Smith, 226.

brewing.9 Dutch beer breweries were dominated by men after the fourteenth century; few

continental women were able to participate in this early commercialization of beer, due to its

high profile status as an established industry.10 Men’s control of German brewing continued

from the fourteenth century to the 1840s,11 when many Germans started immigrating to the U.S.

Due to political unrest in the mid 1840s, almost one million Germans immigrated to the U.S.12

Lagers were a lighter tasting beer that the large German immigrant population was comfortable

drinking and would have demanded in saloons and taverns. The number of breweries in North

America increased from 431 in 1850 to 1269 in 1860 as the German population escalated and

settled into cities.13 This explosion of factory brewing in the middle of the century suggests

strong competition not only for American breweries but also for middle class women’s home

brewing.

Beer’s links to female morality, and masculine industriousness both lessened. As German

immigrants became strongly associated with brewing, white middle class society began to view

beer as a dangerous influence. One cartoon published in Harper’s Weekly highlights the danger

associated with German immigrant’s beer use. The engraving depicts a typical German beer

garden frequented by entire families. However it is not a sedate family outing; women, children,

and a baby are shown drinking at the same time as an obviously drunk man climbs on to a table.

A sign on the balcony warns patrons not to stand on the chairs and tables. Within this cartoon

67

9 Bennet, 82-83.10 Bennet, 84.11 Baron, 177.12 Baron, 177-178. Susan Carter, et all, 1-560 (Series Ad106-120).13Don and Julie Kauffman, The United States Brewers Guide 1630-1864: A complete List of American Breweries, Owners, Addresses and Histories (Cheyenne, WY: Don and Julie Kauffman, 1967), 6-20. Baron, 211.

14 middle class fears about

immigrants and their drinking

habits are present. Immigrant

women participated in the raucous

drinking that middle class white

women started to distance

themselves from in this decade.

Beer’s connection with immigrants

(and with them corruption) moved it further away from the virtue of the home and domesticity.

The rise in women’s temperance activities corresponded with the opening of German breweries.

Beer’s wholesome image did continue despite these events through two avenues: middle

class women’s homebrewing as seen in beer recipes and the brewing industry’s endorsements.

The new American brewing industry capitalized on beer’s traditional image as part of its

advertisement campaigns in order to overcome negative stereotypes.

By 1860, American breweries flourished as they began to implement innovations that

were common in English and German breweries. These innovations included steam engines,

thermometers, saccharometers, attemperators, mashing machines, and conveyor machines. The

68

14 “German Beer Garden on a Sunday” Harper’s Weekly, October 15, 1859, 715. In the image a man is actively breaking the rule against standing on tables or chairs while a woman attempts to pull him down. Another man approaches with a stick to enforce this rule.

new technology allowed for mass production and uniform flavors.15 American beer became

standardized, with brewers able to control and heighten the levels of alcohol in each batch of

beer. The introduction of refrigeration in 1862 helped lager production become a year round

industry rather than a seasonal one.16 Louis Pasteur's sterilization process allowed beer to be

stored for longer periods.17 Because a majority of breweries were run by German immigrants, the

American varieties that had been developed in the years since colonization began to disappear,

resulting in light colored pilsner styles of beer. Light colored beer became so prevalent by the

end of the nineteenth century that darker colored beers were suspected of being disguised

spirits.18 Beer production became associated in the 1850s with a professional and masculine

identity through scientific terms and equipment. The reorganization of alcohol and gender were

important factors in middle class women’s involvement in temperance.

A Question of Manliness

As William Cobbett’s discussion of the effeminate qualities of tea indicated, men saw

beer as increasing their manly characteristics in the nineteenth century.19 Cobbett’s statements in

Cottage Economy indicated the nuanced rhetoric of men’s role within society; one side indicated

69

15 Mathias, Peter, The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830. (London:UK, Cambridge University Press, 1959) 63-66. Steam engines were being used to create steam in this case; steam was used by brewers to boil the mash faster. The mash is a mixture of grains, usually different ground malts, and water. For saccharometer see footnote 79. Attemperators measure the drop in specific gravity (footnote 79) that occurs as the wort ferments. A wort is the mixture of malts, sugar, proteins and other products created during mashing. A mashing machine was the predecessor to a mash tun (a large stainless steel tub with a mesh screen on the bottom which catches and strains the mash.) Definitions from: Dave Miller, Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need To Know To Make Great-Tasting Beer (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 1995), 338-346.16 Baron, 233-235.17 Ibid, 239.18 Elizabeth Tilton, “Is beer the cure for the Drink Evil?” The Survey, February 24, 1917. Schlesinger Library Microfilm no. 8480. (No page numbers but 2nd page.) This suggests that even as late as 1917 beer was not considered as bad as hard liquors, and that it was still not the threat that distilled spirits were. 19 Cobbett, xxx.

that men needed alcohol (specifically beer) to be productive members of society, while the other

side articulated that overindulgence of alcohol limited men’s ability to provide for their families.

