By John T. Humphrey
Records Used to Tell the Story
of
Life in Mid-Eighteenth
Century Pennsylvania
County Tax Lists
Diaries and Letters
Road Petitions
Business Ledgers
U.S. Direct “Window” Tax
of 1798
U.S. Census of 1790
Deeds
Estate Inventories
“Black clouds rested heavily
on the southern horizon and
foretold of an unusually
severe storm…all port-holes
and hatches were closed and
fastened, the upper yards were
lowered and the sails
furled…Soon after 8 o’clock a
hurricane broke loose, far
more terrible than we
dreamed an ocean could
be…winds howled, roaring
waves ran mountains
high…All passengers were
gathered in the cabins and a
solemn stillness reigned about
10 o’clock there was a terrible
shock…the side of the ship
against which my wife was
leaning was now the bottom
and the bottom had become
one of the sides of the cabin
and we realized the ship had
capsized…a cry was raised for
axes to cut away the
masts…the Captain bravely
climbed the main mast, and
under his blows it parted and
went over. Instantly, the ship
righted itself and floated on
even keel!” [1]
The foregoing is an account of
a voyage recorded by a
Moravian minister traveling
from Germany to Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. It offers the kind
of detail most family historians
would like to find on their
eighteenth-century ancestors.
Yet, how often can any
historian find this kind of
detail? Seldom, if ever!
Details concerning what an
ancestor may have done on
any given day can be difficult,
if not impossible, to find. But,
details concerning shared or
common experience have been
recorded, and that information
is useful in gaining insight into
eighteenth-century life in rural
Pennsylvania.
Shared experience is an
analytical tool used by
historians to research,
interpret, and analyze the past.
Men and women of all
generations have shared
experience, such as our
contemporary habit of
purchasing food in a grocery
store. Details of that
experience include the day of
the week, time of day the
purchase, and the name of the
store. The fact that most of us
purchase food in a store
provides an experience we all
share in common.
Immigrants Had “Shared
Experience”
The same was true of all
eighteenth-century
Pennsylvania immigrants. All
newcomers had to journey
there on a ship—an experience
shared in common. The
specifics of each voyage were
unique to that journey and to
the passengers who traveled on
that particular ship. But, on
that ship and others, people
had shared experiences as
well.
Ship’s captains carried out
similar or routine sailing
maneuvers on each and every
trip across the Atlantic. As a
sailing vessel approached the
North American continent, for
example, the captain of the
ship would have ordered a
member of his crew to start
“sounding for the bottom.” The
crewmember dropped a rope
with a heavy lead weight over
the side of the ship to test the
depth of the water. He was
trying to find the bottom. If
the weight touched bottom at
eight fathoms, that meant the
ocean was only forty-eight feel
deep. (One fathom equals six
linear feet.) That indicated the
ship was approaching land.
Testing for the bottom was
especially important if the ship
approached the coast of New
England or New York in a fog
bank, a common occurrence.
An account of one voyage
noted, “No land was seen
even though the ship had
proceeded to eight fathoms.
When at 10 a.m. the mist
lifted, America was seen for
the first time.” [2]
A 1742 account of another
voyage noted that the captain
found the bottom at 35 fathoms
or 210 feet. On May 19 a
cold, thick fog covered the sea.
[3] The captain of this
particular ship dropped anchor,
as he wanted to send a small
boat ashore to find a local
navigator—another common
experience. If a ship’s captain
was unfamiliar with his present
location or his destination port,
he waited until he could
arrange with a local expert
who could pilot the boat into
the harbor with some degree of
safety.
