Tag Archives: 10th Massachusetts

Headed for the Hudson

22 Friday Nov 2013

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Fort Lee: It’s a mixed bag.

Fort Lee is a mixed bag: the site is very urban, authenticity levels vary, the activities sometimes get off schedule, and I don’t think anyone knows for certain what goes into the stew pot. Still, it’s an easy there-and-back dash, and all of us are going now that Sunday’s swim meet is cancelled.

After all, the Young Mr has an agenda. After being told at the Fort that “they didn’t have grapeshot then,” we found a reference in the Jeremiah Greenman diary to grapeshot being fired on the Continental troops at Fort Mifflin in 1777. He’s fastened on this and looks forward to moving that conversation forward…

And I’m just happy to have a day outside to look forward to. It’s a little dull without a fire and tent, but the event has its quirky charms, and I can always bring a book or work on shirts.

To (Ft) Lee or Not to (Ft) Lee?

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

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A Market Girl with a Mallard Duck, pastel by John Russell, 1787. (Sold by Christie's)

A Market Girl with a Mallard Duck, pastel by John Russell, 1787. (Sold by Christie’s)

I like Fort Lee: after all, I like big guns, and Fort Lee has a 32 pound gun.

It’s always cold, though, and I could use a day sewing various projects or vacuuming. But it’s also the last event of the season. Of course, in the slack time, I always stand on the NJ shore wondering how feasible it would be to run over to Manhattan for trim, fabric, or a trip to a museum. In kit. Because…. why not?

But Mr S wants me to come, so I’ve stirred myself to cutting and pressing and starting to hem a wool kerchief. This is made from some crossed-barred wool found in Somerville on the shopping expedition with Sew 18th Century.

She kindly sent me the image above, which is a good thing because I get distracted and think, “you know, that image with the duck and the girl and the bonnet,” which will give you 71,000,000 results in Google, but fortunately includes this one.

Three hems: I should be done by now.

It’s an easy project, but sometimes those are the hardest because you’re not learning anything. That, of course, is what Netflix is for: ghastly murders or sophisticated dramas keep you going on repetitive hems.  (I do my best backstitching to BBC crime dramas– go figure.)

So, a November Saturday up on the Palisades means wool, in fact, requires wool, and for the first time I think I have enough wool to stay reasonably comfortable. That’s a cloak, kerchief, gown and two wool petticoats, plus wool stockings and, if they fit, sheepskin insoles for my shoes. We have a wool shift at work, but at about 50 years later than the Fall of Fort Lee, it provides no justification for a wool flannel shift. Still, a wool shift is a tempting thought, and suddenly that kerchief hem gets more interesting, as I start to think about where to look for documentation of wool or flannel shifts.

How many men and a tub?

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by in Laundry, Living History, Research

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The Laundry
Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard (French, Paris 1800–1874)
1840s, Salted paper print Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
2005.100.1241

How many men does it take to know what kind of wood a laundry tub should be made of?
For now, one woman. Yes, I’ve got a new obsession.

It started innocently enough with an exchange about future laundry tubs and an existing tub described as large, made of pine, and badly shrunken. Somehow I found myself burning to know, What is the appropriate wood for a laundry tub made in southeastern New England between 1775 and 1785?

Luckily I work in the kind of place where you might find an answer to that kind of question. In the Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection, I found George Dods Cooper Accounts (MSS 9001-D Box 4). Mr Dod worked as a cooper in Providence between about 1790 and 1820, so he’s later than I need for this specific application, but I’m not sure the form changes radically before 1850, so Mr Dods seemed like a good place to begin.

While I did not find the hoped-for a receipt for purchases of specific kinds of wood, I did find that Dods was coopering with both iron and wooden hoops, and that he was making barrels, tubs and buckets of unspecified kinds of wood as well as cedar tubs.

1813 Mr Holroid
Nov 19
Sating 4 iron hoops on a Poudering Tub 0=6 0
Sating 6 Wooden Do- on another – Do- 0=3 0

1810
Oct 3 Satting 3 hoops on a large cedar tub 1 firking hoop 0=1-6

1813
July 6 Sating 2 hoops on a Cedar tub 0=1-0

–George Dods Papers, MSS 9001-D Box 4, Folder 2, RIHS Library.

Poudering or powdering tubs were used for salting meat; satting is how Mr Dods spelled setting, and the firking is a firkin. His spelling was idiosyncratic but consistent.

Enslaved Girl 1830 Origin: America, Virginia, Arlington County Primary Support: 6 x 4 1/8in. (15.2 x 10.5cm) Watercolor, pencil, and ink on wove paper Museum Purchase Acc. No. 2007-34,1

Enslaved Girl, 1830
America, Virginia, Arlington County
Watercolor, pencil, and ink on wove paper
Museum Purchase Acc. No. 2007-34,1

So, 1813: a cedar tub. But was it for laundry? I found well buckets and house buckets, ‘poudering’ tubs and pounding barrels, barrels for meat and rum and ‘flower,’ cedar tubs and a ‘tub for Cora,’ but no tub specifically described as a laundry, washing or dish tub.

Searching local library and special collections databases using the appropriate Library of Congress subject terms proved fruitless as well, though eventually I ended up at Williamsburg, where I found an 1830 watercolor drawing of an enslaved girl with a tub on her head. (They call it a tub; you and I might call it a piggin.) This at least confirmed the persistence of the tub style seen in the 1785 British Encampment drawing. I suppose that’s something.

