Search results for: elizabeth weed

The Material World of Widow Weed: an interpretation

25 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by in Living History, material culture, Research

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Pomade, powder, a pad, and a liberal dose of hairspray got me closer to Big Hair than I’ve ever been.

Part four of a series

Widow Elizabeth Weed: what would she wear? What would she own? My first inclination had been to wear the grey tabby wool gown I already had, until I realized how much of George Weed’s estate Elizabeth had received. As detailed in the first post, the strategic fabric reserve (SFR) provided a “just enough” remnant of shiny silk to make a gown. Second mourning seemed right, for six months past the death of her second husband; with Mrs. Mifflin’s 1773 gown style in mind, I decided to make an English gown with robings and stomacher. (To be honest, I’m pretty pleased with how close my cuff came to Mrs. Mifflin’s, considering how badly I can mess up a cuff, and that this was my first finished silk gown in an 18th century style.)

A gown is one thing, but what about the rest of the ensemble? The Widow Costard print provided some guidance, despite being some years later than 1777. The black hood and cloak or mantelet over a white cap appears in other widows’ portraits, although the black silk cloak is not an uncommon accessory. I had been toying with making one already, and had patterned one from the original in Costume Close Up; extant examples aren’t thick on the ground, but there are enough to demonstrate some consistencies.

Cloak, figured cerise silk satin with a lace trim, 1760-1770. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.61-1934

1760s example at the Victoria and Albert has a shape similar to that in the Williamsburg Collection, while another at the Met (dated, without a reason cited, to 1820-1829; perhaps the reason is in the selvage or the lace), provides some clues to construction and materials. So, with another remnant from the SFR in hand, I worked from my muslin to a paper pattern, using the neck cutout from my red wool short cloak as an additional guide. It went together in fairly short order, since it is mostly hemming, with just two seams and some pleating. While I wore it untrimmed due to time constraints, self trim or lace or would be ideal additions.

Portrait of a Woman called Lady Fawkener ca. 1760. Jean-Etienne Liotard.

Additional clues to Elizabeth Weed’s status as a six-months widow are found in the black silk ribbon of her cap; black and white hats are common enough that the hat alone does not signal “widow.” I chose to make mine from a black figured silk taffeta lined with white, based on an ad in a Philadelphia paper. On October 15, 1776, John Brown advertised in the Pennsylvania Evening Post for a runaway Irish servant girl, Judith Kennedy, wearing, among other items, a “black spotted silk bonnet lined with white.” Obviously, this might well mean “bonnet” in the form we are most familiar with, and I have taken liberties by extrapolating the spotted silk to my hat cover. Nonetheless, black and white hats are a thing, and I was looking to upgrade from my tatty and faded black chip hat.

Gathering white linen evenly is a challenge: literal thread counting.

Gown, hat, cloak, updated caps: so far, so good. I had a black wool petticoat already, suitable for mid-Atlantic autumn (there was no way a black silk quilted petticoat was happening in the time allotted), and black worsted (woven) mitts. What else would Mrs. Weed need? Upgraded shoes are tempting but beyond my budget, so the last article of clothing was an apron.

The majority of my aprons are check linen, with one clean unbleached linen apron and one stained white linen apron (coffee is my weakness). Fortunately, I found 30 yards of vintage white linen on a trip to New England, and thus had apron fabric handy. After making five aprons, this one went together in less than a day.

The final piece was jewelry. A few years ago I found a “Georgian” cut steel and glass locket suitable for hair that I wore as a widowed housekeeper; on a fresh black silk ribbon, that would be a cornerstone. I added a three-strand necklace of black glass beads to contrast with the locket (thanks to the local hobby store and a stash of findings). Earrings also came from the stash, made up quickly from modified buttons and black faceted drops.

Accessories. I finally have them.

I added a white silk neck-handkerchief for warmth, and bought a black one just in case. Based on images, I thought white most appropriate, but somehow, with the grey gown, the image of “Pilgrim” was hard for some visitors to overcome, so on Sunday, I switched to black. Sometimes you have to choose accessories to lower the hurdles for your audience. Explaining that I was not a Pilgrim, but in mourning–while providing an opportunity for interpretation–was not my primary objective, so the easy color switch seemed well worth making.