Depending on the distance to
shore and the condition of the
passengers and crew, the
captain may have sent a
smaller boat ashore for other
reasons—to get fresh water or
to bury the dead. A record
kept of one crossing noted that
a boat went ashore near New
London, Connecticut, to bury
an infant born in route to
Pennsylvania. [4] While ashore
they encountered a resident
who commented on how fit
they appeared after such a long
voyage. He noted that
passengers on most ships
usually got a fever and many
often perished. He went on to
say, “They [the dead] were
placed in scores in large
ditches near the shore and
covered with sand…” [5]
Statements similar to this one
suggest that the remains of
many immigrants were,
perhaps, similarly buried on
the beaches of New England,
Long Island, New Jersey, and
Delawarre
Voyage A “Slow
Boat”
The voyage from the capes of
the Delaware Bay to
Philadelphia was neither fast
nor easy. Everything
depended on the wind. If the
prevailing breeze came from
the south, then the ship
probably reached Philadelphia
in short order, as was the
circumstance when Gottlieb
Mittelberger came to
Pennsylvania. He noted in his
travel journal that the journey
up Delaware Bay took forty
hours, or about 1½ days. [6] In
a letter to Germany,
Christopher Saur noted that
some ships needed eight to ten
days to travel the same
distance. [7]
When a ship finally arrived in
Philadelphia, people usually
gathered on the wharf. The
narrator of another journal
noted as they approached the
dock, “…a crowd of persons
was seen gathering on shore in
expectation the newly arrived
immigrants were to be exposed
for sale.” [8] Merchants
looking for servants soon
boarded. Frequently, those
merchants were the proprietors
of the ship or were in the
employ of the owner. An
official account was taken to
determine the passengers who
could be sold as indentured
servants. The merchant then
placed an advertisement in one
of the Philadelphia
newspapers, “German
Servants For Sale.” [9]
Sometimes, those
advertisements noted the wharf
where the ship
docked—information that can
be especially useful for any
family historian whose
ancestors may have arrived on
a ship so advertised.
Frequently, a representative of
the government accompanied
the merchants. The official
was not looking for servants,
but wanted to make certain
that all fit males sixteen and
older who were aliens
disembarked and proceeded to
the courthouse where the
required oath was given. [10]
Immigrants, whose origins
were not in the British Isles,
made their way to the
courthouse located at second
and High Streets. As they
proceeded to the courthouse
they climbed the steep
riverbank to the city on some
very wobbly legs. After an
extended period of time at sea
they were used to the rocking
motion of the ship, and they
did not have their “land” legs.
Most probably looked like a
pack of drunken sailors as they
proceeded to the courthouse.
The captain of the vessel
usually led the way. When the
alien immigrants entered the
courthouse, a representative of
the government—namely the
Mayor, President of the
Assembly, or a Justice of the
Court—was waiting. He told
them they were now in a
country that belonged to the
King of England; a fact that
required them to take an oath
of allegiance to that King and
his successors. [11] The oath
was then explained to the
immigrants. Given the
numbers of Germans arriving
in Philadelphia, one presumes
that someone was available
who could translate. The
immigrants had to promise
they would conduct themselves
as good and faithful subjects,
that they would not revolt
against his Majesty, nor would
they settle on lands that were
not their own. They were also
required to abjure or renounce
allegiance to the Pope. In the
words of another narrator,
“After we took the oath, we
signed our names to two
different papers, one belonged
to the King and the other to the
government of Pennsylvania.”
[12]
Arrival In Pennsylvania
Immigrants undoubtedly
formed some interesting
impressions of Pennsylvania in
the days and weeks following
their arrival. In fact, their
initial impressions were
probably formed on the docks.
Mid-eighteenth century maps
of Philadelphia show sixty-five
docks covering a fairly
extended area along the west
bank of the Delaware River.
Philadelphia had become the
largest and single most
important port in the American
colonies. [13] Immigration
records reveal a very busy
place. In one month alone,
September 1753, fifteen ships
arrived with German
immigrants; on average they
arrived every other day during
that month. [14] Other
immigrants arrived as well,
including the Scots-Irish, who
came in numbers almost equal
to the Germans. And, there
was related
activity—numerous ships in the
harbor were used to transport
agricultural products from
Maryland, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and Delaware to
Europe and the West Indies,
and other ships brought
manufactured goods from
Europe. [15]
The import-export business in
Philadelphia created a complex
economy that involved the
efforts of thousands.
Generally, an
eighteenth-century sailing ship
was docked for about thirty-six
days. [16] Immigrants would
have seen sailors roaming
about the docks, along with
stevedores moving goods on
and off the ships, and cart men
and laborers who transported
the goods to warehouses.