The influx of German immigrants and rise of the American brewing industry helped reinforce the

association of manliness and beer drinking, by providing men with commercial beer that was

brewed by men. German men’s association of brewing with men’s work encouraged the industry

to grow. German breweries, like Schlitz, expanded and became industry leaders starting in the

1850s.20 By the 1860s the brewing industry as a whole recognized the need for some form of

collaboration when a tax act in July 1862, stipulated a one dollar tax for each barrel of beer sold

as well as licensing fees for individual brewers.21 By November of 1862 the first national

brewers convention discussed the ramifications of the new tax and how the government planned

to collect taxes on beer brewed prior to the act’s passage.22 This original meeting included only

lager beer brewers, but after the second meeting in 1863 a few ale brewers were always present

at the meetings; the first meetings were held entirely in German.23 The new Brewers

Association’s major function was to lobby the Internal Revenue Service to lower the tax on beer

barrels. The association lobbied several times from 1862 until 1869.24 This association allowed

men’s drinking to become a profitable industry that supported men’s beer drinking as healthy.

70

20 A. T. Andreas, History Of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, From Prehistoric Times To The Present Date (Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1881), 1463.21 “Tax Act 12. Stat 432” Records of the Internal Revenue Service, National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/058.html#58. 3. 22 United States Brewers’ Association, Documentary History of the United States Brewers‘ Association, Part I (New York: N.Y. Economical Printing Co., 1896-1898), 100, 116.23 United States Brewers’ Association, 117-118.24 United States Brewers’ Association, 230. Originally the Internal revenue service was called the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In1882 the income tax on alcohol was repealed. Records of the Internal Revenue Service, “The Tax Act of 1862 authorized a permanent internal revenue establishment, the Office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and which was informally known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue. It was formally re-designated the IRS, [in] 1953.”

Men’s fears about the negative effects of excessive drinking gave way to men’s

temperance groups in the 1840s. The Washingtonians, a middle class male led temperance

organization, increasingly leaned on middle class women after 1841 for their support and ability

to reshape men’s leisure away from drinking.25 This association eventually helped middle class

women take a more active role within the larger temperance movement and helped shift their

thinking on the progress of the movement and middle class women’s roles. In the 1850s,

reforming women began to see men as ineffective leaders of temperance, saying men had,

“dallied too long with the subject” and argued for increasing the role of middle class women.26

Domesticity reached its height in the the same decade, when middle class women were fully

invested in their moral authority, and when they were beginning to be valued outside the home

for their contributions.27 It was also in the 1850s that society began to chastise middle class

women for speaking out in defense of temperance. After an early temperance speech in 1853,

Susan B. Anthony’s status as a domesticity expert was called into question by local newspapers

because she was unmarried and presumably had no child rearing experience.28 Interestingly

Catherine Beecher’ domestic credentials were never disputed, even though she was also

unmarried and childless. The backlash against middle class women actively participating in

temperance in the 1850s only extended to women who went outside the domestic woman ideal.

Parallel Production Revived?

Perhaps the domestic woman was trying to reaffirm her ties to middle class values since

in the late 1850s and early 1860s there was a slight upturn in beer recipes. This small surge did

71

25 Fletcher, 34, 36-39. The Washingtonians were started in 1840 as a mutual support group for 6 alcoholic middle class men, the first Martha Washington society was established in 1841.26 D.C. Bloomer, The Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer (Boston: Arena Publishing, 1895), 20.27 Glenna Matthews, Just a Housewife (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 6.28 Ida Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Vol 1. (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1898), 83-84; Mattingly, 105; Fletcher, 25.

not over turn the trend away from beer in cookbooks, but it did suggest that middle class women

were concerned about their domesticity status and highlighted their brewing to some extent as a

way to showcase their domesticity. Included in Mrs. Bradley’s Housekeeper’s Guide, published

in 1860, was a chapter titled “How to Make Beer” with five separate recipes. The book included

an accolade for White Spruce Beer, “It is a delightful beverage in warm weather.” 29 This

cookbook stands out for its inclusion of a specific chapter on beer and for having five different

beer recipes. Cookbooks from 1860 show the slow decline in beer recipes with 53% of works

including at least two beer recipes (five of the fifteen works had more than two recipes); however

Mrs. Bradley’s was the only work to highlight the process of brewing in a chapter title. Mrs.

Bradley’s did not give a detailed account of brewing. Mrs. Bradley’s recipes were vague,

assuming knowledge in the reader, yet her recommendation of White Spruce Beer indicated she

had a past knowledge of brewing, and knew the best time to use this specific recipe. Mrs.

Bradley may have been attempting to reestablish the traditional link between women and

brewing, as a way to showcase her mastery of domesticity; Mrs. Bradley may have also been

catering to her audience’s demands for instructions on brewing. The fact that Mrs. is repeated on

the cover page twice may indicate a self-consciousness by the author and publisher, as well as a

withdrawal from the reforming woman interpretation of true womanhood.30

The revival of middle class women’s parallel production of beer may have been in

reaction to nativist fears and the rise in taxes associated with buying commercial beer through

1869. Like Mrs. Bradley, other cookbook authors began including beer again in their indices

under beer, making it easier to locate these recipes. The early 1850s had seen a downgrading of

72

29 Mrs. J.S. Bradley, Mrs. Bradley’s Housekeeper’s Guide; or A new plain and economical cook-book (Cincinnati: H.M. Rulison, 1860), 99.30 Mattingly discussed the use of Miss as a way for newspapers to disparage outspoken unmarried temperance women, and question their legitimacy as counselors to society, 105.

beer in middle class women’s cookbooks, and an effort to split up beer recipes as the reforming

woman model of true womanhood gained support from middle class women. By the early 1860s

the domestic woman’s focus on production revived slightly, and reasserted itself in cookbooks.

