Journeying West Before 1840

Reverend Joseph Doddridge writes in 1824 about his childhood in the (mostly)1770s:

The furniture for the table, for several years after the settlement of this country, consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates, and spoons; but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers and noggins. If these last were scarce, gourds and hard shelled squashes made up the deficiency.
The iron pots, knives, and forks were brought from the east side of the mountains along with the salt, and iron on pack horses.

These articles of furniture, corresponded very well with the articles of diet, on which they were employed. “Hog and hominy” were proverbial for the dish which they were the component parts. Jonny cake and pone were at the outset of the settlement of the country, the only forms of bread in use for breakfast and dinner. At supper, milk and mush were the standard dish. When milk was not plenty, which was often the case, owing to the scarcity of cattle, or the want of proper pasture for them, the substantial dish of hominy had to supply the place of them; mush was frequently eaten with sweetened water, molasses, bears oil, or the gravey of fried meat.
Every family, besides a little garden, for the few vegetables which they cultivated, had another small enclosure containing from half an acre to an acre, which they called a “Truck patch.” In which they raised corn, for roasting-ears, pumpkins, squashes, beans, and potatoes. These in the latter part of the summer and fall, were cooked with their pork, venison and bear meat for dinner and made very wholesome and well tasted dishes. The standard dinner dish for every log rolling, house raising and harvest day was a pot pye, or what in other countries is called “Sea pye.” This besides answering for dinner, served for a part of the supper also. The remainder of it from dinner, being eaten with milk in the evening, after the conclusion of the labour of the day.

In our whole display of furniture, the delft, china, and silver were unknown. It did not then as now require contributions from the four quarters of the globe to furnish the breakfast table, vis. the silver from Mexico,; the coffee from the West Indies; the tea from China, and the delft and porcelain from Europe, or Asia. Yet our homely fare, and unsightly cabins, and furniture, produced a hardy veteran race, who planted the first foot steps of society, and civilization, in the immense regions of the west. Inured to hardihood bravery, and labour from their early youth, they sustained with manly fortitude the fatigue, of the chase, the campaign and the scout, and with strong arms “Turned the wilderness into fruitful fields” and have left to their descendants the rich inheritance of an immense empire blessed with peace and wealth.


From: On the Settlement and Indian Wars of the western parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, pgs, 108-109