The remedies (as promised) were another, slightly strickier matter. While making them according to the receipts I found was relatively simple– this is long before big pharma– carrying them was another challenge. I opted to make a box, and fill some bottles, as will become plain in the next installment.

The Crisis of Costuming

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in History, Living History, material culture, Reenacting, Research

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John Potter and family. Overmantle painting ca 1740. Collection of Newport Historical Society.

There has been a lot of good work done recently as people consider the past and our relationship to it. Costumers are increasingly uncomfortable with uncontextualized depictions of historical dress and have had to come to terms with the truths of how the money that bought the pretty dresses was made. Obviously, dressing in trimmed silks and paste jewels is expensive, and in the North American colonies (and many other places) in the 18th and 19th centuries, the money that bought those goods was made on the backs of enslaved people.

Mary and Elizabeth Royall. Oil on Canvas by John Singleton Copley, about 1758. MFA Boston, Julia Knight Fox Fund, 25.49

But there’s an even harder truth waiting for us: even the ordinary clothes and everyday goods were often paid for with money made on the “free” labor of unfree men, women, and children. Not only did more people than we want to admit own other human beings, more people than we credit invested in slave trading voyages. And even if they didn’t directly invest in the voyages, they were often engaged in trade that intersected with the slave trade, or supported the plantations where captive people labored by indirectly feeding and clothing them.

The very hard truth is that it is even possible for tenant farmers in late-18th century Rhode Island to have supported and profited from slavery as the edible crops they grew were sold to feed those enslaved on rice, indigo, and cotton plantations in the south. Dairying– cheese making–was a means of making dairy protein stable and transportable, and vegetables like onions expanded diets.

John Brown’s china ca 1790. The China trade was funded by the earlier slave trade.

Chattel slavery made the world we inhabit–both now and when we put on the clothes of the past–no matter what class level we represent. Some would argue that we should no longer put on those clothes. I sit in a place of privilege as a white woman and one who has never engaged in Civil War living history or costuming, a period that is particularly fraught. But even interpreting a 1910s suffragist means you must confront the demons that are not past: racism, Jim Crow, voter suppression, and the truths of how the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement treated Black women. We are always complicit.

Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”). Miniature portrait, watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811. Massachusetts Historical Society Artwork 03.147

But I think that means we can, and even should, continue to interpret the past through all the clothes. Telling all the stories more fully helps us move forward. All of us must own the truths of how we reached this place in American history. All of us must own who we might or might not have been. We share a history and a culture, even when many are excluded. That exclusion is part of the story. For a time it needs to be the main story, as we as a nation, as interpreters of the past, see the world anew, listen to voices that have gone unheard.

It will be a long time before any of us are able to resume the work we did before, interacting directly with the public, but that gives us a chance to rethink what we do, and how we do it. For some, abandoning the costumes of a problematic past may be the answer. For others, considering more fully the characters we represent may offer a way to carry on.

Alice, d. 1802. Engraved from an original sent from America, by Mackenzie, [London] : Pub. Jan. 1. 1803, by T. Hurst, Paternoster-Row. (1804?) The Library Company of Philadelphia

I have thought a fair bit about the 2019 Occupied Philadelphia event. Once again, I portrayed Elizabeth Weed, the widowed pharmacist with a sickly son who went on to marry Thomas Nevell, architect and builder. Elizabeth owned a business and a house, but did she own people? A visitor to that event asked me, “Did you own slaves?” and I had to think about it. It wasn’t a question I had asked myself before, and that’s a clear failure since I had done research on the nature of labor in mid-18th century Philadelphia as indentures gave way to enslavement. I don’t think Elizabeth Weed owned anyone; I can find no evidence, but I need to look again, and more deeply.