Civil War and Aftermath

! The Civil War affected all areas of American life in the nineteenth century. For

temperance, it was this war and the social changes that occurred after it that strengthened the

cause and finally broke middle class women’s link to beer production. The temperance

movement used fears about over consumption of alcohol to combat the changes in drinking that

occurred in military camps. Alcohol was a part of daily camp life, and beer consumption doubled

the levels of 1850 by the end of the war.31 Attitudes about the association of gender and drinking

changed because of the Civil War. For the temperance movement prior to 1850 masculinity was

defined by men’s ability to abstain from alcohol, the male identity was associated with sobriety

and restraint. Over the course of the war masculinity became connected with bravery in battle

and an exaggerated masculinity (associated with men’s drinking).32

The war also redefined femininity. The decades leading up to the Civil War saw an

increase in alcohol related spousal abuse.33 The rate of women killed by their husbands tripled in

Vermont and New Hampshire by the mid nineteenth century. During the war middle class

73

31 Fletcher, 60.32 Fletcher, 59, 63.33 Barbara Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press), 108-109; Rorabaugh, 9. Alcohol was a part of daily camp life, and beer consumption doubled the levels of 1850 by the end of the war.31 The type of drinking was also different from pre-industrialized America. Men binge drank more often during the nineteenth than in the eighteenth century.

women continued participating in temperance groups, and expanded their roles. Many of the men

defended themselves by claiming they were drunk.34 These developments in how society used

alcohol and the behavior it was affiliated with affected how women viewed alcohol and beer. The

association of alcohol, abuse, and women’s victimhood were fundamental images to the early

temperance cause since Mason Weems’ Drunkards Looking Glass. This perception may have

initially encouraged middle class women to join the temperance movement. During and after the

war groups like the Good Templars and the Sons of Temperance encouraged women to

participate and to hold leadership positions.35 Middle class women also claimed the right to

participate in organizations like the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of Missing Men

of the United States Army, through their traditional domestic role of caring for the sick and

dead.36 The growth of middle class women’s roles during the Civil War was due in part to a

shortage of men. However, as middle class women advanced within the hierarchy of temperance,

they changed the rhetoric to present middle class women as the natural champions of temperance

pointing to women’s capacity as role models and courageous heroines.37 In the 1860s changes in

the meaning of womanhood and manliness combined with the new focus on complete societal

temperance created by the Maine Law. Men and women took on new roles that reinforced that

intemperance was a group threat rather than an individual one. As a result these forces came

together and created a crisis within middle class women’s relationship to home brewing. Both

interpretations of true womanhood were able to embrace the new concept of women leading

temperance through their experiences of the war.

74

34 Mari Jo Buhle et al., 216-217.35 Fletcher, 74-75.36 Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic Of Suffering: Death And The American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 212-213.37 Mattingly, 40.

It was however, an uneven embrace, there seemed to be a slight resurgence of the

domestic woman ideal at the end of the war. Beer recipes started to include the price per batch

again, indicating that it was cheaper to brew at home rather than buy beer.38 The presence of

prices connotes anxiety over expenses and household incomes post bellum. Economic instability

was common for the rising middle class and fears of falling back into poverty must have been

wide spread. Catherine Beecher noted these fears almost two decades earlier in her Treatise on

Domestic Economy, when she said, “Persons in poverty, are rising to opulence, and persons of

wealth are sinking to poverty...There are no distinct classes...but all are thrown into promiscuous

masses.” 39 Yet it was only at the end of the Civil War and in the face of the new brewing

industry that middle class women started to include fears of economic and social instablity.

Isabella Beeton, who published numerous cookbooks, did this in at least two of her works,

Beeton’s Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping Book in New York and The Dictionary of Every-

day Cookery in London. Beeton’s works show that some lingering domestic woman impulses

may have been concerned with their role as home brewers and about losing a part of their

performance of domesticity. Women ascribing to the reforming woman model in contrast

became more outspoken in their denouncement of all alcohol after the Civil War, when American

society attempted to deal with its aftermath. In Albert Bellows’ The Philosophy Of Eating, beer

is linked (by the use of “see” notes) to a discussion of alcohol as a dangerous problem. Beer is

not specifically mentioned in Bellows statement on alcohol but he does not include any

additional information under beer except the directions to go to page 220 where alcohol is

75

38 Isabella Beeton, Beeton’s Everyday Cookery And Housekeeping Book (New York: D. Appleton and Co., Broadway, 1865), 130. The Dictionary Of Every-day Cookery, (London: S.O. Beeton, 1865), 137. These works are extremely similar in layout and recipes.39 Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy, 32-33.

attacked as un-nutritious.40 Bellows also included an entire chapter on the benefits of drinking

water.41 Similarly Juliet Corson wrote, a decade later, that beer was a waste of money, arguing

that nursing mothers would not pass on important nutrients to their babies because beer would

dilute their milk.42

! In 1865, the first attack on all alcohol in cookbooks was published in a women’s

cookbook. Earlier cookbooks had discussed temperance, or excluded alcohol, but none had made

any serious critique of alcohol. Although originally written in French sometime prior to 1826,

this work made its first appearance in New York just as the Civil War was winding down. In The

