Early American Dining Table Etiquette

Farm dinner table, early nineteenth century, with white linen cloth, Staffordshire, redware, and pewter.

Glass did not appear on the average table until close to the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Glass could be had if one could afford it, for the merchant who sold “crockery” also sold glassware, which like his earthenware generally came from England or perhaps Ireland. “. . . Pint and half pint tumblers, Wine Glasses, Goblets, Vinegars, cut and common Salts, glass pint Mugs, Bird fountains, Inks, Mustards, Smelling Bottles, Proof Vials, Jill, and half Jill Tumblers, Butter Coolers, &c.” ran a Hartford ad of 1790 which also listed a large supply of “blue and white and cream coulor'd.” But glass was much more expensive.

There was actually little need for glass on a country table in those days. “Cyder” was the rural New England drink for adults and children morning, noon, and night-for breakfast, dinner, and supper, with a big pitcher of it for evening entertainment, the daily drink of sustenance and the gesture of hospitality. It never tasted better than out of a wooden noggin, a pewter tankard, or a “pottle-sized” (two quart) mug.

A man’s social standing and his pocketbook, both, could be gauged by what he drank. To the man of substance in the village, for example, who had just built a handsome mansion for himself and had acquired his tastes and fashions “down Boston-way,” glass was a definite asset if not a positive necessity. His more urbane standard of living and the friends who came to see him required the proper glass. — From “Customs on the Table Top: How New England housewives set out their tables,” by Helen Sprackling, 1958

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