Everyday Life in Colonial America

While life in colonial America was harsh compared to modern living standards, colonial Americans employed commonly-used tools in their home and villages lives that helped them survive and even thrive, despite their exposure to frigid winters, increasingly hostile Native Americans and the constant struggle for sufficient food stocks.

Commonly-used Items

Common tools employed in most colonial households included bayberry, whale oil or tallow candles, which gave colonials their only source of light beside the family hearth fire, while children as young as six were frequently employed in carding, which removed tangles from freshly-sheered wool, making it easier to straighten before spinning it into thread.

Hornbooks for Education

While a formal education was considered unnecessary for young girls, most colonial children learned reading, writing and mathematics from their parents or local ministers, using hornbooks, as they were known, which was a sheet of paper affixed to a tablet of wood, leather or bone, all covered by a thin, transparent strip of horn, while well-heeled young girls refined and practiced their needlework skills on ever-present samplers.

Simple Toys

In an age before video games and mass-produced toys, colonial children made whirligigs out of bone, clay and the occasional spare button, making for hours of simple amusement as they warmed themselves beside the family hearth fire. Other common household items included the fire bucket, which was employed in early bucket brigade firefighting, while time was told almost exclusively with the use of sundials, although on overcast days, sundials became useless ornaments in colonial villages.

Smell Good Pomanders

Other basic conveniences within the colonial home included such Medieval carryovers as pomanders, which usually included an orange studded with cloves and covered in oils and spices to give colonial homes a pleasant smell, while warming pans filled with hot ashes from the hearth fire were passed between bed sheets on frigid New England nights, warming straw-stuffed mattresses before colonials tucked in until dawn.

Eating off Trenchers

Colonials ate off of wooden plates known as trenchers, generally with their hands, employing sugar nippers for much-coveted sugar cones to add sweetness to foods and beverages. Salt cellars were another carryover from Medieval Europe, defining the status of diners “above the salt” for guests of honor who sat at either end of the family table, while children and less important guests sat “below the salt” on either side of a table, making everyday life in colonial America, a civilized stronghold against the daily challenges of a harsh New World.