Contributing to the chaos were
numbers of teamsters with
wagons, and flatboat operators
who brought goods to the city
for
Philadelphia Then
Comparatively Small
By contemporary standards
Philadelphia was relatively
small. But, by the standards of
eighteenth-century ancestors,
most of whom left small
villages Germany or Great
Britain, Philadelphia probably
looked huge. A 1762 map
shows the city extended from
below South Street to Vine
Street in the north and west to
about Seventh Street. [17]
Reports dating about 1750 note
it took about one day to walk
around the town. [18]
Newly arrived German, and
Scotch-Irish immigrants
probably noticed several things
almost immediately. First, the
city had not walls. Many
towns and villages of
comparable size in Europe still
retained their medieval
fortifications. Second, the
streets in Philadelphia were
rectilinear, running at
ninety-degree angles to one
another. Streets in the Quaker
capital did not meander as did
many streets in European
towns and villages. Newly
arrived immigrants most likely
commented that in Philadelphia
streets were much wider than
in Germany or England.
The third item they might have
noticed was the lack of a
church steeple with a bell or
clock that struck out the
time—an observation they
would have shared with
Gottlieb Mittelberger. He
noted in his journal, “…the
town did not have a steeple
with a bell or clock, and there
is no striking of the hours,
which seems very dull to
newcomers, especially in the
night.” [19]
The Philadelphia of 1760 may
not have felt as foreign to
Germans arriving in that city as
many late-twentieth century
historians may think. Based on
the number of recorded
baptisms found in
eighteenth-century
Philadelphia church registers,
Germans may have accounted
for one-half of the entire
population of the city. [20]
Most of those Germans lived in
an area of Philadelphia located
in the northern end of the city
around Arch, Vine, and Race
Streets. In this section of the
city, Germans started a
tradition that would continue
for generations in this
country—even into this
century: They created the first
ethnic neighborhood. [21] In
the German section of town,
signs were written in German
and English, and to the
consternation of many English
residents, some signs were
inscribed solely in German! [22]
In this neighborhood Germans
built their churches—St.
Michael’s Evangelical
Lutheran Church, the First
Reformed Church, and later,
Zion Lutheran Church—the
largest in the colonial city and,
later, the Federal Capital.
German settlers, who arrived in
Philadelphia, most likely
disembarked, and proceeded to
the German enclave because
here they could make contact
with friends and neighbors who
came earlier. Here they could
begin the process of getting
re-established. The presence
of so many Germans in this
area of Philadelphia
undoubtedly eased their
transition into a foreign culture
and a foreign land.
The sounds immigrants heard
would have been interesting as
well. These newcomers would
have heard a dialect of English
that was very different from
English as spoken in the late
twentieth-century.
Eighteenth-century ancestors
would have heard a dialect of
English as it was spoken in
Great Britain. They would also
have heard dialects of German,
and, indeed, language may be
provided the new German
arrivals with a means of
identifying others from their
own region of Germany. An
immigrant from the Rhineland
Pfalz, for example, may have
heard Germans speaking in a
local dialect that would have
immediately told him these
men are from my region of
Germany—the “Pfalz.” That
recognition would have
provided the immigrant with an
opportunity to inquire about
other arrivals from his region
of Germany or perhaps even
from his village—immigrants
who may have settled in one of
the more distant counties, such
as Lancaster, York,
Northampton, or Berks.
Most Move to the
Countryside
Most immigrants did not
remain in Philadelphia for any
length of time, as evidenced by
settlement patterns in
southeastern Pennsylvania.
Those settlers wanted to get
out on the land. Christopher
Saur in a letter sent to
Germany noted, “Because one
may hold as much property as
one wishes, also pay for it
when one desires, everybody
hurries to take up some
property.” [23] In the
mid-1750s a Moravian minister
in Philadelphia noted that
members of his congregation
spent a good deal of time
talking about the price of land
and the places where they
could buy it. This put the
minister in some distress as he
felt they should be more
focused on the spiritual realm
and less on the material. [24]
The lure of land drew
thousands of immigrants to
Pennsylvania, both German
and English—a fact many
twentieth-century family
historians do not fully
appreciate. Land played a
very important role in the lives
of all ancestors. Our
eighteenth-century forebears
lived in an agrarian economy in
which practically everything
came from the soil—food,
clothing, and shelter. It was a
simple fact: People who
controlled land controlled their
own destiny. In Germany or
England most people were
tenant farmers and did not
control land. They rented the
land and their ability to stay on
that land depended on the
owner, generally a Lord or
someone of minor nobility. If
the tenant paid the rent on time
and if he caused no problems,
the renter remained on the
land. If he followed the
dictates of the landlord, he
increased his chances of
keeping his tenancy.
