ThanksMarket2

To market, to market!
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PLYMOUTH COLONY
The Pilgrims packed enough provisions onto the Mayflower to not only provide for the voyage but also to feed the settlers for the many months until crops could be planted and harvested. Some provisions, such as butter, were meant to last even longer. We know that an extremely large quantity of heavily salted butter was purchased for the Mayflower voyage. William Bradford described how the Pilgrims, in order to complete their financing, were “forced to sell off some of their provisions to stop this gap, some three or four-score [60 or 80] firkins of butter, which commodity they might best spare, having provided too large a quantity of that kind.” (Samuel Eliot Morison notes, “this would mean 3360 to 4720 pounds of butter”!) There were no cows on the Mayflower and the Pilgrims did not know how long they would have to wait before dairy animals could be brought to New England!

William Bradford tells us one sailor who “went and got a little spice and made him [another sailor] a mess of meat.” Among the provisions on the Mayflower could probably be found many of the exotic spices that were used in the cuisine of “Old England.” Certainly, provisions lists of the 1630s, advising new emigrants about what to pack for the voyage, consistently listed among the “needefull things as every Planter doth or ought to provide to go to New-England” spices such as cloves, cinnamon, mace and nutmegs, as well as sugar, honey and dried fruit.

We have no "menu" for that famous “First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” in 1621.

All we know, in the words of Edward Winslow, is that “our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week” and that the Native Americans in attendance “went out and killed five deer.”

“Fowling” encompasses any wild birds, including wild turkeys, which are recorded as being plentiful.) The records tell us that there were crops of Indian corn and barley; there MAY have been wheat from the stores brought on the Mayflower. Foods native to the area include walnuts, chestnuts, hickory nuts, gooseberries, raspberries, crab apples, cranberries, beans, pumpkins, squash and wild onions. The Pilgrims probably brought with them parsnip, carrot, turnip and onion seeds so these root vegetables would have been available. (The Pilgrims did not have apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, celery or molasses.) They probably had eggs; we know they had butter!

And they undoubtedly had the spices that we now associate with the traditional tastes and scents of a New England Thanksgiving - cloves, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and ginger.

Several 17^th century estate inventories list these specific spices among the possessions of Plymouth Colony residents. In 1651, John Hazell’s inventory listed not only cloves, nutmegs, turmeric, aloes, cinnamon, saffron, mace, pepper and ginger, but also white sugar. Sugar was an especially rare and valuable commodity in 17^th century Plymouth Colony.

Nutmeg

How were the foodstuffs that had been brought on the Mayflower distributed?

The settlement of Plymouth had been financed as a joint stock venture. All the Mayflower passengers were stockholders and therefore entitled to a share in the general stores (which included not only tools and clothing, but foodstuffs such as butter and flour and spices). The stores were kept in a common warehouse (the “Common House”). This system came to an end when the stock company was dissolved in 1627.

There continued to be warehouses but they were now individually built and owned. As ships came in, goods were put into the warehouses and sold, at first, directly to the consumers and, then, to individual shop owners who sold to the consumers. There were shops in Boston by the 1640s; the contents of one shop, inventoried in 1647, included ginger, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, sugar and raisins. The first shop in Plymouth Colony may have been that operated by Alexander Standish, son of Mayflower passenger Captain Myles Standish, who added a room onto his father’s house in Duxbury specifically for that purpose.

Just as imported commodities were bought and sold, so too were homegrown commodities. Farmers may have been initially dependent on their own farms but specialization soon developed – not every farmer had a cow, not every farmwife was as skillful in carrying for poultry or in dairying. Soon, there were farms with surpluses of some provisions and shortages of others. A market system quickly evolved for purposes of distribution and exchange. The markets were held once a week, on Thursdays. This system was codified in 1638 when it was enacted by the General Court of Plymouth Colony, “that there shalbe a markett kept at Plymouth every Thursday, and a faire yearely the last Wensday in May, & to continue two days and a faire at Duxburrow the first Wensday in October yearely, & to continue two days for all cattell & comodyties.”

Among the commodities grown in New England by the mid 17^th century were the classic ingredients of the Thanksgiving dinner - turkeys, chickens, apples, pumpkins, squash, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions and wheat (for the pie crusts!). Potatoes – now thought of as a staple – were not introduced into New England until the 1720s. By 1745, however, New England was growing enough potatoes to export. The other missing ingredient? Cranberries! Cranberry sauce had to wait for inexpensive sugar (cultivation of cranberries did not begin until 1816). Sugar and spices continued to be among New England’s most significant imports.