As the mid-eighteenth century arrived, life for the Southern colonists was the best that the British colonial experience could ever have yielded. In almost every aspect of their lives, these peoples had achieved a standard of life not equaled even in the mature societies and economies of Western Europe. The evidence of details of the lives of these people has not been balanced across the economic and social ladder as one might expect. While there has always been a reasonable body of knowledge covering the landed gentry and the upper class of the colonial era, there is still comparatively little known of the majority of the middle and lower classes in the South. Because of the lack of diaries, letters or official documents for most of the population, the details of the lives of these forgotten population remains rather sketchy. What we do know about this largest segment of the Southern population is that they were a hardy, self-respecting and self-supporting people.
From the very beginning the key to prosperity for the Southern colonist was the near universal opportunity to acquire land. Land was the source and measure of wealth in the world at that time. A tobacco planter wrote, “If a man has Money, Negros and Land enough he is a complete Gentleman.” And land was abundant. In Jamestown the investors in the parent London Company were given 100 acres for each share of stock they owned. Later, as the colony developed, the colonial government gave anyone who paid his own passage to the New World 50 acres free through the “headright system.” In Maryland, Lord Baltimore granted manorial estates to any who would import 50 persons to his colony, and as a result over 60 manors were established there. Around Charles Town, South Carolina in the late seventeenth century, land was valued at only one penny per acre. Thus, the acquisition of land was not the issue. The more critical issue of the colonial period was not how to obtain land; it was how to obtain adequate labor to work the land.
Overall the living standards of the typical white family were the highest in the world in the mid-1700s. Land was readily available, the population density was low, the air and water was not polluted, food was plentiful, disease was low, abject poverty was rare, energy was abundant, and the environment was essentially untouched and beautiful. The struggles to survive, as in the early colonial period, were mostly a past concern for the majority of the population. The median income per capita was around £10 ($900 in 1985 equivalent dollars). Pretax incomes were similar to those in Great Britain, yet the colonists paid little to no taxes. Therefore, the colonist had more disposable income. A study on Maryland’s Eastern Shore found that a typical household spent one quarter of their income for products that came from outside their colony of residence. This was a significant finding, and a real indicator of a high level of economic activity for the eighteenth century in North America.
The sure sign of the well being of the colonists were their diets. The typical family spent a third of their income on food such as grains and vegetables. The high meat consumption was a key indicator of their relative wealth. The colonists had high quantities of pork and dairy products, with the average adult consuming about 1/2 pound of meat per day. Hard evidence of the impact of good nutritional diets in the American colonies as compared to that of Great Britain was researched by Kenneth Sokoloff and Georgia Villaflor based on the muster rolls of soldiers in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution on both sides. Their work found that native-born colonial soldiers were two inches taller than the British soldiers, a clear scientific indicator of the superior diets of the North American colonists.
The majority of the Southern colonial farms were sized at between 75 to 125 acres, and were worked by the immediate family. With hard work and some money for tools to clear the forests into arable land, a family could provide an adequate diet. Developing large farms was difficult when one considers that it took a farmer a month to clear around 3 acres if he left the tree stumps in the ground. Although this was a backbreaking way to exist, it represented up to 75 percent of the livelihood of the population of colonists. The typical Southern small farmer planted corn, wheat, barley, oats, and rye and a variety of vegetables in season on 15 to 35 acres of his farm, leaving the rest of the acreage to forest or pasture. He raised livestock cattle and hogs for meat, and cows for hides and dairy products. Horses were used for transportation and for working the fields. Sheep were raised for wool. Some farms had a small orchard for growing fruits.
For the first 15 years after settlement in 1607, dwellings at Jamestown continued to be rather crude shanties of green timber and poor workmanship, always falling into decay and disrepair. But gradually the houses improved and became more substantial. Most of houses were framed wood structures. The standard dwelling was indeed small at 350 to 400 square feet. It consisted of two rooms, on one story, with a brick fireplace and a packed dirt floor. The cost of this dwelling was about $270 in building materials. The wood frame structures had weatherboard exteriors with shingle roofs. Windows were small and shuttered, made of glass or oiled paper. Sometimes the floor was of brick, set in sand. The front door was of heavy wood planks.
The homes found in the Southern towns had similar attributes of the farm dwellings. In the town of Williamsburg, Virginia, as described in an account by Reverend Hugh Jones, the homes were being “built with Brick, but most commonly with Timber lined with Ceiling, cased with feather-edged Plank, painted with white lead and Oil, covered with Shingles of Cedar…” In Jamestown Governor Sir Harvey in a letter to the Privy Council in 1638 described 12 new homes in the town, with “the fairest that was ever known in this countrye” being built of brick by the secretary, and the others were framed houses that were constructed “consonant to his Ma’ties Instruction that we should not suffer men to build slight cottages as heretofore.”