Handbook of Dining, the author (or translator) attacked alcohol, within a chapter titled “Thirst”

saying that, “Alcohol is the monarch of liquids. America was subjugated by alcohol as much as

by gunpowder.” 43 The author went on to suggest that uncertainty over the future led men to

drink. This initial statement on alcohol as the master of Americans would have distressed many

who ascribed to the reforming woman ideal. They saw alcohol as a looming threat both morally

and politically as the young brewing industry was beginning to recruit active lobbyists.44

Although the author may not have intended his work to set in motion a tide of anti-alcohol

articles in cookbooks, that was the outcome.

In 1869, Catherine Beecher published, for the last time, Miss Beecher’s Domestic

Receipt-book. It included her older recipes for Ginger Beer, and Superior Ginger Beer. That

same year, she came out with a new work, this time in conjunction with her sister Harriet

76

40 Albert Bellows, The Philosophy Of Eating (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1868), 218, 220.41 Bellows, 185-204.42 Juliet Corson, Fifteen Cent Dinners for Families of Six (New York: Juliet Corson, 1877), 20.43 Brillat-Sarvarin, L.F. Simpson, trans. The Handbook Of Dining, Or, Corpulency And Leanness Scientifically Considered: Comprising The Art Of Dining On Correct Principles Consistent With Easy Digestion, The Avoidance Of Corpulency, And The Cure Of Leanness, Together With Special Remarks On These Subjects (New York: Appleton, 1865) 137.44 Baron, 215.

Beecher Stowe called The American Woman's Home. Although not a cookbook, this work was an

all encompassing manual for housework, health, and the organization of the home. Beecher

makes her strongest statements about temperance within this work. The sisters presented

arguments against the use of stimulant drinks, by which they meant any drink that caused various

forms of excitement in the imbibers.45 Additionally Catherine Beecher repudiated her earlier

stance on temperance in Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, where she identified herself as

using alcohol in her cooking. In The American Woman’s Home she describes alcohol as “poison,”

“sinful in all forms,” “unhealthy” for everyone, and most importantly may lead to a desire for

more.46 In true Catherine Beecher style, she used science to underline her points, she stated that

stimulating drinks caused all functions of the body to accelerate beyond their natural speed and

that once the stimulation wore off, the body was left in a state of diminished power equal to the

earlier stimulation.47 She went on to suggest that coffee, tea, all hot drinks, all cold drinks, and

drinking anything while eating was unhealthy and potentially dangerous.48 Beecher was still

working under the domestic woman ideal; however, this model of true womanhood had changed.

Beecher states, “There is no direction in which a woman more needs both scientific knowledge

and moral force than in using her influence to control her family in regard to stimulating

beverages.” 49 Beecher’s work shows that something dramatic occurred within the domestic

woman ideal since her first writing in 1847. Rhetoric, women’s changing emphasis on

consumption over production, and the increased commercial production and misuse of beer came

together in Beecher’s final work, to make middle class women’s tradition of brewing

77

45 Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home (New York: J.B. Ford and Company, 1869) 142.46 Beecher and Beecher Stowe, 147.47 Beecher and Beecher Stowe, 138-139.48 Beecher and Beecher Stowe, 138-149.49 Beecher and Beecher Stowe, 138.

incompatible with domesticity. The fact that she published this later work with such different

views indicates that middle class women’s relationship to beer within the domestic woman

interpretation of true womanhood had changed. The link between performing domesticity and the

production of beer was disrupted; temperance and consumption became associated with

domesticity.

The American Woman's Home marks the true decline of beer recipes in middle class

women’s cookbooks. When Beecher and Stowe published a similar work in 1871 called

Principles of Domestic Science they included stronger warnings against alcohol, stating that it

was “injurious” for household children to be brought up in the same home as alcohol.50 Here

Beecher was setting out a fundamental tenet of domesticity, middle class women’s responsibility

to protect children. Beecher’s understanding of how to perform true womanhood changed to

associate home alcohol production with a threat to children. After 1871 it becomes difficult to

find examples of middle class women’s parallel production of beer in their cookbooks. Beecher

moved from concentrating heavily on production and on how to care for the home, to advocating

against the consumption of potentially harmful outside influences. Within three years the

Women’s Crusade turned into a national organization becoming a powerful political force

focused on protecting the home.

The rhetoric of the 1850s that asserted men’s incompetence to handle the problem of

alcohol, shifted into the political arena as middle class women in the WCTU voted in 1874 for

“home protection” a platform for supporting women’s suffrage. The domestic woman model

embraced more of the reforming woman ideal in the late 1860s and early 1870s to envision

middle class women’s sphere as encompassing more than the physical confines of the home.

78

50 Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Principles of Domestic Science (New York: J.B. Ford, 1871), 130.

