Colonial Life

Up until the second half of the seventeenth century, the British government was far too preoccupied with its own problems to closely monitor and regulate colonial policy. So, in virtually every aspect of daily life, from providing their families with food and shelter to establishing schools and churches to organizing recreational activities, the New World settlers had to start from scratch. By the time of the American Revolution, the English colonists had turned the North American wilderness into a structured, mainly agricultural, and highly literate society—a society that was built on ingenuity and thrived on autonomy (the right to direct its own affairs).

What did people eat before the Revolution?

The diet of colonial Americans varied, depending on the food at hand and the origins of the people who lived in a given area. Some foods, however, were considered staple items (basics that everyone consumed). In 1763, 90 percent of all Americans were farmers, so the hardiest vegetables—those that

were easy to grow and could be stored for long periods of time without rotting—appeared on most colonial tables. These included beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and turnips. Since settlements tended to grow up along the ocean or rivers, seafood was often on the menu. Oysters were popular with nearly everyone, but—very surprisingly—lobsters were considered fit only for the poor.

New York, New Jersey, and especially Pennsylvania were considered the colonial "breadbasket." Farmers there grew wheat to supply the colonies, Canada, and the West Indies. The green vegetables and the cheeses, salads, and apples introduced by the Germans and the Dutch made the diet in these colonies more varied than in any other part of the New World.

The Scots-Irish in Pennsylvania and the Southern backcountry depended on hunting and fishing, often using techniques they learned from Native Americans. They lived mostly on wild fruits and greens, bear, venison (deer meat), rabbit, squirrel, woodchuck, and turkey. These people moved frequently, so they did little serious farming. Occasionally, though, they would clear a small patch of land to grow sweet potatoes, turnips, corn, beans, or squash.

Pork was popular in New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Vermont). Pigs were easy to raise almost anywhere—they could forage for food in wooded areas or even on city streets. A man called a "hog-reeve" was often hired to keep these ill-tempered beasts under control. The New England diet was frequently rounded out with white bread, milk porridge, and pumpkin that was roasted, boiled, mashed, and then made into bread, cakes, and pies.

Some Southern farmers cultivated great quantities of rice. Milk was popular in the South, as elsewhere, but it could not be kept fresh in the warmer Southern colonies, so it was not a staple item there. The diet of the poor Southerner might include only three or four ingredients, but wealthy Southerners fared better. Harriot Horry, who was the daughter of a wealthy South Carolina planter, compiled a cookbook in 1770. It includes directions for the preparation of beef, veal, seafood dishes, Shrewsbury cakes (shortbread cookies made with sugar, butter, nutmeg, and flour), cheesecakes, marmalades, ginger-bread, almond cream, and strawberry jellies.

Literacy in the colonies

The written word was just as powerful a force for freedom before the Revolutionary War as weapons were during the war. Americans were an uncommonly literate group of people (able to read and write). The founders of the colonies feared that their distance from civilization would turn the population into savages. Early settlers in the New England area were especially concerned about their children's future: they combined elements of Christian education with reading and literacy by using the Bible as an early reading text.

How many Americans were able to read? Estimates vary, but historians agree that by the time of the Revolution, the percentage of the population that could read was far higher in America than in Europe. It is harder to estimate how many African Americans could read, but there is evidence that a fair number could, especially those living in the North.

As early as 1642, Massachusetts parents who failed to teach their children to read were fined. As communities grew, New Englanders established extensive public schools. The goal of these schools was to teach every colonist to read. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, children benefitted from more and better educational facilities than those in any other part of America.

Although public education in the other colonies was less equitable, most white colonists—both male and female— could read. Most also owned at least a few books, often the Bible and an almanac (a book containing lists, charts, and tables of useful information).

Fueling independent thought

On the eve of the Revolution, the colonists were a literate and independent-minded people. American colonists apparently loved to read and write and were deeply interested in following the news and arguments of the day. Newspapers played an especially important role in the colonists' lives. They were read eagerly, with people sharing their copies and discussing the headlines. With such a large reading population, it was no wonder that many colonists were opposed to the Stamp Act (see Chapter 4: The Roots of Rebellion [1763–1769]), which taxed the very paper upon which their newspapers, pamphlets, and books were printed.