The type of housing a person or family had usually varied according to social class. For those families that prospered, they would build or acquire a three-room home of brick, with a wood floor, two brick fireplaces and some 800 or more square feet of living space. Homes outside Jamestown, owned by planters, were constructed of brick foundations and chimneys only, with the remaining made of wood, which was in great abundance. A typical dwelling in Virginia was the parsonage of the vestry of Northamption County, which was built in 1635. It was 40 feet long, 18 feet wide and “nyne foot to the wall plates,” with a chimney at each end. A partition ran though the middle of the home which divided it into the “Kitchinge” and the “Chamber” and at each end there was a room-a study and the other a buttery. All homes lacked plumbing and water closets. Lighting was by candle or by lamp of metal or glass, fueled by whale oil. During the last half of the seventeenth century in Virginia, while houses varied from one-story or two-story cottages to two-story-and-a-half brick structures, the most common house was a story-and-a-half of wood or brick, with the occasional rear wing and often a “shedd-room” kitchen.
The large plantation manor homes of the wealthy gentry were extremely impressive. During the eighteenth century the most common plantation, whether of brick or wood, was a large square building of two stories high, with a wide hall-often called the “great hall”-with four large rooms on each floor, and four chimneys. The building often had one or more wings, or even detached buildings for laundry, kitchen, office or school. The stable or carriage house was usually further away from the primary dwelling. The mansion “Rosewell” on the York River in Virginia had, including the wings, a frontage of two hundred and thirty one feet, with the central building containing fourteen rooms sized at twenty foot square, and nine rooms measured fourteen by seven feet. There were some nine passages and a “great hall” with a grand stairway displaying a mahogany banister carved with fruit and flower designs, leading up to a hardwood landing which commanded an impressive view of the York River and the surrounding countryside.
Homes in Maryland looked very much like those in neighboring Virginia. Lord Baltimore had directed that the colonists construct homes in “as decent and uniforme a manner as their abilities and the place will afford, and neere adjoyning on to an other.” In 1638 Father White wrote Lord Baltimore recommending that he send a brickmaker to the colony to allow each planter to build a brick home that would be cheaper, more healthful “against heate and coale,” and “fitter for defense against the infidels.” But the Marylanders evolved from hut, to framed wood story-and-a-half houses as was done in Virginia. A French visitor in 1781 to Maryland commented on the contrast between the luxury homes found at Annapolis and the small structures father north. He wrote, “As we advance towards the south, we observe a sensible difference in the manners and customs of the people. We no longer find, as in Connecticut, houses situated along the road at small distances, just large enough to contain a single family, and the household furniture nothing more than is barely necessary; here are spacious habitations, consisting of different buildings, at some distance from each other, surrounded with plantations that extend beyond the reach of the eye…Their furniture here, is constructed out of the most costly kinds of wood, and that most valuable marble, enriched by the elegant devices of the artists hand.”
The settlers in North Carolina in the Albemarle region before 1700 still lived in rude cabins since they were without large sums of capital. Yet John Lawson wrote around 1700 that most citizens “…lived very nobly.” Brick was made in the area, and the presence of skilled carpenters, joiners, masons and plasterers supported the building of many attractive and substantial residences. In South Carolina, in and around Charles Town, the homes were mostly of wood, yet brick houses were in evidence. Staying with a Frenchman some 36 miles outside the town, he noted “a very curious contrived house built of brick and stone.” For the wealthy planter class, that began to flourish by mid-17th century, it was very common for them to have not only their mansion on their plantation, but also to maintain a home in the city. These town houses were “large and handsome, having all the conveniences one sees at home [England]…the most considerable are of Brick, the other Cypress and yellow Pine.”
The frontier houses in the backwoods of the Carolinas remained crude for most of the colonial period. In 1729 in Winyaw Parish the parsonage was described as, “a wooden building but plaster’d within, a story & half high & 25 foot Square.” Around 1767 Reverend James Harrison in St. Mark’s Parish, located 8 miles from Charles Town, was provided a representative house “…just finished, 36 ft. front, with four good rooms, lobby and staircase-a good kitchen, garden, orchard, stables and necessary out houses.” In Charlotte, North Carolina in 1766 regulations required each lot have, “one well framed sawed orhewed Log-House” some 20 feet long, 16 feet wide and 10 feet “in the clear” with brick or stone chimney.