Beecher’s statement in Principles of Domestic Science indicates that the major tenants of true

womanhood with its focus on child rearing remained constant to both interpretations. However

over the course of the nineteenth century, how this goal was achieved changed as a result of

social factors (like the rise in immigrant men’s brewing, the civil war, economic instability, and

nativism) as well as the influence of the different perceptions of true womanhood. Prior to

Frances Willard’s ascent to power in 1874 and the modification in the domestic woman model

toward outwardly defending the home, parallel production and middle class women’s home

brewing was not incompatible with true womanhood. It was through middle class women’s

evolving understanding of domesticity that they put aside the tradition of brewing and move into

the public sphere and demanded women’s suffrage. Middle class women were unable to

participate overtly in the commercialization of brewing due to middle class perceptions of gender

divisions in work. The nineteenth century association of men with commerce and women with

the home was too strong for middle class women brewers to overcome; men and women did not

see it as part of their sphere. Instead middle class women utilized the foundation of true

womanhood, the nurturing of children, to move beyond the home.

79

Conclusion

In 1889 Elizabeth Thompson published The Figures of Hell: or The Temple of Bacchus.

Dedicated to the Licensers and Manufacturers of Beer and Whiskey. Thompson’s work was

addressed to the producers of alcohol, specifically (as the title states) beer and whiskey. She

states in her preface, “This appeal is not to drunkards, pleading for them to reform. That has been

tried in vain. There are no half-way measure in treating with mad dogs and rattlesnakes. Unless

they are killed or boxed up they will kill us. Equally so is it with those that manufacture and sell

intoxicating liquors...We are an afflicted people, accursed with beer and whiskey.” 1 Thompson’s

remarks are extreme and highlight how radical middle class women became as they embraced

the reforming woman’s ideal in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Additionally her work

shows that women (at least those in contact with Thompson) were no longer participating in

parallel production of beer. Her work, which focuses on statistics and horror stories, argues not

for a law enacting prohibition, but the end of manufacture and importation of “spiritous

liquors.” 2 It is important to note that beer has been linked with spiritous liquors in Thompson’s

work, and that she emphasized beer in the title of her work. Beer had maintained its image as

wholesome and its place within middle class women’s cookbooks only until the late 1860s.

Beer’s protected status as a nutritious beverage and “delightful in warm weather,” 3 disappeared

after the domestic woman model renounced its focus on traditional production in favor of the

more activist impulse of the reforming woman ideal. Left undefended by middle class women,

beer was made susceptible to condemnation by temperance reformers. Middle class women came

full circle from participating in beer production in the early to mid-nineteenth century to

80

1 Elizabeth Thompson, The Figures of Hell: or The Temple of Bacchus. Dedicated to the Licensers and Manufacturers of Beer and Whiskey (New York, NY: Oahspe Publishing Association, 1889), 3.2 Thompson, 4.3 Mrs. Bradley, 99.

attacking the production of beer as a threat to society at the end of the century. Thompson’s

statements indicate that the shift from production to consumption continued and became so

closely related to middle class women’s perception of womanhood that women could condemn

beer production from the outside, as unconnected to domesticity.4

This study challenges the argument that middle class white women lost their claim to

brewing in the eighteenth century. I argue that middle class women continued brewing in the face

of industrialization. Middle class women were actively participating, albeit in a different way, in

the industrialization that swept the northern United States during the nineteenth century.

Additionally this thesis argues that different interpretations of domesticity were important factors

in women’s involvement in homebrewing. Domesticity highlights the way middle class women

understood their roles within and beyond the home.

Middle class women embraced and distanced themselves from beer in turns during the

nineteenth century. As middle class women adopted true womanhood, they used beer in distinct

ways to support their diverse interpretations. Within this study, I present two different models

within true womanhood as a way to contextualize the different ways middle class women

interpreted their role in the home and their relationship to beer. In the early nineteenth century,

beer gave middle class women a way to perform domesticity through brewing for their families

81

4 Image from Thompson, title page.

and the home. Cookbook recipes encouraged this performance by distributing beer recipes and

providing a permanent record of middle class women’s access to homebrewing. By the mid

nineteenth century middle class women’s relationship to home brewed beer was not as stable.

The two different ideals began to view beer and brewing in different ways as the domestic

woman maintained its attachment to brewing and the reforming woman moved closer to

temperance. Middle class women’s focus within the home began to move from production to

consumption in this period. Catherine Beecher’s statements on temperance chronicle this mid

century shift as middle class women began rethinking their relationship to beer. The

concealment of alcohol production within beer recipes shows that although the domestic woman

archetype continued to brew, cookbook authors increasingly saw alcohol production as opposed

to domesticity. The 1870s saw the domestic woman type relinquish their role as brewers and

embrace the reforming woman’s hostility towards alcohol in all forms.

This thesis reaffirms that middle class women’s understanding of domesticity changed in

the nineteenth century. In the 1830s cookbooks indicate domesticity was the mastery of domestic

tasks and the provision of the family through home production. The goal of domesticity was to

make the home a nurturing space where middle class women could instill morals and virtue in

their children, and to give their male relatives a place to recover from the strain of public life.

The domestic woman ideal reinforced their influence in the home through their connection to

brewing through beer recipes. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, women from the

middling sort adjusted their brewing in reaction to commercial production. Middling sort women

did not stop brewing; instead they continued to brew as part of a parallel production that focused

on domestic use. As the doctrine of true womanhood developed, middle class women’s brewing

82

remained stable because it promoted the idea that these women were experts and professionals

within the home.

