Home Life in Colonial Days

This charming volume was written in a day when good description was considered as much a virtue as bold interpretation. Brimming with detail, it takes us into the homes of the American colonists so that we may experience firsthand such things as the kitchen fireside, the serving of meals, flax culture, wood culture, spinning, and hand-weaving. It provides a vibrant overview of girls’ occupations, styles of dress, travel, transportation, tavern life, colonial neighborliness, even old-time flower gardens. After countless printings, Home Life in Colonial Days continues to be the most highly respected account of daily life in the early years of America. This title, originally published in 1975, is available on-demand only.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1853, Alice Morse married Henry Earle in 1874, and made her home in Brooklyn, New York, spending summers at her father’s Worcester home. Her earliest writings were about Sabbath customs at the church of her ancestors in Vermont. Mrs. Earle continued to document Puritan and colonial customs in eighteen books and more than thirty articles published from 1892 through 1903. She died in 1911.