Memoir of John Howe Peyton: in sketches by his contemporaries, together with some of his public and private letters, etc., also a sketch of Ann M. Peyton
History
Memoir of John Howe Peyton: in sketches by his contemporaries, together with some of his public and private letters, etc., also a sketch of Ann M. Peyton
Peyton, Anne Montgomery, 1802-1850; Peyton, John Howe, 1778-1847
In the household her presence was felt from the kitchen to the attic.
She ordered all the domestic arrangements--neither handing over the
management of her house to the servants, or her children to nurses and
governesses. She superintended in a way to see personally that all was
as it should be. Careful in these matters, she was equally solicitous
that her daughters should understand the proper method of regulating a
household, and how to provide for the want of a family. For this purpose
she instructed them herself how to purchase, or select the different
articles required for home consumption; how to choose the various kinds
of meat, fish and poultry, and then how properly to cook them. They were
also instructed in the art of making tarts, puddings and even
confectionary, many a happy evening has the writer spent with his
sisters and their young school friends at what juveniles called a
"toffee-party." She said this kind of knowledge made them independent of
ignorant servants, and was not detrimental to the dignity of any lady,
mother, or daughter. She always sought to make them adepts in the
science of good house wifery, as being the most useful and honorable
knowledge for those whose destiny it is to become the mothers of
families.
It may not be uninteresting to say a few words at this point as to the
good uses to which she applied the knowledge acquired at Mr.
Crutchfield's school, of the virtues of various herbs and plants. A case
of illness or an accident never occurred in the family, among either
whites or blacks, numbering between 60 and 100 souls, that she was not
early by the bed side of the unfortunate sufferer, and as soon as she
understood the case, prompt to apply some simple, homely remedy; for she
had specifics for all mortal maladies. If accidents occurred she had
balsams, cataplasms, ointments, &c., &c., prepared from flowers and
herbs for external application, and in cases of fevers, or other
diseases, she prescribed her decoctions, draughts, electuaries, &c., and
required these nostrums to be gulped down. From the hoarhound indigenous
to our fields, she prepared a decoction for colds, from the wild cherry
an extract for coughs, from tansey and the bark of the dogwood tree, a
tonic, from camomile, a tea of reputed virtues, from the dandelion, the
buds of the Balm of Gilead cures for dyspepsia, &c. In a word she was
provided against all forms of disease with pills, plasters, powders,
syrups, tinctures, elixirs--a whole catalogue of her own medicinal
preparations. Of course the simple manner in which she extracted the
virtues of these and other plants rendered them less potent and probably
less efficacious than the preparations of the professional chemist, but
they were generally applied or taken with good effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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