Following the rules frequently
meant attending the church of
the local ruler, as opposed to a
church dictated by conscience.
If the family lost its right to
remain on the land, it had to
find another way had to be
found to provide for the basics
of life.
Population growth during the
eighteenth century
compounded the problem. As
population increased in
Germany and Great Britain, the
demand on the limited amount
of land also increased.
Consequently rents escalated.
[25] Tenant farmers with
limited or no access to land in
Europe had two
choices—relocate or continue
to live at a subsistence level.
Many chose to relocate and
some who did came to
Pennsylvania. [26]
The price of land and its
availability influenced the
decision of where to locate in
Pennsylvania. Historians are
finding that settlement patterns
were also very important. In
the case of German
immigrants, scholars are
discovering immigrants who
came from the same home
village or region settled
together in Pennsylvania. [27]
Obvious benefits were to be
gained by living near people
who came from the same
village or perhaps the same
region. A newcomer could
seek help from friends and
distant relatives during those
early years when life was
literally being carved out of the
wilderness. [28]
In terms of price, the further
one moved from Philadelphia,
the cheaper land became. In
1750 Mittelberger noted, “The
price of farms around
Philadelphia are quite high.
Even a days journey from
Philadelphia prices for
uncleared land are high.” [29]
Advertisements in Philadelphia
newspapers show that in 1750
the price of a homestead with a
house, barn, and cleared field
was twice the price of
uncultivated land—a fact that
forced many Germans to
search for unimproved land in
the interior of Pennsylvania.
[30]
Travel Presented
Obstacles
Usually newly arrived settlers
made their journey to
Lancaster, Berks,
Northampton, and York
counties on foot, and the trip
took several days. Immigrants
leaving Philadelphia would
have set out on one of the
three roads leaving the city.
As the traveler left
Philadelphia, he or she would
have seen barns with some
frequency. But, once the
sojourner reached upper
Bucks, Montgomery, or Berks
Counties, the distance between
farmsteads would have grown
considerably. In an early
journal entry Muhlenberg
noted, “When one travels on
the roads, one constantly
travels in bush or forest.
Occasionally, there is a house
and several miles down the
road there is another house.”
[31]
Rivers and streams set up
serious obstacles to travel. In
more settled areas boats or
canoes could be found along
most rivers and some streams,
but once a traveler entered the
forest, there were no ferries.
For the sojourner traveling on
foot, a horseman or boatman
passing by might be persuaded
to carry him to the other side.
If not, the traveler’s only
alternative was to swim.
Accounts in several journals
kept by Moravian missionaries
noted that they did swim
streams both in the warm and
cold weather months. On a
trip in November, 1743,
Leonard Schnell and Robert
Hussey, “…lost their way
several times and had to cross
several rivers, through one of
which, the Nottway, they had
to swim, as there was no one
at hand to take them across in
a boat.” [32]
In the mid-eighteenth-century
much of southeastern
Pennsylvania was still
forested. Muhlenberg noted, “
The settlements here are totally
surrounded by forests.” [33]
The forest caused sounds to
echo and re-echo. One of
Muhlenberg’s colleagues, an
Anglican minister, noted in a
report sent to England that,
“the whole country is one
continuous woods!” [34] The
Anglican missionary
complained bitterly about it.
He told his superiors in London
he could not send a proper
report, as he had no idea how
many people were members of
his congregation. He had no
way of counting them because
they all lived in the woods;
when he went out to find them,
he generally got lost. [35]
Water was the single most
important factor that
determined where immigrants
settled. Most settlers wanted
an accessible water supply.