Rebecca Flower Young, though, is another story. By the time she lived in Baltimore with her daughter, who made the Star-Spangled Banner now at the Smithsonian, her daughter had a 13 year old African American or African indentured servant. The young woman’s name is lost to time, but the fact of her existence and the trajectory of Young’s life make me wonder about her time in Philadelphia. As an Army contractor, she had women sewing for her, and she probably sewed herself. The labor of the indentured servant girl in Baltimore allowed Mary Pickersgill to concentrate on working for money. While the Smithsonian may describe the indentured girl as “helping Pickersgill make the flag,” chances are that her housework– tending fires, cooking meals, cleaning the house, permitted Pickersgill, her nieces, and her mother to do the sewing and cutting. Similar work was necessary to support Rebecca Young’s enterprise in 1780s Philadelphia. Who performed it? Were they paid, or unpaid?

If (when) I can once again put on the stays, petticoats, and gowns that allow me to interpret Rebecca and Elizabeth, my work must include a discussion of the labor that supported their work, and who performed that labor. I will have to challenge the public to imagine a more complete history of the United States, one that is both starker and more nuanced. The country was built and flourished on the labor of unwilling captives, which we have concealed behind myths about the founding heroes and heroines. Only when we admit those truths can we truly begin to portray the past, inhabit those clothes, and engage with the public.

About the Images:

This overmantle painting shows a wealthy Rhode Island planter family with their African slave, a rare depiction of the realities of New England life. John Potter was a wealthy South Kingstown, Rhode Island planter, notorious for his counterfeiting activities of 1742. Many of the people enslaved in Rhode Island were forced to work on the large farms in what is now Washington County.

Mary and Elizabeth Royall were daughters of Isaac Royall, who owned the largest number of enslaved people in Massachusetts. The Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, MA (just north of Boston), interprets the lives of the family and those they enslaved.

John Brown‘s dinner set of Chinese export porcelain in emblematic of his wealth, which was derived from many sources, including the slave trade. The China Trade decorated his brick mansion house in Providence, but war profiteering, distilling, and the slave trade built it. He was an unapologetic– indeed, an enthusiastic– defender of the slave trade as a source of revenue for the New Republic.

Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”), born into enslavement in 1742, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman’s favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution.

Alice, known variously as Black Alice and Alice of Dunk’s Ferry, was a native of Philadelphia and a slave, born to parents who had come from Barbados. She is said to have been 116 at the time of her death in 1802. In extreme old age Alice received many visitors who enjoyed hearing stories about early Philadelphia and its famous first settlers, including William Penn and Thomas Logan. Alice was also a lifelong worshiper at Christ Church in Philadelphia. “Being a sensible intelligent woman, and having a good memory, which she retained to the last, she would often make judicious remarks on the population and improvements of the city and country; hence her conversation became peculiarly interesting, especially to the immediate descendents of the first settlers, of whose ancestors she often related acceptable anecdotes.” from Thomas, Isaiah. Eccentric biography; or, Memoirs of remarkable female characters, ancient and modern (Worcester, 1804), plate preceding p. vii. and p 9.

Further Reading:
Many of these are available in paperback; check in the university press sites as many are offering discounts right now that make them competitive with Amazon, while supporting them directly. Inter-library Loan is also an excellent and often free option; check with your local library.

Anderson, Jennifer L. Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. Never Caught:The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. New York: Simn and Schuster, 2017.

Clark-Pujara, Christy Mikel. Slavery, emancipation and Black freedom in Rhode Island, 1652-1842. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Iowa, 2009

Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: NYU Press, 2016

Gagnon, Jeffrey Charles. (Re)creating Social Life Out of Social Death : cross-cultural alliances in the circum- Atlantic, 1760-1815. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California San Diego, 2012.

Gigantino, James G. II. The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Hartigan-O’Connor, Eleanor. The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Lin, Rachel Chernos. “The Rhode Island Slave-Traders: Butchers, Bakers, and Candlestick-Makers.” Slavery and Abolition 23:3, 21-38. (2002)

Rapplye, Charles. Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Salinger, Sharon V. “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1, 62-84. (January 1983)

Smith, Billy G. “Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth-Century America.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 132, No. 1, 85-118 (March 1988)

Smith, Billy G. “The Family Lives of Laboring Philadelphians during the Late Eighteenth Century.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 133, No. 2, Symposium on the Demographic History of the Philadelphia Region, 1600-1860, 328-332 (June 1989)

The Tracing Center: Resources for Interpreting Slavery.

