Post by spence on Sept 21, 2022 19:00:32 GMT -7
When I make a meal on a trek I frequently include a cup of tea, either sassafras of gunpowder.
I’ve always enjoyed the tea, but have frequently wondered if that was HC/PC. From the evidence I’ve collected I haven’t been able to settle that question in my mind.
There certainly is evidence that there were many enthusiastic tea drinkers in the colonies:
_Eighteenth Century America: A Hessian Report On the People, the Land, the War, As Noted in the Diary of Chaplain Philipp Waldeck (1776-1780)_, translated by Bruce E Burgoyne, entry for Jan. 19, 1778:
"I have been in a variety of tea-drinking situations. I would bet everything in the world that it is impossible in traveling through North America to find a single house, from that of the fanciest gentleman to that of the oyster digger, where the people do not drink a cup of tea at midday. The men could sooner get their wives to give up their finery than to do without tea. And if a law were passed making tea-drinking illegal, I do not doubt for a moment that the entire population would take up arms and begin a rebellion as now exists. It is not only the ladies who are so addicted to tea, but also the men, who break from work at three o'clock in order to sit down to a cup of tea. We [the German officers] drink it, however, as a courtesy to the society in which we find ourselves, or for fear that we will be served coffee, which the American make in a strange way. They only color the water brown."
Ads of tea offered for sale were common, too.
The Pennsylvania Gazette
April 10, 1760
JAMES WALLACE
Superfine bohea, congo, souchong and hyson tea , compleat setts of tea china, blue and white china cups and saucers in boxes,
The Pennsylvania Gazette
August 23, 1764
THOMAS WALLACE...
Also Bohea Tea by the Chest, Souchong, Tonkey, Green and very best Hyson Tea , by the Dozen or Pound;
A wide variety of teas was available, apparently. These are the types I have found period references to.
hyson
green
bohea
souchong
congo (congou)
tonkey (twankey)
gunpowder
There are references to sassafras tea being drunk, but apparently as part of a medical treatment, not as a pleasing drink.
When the supply of teas was cut off during the revolution, they took measures to solve that problem:
_Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784_, Johann David Schöpf/Schoepf, translated from the German and edited by Alfred J. Morrison, 1911
“A domestic tea is prepared from the leaves of the Red-root (Ceanothus americana), which is really not bad to drink, and may well take its place along with the inferior sorts of Bohea tea. Jonathan Plummer in Washington county on the Monongahela during the war prepared himself more than 1000 pounds of this tea, and sold it for seven and a half to ten Pennsylv[ania] shillings the pound. His method of preparation he kept secret ; probably he dried the leaves on or in iron-ware over a slow fire. By better handling, more careful and cleanly, this tea could likely be made greatly more to the taste than it is. At the beginning of the war, what with general prohibitions and the enthusiastic patriotism, the importing of Chinese tea was for some time rendered difficult, and attempts were made everywhere to find substitutes in native growths ; this shrub was found the most serviceable for the purpose and its use is still continued in the back parts. Along the coast this patriotic tea was less known and demanded, but it will soon banish from many houses in the mountains the foreign tea which is now become cheaper. The use of tea is everywhere quite common.”
How about in the less civilized parts, though? We have some opinions that it wasn’t common in the backwoods areas.
Joseph Doddridge. _Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania_,
“Tea and coffee were only slops, which in the adage of the day “did not stick by the ribs.” The idea was they were designed only for people of quality who do not labor, or the sick. A genuine backwoodsman would have thought himself disgraced by showing a fondness for these slops. Indeed, many of them have, to this day, very little respect for them.”
I’ve gleaned all the food references in the journals of James Nourse, Sr. and Jr., Nickolas Cresswell, Richard Henderson, William Calk, Spencer Records, Christopher Gist and several others, and have not found a single reference to the use of tea in the wilderness, by longhunters, etc.
