DUTCH FARMHOUSES
The old Dutch homestead of colonial times fitted the place and the
race for which it was built. There was plenty of solid level earth
for it to stand on,--so it spread out, sunny and long. The men who
built it had never climbed hills or lived on mountain-tops, nor did
they mean to climb many stairs in their houses. The ceilings were low,
the stairs short and steep, and the stories few; a story and a half
were enough for nearly every one. The heavy roof, curving slightly
inward, often stretched out in front at the eaves to form a shelter
for the front stoop. Sometimes in the rear it ran out and down over a
lean-to to within six or eight feet from the ground. Sometimes dormer
windows broke the long roof-slope and gave light to the bedrooms or
garret within. This long roof contracted the walls of the second-story
bedrooms, but it afforded a generous, useful garret, which to the
Dutch housekeeper was one of the best rooms in the house.
The long side of the house was usually set to receive the southern
sunshine; if convenient, the gable-end was turned to the street or
lane; for, being built when there were poor roads and comparatively
little travel, and when the settlers were few in number, each house was
not isolated in lonesome woods or in the middle of each farm, but was
set cosily and neighborly just as close to those of the other settlers
as the extent of each farm would allow, and thus formed a little
village street.
The windows of these houses were small and had solid wooden shutters,
heavily hinged with black-painted iron hinges. Sometimes a small
crescent-shaped opening cut in the upper portion of the shutter let in
a little dancing ray of light at early dawn into the darkened room. In
the village as in the city the stoop was an important feature of the
house and of home life. Through the summer months the family gathered
on this out-door sitting-room at the close of day. The neighbors talked
politics as they smoked their evening pipes, and the young folk did
some mild visiting and courting. As the evening and pipes waned, little
negro slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal dishes of living coals,
to start the smouldering tobacco afresh in the long Dutch pipes.
The cellar of these old farmhouses was a carefully built apartment, for
it played a most important part in the orderly round, in the machinery
of household affairs. It was built with thought, for it had to be cool
in summer and warm in winter. To accomplish the latter result, its
few small windows and gratings were carefully closed and packed with
salt hay in the autumn, and a single trap-door opening outside the
house furnished winter entrance. Within this darkened cellar were vast
food-stores which put to shame our modern petty purchases of weekly
supplies. There were always found great bins of apples, potatoes,
turnips, and parsnips. These vegetables always rotted a little toward
spring and sprouted, and though carefully sorted out and picked over
sent up to the _kamer_ above a semi-musty, damp-earthy, rotten-appley,
mouldy-potatoey smell which, all who have encountered will agree, is
unique and indescribable. Strongly bound barrels of vinegar and cider
and often of rum lay in firm racks in this cellar; and sometimes they
leaked a little at the spigot, and added their sharply alcoholic fumes
to the other cellar-smells. Great hogsheads of corned beef, barrels
of salt pork, hams seething in brine ere being smoked, tonnekens of
salted shad and mackerel, firkins of butter, kilderkins of home-made
lard, jars of pickles, kegs of pigs’ feet, or souse, tumblers of spiced
fruits, graced this noble cellar. On a swing-shelf were _rolliches_ and
head-cheese and festoons of sausages. On such a solid foundation, over
such a storage-room of plenty, thrift, and prudence, stood that sturdy
edifice,--the home-comfort of the New York farmer.
On the ground-floor above were low-studded rooms, one called the
_kamer_, which was the parlor and spare bedroom as well; for on
its clean sanded floor often stood the best bedstead, of handsome
carved mahogany posts, with splendid high-piled feather-beds, heavy
hangings, and homespun linen sheets and pillow-cases. Back of this
_kamer_, in the linter, was the milk-room. The spinning-room with its
spinning-wheels was the sitting-room, or occasionally the kitchen, and
the bedroom adjoining was called the spinning-room _kametje_. There
were often four or five spinning-wheels in a family, and their merry
hum meant lively work. The furniture of these rooms was in character
much like that of townhouses, and all had sanded floors. Above these
rooms were comfortable chambers; and above the chambers the garret.