While most early Americans could and did read, highly educated people read more widely. At this point in U.S. history, it was not considered necessary for young women to attend institutions of higher learning, but young men studied the classics in American colleges—usually in the original Latin and Greek. They also read the works of European philosophers of their day (philosophy is the study of the nature of things, based on logical reasoning). These studies proved to be a provocative mixture: they encouraged the patriots (freedom-fighters) to base the colonies' rebellion on principles of liberty, philosophy, and justice, not simply on economic matters like taxes.

Education and the sexes

There were few opportunities for formal education for women prior to the American Revolution. Their education centered instead on managing a household and raising children. Even though women were the undisputed backbone of the American family unit, for most of the colonial era they were afforded no legal status whatsoever.

The number of skills colonial women had to master to perform their various roles was astonishing. They made their family's clothing from cloth they produced themselves. They also cooked, processed, and preserved food from crops they grew and tended; treated the sick with a variety of herbs; assisted in childbirth; took care of farm animals; educated young children; and assisted in the family business.

Women learned these skills from their mothers or served as apprentices or servants to other families. Girls and boys went to "dame schools" (taught by women known as dames) up to about the age of seven to learn how to read and write. Some girls were fortunate enough to receive a secondary education with the boys after dame school, or they were tutored at home or went to private schools.

Educational opportunities for women varied from colony to colony. Until about 1750 in New England, for instance, education for girls usually stopped after dame school;

later, however, many girls attended "town schools" just like the boys. Boys and girls were educated separately, though—the girls had their turn in the summer or at the end of the day after the boys' classes were over. The quality of the education at town schools was said to be better for boys. The first all-female town school opened in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1773, for the teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. Girls who sought further education could attend a handful of private schools—if their families could afford the tuition.

Educational prospects were better for girls in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey than they were for the girls in the rest of the Northeast. Even though they too were expected to devote their lives to family and household, they were fortunate to receive an elementary education equal to that of boys in schools operated by the Dutch Reformed Church, Quakers, and various German religious groups like the Moravians. Moravians believed girls had the same ability to learn as boys: they established schools for both sexes, as well as some all-girl schools.

The leading pre-Revolutionary girls' school was founded in 1754 in Philadelphia; female students there studied reading, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar. A girls' boarding school was opened in Philadelphia in 1767. Private and evening schools were also options.

A high quality education for girls was more difficult to obtain in the South, partly because of the region's geography. Large, scattered farms and plantations made a town-school system impractical. Fewer Southern girls were able to read and write, and education was considered a private family affair.

Young children were taught by their mothers; later, tutors were hired. Tutors might instruct a boy's sisters in domestic matters, music, dancing, art, needlework, conduct, good manners, and possibly conversational French. Poor girls might become apprentices and learn how to read the Bible and perform household tasks; some attended the few free schools available, but most poor children received no education at all.

The sporting life

Because the American continent was fertile, the early settlers did not have to spend all of their time finding and growing food. Colonial Americans, therefore, had a fair amount of free time for sports and recreation. They enjoyed the European games and sports they had brought with them (cards, lawn bowling, and dancing) and embraced the Native American pastime of gambling. People bet heavily on the outcomes of sporting events, horse races, fistfights, and card games. In 1765 William Byrd, one of the richest men in the colonies, reportedly had to sell 400 slaves to pay off his gambling debts.

Founding Father John Adams wrote in his John Adams: A Biography in His Own Words: "I spent my time driving hoops, playing marbles, playing Quoits [a game in which flat rings of iron or rope are pitched at a stake, with points awarded for encircling it], Wrestling, Swimming, Skaiting and above all in shooting." By the mid-1700s, activities that had once been necessary for survival had become recreational in nature. Many colonists spent their leisure time engaging in shooting contests, hunting, and fishing.

