Civil War Era Knit-Along Update

Hopefully, many of us have all been knitting a period item for about a week now. I haven't gotten very far on mine. Regardless of how far you are or what you are knitting, you can show off your color choices and pieces so far. Just write up a blog post and link to it using the link function at the bottom of this post. You can link until Monday. 

I chose to use a forest green and a dark brown for my sontag. I keep forgetting to increase at the beginning of each row and end up remembering half way through the row. Once you get the hang of the basket weave pattern, it is fun to work on. I have been using a yarn called "Swish" from Knitpicks.com and have been using size 8 needles.        

 I have seen sontags laid out and it never looks like it will fit the body the right way, but they always do! I am happy with how it looks so far. I was really undecided when I was choosing colors. I have too much maroon knitted period items. I thought the dark green and brown would offset them nicely. I only have two reenacting dresses, one is green checkered and the other maroon and white calico. I know that one of the biggest reenactor pet-peeves is being too "matchy." I try my best but I know what I like.

As you can see from the photo at the top, Coal the Kitty is such a full supporter of the Civil War Era Knit-Along that he has chosen to play with a period correct toy--around the room and eventually down the stairs. As usual, I can't wait to see everyone's work. It is amazing how many talented bloggers there are out there! 

The New England Primer: Colonial School in the Northeast

In the Early Colonial period, religion was the backbone of education.  In 1642, the Puritans in Massachusetts passed a law which used elected members of the colony to oversee  education to make sure that children were receiving an appropriate education and that they understood the laws of the colony. Many colonies followed the model that the Puritans set. 

 





 
 In 1647, the Puritans passed the Old Deluder Satan Law which was designed to make sure that all of their citizens were able to read the Bible to protect themselves from Satan. To make this possible, the law required that every town with fifty houses to pay a teacher to teach reading and writing. Also, every town with at least one hundred houses was required to erect a grammar school to prepare boys for higher learning.


 


By 1683, William Penn made a law which fined the parents of children who could not read and write by the time they were twelve, five pounds. A lot of money back then. While educating slaves was not illegal yet, few were educated. Some African schools were erected by Quakers but elsewhere in the colonies, few were taught. 


Schools during the American Colonial period were typically one-roomed buildings built by communities or churches. School boards were elected by the community and they built the school as they saw fit without any regulations. Each school board chose their own teacher and set their own tuition costs. Teaching was a predominately male profession, with men making about one hundred pounds a year and women teachers only making thirty percent of that. Some schools even had their teacher board at students' houses to reduce financial strain on the teachers. Many students also paid their teacher in foods and other farm goods.


 In the schoolroom, boys and girls had separate benches. The children were of mixed ages and girls tended only to stay for a few years, so they could learn home skills. Since school took place only in the winter and months when children weren't needed on farms, the students were expected to bring wood to feed the fire. It was very rare for students to have textbooks. Normally the schoolmaster had the only textbook. Children typically had a horn-book (pictured top, left,) which was a small paddle of wood which had a lesson printed on it which was then covered by a thin sheet of cow horn to protect the print. Horn-books could be threaded with string and worn around the neck.

Paper was scarce so most work was done verbally. Reading, writing, religion, and spelling. Latin grammar schools for boys only, taught Greek and Latin. Students were expected to memorize and recite their lessons, which were usually a religious rhyme. Copy-books taught nice handwriting, which was considered more important than good spelling as many words of the time were spelled phonetically. 







Learning handwriting by tracing over letters written in a faint ink is attributed to John Locke and very similar to how we teach children to learn to write in modern times.   

*Note: The poem and etchings are from the most popular Colonial textbook, The New England Primer from 1727. Int he late 1700s, the poem was changed to include more religious rhymes and to exclude all references to the King. Etchings of King George II were ripped out of the older Primers during the revolution and few exist today. In future printings, George Washington was printed at the beginnings.  

Summer Colonial Cooking: Gingerbread Cake Recipe

It's been so hot recently! The sun has shone bright without a cloud in the sky. What a great day to spend in a Colonial farmhouse, cooking?


I love animals, but the door of the farmhouse has been altered to let smoke out. Unfortunately, it also lets small (and not so small) critters in! Cooking with critters is nearly impossible.

I once heard that cats can contort and fit anywhere their head can fit. I wasn't sure how cats did this until I saw this barn kitty slide in the kitchen under the door.

The rooster has been testing the waters in the kitchen for a while but today he decided to come all the way in and see what crumbs he could scrape from the cracks in the floor.

I was waiting for cat and chicken brawl, but it never came. After the cat was done sticking his nose in all of the whipped cream, the cat and chicken sat down together.

I spent a good while chasing both the cat and the chicken around the kitchen but it was impossible to keep them out.  I tried my best to keep them off the cooking utensils. The chicken was fond of standing on the dutch ovens. There was also a cooked chicken on the table which he didn't seem to mind. 

Here's a period recipe for Gingerbread Cakes if anyone is brave enough to try it. I don't think our modern palates are used to real ginger used in sweets.

The recipe makes a lot of dough! Remember they baked a lot at once and stored it up.  I wrote the recipe up in modern terms and also in modern "sizing."

