Manners And Customs.

Food and Dress. - The Swedes on the Delaware River, we are told, in a letter addressed by one of themselves, in the year 1693, to John Thelin, of Gottenberg,¹ "were almost all husbandmen, and our meat and drink is after the old Swedish custom. The country is very rich and fruitful, and we send out yearly to our neighbors on this continent and the neighboring islands bread, grain, flour, and oil. We have here, thank God, all kinds of venison, birds, and fishes. Our wives and daughters spin wool and flax, and many of them weave." The Swedish clergyman, Rev. Eric Biork, a few years afterwards, states that there were "no poor in the country, but all provide for themselves, without any cases of want."

The first English settlers give us an interesting account of the sturdy race of the North which had preceded them in subduing the wilderness of the Western World. Thomas Parker, under date of Feb. 10, 1683,² writes, -

"There are Swedes and Finns who have lived here forty years, and lived an easy life through the abundance of commodities, but their clothes were very mean before the coming of the English, from whom they bought good ones, and they begin to show themselves a little proud. They are an industrious people. They employ in their buildings little or no iron. They will build for you a house without any other implement than an axe. With the same implement they will cut down a tree and have it in pieces in less time than two other men would spend in sawing it, and with this implement and some wooden wedges they split it and make boards of it or anything else they please with much skill. The most of them speak English, Swedish, Finnish, or Dutch. They plant a little tobacco and a little Indian corn. The women are good housekeepers. The most of the linen they wear they spin the flax and make themselves."

In the early part of the last century among the English settlers, under ordinary circumstances, bread and milk and pie formed the breakfast meal, or often only pop-robbin, a combination of eggs and flour made to a batter and boiled in milk, appeased their wants. For dinner a bountiful dish of pork or bacon with a wheat-flour pudding or dumplings, with butter or molasses, was the bill of fare, while mush or hominy, with milk and butter and honey, sufficed for the evening repast. On important occasions, when venison and other wild game was in season, chocolate, which was sweetened with maple-sugar, formed the basis of the entertainment. William Worrall, of Ridley, stated that he never saw tea or coffee until about 1750, when his father brought some tea from Philadelphia, and his aunt, who then lived with them, and had charge of the house, did not know how to use it until she had received the proper information from one of her neighbors who had been instructed in the art of tea-drawing in the city. The prudent conduct of Worrall's aunt was not imitated by one of her friends, residing in the vicinity, who, when she first had tea introduced into her house, boiled the leaves and served them with butter. It was at this time such a rarity that even in the houses of the wealthy the hostess would measure with scales the amount of leaf necessary to draw tea for the company, or as in modern days, we put it, "count the noses" of her guests. Later on in the rural districts, before and after the Revolution, the daily fare consisted of salt pork or beef, - fresh meat was an occasional dainty, - rye bread, potatoes, cabbage, hominy, and turnips, while in summer-time beans and peas made their appearance on the table. The latter were eaten with the knife, no one having the patience to chase peas over a dinner-plate with the wide-spreading, two-tined forks, with massive buck handles, which were then in general use.

During the latter part of the last century silver plate was in every household, and each article had its history, as it was handed down from parents to child as heirlooms, and was often made the subject of disposition by will. But for ordinary use pewter platters, porringers, and tankards were employed, and were kept so bright that they shone like a mirror, while pewter pots filled the place of our modern glass tumblers and goblets. In many instances it was customary for the family, including the domestics and hired men, to gather around the same board, the slaves at the bottom of the table. If perchance some acquaintance came to tea, which was a popular custom among the women of the wealthier class in town and country just previous to the Revolution, the party always dispersed so that the company might get home before it was time for candle-lighting, and to put their children to bed.

In 1745, Dr. Franklin invented the open stove, which be called the Alter Idem, but which is still known by his name, and it won its way almost immediately to popular favor. At one time all the old houses in this section of the country, whose owners were in easy circumstances, had in the parlor a Franklin stove. In the ancient stone dwelling standing on the left-hand side of the Queen's Highway, about five hundred feet above where the mill, race, and quarry railway crosses the road at Leiperville, is still to be seen one of these stoves.

On the night of the battle of Brandywine, after writing a letter from Chester to Congress, apprising that body of the defeat of the American army, Washington joined his troops, that had gathered "back of Chester," between Leiperville and Darby. Tradition states that the general sat for some time in the old house, before the stove, silently watching the fire that