Calling all Cars

[sienamystic]

Has anybody, perhaps on a tour of a historic house, been told a story about "how things were" that seems a little funny/odd/legendary? I'm not talking about ghost stories, per say, but things along the lines of "they were shorter back then" and "ladies made firescreens to keep the heat off their face so their wax makeup wouldn't melt" and "good night sleep tight refers to rope beds." We're looking for ones that are particularly linked to American Revolution stuff. Pls comment - I'm sure there are a lot more stories out there than ones we were able to come up with.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

In a castle in Ireland, we were told that beds were so short a few hundred years ago not so much because people were shorter, but because, without modern medicine and public health, they tended to be sick and sniffly a lot more often, so slept sitting up in order to breathe better. Not linked to the Revolution, but right period, anyway.

And there's always the one about French court ladies of the period wearing their wigs so high and for so long that they got rats in them.

Will try to remember some more; having grown up in Philadelphia, I've probably heard others.

[strawberrykaren.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing these sorts of stories while touring Mount Vernon, but it's been years -- decades -- since I've been there. (And in that time, I know they've gotten a lot better.) Possibly also while touring other sites. Are you looking for these sorts of statements relating specifically to the Revolution, or to 18th century life in general?

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

18th century life in general, but since we're a decorative arts museum, it's nice to get ones that we can use objects to explain. For example, I just now learned about "Holy Lord" hinges and "13 panes of glass for the 13 colonies" stories.

And while Mt. Vernon may have improved, many of these stories still circulate currently *g*

[strawberrykaren.livejournal.com]

Thought of one: that women would typically have ribs removed in order to keep their stays tightly-laced.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Yes indeedy-doodily - our costume curator has already staked out that ground. Plus the "seventeen inch waist" thing.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I've got a perfect one. All around Boston, the historical house people claim that the glass panes are wider at the bottom than the top because glass is a liquid, and it has flowed down over the years. (I have heard this twice in lectures at the Old Manse, in Concord.)

In fact, glass is a liquid, but flows so slowly it would take much more than 200 years to thicken at the base of a 12" x 6" pane. Rather, glass panes were made via a glassblowing technique that always yielded panes of uneven thickness, and it became a convention to put the wider part at the bottom rather than the top. Those panes looked like that the moment they were installed into the window frame.

I believe this factoid was on Urban Legends, or someplace, but I also got a chemist friend of mine to confirm it.

(The Old Manse's windows are very exciting, historically, not because of how they were made, but because Hawthorne wrote graffiti on one of them, using his new wife's diamond as an implement.)

I also recall hearing, also at the Old Manse, that Cotton Mather was cross-eyed, and thus could unnerve his congregants because they couldn't tell whether he was focussing at them at any moment or not. That sounds like a legend, but I have no way of knowing whether it's actually true.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I've heard the "liquid glass" story a bunch of times - the only problem is that it might be hard to show this in an exhibit setting, which is what we're trying to hash out. But I'll put it on the Big List, because it is a really widespread one.

[max-und-moritz.livejournal.com]

Constantly, and everywhere. But then I come from the happy homeland of the Inquisition and live in the happier land of nosferatu *g* What with history coming to our doorstep roughly 300 years belatedly compared to the rest of Europe, and the added experience of fifty years of Soviet régime, modernity is rather out of place here. In all senses, "things as they were back then" still are, very much :)

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Yes, but at least Nosferatu are nice, quiet neighbors - no wild parties or screaming, like those irritating Inquistitionistas.

Americans tend to go through cycles of becoming re-enchanted by their own history from the Revolutionary War timeperiod, and want to revisit it. Unlike the Civil War, which tends to be, more or less, constantly fascinating to a large group of people, this George and Martha Washington/Bunker Hill/Minute Man obsession ebbs and flows. (Presumably this is so there is never a worldwide shortage of reproduction tricorn hats.)

[(Anonymous)]

When we used to do house tours they told us that the front door was on the second floor (with the big grand staircase out front) because the homeowners were taxed based on the number of floors, but everything below the main entry was basement. Debsiobhan