Captain Allen, Candle making, American Chestnut and a Tobacco Chewing Ladybug!
I arrived at the village on Saturday morning and at 1 degree Fahrenheit the sheep were wearing other sheep to stay warm. The village was so calm and the chickens and roosters were standing motionless in the beams of sunlight inside the Fenno's barn. The crisp silence was interrupted by George making tracks at the town's center with the horse drawn sleigh getting ready for today's hardy visitors. The Asa Knight store was warm and still had some evidence of the Christmas By Candlelight program, but in a few minutes Janice and I had the store ready for business. Janice Dulmaine, a long time Old Sturbridge Village interpreter and employee was my co-storekeeper companion today and for some reason I knew today was going to be an educational experience at the AK.
Janice shared with me her beginnings at the village when her children were young and she was working at the Education Department cooking at the hearth and doing some housekeeping. She then became an interpreter, cook extraordinaire and candle maker among many other things at the Freeman farm. Janice was able to share some of her expertise in
handling tallow, the main ingredient for candle making in 1830s New England. The people would use the fat from their animals (not pig fat... their fat was not the right consistency for candles.) after the late fall slaughter. Tallow is the fat mainly from cattle and sheep after it is boiled and filtered for impurities. She also shared that an invention of a curling wick (sold at the Asa Knight Store) improved the longevity of a candle. This new wick would give candles about 4 hours of burning time. This task was not a popular one and normally the wife would kick everyone out of the house to perform this tedious and messy task. This also meant that there was not time to do any specific cooking and everyone would be eating basic and cold foods. Janice also explained that the people who lived by the coastline had access to spermaceti which is whale fat known for making brighter candles.
The cold temperatures weren't being shy and our fellow interpreters from the shoe shop came to visit us looking for a little Asa warmth. Young Jadon Rivard came in and bragged about his first pair of shoes and how he was already working on his second and third pair.
Peter also came in for a visit. We discussed shoe making and about a Sturbridge shoe maker named Captain Simeon Allen. I learned from Peter that a cobbler was someone that repaired shoes and a shoemaker actually made shoes and that the word cobbler could sometimes be used as an insult to a person. The bottomline.... a shoemaker makes shoes and a cobbler repairs shoes. Thank you Peter Oakley (no relation to Annie Oakley) for the "shoe" education.
We had a few international visitors, a gentleman from Canada and mother and son from Germany. We talk to our friends from Germany about the items were sold from Germany. Some of these items were fireplace bellows, ice skates and licorice. We also blamed our Canadian visitor for the delightful temperatures we were experiencing in New England.
What I love about Asa Knight is that I'm constantly learning about different things. Janice talked to me about the American Chestnut tree. A very important tree that provided New Englanders with great lumber, very resilient to weather and bugs. Each tree could produce over 6,000 nuts which were a great source of free nutrition and also could be sold to country stores like Asa Knight for extra income. These amazing trees were devastated by blight in the early 1900s. Thanks Janice for the American Chestnut lesson!
My last visitor was a chewing tobacco seeking ladybug! Never a dull moment at the Asa Knight Country Store!
