In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r t h r e e “This Drink Cannot Be Kept During the Summer” Large Planters, Science, and Community Networks in the Early Eighteenth Century When small-planter households in the early eighteenth century ran out of cider, they had a unique problem. Unlike people in England, New England, or the Middle Colonies, Chesapeake colonists could not purchase alcohol at local markets or commercial distilleries or breweries. Chesapeake residents did not develop public markets until the late eighteenth century, distilleries until the nineteenth century, or breweries until the twentieth century. Most could not import foodstuffs from England or the West Indies because they had neither the connections nor the credit or reputation to do so. The irregularity of shipments and the difficulties inherent in shipping beverages made it impractical for even the upper sort to import much liquor. Instead, Chesapeake colonists depended on the productions of nearby large plantations that made enormous amounts of cider. When small-planter households could not make cider or when they ran out, they turned to large planters for their surplus stocks of cider and distilled apple and peach brandy—at a price. “Small planters” were those whose estates were worth less than £100 when they died; such households comprised almost 77 percent of estates. Large-planter households were those worth more than £250; middling planter estates were worth between £100 and £250. The large planters were the 3 to 10 percent of all white heads of households who rode in coaches, built mansions, owned more than twenty slaves, controlled the region’s political institutions, sold their tobacco on consignment directly to merchants in England, and imitated the dress, architecture , education, leisure activities, and market consumption of the English gentry . It was this minority who imported, albeit belatedly, the technology, English connections, and knowledge to preserve alcoholic beverages year-round through the expensive and complex process of early modern distilling.1 The limited evidence that remains indicates that it was men who managed the larger cidering and distilling operations; their wives and other women on the plantations were far less likely to have the physical freedom, connections, literacy, financial credit, or time to handle a large distilling endeavor. While women in small-planter households made cider just as they made cheese, candles, and other household supplies, it appears that on the large plantations slaves of both sexes made the alcohol. Small-planter households could not afford the technology or labor to be selfsuf ficient in the early eighteenth century and thus depended on large planters for alcohol when their own production was insufficient. The neighborhood choreography of large planters selling their plantation-produced distilled liquors to lowerand middle-sort colonists within a three-to-five-mile radius reflected the necessity of community reliance as well as the graduated nature of the region’s ties with the Atlantic world. While the largest planters imported goods from Europe and slaves from Africa and maintained connections with European merchants, small planters did not. Even large planters struggled to keep up with European science and technology, and small planters were further behind. In the early eighteenth century, small-planter households found their opportunities to interact with the Atlantic world limited and focused instead on cultivating commercial relationships with large planters. The main reason that small-planter households faced alcohol shortages was that apples were in season only from late summer to early winter. One Virginia traveler recorded that in July, before the apples had ripened, colonists “have but little cider, no beer, and the water . . . is reckoned very pernicious to the bowels when unmixed with spirit.” Another visitor concluded that around “the meaner sort you find little else but water amongst, when their cider is spent.”2 Even during the apple season, women frequently found their attempts at cidering thwarted. In September of 1736, for example, the Virginia Gazette warned that “there will be a great scarcity of cider, the apple-orchards having generally failed” because of a drought. Cattle killed fruit trees by stripping their bark. “Many that have good orchards,” Robert Beverley critiqued in 1714, “expose the trees to be torn, and barked by the cat[t]le.” Cattle injured orchard trees frequently enough for the Virginia Assembly to pass laws imposing punishments for letting one’s cattle damage another’s trees. A first or second offence incurred a fine of two hundred or four hundred pounds of tobacco, respectively, payable to the orchard owner. A cow or...

Share