IM DESPERATE!!How did people dress in the frontier?10 POINTS TO THE BEST ANSWER!I PROMISE!?
***DURING THE 1700s***
How did people dress in the frontier? what were their clothes made of? who made the clothes? were did they get the clothes (like what animal or plant)? what did girls wear, what did men wear? what did women wear? what did boys wear?
what type of food did they eat? did they farm or hunt, how did they cook thir meals, what were the common foods they ate, did they all eat together, did they pray before they ate
What were their houses like? how did they build it, where did they live in, how was it inside, what did they have in their houses, who biult the houses?
What was the weather like? were there 4 seasons? what did they do in winter? in summer? in spring? in fall? when it rained? when it snowed? were there earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes?
What was their lifestyle? just describe thier life
What was the frontier like? what was the area like? what did it look like? lots of trees or lakes? lots of plants? lots of neighbors? big yards? was the ground soil or concrete or grass?
Each question is a paragraph so i need a lot of info. This is supposed to be a journal . i have to pretend im living in the frontier. Please give me a lot of info!
Thank you so much for wasting your precious time on me.
ALSO: how did they speak in the frontier? (Language and "old" words they used) what did they use to say mom and dad? Whats some other words they used?
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2 comments
gaylene B on July 26, 2010 at 7:00 pm
I’m going through older questions – first of all – the Frontier in the 1700s was like West Virginia, maybe Tennessee or Kentucky or Ohio. They were almost all farmers. Even the people who worked at the few trading posts were farmers also.
Clothes were generally hand-me-downs as fabric was relatively expensive at the time. Many times frontier people wore leather (deerskin actually) because it was cheaper than fabric. You caught a deer, skinned it and used the deer’s brain to tan the leather. Boots were expensive and were made in only one size unless made to order. Most frontier people wore Indian style moccasins. They were easy to make at home.
Unless your family was raising sheep, you probably didn’t have wool. If your family raised flax you might have linen, but it’s not easy to learn to harvest and weave. Of course, your family would need to have a loom to weave linen, big expensive item to carry into the frontier.
Learn about flax here: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Linen.html
Girls wore dresses, shawls, Mop caps, aprons: This website talks about French pioneers in illinois, but the idea is the same for English pioneers: http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/athome/1700/sideby/f-clo.htm
Eastern US – climate at the time was colder in the winter than now (well, not this minute) But people felt colder because houses were a lot more drafty. No earthquakes to speak of, not until 1811. In a 4 season climate most of the living was outside for as much of the year as possible.
The Swedish log cabin was being built all over the frontier by 1700. They were one room rectangular houses with a door in one long wall and a fireplace built against one of the short walls. The chimney was built of logs as well. The floors were usually dirt, but sometimes wealthier farmers elevated the house onto pilings and installed a floor. A window cut into one wall would have been covered with oil cloth or animal skin – no windows. No doorknobs, just a board that held the door closed and lifted up to open.
This Website will tell you about how the cabins were built: http://architecture.about.com/od/periodsstyles/a/logcabins_2.htm
The wife would cook in her single big pot that hung on a chain over the fire. – if she was lucky she had a gridiron as well (like a BBQ grill today) that she could lay across the coals to grill on. If she was REALLY lucky her husband built her a small beehive style oven outside so she could cook bread. She usually had laid down a supply of cherished salt, sugar, flour, corn meal, pickled vegetables, and coffee into her cellar, if she had one, or stored in barrels in the house. She carefully fed her yeast starter so that she could make her bread. If her starter died, it might take her weeks to get more from a neighbor.
See this Website for more on Baking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baking
(She’d be proud to have her own oven, in the old country the ovens were owned by bakers and you could never be certain of what was in the bread? plaster, talc, sawdust?)
The housewife was in charge of preserving the food to see them through the winter – without relying on refrigeration. She needed to salt to preserve meat, fish, vegetables (that’s what pickling is), milk (we call preserved milk cheese) She milked the cows and churned butter.
See this website on how to make cheese: http://cookingupastory.com/making-cheese-at-home
So the wife cooks over the fireplace, which is big enough to stand up in. Uses her pot on washday to boil the laundry – made her own soap from lye.
See this Website for directions on soap making: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_making#Soapmaking
A bed was a bag stuffed with straw, weeds, feathers, pine needles, whatever was fairly soft and affordable. No sheets, just blankets or animal skins. Until her husband built her a bedstead, it was placed on the floor, fairly close to the fire for warmth in the winter, near the window when it got hot. Children often slept in their parents bed or up in the rafters on boards. (The rafters are the beams that hold up the roof)
People tended to move indoors when the weather was bad. Winter evenings could be long. Women usually hand sewed clothes or did repairs in the evenings. The only book in the house was usually the Bible, KIng James version – but that’s only if they could afford one.
Women wanted to live close by to other neighbors, if you became ill, or were giving birth, you turned to other women. So your neighbors were rarely as much as a day away. You have fences around your animals to keep them away from the Native Americans. Your biggest enemy was the Indians – you didn’t understand what they said, but you feared them.
Grass was only common in places where it grew naturally. Your husband cut as many trees as he could – for heat in the winter, to clear the land for planting, to sell to others. The natives hated this, but you didn’t understand why.
You lived as close as you could to a source of water, so you didn’t have to haul the water so far. Water is heavy 62.4 pounds per sq cubic foot.
There was more, but the program can’t take any more.
bcblog on July 26, 2010 at 7:00 pm
That’s a lot to answer. haha More than I would like to type out here, but here are a couple of links that should get you a good start on all your questions.
http://newacquisitionmilitia.com/Scotch-Irish%20on%20the%20Frontier.htm
http://www.watertown.k12.ma.us/cunniff/americanhistorycentral/06lifeinbcolonies/Living_in_the.html