In Georgia by the middle of the 17th century most houses were still made of wood. Sir Francis Bathurst in 1735 tells of a house 20 feet long, by 12 feet wide, divided into two apartments, a bedroom and dining room, and the house covered with clapboards. By the mid-18th century houses in Georgia had become grander, especially in Savannah. In 1765 John Graham advertised a house of two stories, with a first floor containing “a handsome balcony in the front, with a dining room, two “good bed-chambers,” one of which had a fireplace, a passage of “eight feet wide, and an easy well finished staircase,” a “kitchen adjoining the house well fitted up,” and a piazza running the full length of the house, at one end of which was a “bedroom lined, plastered and glazed,” and at the other a convenient storeroom. On the second floor was a “large well finished dining-room, a good bed-chamber, both with fire places, and a light closet that will hold a field-bed.” The home also had a cellar, several out buildings including two worthy lodging rooms. But most Georgia backwoods houses were one and two room structures of hewed logs, notched to fit together, with the cracks filled with moss, sticks, straw and clay. These simple houses had a roof of clapboards, and a chimney of logs backed with stone.
The colonial houses of the average farmer were furnished with a minimum of simple household objects, usually consisting of half split logs on peg-legs, a chest, a sawbuck wood table, barrels for chairs and a bed of straw either laying on the floor or suspended by rawhide strips on a wood frame. The most prominent and often the most expensive item of furniture in many homes was the bed, which was found in nearly every room in the house except the kitchen. Soon the grand four-poster beds covered with soft feather mattress, adorned with pillows and sheets of oznaburg, canvas Holland or linen, blankets and quilts of bright colors, was the norm. The estates of the planters contained a great variety of beds, tables, chairs, chests, trunks, portraits, rugs, tapestries and clocks. The furniture was made of oak, pine, cypress, bay, cedar, maple and walnut, while mahogany was to appear in the eighteenth century. Refinements included brass or iron andirons, shovel, tongs, and bellows at each fireplace, with curtains at the window, and cushions for the chairs.
Personal property was scarce for the average colonist, consisting of a few handmade clothing items (including a few wool items for winter) and a pair of shoes. Lower classes ate from wooden bowls. Middle-class families had earthenware or pewter, bed and table linen, knives, forks, and a Bible. Tumblers, mugs, flagons, tankards and cups were used for drinking. Other eating articles were “saltcellars, porringers, sugar-pots, butter-dishes, castors, cruets, bowls and Jugs.” Above the median families had a few fancy clothes, a watch, china plates, fine furniture, some silver items and a few small amenities. Those in the wealthy class had fine clothes, imported furniture, tapestries, clocks, exquisite china and silver, non-religious books, a man’s wig artwork, a carriage, and a volume of luxury goods. The wealthy also had household chores performed by servants or slaves.
Cooking of any meal was a major undertaking. Activity was centered around the fireplace, with wood-fired cooking with hanging pots swung over the fire or in the oven on the side of the brickwork. Cook stoves, invented by Franklin in 1740, were not commonly used at this time. Cooking utensils and methods were basic. Mealtimes were different than today. The farmer rose early and headed out to handle his chores. At around 10 AM he returned for a big breakfast of smoked beef or turkey, sugar, and sometimes milk, butter or eggs. The remaining meal of the day was dinner occurring at 9 PM followed shortly with bedtime. Game, fish, smoked beef or pork, vegetables, wheat bread, pie and pudding were some of the usual dinner staples. The potato was new to the diet of the colonist, appearing after 1720 when the Scots-Irish introduced it. Corn was popular, with cornbread being as available on a royal governor’s table as it was in the log cabin of the black slave field hand. Hogs and hominy was seasoned with cabbage or greens.
While an image of a life of idleness and leisure for the Southern colonial woman may have evolved over time, the impression is not one of fact for most females. The lives of the planter’s wife and the ladies in the town mansions was quite different than that of the poorer lot in the backwoods areas. The mistress of the plantation was spared from much drudgery with servant and slave help, as she primarily handled the duties of providing food for her large family and guests. She was responsible for the management of the large family in an era of limited home technology for even the most basic of activities. In addition to handling the servants, she personally handled the sewing by hand of most of the clothing worn by the family, cared for the children, made butter from milk, processed pickles and preserves, handled the poultry and meats like sausage, cured the ham, managed the washing of the clothes, sometimes acted a tutor for the children’s schooling, cared for the sick black and white members of the family, and attended to the meal preparation.
Wealthy ladies were often supported by a large number of servants. Eliza Pinckney living in Charles Town in a modest home after the marriage of her children wrote of her domestic help: “I shall keep young Ebba to do the drudgery part, fetch wood, and water, and scour, and learn as much as she is capable of Cooking and Washing. Mary-Ann Cooks, makes my bed, and makes my punch. Daphne works and makes the bread, old Ebba boils the cow’s victuals, raises and fattens the pountry, Moses is imployed from breakfast until 12 o’clock without doors, after that in the house. Pegg washes and milks.” Wives of tradesmen in the towns were usually at home caring for the children and housekeeping with the help of servants.
