Life in The Growing Colonies

City Life in The Northern Colonies :

One of the biggest changes that had come in the colonies was the growth of some
early villages into cities. In 1730, the four largest towns were Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia in the north and Charleston in the south. These ‘’cities’’ would be small
towns today. For example, Boston had about thirteen thousand people, which was a tiny
part of its present-day population ; However, these cities were important to all the
colonists.
Northern cities are trading centers. The first thing a visitor noticed was the hum of
activity around the docks. Everytime a ship landed, the whole city rippled with
excitement. Merchants waited eagerly to inspect the ship’s cargo. There was a big
demand for tools, wloth, and other manufactured good from England. The colonists also
wanted spices, tea, coffee, and cocoa beans, all products that they could not grow
themselves ; all these goods that made life more pleasant came from distant places.
Workmen stacked great piles of cargo on the docks for reloading when the English
goods were removed from the ship’s hold. Barrels of fish, salt pork, beef, grain, stacks of
lumber, and other raw materials would be traded for the imported goods. The well-being
of hundreds, even thousands, of people depended on this exchange of products. Beyond
the seaport town were the farmers who needed to sell their product overseas.
Most of the colonists tried to be self-sufficient, to grow or make most of the things
they needed. However, trade was still important to them. They were part of a larger
community that stretched across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. So you can understand
why the early settlements on good harbors such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
became the first cities.

What do you suppose it was like to live in one of these cities ? That would depend on
how your father earned his living.
Well-to-do merchants live comfortably. In each city, there were a good many
merchants who became wealthy in the business of buying and selling the goods that
came through the ports. These men built large homes, often of brick or stone. They
furnished their homes with useful and lovely things from England. They tried to live as
nearly as they could as high-born aristocratic people did in England.
A visitor in a wealthy merchant’s home was always impressed with the beauty and
comfort he found there. He ate dinner with the family at a carved and polished table that
was set with fine china, glassware, and silver. After dinner, the family and their guests,
all dressed in elegant English clothes, listened to the ladies who sang and played
musical instruments.
The artisans are skilled craftsmen. As the towns grew, people began to depend on
many different kinds of skilled hand workers, or artisans, to make the things they
needed. Along certain streets were the shops of busy shoemakers, tailors, furniture
makers, silversmiths, sailmakers, and so on. Many artisans lived with their families in
rooms behind their shops or in a second story above them.
The family life centered in one large room with a fireplace at one end. This was the living
room, dining room, and kitchen. The family sat down for meals served from the fireplace.
After a hearty meal of simple food, they might sit together for a while. The women might
hold a sewing bee or a quilting party, enjoying one another’s company as they did useful
work.
The artisans worked long days in their shops, making by hand the articles that their
customers ordered. Their wives, too, worked hard at many household tasks. They made
all the clothing for the family, for example. The children of artisans usually went to
school for only a few years, if at all. Usually, they learned a trade or worked in the home.
Laborers in the cities. A great deal of hard work had to be done in the colonial
cities. Ships had to be loaded and unloaded, goods had to be hauled to and from
warehouses in carts and wagons, ships had to be built, flour had to be milled and
packed, meat had to be packed for shipping. All this work had to be done without the
labor-saving machinery we find today in docks, warehouses, and factories.
Who did this hard work ? Much of it was done by free laborers (men who were paid
wages for their work). Indentured servants or sometimes black slaves were also given
such tasks. Some free laborers managed to save money from their wages, with this, they
would set up small stores in the town or get land in the country and become farmers.
After an indentured servant finished the years of work he owed his master, he usually
had two choices. He might become a free laborer in the town, or he might move west to
become a pioneer farmer.
Farm life. Of course, a farmer and his wife could not make everything they
needed ; they couldn’t manufacture metal goods, such as knives, guns, axes, or iron
cooking pots. They could not grow spices, tea or cocoa. Little by little, they came to want
other things as well. If they could get ready-made cloth instead of weaving their own,
many hours of labor could be saved. It was also pleasant to have a clock, a few books, or
sugar to use instead of honey and maple syrup.
The farmers obtained all these special goods by selling or trading the farm goods they
didn’t use themselves. As the amount of trade increased, little villages grew up here and
there in the older, settled farm regions.
In the village there might be a general store, a grain mill, a saw mill, a blacksmith’s shop, and a
weaving shop. The more well-to-do farmers could pay artisans to do some things the farmer used
to do himself. These were chores such as shoeing horses or grinding wheat. At the general store he
traded grain or meat for manufactured products. He also enjoyed meeting other farmers in the
village. It made life less lonely
Plantation Life. Any tour of Maryland, Virginia, or South Carolina would include a
visit to a large plantation. Most people in the south owned small or medium-sized farms
and lived in much the same way as other colonial farmers. However, the planters, who
owned large plantations were the wealthiest and most powerful people in the Southern
Colonies.
You recall that cash crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo became very important to
the South. These crops required large amounts of land and many many hands to do the
work of planting, tending, and harvesting. Wealthy planters owned huge farms and kept
many servants and slaves to do the work.
A plantation was a community because of all the different activities that went on there. A
large one might have as many buildings as a town would have. At the center was the
planter’s big house where he and his family lived.
A short distance away were many smaller buildings, including storehouses, a carpenter’s
shop, a blacksmith’s shop, and a weaving shed. Still farther away were the homes of the
servants and slaves. The rest of the land was used for raising livestock and growing
crops.
In many ways the plantation was a self sufficient community. However, trade was very
important to the plantation owner. He made money by shipping his crops to England.
Like the rich merchants in the cities, he ordered his clothing and his household goods
from England ; he, too, wanted to live like an English aristocrat.
Unlike the city merchant, the planter and his family lived far way from others. Their
children had to be educated by tutors who came to live with the family ; However, most
plantation owners were interested in the outside world, they ordered books, magazines
and newspapers from England. Often they sent their sons to school in England.
The slaves who did the hard work of the plantation lived in crude little cabins. The
planter gave them plain food and clothes from the plantation storehouse. Some of them
did housework, others spent their days in the workshop. Most of them, however, worked
in the fields. Men, women, and children went out to the fields at dawn and worked until
sunset. The well-being of a slave depended on the wishes of the plantation owner and
the men he hired as overseers. If the owner were careless or cruel, his slaves suffered
great hardships.

Transportation and Communication in The Growing

Colonies :
The time came when the settlers wanted to push farther west to make new homes. At the
same time, they wanted to keep in touch with the older settlements. Men in the different
colonies, such as Massachusetts and New York, wanted to be able to travel back and
forth on business. In other words, the colonists needed roads.
The Development of Roads. Over the years, the colonists managed to carve roads out of
the thick, shady forests. Indian trails were widened by cutting the branches on either
side so that horseback riders could get through. Later, some people either made or
imported carts, wagons, and carriages. Then the trails were widened so that these
vehicles could pass through.
By 1750, there were roads connecting the main towns and cities of the English colonies.
Over these early highways traveled lumbering wagons, heavy coaches, and galloping
horses. From diaries and letters of those days, we know the roads were rough and
bumpy. Depending on the weather, they were either dusty or muddy. The inns along
these roads usually offerend the weary traveler poorly cooked meals, lumpy beds, and
dirty bed covers. Off the main roads, the roads were merely trails.
Nevertheless, this system of roads helped the colonists in many ways. Farm products
could be carried to market in towns and cities. Merchants sent products from the cities
over these roads to the farm people. Some businessmen and other travelers began to get
acquainted with people in other colonies.