Middle class women’s parallel production of beer began to be displaced when the

reforming woman model began to assert itself in the late 1840s and 1850s. Recipes in the 1850s

illustrate the reforming woman ideal had expanded that responsibility to include protecting the

home from outside threats; these women were backed by state laws prohibiting the sale and

production of beer and alcohol in 13 different states.5 Middle class women embraced this

mentality began to act publicly to defend against what they perceived as threats to the home with

riots. Men also began to re-evaluate their relationship to beer, with men leading temperance

groups in the 1840s and passing the Maine Law in 1851 which encouraged the reforming woman

model to broaden its understanding of middle class women’s roles. At the same time, men were

also developing an American brewing industry supported in large part by German immigrants.

The domestic woman ideal began to accept more of the reforming woman model in the 1850s by

downplaying beer in middle class women’s cookbooks and splitting up beer recipes. In the early

1860s the domestic woman’s focus on production was reinvigorated slightly, and reestablished

itself in cookbooks; perhaps in reaction to the economic crisis in 1857 which limited many

family’s incomes.

The cookbook recipes of the late 1860s and early 1870s show that both interpretations

had incorporated protecting the home as a way to perform domesticity. This goal was achieved

in different ways by each interpretation and changed as a result of social factors. The parallel

production of beer continued for women under the domestic woman model until they began to

83

5 Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart, ed. Cyclopedia of American Government, volume 3 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1914) 77.

see it as dangerous, and a threat to children; again the basis for true womanhood stressed middle

class women’s role as protectors of children. In 1874 Francis Willard was elected as president of

the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; her rise marks the end of beer recipes in middle class

women’s cookbooks. Willard’s leadership continued middle class women’s movement away

from the private sphere while maintaining the central tenets of true womanhood. By stressing

middle class women’s commitment to domesticity, and Christian socialism, Willard made middle

class women’s work outside of the home more acceptable.6

With Willard’s election, middle class women were not only embracing temperance but

also the reforming woman’s understanding of domesticity as protecting the home from outside of

it. No longer were middle class women able to assert themselves as influences within the home

producing beer; instead middle class women advocated “to make the whole world home like”7

but without the tradition of alcohol.

Further Research

I began this thesis with the quote from Janet Theophano, “[w]hether they are used or not,

they are not forgotten. Their existence in writing offers us a kind of permanence that, if and when

we want it, is waiting for us to retrieve.” 8 Cookbooks provide incredible insight into middle class

women’s lives; although middle class women’s beer recipes have been available to historians,

they haven’t been used to help illuminate how these women felt about brewing. I used

cookbooks to help me clarify middle class women’s relationship to brewing because I thought

they would provide a more varied set of voices than middle class women writing on alcohol. I

found that I was admittedly limited by my research to the perspectives of middle class white

84

6 Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 11.7 Gertrude Stevens Leavitt, The Story of Frances E. Willard (Portland, ME: L.H. Nelson Company, 1905), 8.8 Janet Theophano, Eat My Words (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 51.

women from the northeast. I would have liked to get a more diverse viewpoint to see how

women of different class and ethnic groups viewed beer.

The problem of studying published cookbooks is that not every part of society is

represented. Stanley Baron included two photos within his work that showed women working

within nineteenth century breweries. Women’s participation in commercial brewing was not the

focus of this thesis, but the existence of these two photos suggests that some women, probably

from a lower class, did make the transition into commercial production. More research on

women’s factory work within the brewing industry might address lower class women’s

relationship to brewing. In addition this thesis does not include a wide variety of ethnic groups. I

only saw two cookbooks in my research with kosher recipes, but perhaps the collections I looked

at were not equipped to address more diverse populations. By examining local churches’ or

communities’ cookbooks, I could potentially study other ethnic groups to sketch and a fuller

image of women’s brewing in the nineteenth century.

Beyond expanding the scope of the women studied, further research could provide

greater insight into how women participated in parallel production. Jensen’s study of parallel

production helps illustrate how women participated in a more subtle form of capitalism, evolving

through four different phases of production; use, surplus sale, middling sale, and finally

commercial sale.9 These different stages developed within families over time, sometimes

overlapped, and were interchangeable. While the present study did not find substantiating

evidence of these stages of production in brewing, it is not unlikely that similar phases of

production occurred. Further, this thesis could be expanded to include men’s homebrewing

85

9 Jensen, 819.

activities in the nineteenth century, and then placing homebrewing within the larger context of

nineteenth century beer brewing.

Additionally I was unable to research and contextualize how beer was viewed against

other beverages. This is an area that needs further research to build on where beer stood relative

to drinks like tea and coffee as well as other alcoholic beverages like cider. Cynthia Brandimarte

in the essay “To Make the Whole World Homelike: Gender, Space and America’s Tea Room

Movement” traces how tea helped women move into public spaces and commerce at the

beginning of the twentieth century.10 A possible area of study that could expand on this thesis and

the work of Brandimarte would be examining the relationship of different beverages in the

nineteenth century.

This study focused primarily on the middle of the nineteenth century; while I discuss

women’s temperance, it was not the focal point of my thesis. Additional research on the late

nineteenth century WCTU and women’s participation in factory brewing would provide more

information on the status of women’s relationship and access to brewing at the end of the century

and prior to Prohibition.