Studies of land sales from the
Penn family to first-time
purchasers reveal that tracts of
land along rivers, streams, and
feeder creeks sold first. Land
between streams was sold
later. [36] They needed water
for domestic and farm use,
such as irrigating the meadow.
Faced with the task of building
a shelter and clearing the land
of trees, settlers did not want
to dig a well too!
Foreigners traveling through
Pennsylvania noted this pattern
of settlement. Johan David
Schoepf commented in 1783,
“…farmsteads were irregular
in their appearance, they were
frequently set far back from
the roads and most often
adjacent to a spring or stream.”
[37]
One method used by settlers to
find productive land was to
follow a creek or stream,
which in effect became the
path that led them where they
wanted to locate. A speculator
searching for land wrote,
“…the soil appears to be
wholly made up of decayed
leaves and wood. Once
cleared, this land yields
perhaps the finest crop in the
first year.” [38] In the first
years after clearing the land,
many early farmers produced
forty to forty-five bushels of
wheat per acre. This handsome
bounty enabled them to pay for
their land and the expense of
improvements within a
relatively short period of time.
[39] Mittelberger noted, “The
land is not really dear. One
takes up two-hundred acres,
promised to pay by
installments in ten years and
instead clears off the debt in
five years.” [40]
Temporary Shelter Came
First
Building a temporary shelter
was the first task settlers faced
after they found and purchased
new land. Perhaps it did not
have a chimney or a door. A
blanket might have been used
to cover the entrance. One
example is described without
windows—light entered where
the smoke exited. [41]
Life in such a primitive cabin
proved difficult at best. There
was no way to keep out a cold,
raw winter wind or a driving
rain. Muhlenberg noted that
during the first years of his
pastorate, “…he preached in
barns and transparent
[meaning drafty] wooden
churches. The poor assembled
from miles around. They were
cold and wet and wore poor
thin clothes.” [42]
Problems with nature were not
limited to the wind and rain.
One Moravian minister, while
reading in his cabin, looked up
to see a snake crawling up
through the floorboards. The
snake then slithered along the
floor and went back under the
boards. [43] In another
account, “Snakes have
frequently crept into houses
and even into the beds of
people who lived in the woods
so that the people lay on them
in the night til the snakes grow
restless…” [44]
After building temporary
shelter, work commenced on
erecting a more permanent
cabin and clearing the land of
trees. In general, Germans
approached the task of clearing
the land in a manner different
than the British. Germans did
not girdle or strip the trees of
bark and leave them to die in
place, which was the custom
of the English and Irish.
Germans tended to cut the
trees down, burn what they
could not use, and then dig out
the roots. By destroying the
tree and by grubbing the roots,
the field was fit for cultivation.
The farmer could plow and
harrow the field; he did not
have to spend years working
around dead trees and stumps;
he did not take the risk of dead
branches falling from trees and
destroying valuable crops. He
avoided the risk of breaking or
damaging his plow with roots
still embedded in the soil. [45]
Clearing the land was a
burdensome task, but it was
approached with fervor.
Settlers developed a dislike for
trees and for the forests that
perpetually surrounded them.
One early traveler shared those
sentiments as he wrote in his
travel journal, “Reaching a
settlement is like a feast for an
inexperienced traveler—to see
sun shine on some open
grounds, to view clear fields.
You seem to be relieved from
that secret uneasiness and
involuntary apprehension
which is always in the woods.”
[46]
Tax Lists Show Land
Usage
Tax assessments for several
eastern Pennsylvania counties
list the quantity of land owned,
and many of those assessments
specify or list the number of
wooded acres. Those tax
records provide a means of
tracking rates of deforestation;
that is, historians can follow
the progress of early settlers in
clearing farms of trees. John
Heil, an early resident in
Moore Township,
Northampton County is a
useful example. In 1768 he
was enumerated as the owner
of fifteen acres of cleared land
and one hundred sixty-five
acres of woodland. In 1776 he
was assessed on fifty cleared
acres and one hundred thirty
wooded acres. In eight years
time, from 1768 to 1776, John
Heil cleared trees from
thirty-five acres on his one
hundred eighty acre farm. [47]
On average, he cleared four
acres of land each year without
the help of any mechanical
equipment.