What Being in History Teaches Us

10 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in Living History, personal

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It took four weeks, but I finally lost it.

I’m sitting in my kitchen with a Reverse Manhattan and the New Yorker, weeping after reading the Wheaton College newsletter. Four weeks ago, I was desperate to get my son home to Virginia from college in New England, afraid travel restrictions might strand him on a closed campus in a state with a higher rate of infection. Now, I’m terrifically nostalgic for before, when my friends had jobs, I could go to the fabric store, and had an overbooked calendar.

Rebecca Young at the Museum of the American Revolution. Always a good experience.

That calendar included portraying Rebecca Flower Young, a military contractor in Philadelphia ca. 1780, and, eventually (still?) in the fall, Elizabeth Weed, a pharmacist in occupied Philadelphia, 1777. I think about those women when I get frustrated, tired of being home and just craving normal. More than anything, I want the absence of fear. It’s not something I think about consciously, this fear of the RNA strand, it’s something I experience after I’ve been to the grocery store or the pharmacy. Most of my life has shifted online, but t’s not a huge change. I worked from home already two to four days a week, and lots of my commerce was online.

It’s scary because I know not everyone is behaving the way I am: wearing a mask when I run errands, for example. Because my friends are getting laid off in increasingly large numbers (the last straw came today when a friend posted about joining the 17 million unemployed). I’m frustrated by my lack of control, lack of agency, inability to protect or really help the people I care about beyond my tiny circle of two at home. I can’t even do much for my mother in PA or my father in FL except keep myself safe. And while that impotence could fill me with rage and tears, I am practiced enough at sublimation to recognize an opportunity to understand.

A moment of calm for Elizabeth Weed

How did Elizabeth Weed feel in 1777? She had a son to care for, who was often unwell. She needed to sell remedies to keep paying for food, firewood, and other necessities. She would have had no choice but to stay put and trade with the enemy. Did she feel trapped? Did she walk down the street wondering about each person she saw? What could she get at the market? Where *did* the neighbor get that butter? Those onions?

I sat at my table trying to schedule a grocery delivery or pickup in the next two weeks and thought about how the miserable onions and contraband butter of 1777 are today’s last bag of flour and package of toilet paper. It’s funny, in a way, but it’s also a pointed reminder of what the people we portray felt.

Right now, that’s the best meaning I can offer you: insight into how you might have behaved under British Occupation in 1777 Philadelphia, or in rationed 1944 upstate New York. What creative solutions might you have found? How would you have flexed? How would you have comforted your children when they caught you crying in the kitchen?

2020 Vision

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Clothing, Fail, Living History, Making Things, personal, Philosophy

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Rebecca Young at the Museum of the American Revolution. Always a good experience.

We made it: another turn around the sun, another year, a time of resolutions and reflection. 2019 was the year I had three jobs, invented a job, and qualified for Medicaid. It was a year I spent wondering who I was, and what my experience meant, if anything. I developed a new chronic condition (can you have too many?) and continued struggling to manage the old ones. I applied to, was waitlisted by, and ultimately rejected by a prestigious graduate program. I applied and interviewed for five jobs and got two. The one I have now, though a short-term contract, uses all the skills I honed over three decades working in museums. I expanded the repertoire of 18th-century women I represent, learned about flag making, and increased the number and accuracy of remedies in my medical box. I even journeyed further back in time to represent a Lost Colonist of Roanoke.

Together in multiple centuries, despite the bumps. Photo by Aaron Walker

Still, six months of working all weekend every weekend at job number two put me so far from my friends and habits that despite the pleasure of representing Rebecca Young and Elizabeth Weed, I still feel uncomfortable with living history and costuming. Those months certainly strained my relationship with Drunk Tailor, and with my own identity. Twenty nineteen is year I would revisit only in select details.

Mrs. Wainwright, Miss White and Miss Baker going into the Supreme Court to hear the decision on the Ohio ratification of the suffrage amendment, 1920.

