18th Century Days

If you would like to volunteer (or if you have volunteered and now find you have a conflict) please contact the Education Chair.

Orientation

Dressing up is not a requirement for participation in 18th Century Days, however we do encourage you to do so. Most parent volunteers do choose to dress up – would you like to have your child ask, “How come you were the only mom (or dad) not dressed?”

Candle Making

Can you imagine what it would have been like 200 years ago not to have electric lights? For what things do you need light?

Clothing Workshop

The sewing machine was not invented until the mid-19th Century, so most of the family’s clothing was made at home by hand. The local tailor or seamstress might be hired to make a special garment. Hand-me-downs were common, and very often an older garment, when worn in a few spots or simply falling out of fashion would be unstitched and made into something new.

Colonial Fun & Games

Boys and girls were taught that work was good for them. The children enjoyed their work and took satisfaction in doing it well. But even though the children were busy they always found some time to play.

Cross Stitch

“Great A, little a, Bouncing B . . .” As the time-honored rhyme was repeated, small fingers worked the letters in cross or chain stitch using a large needle and dark worsted thread. Literally, girls learned to sew before they learned to read, but they were not likely to forget either lesson.

Education

By 1647 in Massachusetts, any town with 50 families had to provide a school. Parents paid for supplies and provided wood or worked it off. Written work was done on fools cap in ink. These sheets were sewn into books and ruled by hand. After the Revolution, slates were used. Arithmetic was taught by rote. The teacher read math facts and problems from his own “Sum Book.” The pupils learned by repetition, writing, and reciting. All lessons were recited out loud—if bright, students could learn by listening to others.

Hearth Cooking

The food our ancestors ate hasn’t changed substantially; only the methods of preparation are different! Bake kettles, spiders, and trivets would all be placed over a bed of coals shoveled onto the hearth.

Herbs

In the early days in Holliston if a family member had a headache or an upset stomach, the housewife would go outside to her kitchen garden and pick the herbs that would help take away the pain. Most often they were made into a tea to be drunk or a wet, warm compress to be applied to the painful area of the body. Most itches, cuts, bruises, and even broken bones, were treated at home.

Stenciling

The use of stencils goes back thousands of years, for both practical reasons—before rubber stamps or printing presses or photocopiers were invented, stencils were used to teach children their ABCs; politicians used stencils of their signatures to get through their piles of official correspondence—and to make surfaces look more beautiful and more expensive. The Europeans who colonized America were familiar with stencil designs in the houses, churches and public buildings of their homelands and brought these traditions to the New World with them.