Beginning around 1730, wealthy men began to import racehorses from Great Britain. While British races were run on long, straight tracks, American colonists built oval tracks because the crowds of spectators were so large. Entire communities often attended the horse races, and the racing season might extend from March to November, depending on the local weather. In the mild climate of South Carolina, horse racing became such a part of everyday life that by 1763 newspapers were publishing the daily race results.

Rich and poor alike enjoyed unusual "sports" like bear baiting and cock fighting, both of which are considered cruel,

violent, and abusive in present-day society. Although bear baiting had been outlawed in Massachusetts in 1631, that did not stop its practice. Bear baiting involves setting dogs to attack or torment a chained bear. Cock fighting takes place between two game birds (game cocks) that sometimes have metal spurs attached to their legs to make the fight bloodier. Special pits were built for cock fights, usually in taverns, with a raised area for spectators, who, of course, gambled heavily on the results.

Boxing in the colonies was not the refined sport it was in England. In his book American Eras: The Revolutionary Era (1754-1783) Robert J. Allison describes how the American version of this sport differed from the British version. According to Allison, American boxing fans gathered at taverns to watch matches between two men whose object was to gouge one another in the genitals with waxed fingernails grown especially for the purpose.

Taverns hosted shooting matches, lawn bowling tournaments, and meetings to discuss politics. Boston's most skilled political agitator, Samuel Adams (1722–1803; see section titled "The Sons of Liberty Unite" in Chapter 4: The Roots of Rebellion [1763–1769]), liked to stir up resistance to England through rousing speeches he delivered to local tavern crowds.

The most popular card game of the day was whist, a game that required bluffing one's opponents. The Germans called it pochen (to bluff), the French called it poque, and it came to be called poker by Americans. The Stamp Act of 1765 placed a tax on playing cards; that may have been the most unpopular feature of the Act.

Colonial settlements grew up around water sources, and water sports were popular pastimes. New England and Maryland colonists liked to race sailboats, rowboats, and canoes. Wealthy South Carolina planters escaped the summer heat by traveling to Rhode Island, where they enjoyed the pleasures of sailing. New Yorkers raced yachts, a Dutch invention (the word yacht comes from a Dutch word for hunting boat). Many Americans liked to swim; Founding Father Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) liked it so much, he is said to have considered paying his way through Europe by becoming a swimming instructor.

American colonists did not share the British passion for football or cricket. Instead, they developed other European sports that placed an emphasis on individual skills. As early as 1762, colonists were playing a sport that resembled modern-day baseball. Soldiers under the command of George Washington (1732–1799) at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, were reported in 1778 to be "playing at base." And so, along with hot dogs and apple pie, baseball would later come to be identified as something purely American.

For More Information

Books

Reich, Jerome R. Colonial America. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Web Sites

Related web links can be accessed through "Yahooligans! Around the World: Countries: United States: History: Colonial Life (1585–1783): American Revolutionary War." [Online] Available http://www.yahooligans.com/Around_the_World/… (accessed on April 16, 1999).

Sources

Adams, John. John Adams: A Biography in His Own Words. Edited by James Bishop Peabody. New York: Newsweek, 1973.

Allison, Robert J. American Eras: The Revolutionary Era (1754-1783). Detroit: Gale, 1998.

Ellet, Elizabeth. Revolutionary Women in the War for American Independence. A one-volume revised edition of the 1848 Landmark Series, edited and annotated by Lincoln Diamant. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.

Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Women in the Age of the American Revolution. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989.

Lecky, William E. Hartpole. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 3. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Marrin, Albert. The War for Independence: The Story of the American Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Schouler, James. Americans of 1776: Daily Life during the Revolutionary Period. Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1984.

Revolutionary-Era Colleges

Colonial colleges were very small. In 1775 there were nine colleges with a total of 750 students. Eight of the nine were associated with the religious groups who had founded them. It was very costly to attend college, so a college education was limited for the most part to the male children of the wealthy. Many of the Founding Fathers—leaders in the movement to establish a free and independent United States—received law degrees from one of these institutions. An English visitor to the colonies once complained that it seemed as though every other American he met was a lawyer.

The following is a list of American colleges that could grant degrees during the American Revolution. Four other colleges were added in 1782–1783.