For this coming year, I know only a few things. My contract expires at the end of March. I still love things and order, but I don’t know if I want to work full-time in a museum again. In a bit of perfection, I’m working as the de facto collections and project manager to transfer the library, archival, and object collections of the National Woman’s Party (NWP)  to the Library of Congress and the National Park Service, effectively closing the NWP as a cultural organization (the house is now preserved as a national monument).

I took this contract before my Kickstarter succeeded and admit I am ambivalent about it. Kitty Calash as a business is a little too small to sustain me with a kid in college, but museum work, aside from the work of establishing ownership and provenance, remains difficult for me. I wonder about the accumulations of objects, their meaning, and relevance for the future. I was a curator for a long time, but now I wonder what my role will be, in the evidence locker of history.

Like “curator,” “reenactor” no longer feels like it fits, even though I love history and clothes and dressing up. Perhaps this is too many weeks where dressing up was not an option, too many events missed, the habit lost. Perhaps it’s fear of succeeding, of striking out on my own and doing well, and instead of jumping, hesitating at precisely the wrong moment. Suddenly, it all seems so silly in the face of elections, climate change, and the instability of the gig economy.

Purveying ideas and goods as a milliner is a lot like being a curator.

I wrestled with this in 2017 and 2013,  winters when things seemed hopeless for reasons large and small. Three years ago, I found my refuge in art. Even a year ago, art and aesthetics felt like solace. This year, the New York Times’ Culture Therapist addressed a reader’s question, or problem, that echoed with my own sense of perturbation.

The core of the issue was this: “What happens when we no longer fit our own context?” The answers were varied, and to me, seemed like long shots (too many uncontrollable factors) but this struck me: It will require risking compassion to create an expanded and possibly destabilizing relationship to visual culture.

In 2019, I learned the key to most successful endeavors is vulnerability. I spent a lifetime building walls to protect myself that now box me in. Razing those walls is what I think of when I read “risking compassion,” though it’s hard to say exactly what a destabilizing relationship to visual culture (or history, or costume, or fashion) might be. It may be understanding how little one knows about the past, accepting new aesthetics, or trying something completely new. Even as I contemplate a possible grant-funded costumed interpretation program, clothes from 1919 don’t feel “new” enough to me; they are not different enough. I don’t know what will be, but I do know that unless I’m emotionally uncomfortable, I’m not learning.

On the way home
the view can be amazing

For all the angst and tears and anger of 2019, all the feelings I do not want to feel again, this year taught me to trust myself, to try, to fail, and to succeed. We learn as much from our failures as our successes, and while some of us more easily recall painful memories, it is worth remembering they can lead to our happiest moments. For this coming year, I will try to hold onto hope, that thing with feathers, and plan to learn new skills, improve the ones I have, and continue to find joy in the everyday.

The Charm of the Third Time

03 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

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One must keep up with the news (and the competition)

I’d call it “three times a lady,” but truly, I’ve only been a lady in Occupied Philadelphia twice. Last year and this year, I portrayed Elizabeth Weed, a widowed pharmacist living on Front Street in 1777 with her son, George. We don’t know why Elizabeth Weed didn’t leave the city along with nearly half the population. Was she a loyalist? Was her son too ill to travel? Or did she choose to stay to protect her property from the British– or the son of her late husband’s first marriage, who withheld a portion of the estate? Whatever the reason, remain she did, advertising her wares in the October 23 edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post.

New remedies, new box, new ingredients: refining an idea

Last year, with Drunk Tailor’s assistance, I made a number of remedies using 18th century receipts, with some interesting and sometimes successful results. This year, we improved one– the yellow basilicum ointment– and added some new concoctions. The sulphur ointment for the itch (possibly scabies) worked well on the insect bites I got in the Carpenters Hall forecourt. A charcoal-oyster shell-cinchona bark-benzoin tooth powder was a new addition. I used the clove oil-scented pomatum to achieve the highest hair I’ve managed yet, but the truly satisfying work was recreating multiple recipes actually used by Elizabeth Weed.