Has anyone run across any reference to the use of tea in the boondocks, hunter’s camp, frontier outpost or other wilderness situation?
Spence
I’ve always enjoyed the tea, but have frequently wondered if that was HC/PC. From the evidence I’ve collected I haven’t been able to settle that question in my mind.
There certainly is evidence that there were many enthusiastic tea drinkers in the colonies:
_Eighteenth Century America: A Hessian Report On the People, the Land, the War, As Noted in the Diary of Chaplain Philipp Waldeck (1776-1780)_, translated by Bruce E Burgoyne, entry for Jan. 19, 1778:
"I have been in a variety of tea-drinking situations. I would bet everything in the world that it is impossible in traveling through North America to find a single house, from that of the fanciest gentleman to that of the oyster digger, where the people do not drink a cup of tea at midday. The men could sooner get their wives to give up their finery than to do without tea. And if a law were passed making tea-drinking illegal, I do not doubt for a moment that the entire population would take up arms and begin a rebellion as now exists. It is not only the ladies who are so addicted to tea, but also the men, who break from work at three o'clock in order to sit down to a cup of tea. We [the German officers] drink it, however, as a courtesy to the society in which we find ourselves, or for fear that we will be served coffee, which the American make in a strange way. They only color the water brown."
Ads of tea offered for sale were common, too.
The Pennsylvania Gazette
April 10, 1760
JAMES WALLACE
Superfine bohea, congo, souchong and hyson tea , compleat setts of tea china, blue and white china cups and saucers in boxes,
The Pennsylvania Gazette
August 23, 1764
THOMAS WALLACE...
Also Bohea Tea by the Chest, Souchong, Tonkey, Green and very best Hyson Tea , by the Dozen or Pound;
A wide variety of teas was available, apparently. These are the types I have found period references to.
hyson
green
bohea
souchong
congo (congou)
tonkey (twankey)
gunpowder
There are references to sassafras tea being drunk, but apparently as part of a medical treatment, not as a pleasing drink.
When the supply of teas was cut off during the revolution, they took measures to solve that problem:
_Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784_, Johann David Schöpf/Schoepf, translated from the German and edited by Alfred J. Morrison, 1911
“A domestic tea is prepared from the leaves of the Red-root (Ceanothus americana), which is really not bad to drink, and may well take its place along with the inferior sorts of Bohea tea. Jonathan Plummer in Washington county on the Monongahela during the war prepared himself more than 1000 pounds of this tea, and sold it for seven and a half to ten Pennsylv[ania] shillings the pound. His method of preparation he kept secret ; probably he dried the leaves on or in iron-ware over a slow fire. By better handling, more careful and cleanly, this tea could likely be made greatly more to the taste than it is. At the beginning of the war, what with general prohibitions and the enthusiastic patriotism, the importing of Chinese tea was for some time rendered difficult, and attempts were made everywhere to find substitutes in native growths ; this shrub was found the most serviceable for the purpose and its use is still continued in the back parts. Along the coast this patriotic tea was less known and demanded, but it will soon banish from many houses in the mountains the foreign tea which is now become cheaper. The use of tea is everywhere quite common.”
How about in the less civilized parts, though? We have some opinions that it wasn’t common in the backwoods areas.
Joseph Doddridge. _Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania_,
“Tea and coffee were only slops, which in the adage of the day “did not stick by the ribs.” The idea was they were designed only for people of quality who do not labor, or the sick. A genuine backwoodsman would have thought himself disgraced by showing a fondness for these slops. Indeed, many of them have, to this day, very little respect for them.”
I’ve gleaned all the food references in the journals of James Nourse, Sr. and Jr., Nickolas Cresswell, Richard Henderson, William Calk, Spencer Records, Christopher Gist and several others, and have not found a single reference to the use of tea in the wilderness, by longhunters, etc.
Has anyone run across any reference to the use of tea in the boondocks, hunter’s camp, frontier outpost or other wilderness situation?
Spence
