The tavern-keeper was a versatile individual. "He led the singing in the meeting house on Sunday; ran the ferry if his tavern was situated near a stream; acted as schoolmaster for the children of those who frequented his house; served his fellow men in the legislature, town council, selectmen, and other minor offices; ruled with solemn dignity over the local courts; headed the Train Band on training or squadron days; kept order in the meeting house on Sundays; surveyed the lands assigned to the land-crazy townsmen; and in fact, next to the town clerk, was the most important and learned man in the place."1 Besides these possible lines of activity, he was often a physician, and usually owned and managed a farm from the produce of which he supplied a part at least of the wants of his patrons.2

The Country Store.

The country store was as regularly found in New England towns as the tavern; in some cases the two institutions were combined in the same building, under the same proprietorship. In the typical inland town there were generally not more than two stores and, in many cases, only one. The stock in trade was regularly described in their advertisements as European and West India goods.

lic Statute Laws. I. 640-645. 1808, and Massachusetts Perpetual Laws. pp. 55-63. 1788. License fees were also demanded in Rhode Island, although the regulations were in general less strict in this state. Rhode Island Public Laws. Revision of 1798, pp. 393-394, 580.

1 See Field, Edward. The Colonial Tavern. pp. 41-42.

* Advertisements of farms for sale in the country newspapers clearly demonstrate this fact. See Massachusetts Spy, Jan. 28, June 22, 1807, and National Aegis (Worcester, Mass.), April 25, 1804. Another fact which shows the close relation between this business and the usual occupations of the agricultural population, was the practice of "laying oneself out to give entertainment." In outlying districts where the taverns were either bad or inconveniently situated, or perhaps entirely lacking, a traveler often applied for food and lodging to any "householder of substance," who was not unwilling to accept a moderate sum in return. President Dwight was often accommodated in this way, especially in the northern states of New England. See also Kendall, Edward Augustus. Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States. New York. 1809. 3 vols. II. 147; and Kittredge, George Lyman. The Old Farmer and his Almanack. Boston. 1904. pp. 282-283.

'The descriptions of the various towns given by Whitney in his History of Worcester County, Mass., show that the usual number of stores was two in each town. The advertisements in the newspapers published in inland towns such as Leominster, Stockbridge, and Brookfield, Massachusetts, rarely contain notice of more than one country store.

Under the first of these euphonious phrases were included a few pieces of imported dress-goods, crockery, glassware, powder and shot, and bars of iron and steel. The West India goods were salt, molasses, rum and other liquors, indigo, spices and sugar.1 In regions of active internal trade, where the farm produce could find outlet to a market, as for instance in the towns along the Connecticut River,2 or in the southern part of Windham County, Conn.,3 the country traders were numerous and did a brisk business. They bought up dairy products and salted pork and beef as well as household manufactures from the farmers and undertook, on their own responsibility, often, the sale of these products in the Southern states or in the West Indies. In the isolated rural community, however, business must have been extremely dull. Some profit could be made from the exchange of goods among the members of the community; but of goods from the outside the latter were able to purchase very little. Some salt and a few other necessary articles they had to have; the liquors they often bought in preference to the things which they really needed and were often largely in debt to the storekeeper on this account. In order to eke out a living the storekeeper resorted to agriculture, either tilling the land himself or hiring occasional assistance from his neighbors.5

1 An unusually detailed advertisement is that of a Worcester, Mass., merchant who has to sell: West India goods and groceries, viz: Best cognac and Spanish brandy; West India and New England rums; real Holland gin; Madeira wines; flour, molasses; loaf, white and brown sugar; teas, coffee, chocolate, spices, raisins, copperas; alum; rock and fine salt; dried and pickled fish; glazed china tea sets, crockery and glass ware, violins and flutes. He offers to give cash for country produce. National Aegis, November 20, 1804.

2 A very great difference is observable between the character of the advertisements in newspapers published in the river towns such as Middletown, Hartford, Springfield, Northampton, and Greenfield and those published in the towns mentioned in Note 3, p. 258.

3 See Windham Herald, 1808. Larned, History of Windham County, II. 426. Mr. Adams seems to be justified in his opinion that the sale of liquors was a large part of the business of the country store. He says: "In every store in which West India goods were sold, and there were no others, behind the counter stood the casks of Jamaica and New England rum, of gin and brandy. Their contents were sold by the gallon, the bottle or the glass. They were carried away or drunk on the spot." Episodes. II. 790.

5 As witness the advertisements in country newspapers. Such an advertisement is that found in the National Aegis of a farm of 90 acres in the town of Paxon, Worcester County, Mass., on which is a combined store and tavern. April 25, 1804.

Village Industries.

Every town had its complement of grist-mills, saw-mills and fullingmills; usually there were three or four of the grist and saw-mills and one or two fulling-mills.1 The grist-mills ground the farmer's corn and rye; the saw-mill prepared the lumber for building purposes; the fulling-mill, or clothier's works, as it was sometimes called, contained simple machinery for shrinking and dressing the cloth which had been spun and woven in the farm-houses.2 Combined with the fulling-mill was often a carding machine which performed by water power the laborious operations of preparing the wool for spinning. These machines had only recently been introduced,3 but had spread so rapidly that by 1810 they were found in almost every town. The business carried on by these mills was often interrupted in summer by the failure of the streams on which they depended for their water power; at other times it was small in amount, being limited almost without exception to the needs of the community. The number of mills in a community is by no means an indication of an equal number of proprietors receiving their entire income from this sort of industrial activity. Often various sorts of mills were carried on under one ownership, and besides the proprietors of these various enterprises were regularly farmers as well.5

1 Exceptionally large towns such as Litchfield, in Connecticut, had a much larger number of these mills.

2 The business of a fulling-mill in Cheshire County, N. H., is described in detail in Gallatin's Report on Manufactures, American State Papers, Finance, II. 435. Its labor force consisted of two men and four apprentices, working four months in the year. The total amount of cloth dressed was 6,700 yards per annum. Such mills were often erroneously designated as woolen factories in early descriptions of manufactures.