Domestic Engineering and the Journal of Mechanical Contracting, Vol. LX No. 6, page 160. 1912

But still, questions persisted: first, what wood would be right, and secondly, what size should the tub be? There was the thought that pine might not be right, since reputable coopers are making tubs from oak and cedar. Finally did what most of us do when frustrated now: I did a very simple Google search and ended up at Google Books with Domestic Engineering and the Journal of Mechanical Contracting, Volume 60. 

This journal helpfully informed me that Wooden tubs are made out of 1- 1/4 inch white pine grained or dovetailed together at the ends and held together by means of iron rods and went on to explain that Great latitude was generally allowed in the making of wooden tubs as they were usually made on the premises by the carpenter who had no standards to follow. No standards! Doesn’t that explain a lot.

Fully loaded for Saratoga

Do I have any clearer direction? Well, clear as mud, maybe. It appears that one could have a tub of unspecified wood, hooped with wood or metal, in which one could do laundry. Or one could follow Domestic Engineering, and consider the current pine tub acceptable, if perhaps in need of mending. (I have not seen it, so I do not know.) I suppose the question is really whether or not all of this business will fit into the supply wagon known as our Subaru.

Laundry!

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Events, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

I’ve been thinking about laundry, and not just because I did wash yesterday, but also because I’m committed now to learning more about the women of the 10th Massachusetts (dude, it’s on paper). Since I won’t be able to get up to the Mass Archives or MHS until the holiday break, one place I can start is with the material culture of army women’s lives. This is also helpful as I am thinking about asking for a laundry tub for Christmas. (I had an aunt who got a toilet seat for Mother’s Day, and my husband once gave his siblings fire extinguishers for Christmas, so you cannot deny that we have a proud history of gift-giving.)

There’s a lot to love in the detail above, and while there are some things I don’t think you’d find in the 10th Mass camp — from red coats to chairs, even broken–we can still find useful information. After all, if your chair is broken, you have more of a leg to stand on for having a chair.

The buckets and washtubs have wooden hoops: that’s a fine detail, and one I appreciate, with my very particular bucket. That means, though, that the washtubs I have in mind might not work, as they have metal bands. My bucket man took a long time to get my bucket right, and he doesn’t make washtubs…but maybe the local man would consider trying a smaller tub. Hard to know, but size will be an issue. It appears there may be two sizes of tub in the image above: a larger tub on the makeshift table at left, and a smaller one on the broken chair.

Detail, James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Detail, James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

The improvised clothesline is a reassuring detail, being pretty much what I have in mind for our camps, pending some riverbank logging. These taller sticks would then join our kettle or musket-rack sticks as part of the permanent equipage carried by the Subaru baggage train.

We’d been talking about doing a cold wash at work, where a friend was advocating NOT digging a pit and boiling laundry on the lawn, so these washing women intrigued me: none of them are boiling clothes. In fact, there’s no fire to be seen! But look again at where those kettles are. In the detail above and again at left, note a large kettle adjacent to every washtub. Could it be that water was boiled in a larger (enormous) kettle, and dipped into these smaller kettles? The other thing to note is that this seems to be family-based washing  and not regimental-scale washing. Given that I’d probably only have two shifts and four shirts to wash on a good day (they’re wearing their shirts, you see), could this model work?

None of the reenactments we see achieve anything like the scale of the events or activities we’re trying to recreate. Very few of us can cook with five pounds of flour, and there are never enough guys to make up a full brigade in the field. Those truths don’t mean we should skimp or cut corners, but they do mean that we should cut our coat to our cloth. Smaller scale washing could still convey the hassle, necessity, and gender division of the work.

Pouting over Putnam

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Events, Fail, Reenacting

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James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

This Saturday is the BAR event at Putnam Park in Redding, CT. This is an event with an early set-up time, one of those “early enough to be worth packing the car Friday night” events, as Mr S will need to depart at the time he usually gets up. I’m pouting not because of the early departure time, but because I won’t be going.

The Young Mr has his first swim meet Sunday, so Saturday he’ll have to get his homework done. That means someone has to stay home, or he’ll sleep till noon and spend the rest of the day eating meat and playing video games, all normal for a 15-year-old, but not helpful when most of Sunday will be spent marinating in chlorine.

I did a strange and awful thing to my back in an altercation with the face plate of an UPS unit for a server, and find that two weeks on, I still have a mis-aligned rib and occasional searing pain when reaching for Amelia Simmons’ cookbook to find something for Mr S to take with him to Putnam Park. At first, it seemed that it would be like Fort Lee, where one does not cook.

However, it seems that a camp kitchen is planned and there could be cooking, if only someone could tend the fire during the tactical, but no. I will not be there to stir meat of any kind, in any way, and the gentlemen, if one can call them that, will have to scrounge in the corners of their haversacks, take pot luck from the Boy Scouts, or find other means of nourishing themselves. I’ve also been told that it might be as well for me not to lace up my stays and push my ribs around, though on the whole, I think I might be better off wearing them more often. No matter what, home I shall I be, and the gentlemen will have to shift for themselves. Having seen them in action, I have no doubt that they will do well for themselves, and I might still bake them a pie.