The actual process of clearing
trees from the land began on
land located near the stream or
spring for a number of
reasons. Because the cabin
was located near the water
source land generally was
cleared near the cabin for a
vegetable garden. The farmer
also had to consider his
livestock—he needed an area
on the farm that was suitable
for a meadow. If he already
had purchased a cow and
perhaps a horse, major
investments in Colonial
America, then their needs
would have been given
considerable priority. Early
settlers typically started
clearing land at the bottom of a
hill as opposed to the top: A
dell tended to be the more
productive land. Also, bottom
land could be irrigated to
produce hay. [48]
Thus, eighteenth-century
Pennsylvania farms emerged
gradually from the wilderness
in a set pattern. Land was
cleared first near the house
located along the stream or
near a spring. Work began
here and progressed slowly up
the hill towards the top. The
last land to be cleared would
have been wooded area at the
tops of hills.
Details on life and its
associated difficulties as
experienced by early German
immigrants can be found in
Gottlieb Mittelberger’s
Account of his Journey to
Pennsylvania. In 1752 or
1753 Mittelberger interviewed
Germans who had immigrated
to Pennsylvania in the earlier
decades. They reported that
life was very hard; they lived in
constant fear of the Indians
and lacked tools, equipment,
horses, and cattle. Meat was
available, but salt and
gunpowder were in short
supply. Reports noted large
fires, a by-product of
deforestation, continually
burned around their cabins.
[49]
Tract Sizes Show Life in
Isolation
One of the most difficult
adjustments many immigrants
made was learning to deal with
isolation. Most came from
small farming villages. In the
case of the Germans whose
origins were in the Palatinate;
they did not live out on the
land. In those villages they had
contact with friends, relatives,
and neighbors on a daily basis.
Social contact was not limited
to within the village, but
included others nearby ones.
Aaron Fogelman in Hopeful
Journeys noted in the Northern
Kraichgau, “…settlements
were extremely close to one
another…they were so close
that one could normally stand
on the periphery of one village
and see the next village just
down the road or across some
open fields…the distance
between the adjacent
communities of Schwaigern
and Massenbach is only about
two miles.” [50] The situation
in Germany stood in marked
contrast to life in some sections
of rural Pennsylvania, where
only a few tiny villages
existed. Most early settlers
were lucky if they had a single
neighbor living two miles
away—let alone a whole
village.
Tract size provides a method
of measuring relative isolation
in rural Pennsylvania. If an
early settler purchased a tract
of land containing 500 acres,
the distance from the center of
that tract to the edge of the
property to the edge was about
a mile and one half. [51] If
someone lived on an adjacent
tract of land, then the distance
between neighbors could be
approximately three miles. If
the tract size was larger, then
the distance between neighbors
was greater.
One Moravian minister,
Augustus Spangenberg,
referred to this isolation in a
letter he wrote in 1753. He
noted that if a husband had to
leave his wife for some reason,
and the woman was home
alone and became ill, she had a
real problem. How and where
could she get help? The wife
of the nearest neighbor may be
one to three miles away, but
she had her own
responsibilities. She had her
children, her cattle, and her
household to tend. At the
most, all that neighbor could
offer was perhaps a few hours,
or at the most, a full day. [52]
Given this set of circumstances
and the isolation these families
experienced, the reactions
Moravian ministers received
when they visited people living
in the wilderness should not be
too surprising. In 1754, a
Moravian missionary traveling
in Northampton County,
reported Peter Hoffman’s wife
was incredulous upon hearing
that the missionary would soon
pay a visit. He went on to
write, “The joy this occasion
brought can hardly be
described. We found them all
in childlike, blessed disposition,
just about as one would find
children on Christmas Eve.”
[53]
Moravian Diaries Reveal
Economic Status
Moravian diaries disclose that
this type of reaction was fairly
common; they also revealed
extreme poverty. When
Moravian missionaries stopped
by the home of John Hillman
in 1754, an early settler in
Northampton County, they
noted, “We found their
children very poorly clad, so
poorly they would not let
themselves be seen. Some of
the older ones had taken the
younger ones on their laps to
hid their poverty in clothing.”