86

10 Cynthia Brandimarte, “To Make the Whole World Homelike: Gender, Space and America’s Tea Room Movement,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 1-19.

87

BibliographyPrimary Sources:

Abell, Mrs. L.G. The Skilful Housewife's Book Or Complete Guide To Domestic Cookery, Taste, Comfort, And Economy. New York: Orange Judd, 1855.

An Act to Encourage the Manufacture and Consumption of Strong beer, Ale and Other Malt Liquors. The Perpetual Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; The Establishment of its Constitution to the Second Session of the General Court, 1798. 2 Vol., Worcester, 1799.

The American Practical Cookery Book. Philadelphia: J.W. Bradley Printer, 1860.

Baker, Ruth M. The Cook's Manual, and American Housekeeper. New York: T.W. Strong; Boston: G.W. Cottrell & Co., 1851.

Beecher, Catherine. An Essay On Slavery and Abolitionism, With Reference To The Duty Of American Females. Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1837

Beecher, Catherine. Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book. New York, Harper & brothers, 1847.

“Catherine Beecher to My Dear Lizzie, July 24, 1867” Folder 19, Box 1, Beecher Stowe Family Papers 1798-1956, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.

Beecher, Catherine and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Principles of Domestic Science. New York: J.B. Ford, 1871.

Beecher, Catherine and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The American Woman's Home. New York: J.B. Ford and Company, 1869.

Beecher, Catherine. True Remedy for the Wrongs of Woman. Boston: Philips, Samson, and Company, 1851.

Beeton, Isabella. Beeton’s Everyday Cookery And Housekeeping Book. New York: D. Appleton and Co., Broadway, 1865.

Beeton, Isabella. The Dictionary Of Every-day Cookery. London: S.O. Beeton, 1865.

Bellows, Albert. The Philosophy Of Eating. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1868.

VMHB 37, no. 2 :109; John Curtis to Mr. Loyd [or Boyd] 1733, John Curtis Letter book 1717-1744, 2:131, TS, Rockefeller Library; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

Bliss, Mrs. The Practical Cook Book. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1857.

The Book of One Hundred Beverages. New York: C.S. Francis & Co. Publishers, 1860.

88

Brillat-Sarvarin, L.F. Simpson, trans. The Handbook Of Dining, Or, Corpulency And Leanness Scientifically Considered : Comprising The Art Of Dining On Correct Principles Consistent With Easy Digestion, The Avoidance Of Corpulency, And The Cure Of Leanness, Together With Special Remarks On These Subjects. New York: Appleton, 1865.

Bradley, Mrs. J.S. Mrs. Bradley’s Housekeeper’s Guide; or A new plain and economical cook-book. Cincinnati: H.M. Rulison, 1860.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated To Those Who Are Not Ashamed Of Economy. Boston: Carter, Hendee, and Babcock, 1830.

“Lydia Maria Child Papers,” Microfiche 3, letter 10-2. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

“Lydia Maria Child Papers,” Microfiche 3, letter 50. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

“The Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, 1817-1880,” Microfiche 3, letter 8, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Child, Samuel. Everyman his Own Brewer. Philadelphia: printed by T. Condie, and H. Kammerer, 1796.

Cambell, Sylvia. The Practical Cook-book. Cincinnati: Longley, 1855.

Cobbett, William. Ladies Parlor Book and Domestic Keepsake. New York: William Cobbett, 1851.

Cobbett, William. Advice to Young Men and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life...London: Mills, Jowett, and Mills, 1829.

Cobbett, William. Cottage Economy: Containing Information Relative to the Brewing of Beer, Making of Bread, Keeping of Cows, Pigs, Bees... New York: William Cobbett, 1833.

The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery: Being a Collection of Original and Selected Receipts...Watertown, NY: Knowlton and Rice, 1830.

Corson, Juliet. Fifteen Cent Dinners For Families Of Six. New York: Juliet Corson, 1877.

“German Beer Garden on a Sunday” Harper’s Weekly, October 15, 1859, 715.

Hammond, Gerald, ed. John Skelton, Selected Poems. Manchester: Routledge, 2003.

Leslie, Eliza. Ladies Receipt Book. Philadelphia: Carey And Hart, 1847.

89

Markham, Gervase, ed. Michael Best, The English Housewife. Quebec: McGill University Press, 1994.

Morrice, Alexander. A Treatise on Brewing, wherein is Exhibited the Whole Process of the Art and Mystery of Brewing the Various Sorts of Malt Liquor; With Practical Examples Upon Each Species. London: For The Author: Sold By H.D. Symonds, Paternoster Row, 1802.

“Manuscript,” March 3 1767, Brown Family Papers. John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

Rush, Benjamin. An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind. Brookfield: MA, 1784.

Rundell, Maria Eliza Ketelby. A New System of Domestic Cookery. Boston: W. Andrews, 1807.

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery. Hartford, CT: Printed for Simeon Butler, Northampton, 1796.

Thompson, Elizabeth, The Figures of Hell: or The Temple of Bacchus. Dedicated to the Licensers and Manufacturers of Beer and Whiskey. New York, NY: Oahspe Publishing Association, 1889.