3 About 1800.

An exception is found in the case of towns within reach of a market, as for example the coast towns of Fairfield County, Conn., in which considerable milling of flour was done.

5 An instance is given by Miss Larned in her History of Windham County. In Pomfret, Conn., in 1787, one Captain Cargill owned and operated three sets of grist-mills, a bolting-mill, a blacksmith's shop, a fulling mill, and a churning mill, all on the same water power and under the same roof. Vol. II. p. 266. See also Ibid. II. 240.

An illustration of the combination of several of these enterprises with farming is given in the Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Mass.), Feb. 20, 1811. A farm of 130 acres is advertised in the town of Savoy, having on the premises a store, potash works, grist-mill, and saw-mill. As if these were not enough to keep the future owner busy, the seller adds that the place is a good site for a

tavern.

A tannery or two seem to have been uniformly a part of the economic outfit of the inland town. The working dress of the people was largely composed of leathern garments, not only their shoes and leggings, but shirts, breeches and coats as well. A large part of the material came from the hides of animals slaughtered on the farms and prepared at the village tannery. This was a primitive affair, quite on a par with the mills in the size of its plant and in the scope of its operations.2 Cider mills and cider and grain distilleries were numerous, but were for the most part owned by farmers and located on their premises.3

The manufacture of potash and pearl ash was a by-industry of the farmers in many towns, especially in newly settled regions in Vermont and New Hampshire, and in Worcester and Berkshire counties in Massachusetts. La Rochefoucauld described the process of preparing potash "which is generally observed in the United States," as follows: "Large tubs, with a double bottom, are filled with ashes; the uppermost bottom which contains several holes, is covered with ashes, about ten or eleven inches deep, while the under part of the tub is filled with straw or hay. Water, being poured over the ashes, extracts the particles of salt, and discharges all the heterogeneous matter which it may contain in the layer of hay or straw. The lie is drawn off by means of a cock, and if it should not yet have attained a sufficient degree of strength, poured again over the ashes. The lie is deemed sufficiently strong when an egg swims on it. This lie is afterward boiled in large iron cauldrons, which are constantly filled out of other cauldrons, in which lie is likewise boiling This salt is of a black colour, and called black potash. Some manufacturers leave the potash in this state in the cauldron,

'In the state of Connecticut, for instance, according to the Digest of Manufactures prepared by Tench Coxe from the facts collected in the Census of 1810, there were 408 tanneries. An examination of Pease and Niles' Gazetteer shows that these establishments were scattered fairly evenly among the 119 towns.

2 An early tannery in the town of Quincy, Mass., is described by Mr. Adams as follows: "The earlier tanneries were strange primitive establishments. The vats were oblong boxes sunk in the ground close to the edge of the town brook at the point where it crossed the main street. They were without either covers or outlets. The beam-house was an open shed, within which old, worn-out, horses circulated round while the bark was crushed at the rate of half a cord or so a day by alternate wooden and stone wheels, moving in a circular trough fifteen feet in diameter." Episodes, II. 929.

Coxe, Tench. A View of the United States of America. London. 1794. p. 269. The manufacture of cider brandy was an important by-industry of the farmers of Woodbury, Conn. Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 267.

and encrease the fire, by means of which the oil is disengaged from the salt in a thick smoke, and the black potash assumes a grey colour, in which state it is packed up in barrels for sale.

Pearlash is potash purified by calcination. To this end the potash is put into a kiln, constructed in oval form, of Plaster of Paris; the inside of which being made otherwise perfectly close, is horizontally intersected by an iron grate, on which the potash is placed. Under this grate a fire is made, and the heat, reverberated from the arched upper part of the kiln, compleats the calcination, and converts the potash into pearlash; The process of calcination lasts about an hour."

The apparatus necessary for this manufacture was inexpensive, the largest outlay being for the purchase of the kettles in which the lye was boiled. The products, pearlash and potash, were used to some extent in the household in making soap, in scouring wool, and in bleaching and dyeing cloth. The larger part of the output was sold, partly for use in glass-making and other manufactures, and partly for export.

The Mechanics and Artisans.

We have next to consider the country mechanics or artisans. Here we find that although the division of labor seems to have progressed to a considerable degree in the separation of crafts, yet the connection of each with the fundamental industry, that of tilling the soil, was as close and as rarely completely dissolved as in the case of the professional or business men already described. This imperfect specialization of occupations is described by Tench Coxe as follows: "Those of the tradesmen and manufacturers, who live in the country, generally reside on small lots and farms, from one acre to twenty; and not a few upon farms from twenty to one hundred and fifty acres; which they cultivate at leisure times, with their own hands, their wives, children, servants, and apprentices, and sometimes by hired labourers, or by letting out fields, for a part of the produce, to some neighbour, who has time or farm hands not fully employed. This union of manufactures and farming is found to be very convenient on the grain farms; but it is still more

1 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels, I. 384-386. See also Bishop, J. Leander. History of American Manufactures. 2 vols. Philadelphia. 1861. II. 57. 2 Author's italics.