[54] At the home of Philip
Serfass, a neighbor, they
invited the family to a service
that was going to be held the
following Sunday but “The
parents said that some of the
children had no shoes and
would not be able to come.”
[55]
A journal entry dated January
2, 1749, said it this way,
“News came that the wife of a
New England man had been
delivered of twin sons without
the assistance of a midwife.
The children were hearty, but
there was nothing in the house
with which to cloth one of the
twins, and as for the mother,
there was nothing to eat except
for some dry Indian bread.”
[56] The mother was prepared
for the birth of one child only!
Most farmers did not construct
a stable or barn until some
years after starting a farm,
according to one observer in
1724. [57] Another
eighteenth-century observer
commented that the absence of
barns and stables probably had
stemmed from the fact that
there was scarcely three of
four days of really cold
weather. [58] An alternative
explanation is also possible:
The absence of barns and
stables may have meant that a
house, and clearing the land of
trees, had a higher priority.
These early German settlers
had no time or energy left to
construct a barn. During the
initial stages of settlement, the
barn was probably considered
a luxury and obviously came
later, because eventually they
were built.
The reader may be asking
what happened to the livestock
without barns? Cows were
either chained to a post or
allowed to roam free. In the
evening a member of the
family would travel into the
forest to bring the cow(s) in for
milking. Some farmers put
bells on them so they could be
more easily located. [59] Pigs
also roamed free through the
forest, where they could forage
on roots, nuts, and berries. In
Philadelphia, interestingly, pigs
were allowed to roam free to
forage on garbage. [60]
Perhaps one of Mittelberger’s
more interesting observations
relates to chickens. “In this
country the chickens are not
put in houses at night nor are
they looked after but they sit
summer and winter upon trees
near houses. Every morning
many a tree is so full of
chickens that the boughs bend
beneath them.” [61] He went
on to observe that beasts of
prey were not a problem as
every farmer had a big dog that
roamed the premises. The
reader may at this point is
probably wondering, what
happened to the eggs?
Estate Inventories
Describe Farmsteads
Scholars have been able to well
describe the typical
Pennsylvania farm through a
careful analysis of estate
inventories and other records.
Almost all farmers raised
livestock that included the
previously noted horses, cows,
sheep, fowl, and hogs. One
study said Pennsylvania
farmers kept more horses than
their Virginia, Maryland, or
New England counterparts.
[62] Sheep, raised more for
wool than for mutton, were not
that plentiful. Mittelberger did
observe, “…the sheep are
larger than the German ones
and have generally two lambs a
year.” [63] Swine, bees, and
fowl were widespread. Most
families consumed more pork
than beef, but the numbers of
hogs raised is not certain
because they were not taxed.
Mittelberger noted most farms
possessed five to ten hogs. [64]
Other information on the
number of hogs maintained
comes from inventories of
estates. Pennsylvania farmers
raised and used chickens and
other fowl in substantial
quantities. Because they were
not taxed and inventoried as
part of the probate process, it
is difficult to determine the
actual number of chickens. [65]
One scholar concluded that a
typical eighteenth-century farm
in southeastern Pennsylvania
contained about one hundred
twenty-five acres [66],
twenty-six acres typically
devoted to raising grain—a
crop used to feed livestock and
for baking bread. [67] As a
grain, wheat was the cash crop
for most Pennsylvania farmers;
any surplus was sold on the
open market to raise cash to
purchase other items necessary
for the operation of the farm or
for domestic life. Eight or nine
acres on the farm were given
over to the cultivation of flax,
vegetables, and fruits. [68] The
meadow, a source of hay for
cattle, contained thirteen to
fifteen acres. [69] Thus, a
farmer in mid-eighteenth
century Pennsylvania needed
fifty acres of cleared land to
have sufficient acreage for a
crop that could provide needed
revenue and meet the needs of
his family and his livestock.
Flour and gristmills played a
very important role in the lives
of all early settlers. Flourmills
were as important to people
living in the eighteenth-century
as grocery stores are to people
living in the twentieth. The
reason being, bread made from
wheat or rye, was a stable of a
typical eighteenth-century diet.
A 1728 German diarist
recorded that wheat bread was
eaten almost everywhere. [70]