Virginia. General Assembly. House f Burgesses 1770. The Association Entered into Last Friday, the 22nd Instant, by the Gentlemen of the House of Burgess, and the Body of Merchants Assembled in this City. Williamsburg, VA: Printed by William Rind, 1770. http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb3330165

Hening, William Walter.“August. 1734,” The Statutes at Larges Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619. New York: 1819-1823.

Weems, Mason Locke. The Drunkard’s Looking Glass. District of Pennsylvania, 1818.

United States Brewers’ Association, Documentary History of the United States Brewers‘ Association, Part I. New York: N.Y. Economical Printing Co., 1896-1898.

Secondary Sources:

Andreas, T. History Of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, From Prehistoric Times To The Present Date. Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1881.

Baron, Stanley Wade. Brewed In America; A History Of Beer And Ale In The United States. Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1962.

90

Brandimarte, Cynthia. “To Make the Whole World Homelike: Gender, Space and America’s Tea Room Movement,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 1-19.

Bennet, Judith M. Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England; Women’s work in a changing World 1300-1600. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Bloomer, D.C. The Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer. Boston: Arena Publishing, 1895.

Bordin, Ruth. Frances Willard: A Biography. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Bordin, Ruth. Women and Temperance. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.

Boydston, Jeanne. Home And Work: Housework, Ages and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Boydston, Jeanne, Mary Kelley, and Ann Margolis, The Limits of Sisterhood. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Buhle, Mari Jo, et al. Women and the Making of America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

Carter, Susan, et all, ed. “Table Ad106-120 Immigrants, by country of lasr residence - Europe: 1820-1997” Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, Millenial Edition, Vol. 1, Part A: Population. New York: Cambridge Uiversity Press, 2006.

Cott, Nancy. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature. Eighth Edition, volume 5. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1855.

Epstein, Barbara. The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic Of Suffering: Death And The American Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

Fletcher, Holly Berkley. Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Garraty, John A. and Mark Carnes, ed. American National Biography, vol. 22. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

91

Ginzberg, Lori D. Women in Antebellum Reform. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2000.

Harper, Ida. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Vol 1. Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1898.

Harvey, Elizabeth D. & Kathleen Okruhlik, ed., Women and Reason. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Hyam, R. & R.J. Pankhurst. Plants And Their Names : a Concise Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Jaffee David. A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Jensen, Joan. “Butter Making and Economic Development in Mid-Atlantic America from 1750 to 1850” Signs 13 no.4, Summer, 1988.

Karcher, Carolyn L. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994.

Kauffman, Don and Julie. The United States Brewers Guide 1630-1864: A complete list of American Breweries, owners, addresses and histories. Cheyenne, WY: Don and Juile Kauffman, 1967.

Lender, Mark Edward, and James Kirby Martin. Drinking in America: A History. New York, NY: Free Press, 1982.

Leavitt, Gertrude Stevens. The Story of Frances E. Willard. Portland, ME: L.H. Nelson Company, 1905.

"Mason Locke Weems." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 5, 2011). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404706780.html

Mathias, Peter. The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830. London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Matthews, Glenna. Just a Housewife. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Mattingly, Carol. Well Tempered Women: Nineteenth Century Temperance Rhetoric. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1998.

McDonnell, Myles. Roman Manliness. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

McLaughlin, Andrew Cunningham and Albert Bushnell Hart, ed. Cyclopedia of American Government, volume 3. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1914.

92

Meacham, Sarah Hand. Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Miller, Dave. Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need To Know To Make Great-Tasting Beer. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 1995.

Nadelhaft, Jerome. “Alcohol and Wife Abuse in Antebellum Male Temperance Literature,” Canadian Review of American Studies 25 (1995).

“Old Croton Aqueduct Trail,” accessed January12, 2012. New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/virtual-tours/old-croton-aqueduct-trail.

Salinger, Sharon V. Taverns and Drinking in Early America. Baltimore, ML: John Hopkins University Press, 2002

Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad. New York: North Point Press, 1986.

Sklar, Katherine Kish. Catherine Beecher: A study in American Domesticity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974.

Smith, Gregg. Beer in America; the Early Years 1587-1840. New York, NY: Siris Books, 1998.

Scott, Joan. Gender and the Politics of History: Revised Edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Stubbs, Brett J. "Captain Cook's beer: the antiscorbutic use of malt and beer in late 18th century sea voyages" Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (apjcn.nhri.org.tw) 12 no.2: June 2003.

Palmer, Dave R. George Washington and Benedict Arnold. Washington, D.C.:Regnery, 2006.

Rice, Steven. Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America. Berkley: University of California Press, 2004.

Rorabaugh, Alexander. The Alcoholic Republic: an American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

“Benjamin Rush (1746-1813),” accessed January 2012, University Archives, University of Pennsylvania, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rush_benj.html.

“Tax Act 12. Stat 432” Records of the Internal Revenue Service, National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/058.html#58

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

93

Welter, Barbara. "The Cult Of True Womanhood: 1820–1860." American Quarterly 18 no. 2, part 1 (1966).

Wilson, James Grant ed. Memorial History of the city of New York. 4 vol. New York: New York History Co., 1893.

Zagarri, Rosemarie. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

94