Bethlehem’s Beginnings, Part 1: Working in the Home – Welcome to Burnside Plantation!

April 9th, 2020 |

This is part one of a multi-part education blog series dedicated to looking at Bethlehem’s colonial roots.  Each of these blog posts will focus on interesting information about what life was like in colonial America and Bethlehem itself.  In Part 1 we are going to look at 1700s farm life at Burnside Plantation. While Burnside Plantation is not a working farm today, there are a lot of activities here year-round! 

The house is one of the most important buildings at Burnside Plantation. The original section of the house had two rooms on the first floor (the kitchen and the parlor), two rooms on the second floor, an attic, and a crawlspace under the parlor used as a cold cellar.

The parlor was the main public room in a colonial home, and since it was a place to entertain guests it was where families often kept the best furniture they owned. The parlor also had objects needed for important chores, such as a writing desk for Mr. Burnside, and a spinning wheel to spin thread for weaving into cloth.

The Burnsides may not have had many of the conveniences that we are used to in our homes, but their house was still very important for their daily life at Burnside Plantation.

Try this quick writing activity: Make a list of the most important objects you use each day in your own home.  How do these objects make your house feel like home?  If you could only keep a few things in your house which five would be the most important to you and your family?  Why?

In colonial America settlers had to grow much of their own food since many places did not have a store to buy the same variety of goods that we have in grocery stores today.  Many important foods were grown in the garden such as potatoes, carrots, beans, onions, cabbage, and more. Herbs grown in the garden could be used to flavor foods – just we do like today – but they had some other important uses too. Many herbs were used as tea substitutes, such as bee balm and mint, or for medicines, such as garlic and lamb’s ear (which was sometimes used to cover a cut, like how we might use a band-aid today). Think of how different it would be if you couldn’t get all of those things from the grocery store, but instead had to grow them yourself!

Try your own gardening projects at home, like an herb terrarium or homemade sprinkler!

The kitchen played an important role in the life of early settlers. Cooking was time-consuming because they didn’t have the same kitchen appliances we rely on like electric stoves or microwaves. Instead, everything had to be prepared over a fire in either an open-hearth fireplace or a brick oven.  

This sort of cooking could be difficult. The cook needed to start a fire in the oven early in the morning and then let it burn for 2-3 hours before they were ready to start baking.  Our appliances today have temperature controls, which makes cooking a whole lot easier!

Try making this old-fashioned treat at home. Luckily you won’t have to use old-fashioned cooking tools if you follow the directions here!

Housework was certainly different in colonial times! Next time we will explore another important building on Burnside Plantation and discover just how much work it was to be a farmer in 1700s America.

We hope that you enjoyed learning more about Burnside Plantation! Please consider supporting content like this at HBMS! https://www.historicbethlehem.org/support/donate/

Keith Sten is the Museum Sites & Education Manager at Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites. You can contact him at ksten@historicbethlehem.org to learn more about our school programs at Burnside Plantation and discover other learning opportunities from Historic Bethlehem!

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