Colonial Virginia

Its People and Customs

 By Mary Newton Stanard, 1917 

185 pages, illustrated, indexed, searchable

****************************************************************************
Digital CD Requires Adobe Reader 5 or higher to View
Autoboot Menu for Easy Access; Manually Open on MAC
************************************************************************
 
 “How may we call to life the everyday men and women of other times, obtain 

glimpses of them in their homes, going about their 

business or pursuing pleasure, know them as they were known to their families and 

neighbors? Not by reading history. History records events and names a few of 

those who figured in them, but no matter how ingeniously the string is pulled these generally 

seem more like puppets than people — to be made of bronze or marble rather than

 flesh and blood. A gossipy letter, though crumbling and yellow, telling what company 

the writer had for dinner and what there was to eat, the jokes that were cracked and 

healths drunk; a fragment of a diary giving the neighborhood news, the condition of 

the crops or the latest political excitement; a tailor's or a milliner's bill ; a will ; 

an inventory ; a court record of a lawsuit or a trial, will make a bygone day 

more real than volumes of history. 

Notwithstanding the lamentable destruction of early records — all of those of a number

 of counties having been lost — Virginia is rich in this graphic kind of material. Much

 of it is preserved in still existing colonial county records, in files of that quaint 

newspaper, The Virginia Gazette, in collections of famity papers, in old pamphlets, in 

privately published and other books most of which are now out 

of print, and in journals like the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and the 

William and Mary College Quarterly Magazine. 

But these scattered sources of information are inaccessible to the general reader — 

the existence of many of them is known only to a few special students — and no 

attempt has hitherto been made to gather what is most illustrative from them 

all into one volume, with the purpose of giving a picture, or series of pictures, of life in

 the colony from its settlement to the Revolution.” 

CONTENTS 

I. THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE 15 

   I. — The Founders of the Colony 

   II. — The Later Emigrants 

II. HOUSES FROM LOG-CABIN TO MANSION 55 

III. HOUSEHOLD GOODS 77 

   I. — Furniture 

   II. — Plate 

IV SOCIAL LIFE 102 

   I. — The Home 

   II. — Hospitality 

   III. — Festivities 

   IV. — Gaming, Taverns, Fairs, Etc. 

V. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 166 

VI. DRESS 186 

   I. — Jewels 

VII. VIRGINIA AND ENGLAND 213 

VIII. THE THEATRE 229 

IX. OUTDOOR SPORTS 252 

X. EDUCATION 262 

   I. — Free Schools 

   II. — Private Schools 

   III. — Tutors 

   IV. — William and Mary College 

   V. — Studying Abroad 

XI BOOKS 295 

XII. MUSIC 308 

XIII. PICTURES 314 

XIV. RELIGION 320 

XV. FUNERAL CUSTOMS 341 

ILLUSTRATIONS (93 illustrations)