A more loving pen than mine has drawn the old garrets of the Flatbush
farmhouses, with their cast-off furniture, old trunks, and bandboxes;
the unused cradle and crib; the little end window with its spider-webs
and yellow wasps buzzing angrily, and beating with extended wings
against the dingy panes, or sitting in dull clusters, motionless and
silent, along the moulding; the rough chimneys; the spinning-wheels and
looms, the wooden pegs with discarded clothing. Mrs. Vanderbilt says:--
“The shingled roof which overarched the garret in all its length and
breadth was discolored by time, and streaked and stained with the
leakage caused by hard northeast storms; there were tin-pans and
sea-shells apparently placed at random over the floor in a purposeless
way, but which were intended to catch the drip when the warped
shingles admitted the rain. In winter there were little drifts of snow
here and there which had sifted through the nail-holes and cracks.”
The garret was a famous drying-place in winter-time for the vast
washings. Often long adjustable poles were fitted from rafter to rafter
to hold the hanging garments.
In the garret, beside the chimney and opening into it, was the
smokehouse, sometimes shaped like a cask. Too heavy and big to have
been brought in and up to the garret, it was probably built in it.
Around this smokehouse were hung hams and sausages, and sides of bacon
and dried beef. These usually were not cured in this garret smokehouse;
that was simply a storage-place, in which they could be kept properly
dry and a little smoked.
Of the _kamer_, or parlor, of New Amsterdam Irving wrote, with but
slight exaggeration of its sanctity and cherished condition:--
“The grand parlor was the _sanctum sanctorum_, where the passion for
cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no
one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential
maid, who visited it once a week, for the purpose of giving it a
thorough cleaning--always taking the precaution of leaving their
shoes at the door, and entering devoutly on their stocking-feet.
After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which
was curiously stroked into angles, and curves, and rhomboids, with a
broom--after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture,
and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace--the window
shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room
carefully locked up till the revolution of time brought round the
weekly cleaning-day.”
Mrs. Grant fully confirms and emphasizes this account as applicable to
the parlors of country-houses as well.
The kitchen was usually in a long rambling ell at one gable-end of
the house, rarely in an ell at right angles to the main house; in it
centred the picturesqueness of the farm-house. It was a delightful
apartment, bustling with activity, cheerful of aspect. On one side
always stood a dresser.
“Every room was bright
With glimpses of reflected light
From plates that on the dresser shone.”
The shining pewter plates, polished like silver, were part of every
thrifty housewife’s store; a garnish of pewter, which was a set of
different-sized plates, was often her wedding-gift. Their use lingered
till this century, and many pieces now are cherished heirlooms.
Methods of cooking and cooking utensils varied much from those of the
present day. The great brick oven was built beside the fireplace;
sometimes it projected beyond the exterior of the building. It had a
smoke-uptake in the upper part, from which a flue connected with the
fireplace chimney. It was heated by being filled with burning dry-wood
called oven-wood. When the wood was entirely consumed, the ashes were
swept out with an oven-broom called a _boender_. A Dutch oven, or Dutch
kitchen, was an entirely different affair. This was made of metal,
usually tin, cylindrical in form, and open on one side, which was
placed next the fire. Through this ran a spit by which meat could be
turned when roasting. A bake-kettle, or bake-pan, was a metal pan which
stood up on stumpy legs and was fitted with a tightly fitting, slightly
convex cover on which hot coals were placed. Within this bake-pan hot
biscuit or a single loaf of bread or cake could be baked to perfection.
Across the chimney was a back-bar, sometimes of green wood, preferably
of iron; on it hung pot-hooks and trammels, which under the various
titles of pot-hangers, pot-claws, pot-clips, pot-brakes, and crooks,
appear in every home-inventory. On those pot-hooks of various lengths,
pots and kettles could be hung at varying heights above the fire.
