Three Inventories, Three Households

Hannah Grafton

husband was a mariner had a modest house with three kids after her husband died sociability was important in this household since she had 15 chairs and a punch bowl opposite of plummers, they had luxury in gold buttons and silver headed cane cooking remained central trade rather than manufacturing was her real motif in this setting trading required as much work as manufacturing or growing your food had a shop attached to her house - she was a shopkeeper in husbands absence she made clothes unlike beatrice

Beatrice Plummer

lived on a farm/ comfortable life husband was a linnen weaver but soon became a farmer as well no decorations in the house but a lot of food could roast, fry, boil, and bake (which was the most difficult branch of cooking and not a lot of people could do bc not a lot of people had ovens) after her husband died and she remarried, her second husband cooked for himself and was fined by court when neighbors testified that she was a good wife to him

Magdalen Wear

lived on a frontier husband's wealth was livestock and land paid a fine because child was born too soon had 6 kids had to prove she was a good housewife after she got fined

process to make alcohol (beatrice)

malting - the process of sprouting and drying barley to increase its sugar content - left to the village expert mashing - required slow steeping at just below the boiling point, a sensitive and smelly process which largely determined the success of the beverage brewing - herbs and hops were boiled with the malt liquid, this liquor was cooled and mixed with yeast saved from last weeks beer or bread and if it was all done right beer would bubble in 24 hours

kitchens

showed complexity and unity in the lives of American women

women's role

the habit of assuming that what women did was not very important. housekeeping has long been women's work and seen as trivial

most basic skill of a housewife

building and regulating fires

Seasonal specialties that women had to do besides cooking and baking (beatrice)

dairying came first - beginning with the first calves of early spring gardening and gathering quickly followed dairy months fall was the season for cider making

what did the three women have in common?

each understood the rhythms of the seasons, the technology of fire building, the persistence of the daily demands of cooking, the complexity of home production, and the dexterity demanded from the often conflicting roles of housekeeper, mother and wife

What was prosperity for?

Prosperity = Charity = personal responsibility for nearby neighbors

How was status determined?

Status was depended on husband's job commanded a limited domain (neither isolated or self sufficient)

what was a valuable asset

a wife who knew how to turn milk into cheese, meal into bread, malt into beer, and flesh into bacon