Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake

Preface

Preface This project began when I was trying to research an early-eighteenth-century tavern known as Susannah Allen’s in colonial Williamsburg. It has long been rumored that Allen’s tavern was a brothel. While I suspected that there were not enough single women in colonial Virginia to have supported a brothel, I was intrigued . Very few records of Allen’s tavern remain, and I was unable to determine whether her tavern sold sex as well as drinks and lodging. In the course of my research , though, I began to wonder whether Susannah Allen was unusual, or whether other taverns were run by women. The answers I discovered ultimately became chapter 4 of this book. During that initial investigation, I ran across a small notation indicating that Susannah Allen had purchased some cider for her tavern from a woman. I wondered if the note was mistaken—had someone written “Mrs.” for “Mr.”? Was a planter’s wife handling the plantation’s affairs while her husband was out of town? This book is my answer to that question. Every Home a Distillery covers mostly English experiences in the Chesapeake from 1690 to 1800. The book begins in 1690 because that is the earliest date from which sufficient records are available. There simply is not enough material to write a well-researched account of alcoholic beverage production in the earliest years of English settlement, in part because the Native Americans in the area, the Powhatan, are not known to have made alcoholic beverages. The book ends in 1800 because one of its goals is to research the lives of colonial women in the South, and there are already books about early republic and antebellum women for those who wish to explore later years. As history would have it, women generally tend to appear only through careful readings of probate records, wills, court documents, and account books, all written by men. During this period most Chesapeake women of all races were illiterate, and no diaries or letters from colonial Chesapeake women are known to remain today. The book ends in 1800 also because massive German immigration in the 1840s changed America’s drinking dramatically. The Germans brought lager beer to the United States and built large breweries, both of which have been studied considerably. Finally, although the history of alcoholic beverage production suggested the promise of detailing the meeting of three worlds in the Chesapeake (Native American, African, and English), a lack of manuscripts has reduced this study to mostly English America. Although references are made to the enslaved community when possible, the extant records of how people made alcohol in the colonial Chesapeake simply do not allow for more cross-cultural analysis. While the frustrations of this study may now be evident, its fascinations might require explanation. No one has yet studied the production of alcoholic beverages in colonial America. Discovering and demonstrating that making alcohol used to be women’s work and that taverns were passed down through women has been exciting . Furthermore, alcohol records have revealed how colonial communities worked together to produce, distribute, and consume the alcoholic beverages that they desperately needed. Each household played a role in a series of economic transactions, the scope of which the colonists probably were unaware. The history of making alcohol in the Chesapeake also reveals that colonists used innovations in technology to become more self-sufficient and insular over time. Finally, alcohol records provide a glimpse of a world that is lost and is no longer fully understandable —a world in which alcohol was critical to survival. The shift to a world where drinking is highly circumscribed began in the late eighteenth century. It is my great pleasure to thank the organizations that have supported this project. Virginia Commonwealth University provided a College of Humanities and Sciences Career Enhancement Scholarship that allowed me to spend a summer writing. Fellowships from the American Philosophical Society; the David Library of the American Revolution; the Dibner Library at the National Museum of American History; the Early American Industries Association; the Jamestowne Society; the Program of Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia; the Rockefeller Library at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; the Virginia Historical Society; the Winterthur Library, Museums, and Gardens; and an Albert S. Beveridge grant from the American Historical Association all supported the archival research necessary for this book. This project began as a dissertation under the direction of Dr. Peter Onuf at the University of Virginia...