What were living conditions like during the 1700's for the lower class?
Life In The 1700s Was:
1. What did people wear?
Your hair would be different and your clothes would be
different, and your clothes would even have different names. Even
baby clothes were different.
When a baby fell he/she fell on what was called a pudding. It
was like an innertube, made out of cloth, that was worn around the
baby's waist. When the baby fell he/she landed on the pudding.
When children turned six years old they stopped wearing baby
clothing and dressed just like their mother or father. It was a
drastic change!
Women wore leather shoes, some were delicate and some were good
quality. The leather was from young goats, and the shoes had points
on the toes.
Middle class women wore simple, cotton clothes. Wealthy women
wore pretty gowns made of expensive material.
Fancy gowns had a bodice on the upper part. The bottom part had
two skirts, a pettycoat underneath and an overskirt on top. The
pettycoat was stuffed with wool in the winter.
Colonial men and boys had to wear wigs. Some wigs were made out
of hair, goat hair, horsehair, cowhair and even wire.
2. What did they eat?
Making bread was not easy. First the people had to grow the
wheat. They ground the grain to get the flour. They had to go out
and gather the rest of the ingredients such as the milk, from the
cows, the lard, the salt, the sugar, and the water from the
well.
The bread baked in an oven beside the fireplace.
Desert was a special treat. People baked pie made from dried
apples. In fact most of the fruit had to be dried or it would
spoil. Even some vegtables were dried.
On Sunday Colonial families ate baked beans. The mother of the
family would start baking the beans on Saturday night. She would
put molasses and a piece of salt pork, along with the beans into a
pot called a bake kettle. She would leave the beans in the
fireplace all night. In the morning they were ready to eat.
The Colonial people saved lots of their vegtables by pickling
them. This means they put the vegtables in vinegar for a while. The
meat was saved by puting it in the smoke house. It would get dry
and the smoke made a safe coating.
3. What did they do for a living?
The blacksmith worked with iron. Children children liked to
stand at the door of a blacksmith shop to watch him make pieces of
red, hot iron into horseshoes, oxshoes, hinges, tools and
nails.
Sometimes the blacksmith pulled teeth because there were no
dentists in the village.
Black carpenters and furniture makers were on every plantation.
Their skill built most of the mansions, churches and public
buildings.
The tanner made leather from animal skins.
4. How and where did they live?
In early Colonial days the houses only had one room and it was
caled the Keeping Room. The family did a lot of things in the
Keeping Room such as eating and cooking and working. The grown-ups
and the babies slept in the Keeping Room, while the older children
slept in the attic. In the Keeping Room, one fireplace cold not
keep the whole room warm. The people could not keep warm with a
slow minuet.
Since the early houses were not big and fancy, they were not
warm. Sometimes a house was so cold in the winter that if a person
was writing a letter the ink on the pen might freeze.
When the colonists first landed in America they had to quickly
find some kind of shelter. Their first homes were dugouts, then
huts, and finally cabins. The walls of the dugouts were made out of
tree branches woven together and plastered with mud.
When more children were born families needed more room. They
made a cooking room which was used for eating, sleeping, cooking,
working. It didn't make any difference how big the house was.
One kind of house was called a saltbox house. It was made out of
wood. Salt was kept in it. Today people still call this kind of
house a saltbox house.
5. What was school like?
The boys went to school more and learned more. The girls went to
Dame School and learned less. Most of the girls stayed at home, and
it was thought that they were not smart enough to learn to read and
write. People thought that weaving and spinning and housework were
more important for girls.
The children had to read a book called New England Primer. When
a boy knew everything in the book he would go to another school.
When the boy turned 11 years old, he would go to college.
