Newtown History Campers Spend Time Touring The 1700s

By Kendra Bobowick

Churning crushed ice and cream on a hot day, Newtown Historical Society’s afternoon history campers were working hard for a cold dessert on July 15.

“We’re making this the old-fashioned way,” said Melissa Houston, the head instructress for the camp, which was hosted by the historical society at The Matthew Curtiss House during the week of July 11-15.. With the antique device and simple ingredients of sugar, vanilla, ice, and cream set up in front of her, she said, “Do we have a refrigerator in the 1750s? No, but we have ice.”

As campers listened, she asked, “What do we do for ice in the summer?”

Elise Beier answered, “The boys go to the lake [in the winter] and cut the ice.”

“Right!” Ms Houston said. “They harvested ice and kept it in an ice house.” She then pointed out, “So, ice was expensive, and had to last all summer; ice cream was a luxury.”

She explained the churning and ingredients to the campers, saying they could enjoy homemade ice cream in roughly 30 minutes. Campers lined up for their turn to crank the churn’s handle a few time each before handing it over to junior docent Niles Wilson, who sat on the back stoop of the historic Main Street house and endlessly cranked the handle.

Dressed in bonnets, aprons and vests of their own making, campers had spent the week learning about and living in the footsteps of their counterparts from the 1700s.

Docent Mike Assalta “loves stepping back to 1750,” he said. Junior docent Mairin Hayes also loves the early time period, she said.

“I like the simplified lifestyle,” she said. “There are so many differences; it would surprise people to see all the work it took to get things.”

Niles liked the amount of outside work that took place roughly 260 years ago. He joked, “People were thinner!”

Earlier in the day children had their heads bent over tin lanterns as they tapped out patterns in the tin shell with hammers and nails. Carly Swierbut had intricate lines to follow.

“I will probably be the last one done,” she said. “This is complicated.”

Pleased with enrollment and activities this year, docent Gordon Williams said, “This year was a great year.” In its fifth year, the camp has doubled its enrollment. The historical society offered morning and afternoon sessions this year, which was a first, he said. Running the camp once a year, Mr Williams said, “It’s been wonderful.”

Looking around him at the children in the shade and on the back lawn of the Matthew Curtiss House, Mr Williams smiled at Michael Early, who used overturned buckets to play the drums. Setting the sticks aside, Michael considered what he had learned this year. Making butter by hand was on his list of new experiences, he said.

Camper Mitchell Doherty spoke of one fact that surprised him. “I learned that you could use lavender to keep moths away from food.” Ryan Chieffo liked making decorative windmills from cardboard.

The day’s final lesson was the fire brigade. Donna Ball and her son Miles spoke with campers sitting cross-legged on the lawn, “We are going to talk about Colonial firefighting.” Children soon learned how ineffective early methods were to stop a blaze.

People used fire for cooking, light, heat, and wound up with “a lot of accidental fires,” Ms Ball said. “But, they had no fire hoses or fire trucks or firemen, and no fire alarms.”

Minutes later the campers and docents stood beside bins of water, passing buckets up and down a row to douse flames lining “the neighbor’s shed.” At the base of the barn behind the historical society were imitation flames drawn in yellows and red on cardboard, which were soon drenched with buckets of water.

(More photos and a slideshow of this event appear online at NewtownBee.com.)