Liquor was used at funerals. The practice was to give each person a
dram before entering the house in which the corpse was. This was done
by two men who were placed with liquor at each door of the house or
each side of one door, and was thought in those times to be an
antidote against contagion, and for that purpose a dram was given to
each bearer before he performed his official duty. Rum and cider were
also used to treat people for their services in assisting in raising
buildings after the war had ended. Rum was also used at weddings to
treat the friends who attended it. In those anterior times and even
within my own recollection, it was customary to invite to a wedding
all the young people in this present town and some down the Delaware
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and people, after the war ended, had
not the means to furnish a variety of good victuals for their friends
and neighbors who, yet treated them with those liquors, which had a
superior estimation in those times to that of the present. They
cheered and made lively and sociable the friends and neighbors who
collected together, with trifling, if any, evil consequences, for
people in those days guarded themselves against drinking so much as
to become intoxicated and I have never known of any farmer of the
second generation becoming drunk, yet there may have been such
instances, and in progress of years it became a custom to make many
afternoon frolics with liquor to get different jobs of work done.
This led to intemperance and their multiplicity was unprofitable in a
neighborhood. The young people sometimes had rude dancing frolics,
where their only beverage was rum which was used in different ways,
clear, sweetened with sugar, or made into sling, milk punch, eggnog,
&c. The quantity of liquor drinked at these frolics, and the rudeness
of the times caused many a fist fight, and this fighting became
common at other gatherings of people where liquor was drank.
The use of those liquors increased and others were introduced, such
as gin, brandy and different sorts of wines, &c. All these, generally
of foreign manufacture, in progress of time, were kept for sale in
stores by the large measure, and in taverns by small measure, where
travelers and others who entered the taverns could not only have a
choice of the variety of liquors, but also have their palatable taste
improved by the infusion of sugar and other articles, whereby slings,
milk punch, eggnog, hot toddy and other palatable compositions were
made and much drinked in taverns. And in process of time distilleries
were numerously erected in this part of our country, and cider and
rye whisky, peach brandy, &c. were distilled in great quantities and
other liquors were sometimes formed out of these. All of this flooded
our country with a great amount of liquors of different kinds, the
use of which became so fashionable that the greater part of families
generally kept some in their houses to treat therewith the friends
and neighbors who should visit them, and occasionally to use it in
the family.
After some years' continuance of this extravagant use of spirituous
liquors, its pernicious effects became apparent, and the writings of
those who exclaimed against it, the warnings from the pulpit, and at
last the formation of temperance societies had the effect of making
the practice of keeping and using liquor in families unfashionable,
and it became generally abandoned and many refrained from its use.
This was a fortunate change, for all classes of people had become
sufferers from the bad effects of those habits which had principally
originated from the introduction of the fashion of treating each
other with those liquors prepared in the most palatable manner, both
at home and in taverns; and I have no doubt that more than one-half
of the liquor drank in those days was merely to follow the fashion of
the times. Men generally dislike to be different from others. This is
a powerful inducement to sway men to conform in a greater or less
degree to the customs and fashions of their time, and, when these
happen to be pernicious, thousands sometimes become the sufferers
from their evil consequences.
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