Tag: Household Utensil

  • Sophistication in Colonial America: Combs

    Sophistication in Colonial America: Combs

    Jason FitzGerald // AMH 4112.001 – The Atlantic World, 1400-1900

    The concept of colonial America being a rural environment when compared to a richly expanding British empire probably sticks in most people’s minds when discussing the finer things of life and items made with elaborate materials.  The comb, a very common instrument, holds little value today and is often taken for granted. Some new perspectives have been highlighted when comparing and contrasting certain items in use during the eighteenth century with the help of the Glassford and Henderson Colchester store 1760-1761 ledger located in the Library of Congress collections.

    Examples of Comb purchases in the January 1761 Ready Money Pages of the Colchester store of Glassford and Henderson (folio 11).

    There were many different uses for combs in the eighteenth century.  Combs were used for grooming horses, for separating wool fibers, and for bug infestations as well as for decoration and fashion.[1]  A letter by Mann Page to John Norton mentions currycombs, often used for brushing down horses, in a list of items purchased with tobacco.[2] Another use for combs was in the process of making thread from wool.[3] Different combs with different teeth configurations, which determined the thickness and texture of the threads, were employed for such tasks.[4]  And finally, the dreaded infestation of lice apparently was at the top of the list for fine-toothed combs, which families today may appreciate the frustrations of the ever-elusive hair mite.  What then, might you ask could entice a scholar to examine types of combs purchased from Glassford and Henderson?

    Wooden comb used for dressing a woman’s hair. Image courtesy of The 18th-Century Material Culture Center.

    The quality in which combs were made may very well have identified a need for higher quality items not available in what many may have been considered a dank and dirty back water.  From October 1760 through December 1761, less than 45 combs were purchased with ready money.[5]  Now, it wasn’t because there was a lack of population in need of combs, the inability to fashion a comb in colonial America, or the lack of biting mites.  The combs purchased in the ledger, which were made of ivory, horn, or nondescript materials, very well could have represented an item of status sought by higher society.  And the fact that these individuals possessed coined money could also have represented the ability to afford lavish items.

    The combs purchased in the Glassford & Henderson ledger ranged anywhere from three pence to one shilling and eight pence with the most expensive combs being described as ivory.  A further examination into other eighteenth century ledgers could potential lead to similar trends.

    Examples of Ivory Combs recorded in the April 1760 Ready Money Pages of the Colchester store of Glassford and Henderson (folio 11).

    One thing for certain is that the want or need for extravagant items existed in eighteenth century Virginia. An individual living in the twenty-first century can easily identify with a Rolex or a Michael Kors handbag, conceivably an item equivalent to that of an eighteenth-century ivory comb.  Perhaps a rural environment when compared to a richly expanding empire was not so rural after all.

    Infographic on Combs

    [1] Karen Clancy, “At the Spinning Wheel,” interviewed by Harmony Hunter, accessed November 9, 2016, http://podcast.history.org/2012/11/12/at-the-spinning-wheel/;  David Robinson, “The Bugs that Bugged the Colonists,” accessed November 9, 2016, http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn07/bugs.

    [2] “A Page in the Life: Episode Six, Patsy Grenville’s Day,” Colonial Williamsburg, accessed November 9, 2016, http://www.history.org/history/teaching/dayinthelife/pdf/ADITL_Episode6.pdf; Hunter, “At the Spinning Wheel.”

    [3] Clancy, “At the Spinning Wheel.”

    [4] Clancy, “At the Spinning Wheel.”

    [5] Alexander Henderson, et. al.  Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia folio 10 Debit, 11-13 Debit/Credit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Microfilm Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

  • Pots from the Furnace to the Household

    Pots from the Furnace to the Household

    Luis Torres Rivera  // AMH 4112.001 – The Atlantic World, 1400-1900

    A sectional cast cooking pot from the early 1700s. Image from Bushcraft UK.

    Iron pots were in use in the 1700s.  They were used to cook over an open fire given that iron is one of the best transmitters of heat. “During the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century, Pennsylvanians imported most of the iron that they used from Britain.”[1]  Given that iron ore was mostly imported to the colonies, “ironmasters established early furnaces and forges as a more efficient way to make more iron than local blacksmiths were able to, and as a way to make profits and to diversify their investments.”[2]  Iron pots may have been manufactured either in a large industrial furnace or by a local blacksmith. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson described iron manufactured from two furnaces as being exceptionally strong: “Pots and other utensils, cast thinner than usual, of this iron, may be safely thrown into, or out of the waggons in which they are transported.”[3]  They were thinner than usual due to that in “1750 the British government enacted the Iron Act which prohibited the erection of new steel furnaces, mills for slitting or rolling iron and plating forges with tilt hammers,” so that jobs would not be stolen from British citizens.[4]

    At Glassford and Henderson’s Colchester, Virginia store, we see the sale of iron pots as part of the Ready Money accounts in 1760-1761.  In November 1760, three iron pots were sold with prices ranging from 9 shillings to 10 shillings and six pence.[5]  In other months like August, April and December iron pots were sold at similar prices. The small variation of prices could be presented in regards of the quality and thickness of the iron used. Also, sales could have been greater in November in preparation for the winter season.

    Examples of “Iron pot” purchases in the November 1760 Ready Money Pages of the Colchester store of Glassford and Henderson (folio 10).

    Looking at the conditions in colonial times, the iron pot was a commodity necessary to the household. “While theoretically, colonists could have manufactured all their own high quality consumer goods and accumulated a valuable a stockpile as that of the person buying on the market, it would be rather unlikely that the nonspecialized home manufacturer could have shone in all areas of production. In fact, most homemade items tended to be crude and cheap.”[6]  Iron pots were hard to make; they were sold in local stores or by blacksmiths that had furnaces to make them. As seen in the Colchester store, iron pots were valuable and necessary commodity.

    Infographic on Iron Pots

    [1] Arthur C. Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission), 1973.

    [2]Ibid.

    [3] Thomas Jefferson, “QUERY VI A notice of the mines and other subterraneous riches; its trees, plants, fruits, &c.”, Notes on the State of Virginia, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch06.html (Accessed on 18 April 2016).

    [4] Harold B. Gill, Jr. The Blacksmith in Colonial Virginia. (Williamsburg, Virginia: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1965), (Accessed 5 December 2016), http://research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/View/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports%5CRR0022.xml.

    [5]   Alexander Henderson, et. al.  Ledger 1760-1761, Colchester, Virginia Folio 10 Debit, from the John Glassford and Company Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Reel 58 (owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association).

    [6] Carole Shammas , “Consumer Behavior in Colonial America,” Social Science History 6 (1982): 67–86, 81.