Women in the backwoods settlements and remote farms were dependent on their own labors. These women were significantly more independent and self-sufficient, and endured many hardships even in the mid-1700s. Keeping house was more trying as the food was more scarce, the clothing crude, furniture was quite basic and limited, and houses small. A visitor commented that Carolina women “…take care of Cows, Hogs, and other small Cattle, make Butter and Cheese, spin Cotton and Fax, help sow and reap Corn, wind Silk from the Worms, gather Fruit, and look after the House.” Bricknell wrote that he found the wives of poorer farmers “ready to assist their husbands in any Servile Work, as planting when the Season of the Year requires expedition.”
Even in the earliest settlements colonial women were uniquely efficient. While working to settle on the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, Mrs. Francis Jones entertained the Commissioners who had passed her home remarking “she is a very civil woman and shews nothing of ruggedness, or Immodesty in her carriage, yett she will carry a gunn in the woods and kill a deer, turkeys, &c., shoot down wild cattle, catch and tye hoggs, knock down beeves with an ax and perform the most manfull Exercises as well as most men in those part.”
For a segment of the population whose chief duty was to bear children and keep the master’s home, the Southern colonial women, whether a planter’s wife or frontier homemaker, was critical to the success of the American experience. Certainly the hospitality widely offered to visitors in the Southern colonies was largely due to the success of the home management of Southern women. As recorded by a historian, Robert Beverley, in travels in Virginia around 1700, “The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation but the being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to enquire upon the road where any gentleman or good houskeeper lives and there he may depend upon being received with hospitality.” Another visitor wrote that Maryland mansions were “as well known to the weary, indigent traveller as to the affluent guest.” All the Southern states were known from the earliest time for their hospitality, especially in the rural areas and among the planter class. The seclusion of plantation life made entertaining friends and strangers desirable. But even in the frontier settlements, visitors were a welcome sight.
The clothing of the average Southern farmer was simple and practical. Men dressed in coarse linen shirts, stockings, leather coats or apron buckskin pants, caps and cowhide shoes. Women of the day also wore durable clothing. The gentry class faired better in having a greater variety and style of clothing. The wealthy men had clothing based on the English styles and of various color (queen’s drab, sea-grey mouse’ ear, new brown, and London smoke), and of varied fabric (muslin, worsted Florentine cotton denim). They also wore their riding coats, jockey hats, muslin cravats and black bearskin muffs.
In the colonial America of the eighteenth century, the typical family size was large, with some eight children. Women often married quite young, sometimes at an age of thirteen or fourteen. As John Lawson of North Carolina remarked, “she that stays single ’til 20 is reckoned a stale maid; which is a very indifferent character in that warm country.” William Byrd wrote in 1729 that the most “antique virgin” he knew was his own daughter Evelyn, who was then about age twenty. Childbirth was often for most female adults who were married, with most Southern mothers having their first children in their late teens. The birthrate was 40 to 50 per 1000 colonists. According to available data, one in seven women died during their fertile years as a result of childbirth. It is not surprising that there is no evidence of any practice of birth control. The death rate in the colonies was from 15-25 persons per 1000 each year, compared to England that actually had some 40 persons died per 1000 each year. The reasons usually given for the lower death rates in the colonies was, first, that there were better food harvests leading to better diets, secondly that the lower population density held down the spread of communicable diseases, and lastly that the availability of wood from the vast forests provided a warmer winter for most people than in England. Even infant mortality was better in the colonies, where 12 to 15 of 100 babies died each year compared to England where no fewer than 20 per 100 died.
Half of population in the 1770s was believed to have been below the age of fifteen. The lives of these youths were founded on the sense of obedience without question to their elders. They had to prepare for their lives as youths, with females taking on the marital and homemaking duties, while the males assumed their role of provider. Boys were legally established at the age of sixteen, and were expected to become taxpayers and members of the local militia. It was not a time for the idol pursuits of youth, but one for duty and serious responsibility.
In considering the mortality rates of colonists, the colonial doctor seemed to play no significant part in increasing the chances of maintaining life. The scarce number of doctors or any other health services in the colonial South made no difference, primarily because even the best trained doctor of the time had no way to deal with infectious diseases. The basic treatment in colonial times was to bleed, sweat or purge the malady from the body. Disease just ran its courses and hopefully one survived. Such was the case with George Washington and his bout with smallpox. Incredibility, the life expectancy in the colonial South was better than in most of the world in the eighteenth century.