Home Life in Colonial Days

I just finished this book and I loved it. First, Alice Morse Earle is descriptive and it is fascinating to read her personal feelings as she looks back in time, writing this in the late 1800's. She often speaks of things that they were still doing or using in the late 1800's that I have never heard of and she'll say "much like we still use" when she spoke of how they cleared snow from roads with horses and plows. Each chapter is more interesting than I could have imagined: Homes of Colonists The Light of Other Days The Kitchen Fireside The Serving of Meals Food from Forest and sea Indian Corn Meat and Drink Flax Culture and Spinning Wool Culture and Spinning (and cotton) Hand-Weaving Girls' Occupations Dress of the Colonists Jack-knife Industries Travel, Transportation and Taverns Sunday in the colonies Colonial Neighborliness Old-time Flower Gardens Alice went over in detail the tools, fixtures, techniques and reasons for techniques. It was amazing to read about how much exercise and time women spent making material for clothes. She talks about the earliest forms of tools and how they developed and why they developed and often mentions important inventors, most of whom we would never think about, because we don't have these crafts or trades like flax weaving anymore. She writes about sustainability and surprised me in the weaving chapters on how colonists were able to gain freedom from England with their abilities and work ethics. There are line drawings so we can grasp a better understanding of what these objects and tools looked like. The transportation chapter was fascinating when she wrote about old travel routes like the "New Connecticut Path" and what travel conditions were like and the time it took to get from one place to another. She was most sentimental about gardens and olden day flowers and she wrote about invasive plants that still plague us today. She uses interesting quotes and writings from writers who lived in Colonial times and I appreciated that because those writers are probably not published and there are wonderful descriptions from people who lived thru these experiences. Alice also includes the old spelling. Some might find her writing to be too descriptive and sentimental but I loved it and highly recommend reading it if you are interested in this era. Home Life in Colonial Days is an engaging read. One last, probably not important, tid bit, is that the book I read was published by American Classics, not DoDo Press - does it make a difference? I don't know ...

Alice Morse Earle has written several books on life in Colonial America. This is the first one of her books I've read, and I am eager to move on to another volume, perhaps Child Life in Colonial Days. Mrs. Earle's "Home Life" is a fascinating description of everyday life --- the chores, the tools, the dwelling places, the foods, the sights and sounds --- that Colonial Americans knew. Have you ever seen a strange tool or implement in a museum, an antique shop, or hanging on the wall at a country restaurant, and no one seems to know exactly what it is or what it was used for? Read this book: its many illustrations will more than likely include that mysterious object; and Mrs. Earle will describe clearly what it was and how it was used. This book should be in the library of every enthusiast of American antiques. Without a doubt, this book contains information found nowhere else in a book now in print. This is not a history of Colonial America --- although it contains many interesting tidbits about our country's earliest days. It is, however, an excellent description of everyday life in America, 1600 - 1800, with special emphasis on New England and Virginia. As such, this book would be useful not just to historians and antique collectors, but to writers, museum curators, and anyone who wants to understand Colonial America.

This hundred-year-old work retains its vitality and usefulness. In her wonderfully readable narrative, Earle conveys life in the colonies with vividness missing from most conventional texts. Starting with basic shelter, which were sometimes actually caves in the earliest days, she goes on to describe in detail the critical element of food supply, with careful explanations of culinary practices and useful drawings to illustrate the often-obscure utensils. (This latter feature will fascinate antique buffs.) Also covered are the home production of textiles, the dress of the colonists, travel, religious and social practices, flower gardens, and other matters, providing modern readers an insight into everyday colonial life hard to find elsewhere. Earle's work is a feast of enjoyable information for history readers, collectors, and anyone else who wants to know how the early settlers lived. (The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)