Often a large plate of iron, called the fire-plate, or fire-back, was
set at the back-base of the kitchen chimney, where raged so constant
and so fierce a fire that brick and mortar crumbled before it. These
fire-backs were often cast in a handsome design, sometimes a Scriptural
subject. These chimneys were vast in size; Kalm said you could drive
a horse and cart through them. Irving says they were “of patriarchal
magnitude, where the whole family enjoyed a community of privileges and
had each a right to a corner.” Often they were built without jambs.
Madam Knights wrote in 1704 of New York townhouses:--
“The fireplaces have no jambs (as ours have), but the backs run flush
with the walls, and the hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the
room at the ends as before the fire, which is generally five foot in
the lower rooms, and the piece over where the mantle-tree should be is
made as ours with joiners’ work and as I suppose is fastened to iron
rods inside.”
The kitchen fireplace was high as well as wide, and disclosed a vast
smoky throat. When the week’s cooking was ended and the Sabbath was
approaching, this great fireplace was dressed up, put on its best
clothes for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family; across the top
was hung a short petticoat, or valance, or little curtain gathered
full on a string. This was called a _schouwe-kleedt_, a _schoorsteen
valletje_, or sometimes a _dobbelstee-tiens valletje_, this latter in
allusion to the stuff of which the valance was usually made,--a strong
close homespun linen checked off with blue or red. This clean, sweet
linen frill was placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Saturday
afternoon on the faithful, work-worn chimney while it took its Sunday
rest. In some houses there hung throughout the week a _schoorsteen
valletje_; in others it was only Sunday gear. This was a fashion from
early colonial days for both town and country. In the house of Mayor
Rombouts in 1690 were fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and
lace, and worth half a pound each, and humbler checked chimney-cloths.
Cornelius Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his “great chamber”
a still gayer _valletje_ of flowered tabby to match the tabby
window-curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances for his chimneys.
A description given by a Scotchwoman of fireplaces in Holland at about
this date shows very plainly from whence this form of hearth-dressing
and chimney were derived:--
“The chimney-places are very droll-like; they have no jams nor
lintell, as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it
a lum in a form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or
ruffled pawn around it.”
When tiles were used for facing the fireplace and even for hearths,
as they often were in the _kamer_, or parlor, they were usually of
Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue with coarsely executed outline
drawings of Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt manor-house, the
tiles were pure white. I have some of the tiles taken from the old
Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the middle of the seventeenth
century and demolished in 1895. There were nearly two hundred in each
fireplace in the house. The scenes were from the Old Testament, and
several, if I interpret their significance aright, from the Apocrypha.
The figures are discreetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving says of
these Scripture-tiles: “Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage;
Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah appeared most manfully
bursting out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.”
To these let me add the very amusing one of Lazarus leaving his tomb,
triumphantly waving the flag of the Netherlands.
Sometimes the space between the open fireplace and the ceiling of
the _kamer_ was panelled, and it had a narrow ledge of a mantelpiece
upon which usually were placed a pair of silver, brass, or pewter
candlesticks and a snuffers with tray. Occasionally a _blekker_, or
hanging candlestick, hung over the mantel. In some handsome houses the
sur-base was of tiles and also the staircase; but such luxuries were
unusual.
Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat enthroned in every room of
these Dutch homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as early as 1670:--
“Though their low-roofed houses may seem to shut their doors against
pride and luxury, yet how do they stand wide open to let charity in
and out, either to assist each other, or relieve a stranger.”
In these neighborly homes thrift and simple plenty and sober
satisfaction in life had full sway; and these true and honorable modes
of living lingered long, even to our own day. On the outskirts of a
great city, within a few miles of the centre of our greatest city,
still stand some of the farmhouses of Flatbush, whose story has been
told _con amore_ by one to the manner born. These old homesteads form
an object-lesson which we may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity,
the happiness, the beauty that comes from simplicity in every-day life.