As Drunk Tailor notes in his entry on this year’s event, we can never truly enter the 18th century mindset. Recreating the clothes, food, daily rhythms, and medicines help us experience the feel of the past, but we can never truly be those people. If you regularly cook 18th century meals, you’ll experience the palate of the past: aromatic, relying heavily on cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice. This same range informs the aroma and flavor of the remedies from cough syrup to tooth powder.

Almost undoubtedly one of the ‘smells like Christmas, tastes like death’ tooth powders. Courtesy Jason R. Wickersty/Museum of the American Revolution

It’s a toss up which is less pleasant to the modern tongue, the Syrup of Balsam or the Syrup for the Flux. Both use the “paregoric elixir,” which some of you may recall from the medicine cabinets of old. Camphorated tincture of opium or anhydrous morphine has been used to treat diarrhea for centuries, and the ingredients for the modern version (anhydrous morphine) is remarkably similar to that for Weed’s paregoric elixir:

Weed’s Paregoric Elixir Anhydrous Morphine (Paregoric)
8 ounces opium Anhydrous Morphine, 2 mg
4 gallons spirits of wine, rectified Alcohol, 45%
1 ounce oil of anise seeds Anise oil
2 ounces Flor. Benzoin Benzoic acid
8 ounces camphor Glycerin
Purified water

There are some differences– most of us don’t want to ingest camphor, and “purified water” isn’t quite a thing in 1777– but the active ingredient makes these essentially the same compound. It’s an essential component of both Syrup of Balsam and Syrup for the Flux, so it had to be made first. Over the course of ten days, the elixir cleared from a yellow-orange slightly opaque liquid to a clear yellow liquid, with white sediment at the bottom of the jar (probably the benzoin).

With that in hand, I was ready to tackle Weed’s most famous (and well-protected) remedy. It appears more than once in the daybook, but both listings use the same ingredients and proportions.

One of the original receipts for the syrup for the (Bloody) Flux. UPenn Ms. Codex 1049

Syrup for the Bloody Flux
1.5 pints, simple syrup or molasses
.5 pint, elixir paregoricum
1 drachm each:
Essence of peppermint
Essence of pennyroyal
Essence of anise seed
Essence of fennel seed
tincture aromatic

“Mix them all together, and stop them up in a bottle for life.” (Or, as the other receipt says, “Mix and Digest.”

The resulting mixture is probably meant to soothe the intestinal cramps (with anise, fennel, and peppermint) while the paregoric relieves the endless diarrhea. Licorice-flavored molasses with a peppermint tingle isn’t unpleasant so much as odd to the modern palate.

Syrup of Balsam defied expectations.

On the right: Syrup of Balsam: -10/10 would not taste again.

Syrup of Balsam
1 pint, simple syrup or molasses
.5 print, elixir parigoric
1 ounce each:
Essence of fennel
Essence of anise seed
Royal Balsam
Tincture of Balsam of Tolu

“These must be mixed together, and then put up for use.”

If I attempt this again– to be fair, I have enough ingredients and more knowledge– I’ll try to get the Balsam of Tolu to dissolve more fully into the main mixture, though I doubt the separation is why the taste is so unforgettable. While it did mellow after several days, the basic flavor remained licorice cough drops dissolved in corn liquor with an afterburn of turpentine. Fortunately, the dosage is not by the spoonful, but rather ten or more drops in a wine glass of water, depending on the constitution of the patient. As a “cure for the whooping cough,” the syrup with fennel and anise was probably intended to soothe the throat, and paregoric might have helped the pain of damaged lungs. Living in the post-DTaP era, I’ve never had whooping cough, or been around anyone who did, so it’s much harder for me to imagine treating it without antibiotics (or simply not getting it).

“No, really, no antibiotics!” Photo by Jason R. Wickersty/Museum of the American Revolution

That was really illuminating to some people: antibiotics weren’t invented until 1928 (in the case of penicillin) and were not available for civilian use until March, 1945. Until then, diseases like strep throat could be fatal. Often, the best medicine in the 18th century was to help a patient be comfortable, and ease their symptoms.