KENT, Conn.—When the men marched away in response to Revolutionary “alarms,” the labor of maintaining hearth and home fell heavily on the shoulders of women and their children. In addition to tilling fields, harvesting wood to warm their homes and tending to animals, the households also had to produce goods that formerly were purchased from Great Britain.
The Kent Historical Society’s summer’s exhibit, “Homespun Kent: Revolutionary Households,” will look at the problems these families faced and how they met them.
The historians recall that Litchfield-born theologian Horace Bushnell termed the Colonists the “Kings and Queens of Homespun” when he delivered a secular sermon on the Litchfield Green in 1851. During his oration, he encouraged historians to stop celebrating only the “titled names” or “tall monuments” and instead look at the everyday, unsung heroes who built the community, specifically the local housewives, farmers, blacksmiths and schoolteachers.
High-profile wives like Abigail Adams endured long years of privation as she ran the family farm in Braintree, Mass., but “Queens,” like Esther (Pratt) Beebe, who lived in Seven Hearths during the War for Independence, were equally heroic. The resilient housewives, mothers and spinners who labored over spinning wheels, grew and carded flax, and wove wool to clothe their families, effectively anchored early American domestic life.
They also were the architects of an economic force that encouraged domestic self-reliance, helping to win the war for independence, one household at a time.
To tell this story, the Historical Society will recreate a Colonial-era store in the large northern room of the old house, which, appropriately, was once used just for that purpose. The building, erected by John Beebe in 1751, has adapted over the centuries to the changing economic and cultural landscape of Litchfield County, being first a combination family home and general store, and then, as agriculture and local industry faded at the turn of the last century, an artist’s studio. It has been owned and preserved by the historical society since the late 1970s.
The exhibit at the Seven Hearths museum will open with a reception Saturday, June 27, at 5 p.m. and all are invited to tour the exhibit and the house—currently the only Revolutionary-era structure open to the public in Kent.
The exhibit can be viewed Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., from June 27 through Oct. 31 or by appointment by contacting the historical society.
