Click, drag, and zoom to explore the Colonial Room. Or, view full instructions for how to use this virtual tour.
Colonial Room: Colonial Ways of Life
Alice Van Leer Carrick and her husband Professor Prescott Orde Skinner were the last occupants of Webster Cottage about which home she wrote as “The Next to Nothing House,” published in 1922. Carrick was an author and collector of chiefly American antiques, also silhouettes. While living in Webster Cottage, she furnished the entire house with antiques because she believed that no other furniture would look good in an 18th Century house. She allowed visitors into the house every Thursday and hosted tea parties, dinners, and Dartmouth clubs. This was the beginning of the Cottage as an informal museum. While it was still their home, the Skinners were the first to furnish it according to its original period.
Mrs. Skinner believed that the key to understanding history was understanding women’s stories. The Colonial Room in Webster Cottage is dedicated to those stories through an exploration of women’s work. During the Colonial period, much of women’s lives were consumed by domestic work. Unlike today, housework was a valued and essential part of rural life. Without the women working, the men would not be able to keep up the farm and earn for the family. One of the key parts of domestic labor, was the production of textiles. Women would spin and weave wool and flax to make clothing for the entire family. If a woman was sufficiently skilled, she would be able to create textiles for others in the community. This would add another income for the family.
One important aspect of women’s work was its seasonality. Like other forms of work in rural communities, women’s work changed throughout the seasons based on what was necessary at the time. Another reason for work being done in one particular season, was the temperature. Because houses did not regulate temperatures the way they do today, some tasks could only be done in certain seasons. One of these was candle making. In order to make candles, they needed to harden in a cool place. If it was the middle of the summer, a rural household would not have a place cool enough to do this. This meant candles were made in the fall and winter. For most of the period, candles were dipped (which relied on cold weather even more), until candle molds became more widely available. Molds such as these allowed women to make a greater quantity of candles in less time, which meant they could use more during the rest of the year.
While women did almost all the housework, men were still a part of domestic work. They supported the women of the household by making tools for them, such as the dough bowl and handmade wooden spoon that are shown in the dry sink in the kitchen. Woodworking was something that men did as a way to facilitate women’s work. This is only a part of how men supported women. They provided women with raw material and tools to go about their work. This was important because not only were women producing goods for their family, but they also could produce goods for credit. As previously mentioned, women with specialized skills could produce enough of their speciality for their family, and sell the excess.
Cooking was one of the most important facets of women’s work, meaning that the hearth was the center of the home. Cooking methods were understandably quite different to those we use today. Women were required to cook on open fires and use their space creatively. Very little delicate cooking took place over a direct flame. Stews and meets could be cooked over the flame, but most of the food would have been cooked over piles of hot coals where the heat was easier to control.
Cookbooks were not common during the 18th Century because much of rural cooking did not require anything too precise. Women learned how to cook from their mothers and passed down the skill themselves. Many women were skilled enough at cooking and baking that they did not need measuring cups such as these copper ones; they relied on their instincts. More precise cooking did not become popular until the 19th Century.
As technology changed, so did women’s work. It gradually became less appreciated and viewed as not real work. During the Colonial period and well into the 19th Century, women’s work was viewed as necessary and valuable. Towards the second half of the 19th Century, views on women’s work began to shift into how it is viewed today. Mrs. Skinner believed that women’s stories and their work was one of the only ways we could truly understand our history. She believed that when women’s work is properly interpreted and rewarded, it is easy to see that it is important and intelligent work that needs to be done and should be appreciated.