Peacock Pie and Spit Dogs

I traveled with many of my students and their families today to visit Tryon Palace, in New Bern, North Carolina.  Thanks to all of you (I think our numbers were close to fifty) who braved the cool weather and torrents of rain to visit the site of North Carolina's colonial capital.

Even though I have been studying history for a long time, I learned many new things on my visit, some intriguing, and some downright bizarre.  For example, while we were all in the Kitchen Office, the cook (a man) described how the roasting spit was sometimes powered by a wind-up pulley system, or sometimes by dogs.  What?  Dogs?  Various dogs (spit dogs, the cook called them, and he said that their breed was no longer in existence due to lack of necessity) would run in cages next to the fire, and their running served as the power source to turn the spit, which evenly roasted the meat.  When I got home I Googled and found a few images.

In the image above you can very clearly see the dog running in the wheel contraption to the right of the fireplace.  The pulley's coming off of his wheel cage are turning the roasting spit.

Here is another image.

This more modern image shows the wheel cage, again to the right of the fireplace.

Another unusual and disgusting revelation was the food.  In the formal dining room of the Tryon Palace they had set a table with several items that might have been served in the late 1700s for formal meals (the main meal was usually served at 2:00pm) with a light breakfast to start the day and a later meal, sometimes of leftovers, to end the day (these meals usually were taken upstairs in one's room at the palace).  The main centerpiece for the formal dining room was Peacock Pie.  Our guide noted that this delicacy went back to Medieval times, when a peacock was cleaned, cooked, and then served, but the colorful peacock head was attached to an encasement that held the peacock pie (like a body) and then the tail feathers were displayed behind the pie (or body) of the dish.  I think PETA would have had a field day with this.  Strangely, when I researched this further, I found that cooks from the 1500s-1700s were also seemingly obsessed with taking various appendages of the animals they were cooking and sewing the cooked parts together to create fantastical animals.  Just search for some of this...it looks like Dr. Cookenstein.

And then the clothing.  The guide took great care to show us a woman's corset, or stay, which every woman wore daily.  The guide did suggest that our conceptions of corsets as exceptionally tightly bound might be a bit much.  They were tied more loosely, he argued, for women had to eat, walk, and work in them.  The biggest surprise to me, however, was that MEN also wore stays.  The guide noted that men in military dress wore these to keep an erect posture, but everyday men also wore them, especially as they got older, to keep one's bearing upright (no slumped shoulders please).  Perhaps I might need to ask for a stay next Christmas.

Finally, some illumination on the bathroom facilities.  Most outdoor privies have more than one seat, or hole.  The Tryon Palace interpreters stated that colonists were much less worried about privacy than modern Americans, so if there was a privy with four seats, they may all be used simultaneously.  Keep in mind, this was single-sex use, not mixed-sex use.

As you can tell, a very enlightening day!

Oh, and even more enlightening might be more hints for your Midterm Exam (see previous posts for earlier hints).  One of your essay possibilities will focus on the transition of early America from a society that valued hierarchy to one that gradually began to see the emergence of greater social democracy.  The best way to think or write about this question is to consider the changes in religion (especially how the Great Awakening brings in greater opportunities for social leveling, or equality).