Ingredients: (Makes a lot.)
-12 Cups Flour
-2 Cups Sugar
-1 pound Butter (4 sticks)
-2 ounces Ginger
-2 teaspoons ground nutmeg or 1 freshly ground nutmeg
-1/2 cup Heavy Cream
-16 ounces of Golden Syrup (Treacle)

 Annotated Ingredients: (Makes 4 small cakes or one 9 inch one.)
- 3 Cups Flour
- 1/2 Cup Sugar
- 1/4 pound Butter (1 stick)
- 1 1/4 teaspoons Ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
- 1/8 cup Heavy Cream 
- 4 ounces of Golden Syrup (Treacle)

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix Flour, Sugar, and Nutmeg in a large bowl. Cream Butter with the grated Ginger. Mix the Butter and Ginger in with the Flour mixture. Add Golden Syrup and Heavy Cream. Mix until a stiff dough. Roll out to 1/2 inch on a floured surface. Cut out small circles. Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 40-45 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
   

Civil War Era Knit-Along Instructions

 

For those of us knitting the sontag, there is a pattern in PieceWork Magazine's March/April 2009 edition. For those of us that do not have that issue, there is a free pattern at Ragged Soldier. The last time I tried the pattern, I used the period sizing, which was way too small for me. I suggest using the medium sizing that's written in.











 Materials needed: 

• 500 yards of 100% wool in a sport weight or a true DK, but not worsted for MAIN COLOR.
• 200 yards of  100% wool in a sport weight or a true DK, but not worsted for BORDER COLOR. KnitPicks is a great place to find cheaper, high quality yarn, just make sure that it is sport weight or DK and %100 wool.
• Size 7 or 8 needles  (7 for DK wool, 8 for sport weight.)
• This Pattern. I highly suggest printing it. 
• This Pattern for the border. This is the border suggested in the period directions but few people use this border and opt for a double crocheted border instead.  
• Stitch markers. You can buy these or make them by cutting a straw into thin rings. 
• Safety pin. This is used to mark the Right side of the knitting.  

Good luck! It doesn't officially start until August 1st but I wanted to give a little time for everyone to gather their materials. If you don't have a local yarn boutique or don't want to buy online, Joann's Fabrics might have usable yarn, but probably not in a wide range of colors. 

If you want to practice the basket weave stitch that we will be using on some scrap yarn, knit 5 stitches, purl 5 stitches and repeat until the end. On the next row make sure that you purl 5 stitches first and knit the next 5. Keep rotating for five rows and on the 6th row knit 5 first and purl and so on.

Nantucket Whaling: The Fate of the Essex

Nantucket, Massachusetts was the heart of the American Whaling industry during the 1820s. Whales were used to produce a multitude of everyday items including oil, candles, meat, corset and crinoline boning and even expensive perfumes.

Whaling was a huge industry. Sailors on whaling vessels not only had to track and find whales but also harpoon them, bring them aboard their ship and process the whales. It was a very dangerous job as many sailors could not swim and there were plenty of chances of falling into the water.

When a whale was spotted, chosen sailors would depart the ship and man small whaling boats. All the small boats would be rowed up to the whale and the harpooner would take a shot at the whale. Ropes attached the harpoons to the small boats so that the boats would not lose the whales. The whales would frequently try to swim away, dragging the boats quickly behind them, sailors referred to this as a "Nantucket sleigh ride." When the whale was too hurt to swim, the whale was hobbled, by cutting the tail (this is similar to cutting an Achilles tendon in an ankle.) The whale was then struck again with a lance to kill the whale. The whale's lungs would fill with blood until blood would shoot out of the whale's blowhole, sailors would call "chimney's afire," when it happened to prepare everyone for a shower of blood.  It was a gruesome job but the only way to get oil in a time before petroleum.

The Essex, a whale ship in the 1820s, was attacked by an abnormally large sperm whale in the South Pacific. The ship was rammed twice and sank and 21 men escaped on their small whaling boats but could not manage to get the necessary supplies. The men eventually landed on a small island with a freshwater spring but soon drained the island of its resources. All but three men decided to leave the island in search of food.

The three men who stayed behind were eventually rescued but the other men, delirious from malnutrition and a lack of fresh water" soon resorted to eating their dead companions. Similarly to many 'last resort' accounts of the time, African Americans "died" first, a true testament to the societal norms of the time. After exhausting those who died of natural causes, the stranded men started to draw lots to decide who would be sacrificed for the group. The Captain's nephew, who was entrusted to his care by his sister, was elected and his good friend was elected to kill him.

When they were rescued, there was only three men left. The First mate soon wrote an account of the incident entitled The Loss of the Ship "Essex" Sunk by a Whale and the Ordeal of the Crew in Open Boats. The account was not published until the 1980s; however, the son of the First mate lent a copy of his father's manuscript to a young Herman Melville while they worked on a ship together. Melville was so inspired by the violence of whales, which was a rare occurrence, that he went on to write Moby Dick. 

The whole whaling industry sends shivers down my back. Can you imagine the time when whale oil would be lighting your homes and your corset would be stiffened with baleen? Those sailors must have been a tough group!

You can see modern whaling on Animal Planet's Whale Wars. It is an interesting show. I am not sure I believe in their methods but they do have a great devotion to saving whales.