The Historical Child: Paidology; The Science of the ChildChrisman, Oscar
History
The Historical Child: Paidology; The Science of the Child
Chrisman, Oscar
Children; Manners and customs
The colonial houses were heated by means of fireplaces and in the
kitchen the fireplace was also used for cooking. Some of these
fireplaces were very large, "sometimes wide enough to drive a cart and
horses between the jambs.... Logs were sometimes drawn on to the ample
hearth by a horse."[228] "In the old Phillips farmhouse at Wickford,
Rhode Island, is a splendid chimney over twenty feet square."[229] As
fuel grew scarce, sometimes these fireplaces were made smaller by
closing them up in part and building a "little chimney" within them. For
holding the fuel in the fireplace were andirons, which sometimes were of
three sizes to hold logs at different heights, and there were fire-dogs
or creepers, which were smaller than the andirons and were placed
between them. In the kitchen fireplace there also were cob-irons, on
which were hooks to hold the spit and dripping-pan, and a crane or chain
with pot-hooks to hold kettles. In Pennsylvania the Germans had stoves.
While the English colonial house would have two chimneys, one at either
end and with a fireplace in each, the German house would have a single
chimney in the middle and use stoves. These stoves were of different
kinds. One kind was built from the outer wall into the house, with the
opening for feeding the stove on the outside of the house and the back
of the stove inside the house. In the second story they sometimes had
drums, connected with the stoves, for heating the rooms there. Stoves
were later introduced into the other colonies, and especially so as fuel
became scarce. In 1742 Benjamin Franklin brought out his "New
Pennsylvania Fireplace," a rather complicated affair, in which both wood
and coal could be used, and which later grew into the form now known as
the "Franklin Stove." As the bedrooms of the colonists were freezing
cold in winter, a warming-pan was used to heat up the bed before getting
into it for the night. The warming-pan was round, about a foot wide and
four or five inches deep, with a perforated metal top and a long wooden
handle. This was filled with hot coals from the fireplace and placed
between the bed-linen and moved rapidly about for warming without
scorching the bedding. Wood, of course, was very plentiful at first and
it was used quite freely, the immense fireplaces consuming vast
quantities of it. As the forests disappeared and wood became scarce,
especially in the towns, coal was brought from across the ocean as it
sometimes was found to be cheaper when used with stoves than was the
wood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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