What is life like in Pennsylvania?

What was life like for women in colonial Pennsylvania?

• i need to know what life was like for women and children in colonial pennsylvania. It can't just be they helped out at home. i need to know in a little more detail. thanks!

• Answer:

  Women played a vital role in the economic life of the colonies. Most people were more or less self-sufficient, and all the times like food, clothing, and other household items that nowadays we buy in shops, would have been produced at home. Cloth production was a particularly vital job for colonial women. Cloth was in such short supply in the early colonies that there are records of lawsuits being fought over a missing handkerchief or a hole burnt in a blanket. Women would first have to treat the wool or flax to make it suitable for spinning, and then they would spend hours spinning. Flax was spun into thread on a small wheel with a hand pedal. With wool, the women stood to do the work, and used a much larger wheel. They performed a sort of graceful dance, gliding backwards to draw out the newly spun yarn, then coming forward to let it wind onto the spindle. In a full day of spinning, a woman could walk over twenty miles. Cooking was a much harder job in those days than now, because it was mostly done over open fires, and it was difficult to control the temperature. Women had many seasonal duties. In the autumn, they made apple butter and cider. when the pigs were butchered they cleaned the intestines for sausage casings and stuffed them with meat scraps and herbs. They collected fat to mix with lye for soap making - a long and arduous process. The grease and lye were boiled together outdoors, in a huge pot over an open fire. It took about six bushels of ashes and 24 pounds of grease to make one barrel of soap, which was soft, like clear jelly. In the cold weather, the women made candles and brewed beer (which was drunk by most people instead of water). In the spring, they planted their kitchen gardens. They grew a wide variety of vegetables, and a variety of herbs both for cooking and medical purposes. cheese making started in early summer. The dairywoman slowly heated several gallons of milk with rennet - the dried lining of an animal's stomach. In an hour or two, the curd formed and she worked in some butter, packed the mixture into a mold, andput it into a wooden press for an hour or so, changing and washing the cheesecloths as the whey dripped out. a housewife who could make good clean butter and cheese was a real boon to her family, creating a product that was not only valuable at home but in the marketplace. to be a good dairywoman was a fine art and hard work. Turning milk into butter required an hour or so at the churn followed by kneading and pressing with the hands or wooden paddles. Obviously most women weren't able to do all the housewifely tasks well. someone who was good at cheesemaking mgith trade her wheels of cheese for cloth or meat or candles. A midwife or dressmaker might be paid for her services with a brace of geese or tub of sweet butter. The community of women was both an informal barter economy and a network of mutual assistance. Women dropped in on one another freely, picked up some household duty like shelling peas as they sat and gossiped or consulted with one another about recent events. Colonial women reached the height of their powers in middle age, when they were no longer burdened by continual pregnancy and had daughters old enough to help with the domestic enterprises (The birth of a daughter was not unwelcome in most colonial families. The parents needed sons to help in the fileds, but they also wanted girls to assist their mothers inside). Although a prosperous matron had absolutely no voice in the public arena, she was expected to take a leading part in the parallel universe that was the world of women. Older women were the advisers, counselors, and judges of the younger. A competent housewife also earned the respect of her husband, who could see firsthand the value of her labours. The farmer who slaughtered a pig needed his wife to make the sausages, proces the bacon, and preserve the porkl. As he sat by his fireside at night, mending his fishing net or fixing his tools, he could watch her turning the flax he had harvested and the wool he had sheared into the family's clothes. The candle that lit their way to bed came from her hand, as did the vegetables, eggs and cheese they ate, and the beer or cider they drank. They were very much partners in the family business, and if the man was at all sensible he understood how critical his wife was to their mutual success. Another role that the woman was expected to take on was that of the family doctor. Since professional doctors were few and far between, the woman was generally expected to be able to treat a wide variety of illnesses, and even to stitch up wounds and set broken bones. This was the case in Britian and Europe as well as in the colonies. A book called 'The english Housewife' by Gervase Marhkam, published in 1617, contains recipes for over 200 different cures for ailemnts, that the hosuewife was expected to be able to produce, and he takes it for granted th