The Sauceboat of a Signer

It is amazing how one tiny fragment of pottery from an archaeological dig can tell us the appearance and function of an entire object. At Historic Annapolis, we have been delving deep into past archaeological records to see if they can tell us anything new about William Paca’s Annapolitan lifestyle.

Figure 1: White salt-glazed stoneware fragment found during the William Paca House garden excavations

This white salt-glazed stoneware fragment was dug up in the 1960s from the area just in front of the west wing of the William Paca House.[1] Although it may not look like much in its current state, a closer examination of its shape enables a direct match to be made with a white salt-glazed sauceboat on exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The diaper pattern and the rococo edge of the fragment perfectly matches the sauceboat. This match gives us a wealth of information about William Paca’s tastes in both fashion and food!

Figure 2: White salt-glazed stoneware sauce boat. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Online: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O151250/sauce-boat-unknown/

The design of the sauceboat and the material in which it was made conveys that William Paca was an exceedingly fashionable gentleman. Rococo tableware was all the rage amongst elite circles from London to Annapolis in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. An excavation of the Calvert House on State Circle, Annapolis, has revealed that the Calvert family owned rococo style white salt-glazed plates with similar decorative motifs to William Paca’s sauceboat.

Figure 3: White salt-glazed plate from the Governor Calvert House. http://www.aia.umd.edu/seeking_liberty/gov_calvert.html

What would have been served in William Paca’s sauceboat?

The colonial dining table would often have included a large dish of meat or fish accompanied by a complementary sauce served in an elegant sauceboat. A popular combination was the serving of duck with an orange sauce, a pairing still popular today! To make your own authentic eighteenth-century dish, follow these instructions:

·         1.) Stuff a duck with a mixture of ducks liver, streaky bacon, butter, onions, parsley and mushrooms

·         2.) Place bacon slices on top of the duck and cover with paper (or foil if you want to follow twenty-first-century conventions!)

·         3.) When the duck has been roasted, pour some of the gravy juices into a stew pot

·         4.) Add minced shallots and the juice of an orange to the stew pot and heat[2]

·         5.) Serve the sauce in a beautiful rococo stoneware sauceboat

Figure 4. A little after Paca's time, a gentleman demonstrates the joy that a sauceboat (albeit a slightly less elegant version)  could bring.  A convalescing man happily eating a meal, assisted by his grinning servant, coloured etching by J. Sneyd, 1804, after J. Gillray.   © Wellcome Library, London http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1160208

---

[1] Stanley South (1967). The Paca House: A Historical Archaeological Study. Alexandria, Va., Contract Archaeology.

[2] The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Online at http://recipes.history.org/2013/06/to-dress-duck-with-juice-of-oranges/

William Paca's "Sleeve Buttons"

Dusty, dog-eared reports that seem to sit unloved on office bookcases can bring to light a wealth of fascinating information; the William Paca cuff-link is a good case in point. Though this artefact has been known to us for some time, and even exhibited, it is revealing to revisit it and deepen our understanding of William Paca and late-eighteenth-century Annapolitan society as a whole. This brass cuff-link (or sleeve button as they were called in the 18^th century) was recovered from the archaeological excavations of the William Paca garden in the 1960s. From pottery fragments in the same archaeological layer, we can date this sleeve button to the time when William Paca lived in Prince George’s Street meaning that this sleeve button was almost certainly worn by William Paca himself. Although the design has lost its clarity over the centuries, we can still make out the image of a running fox and the word “tallio”. This gives the sleeve button a novelty appearance and shows that during his free time, William Paca was a keen foxhunter (as well as a snappy dresser) . William Paca was not the only colonial to own such a cufflink. The same design was incredibly popular in eighteenth century America and identical sleeve buttons have also been found at Williamsburg and Ferry Farm, George Washington’s childhood home.[1] The use of accessories to express a love of a particular sport is still practiced by many Americans today. Think of the modern baseball cap. Originally an essential and purely practical element of the outfit, the baseball cap (like Paca’s cufflink) now carries various baseball related designs intended to mark the user out as an enthusiast. The men of the 18^th century would have used their sleeve buttons to show that they were a fan of foxhunting much in the same way.

Figure 1:  Brass ‘tallio’ cufflink. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Museum Purchase.

Hunting in Colonial America

The motif and lettering gives us a clear indication that the owner enjoyed foxhunting. “Tallio”,  a quaint misspelling of Tally-Ho, demonstrates that the vernacular of the British hunting gentry was easily transferred to America where the sport continued to be practiced. The British citizens of colonial America wished to continue the leisurely pursuits of their homeland.

Who participated in American foxhunts? In Britain, hunting was a marker of high society. Due to the Game Laws Act of 1671 which ruled that one’s land had to be worth upwards of £100 per annum to participate, hunting in Britain was restricted to the landed gentry.[2] The right to foxhunt was less restricted in colonial America. However, only the Anglo-American landed elite would have had enough leisure time and have owned enough hounds and horses to be able to run their own pack. Though slaves and servants did not hunt the foxes on horseback, they still participated in the sport as huntsmen who controlled the hounds.[3] 

American fox-hunting in the colonial period did not generally consist of organized clubs. Instead, men would hunt in informal packs.[4] An exception to this was the Gloucester Fox-hunting Club, probably the first formally organized club of this kind in America. Formed in 1766 in a Philadelphia Coffee house, this club was full of important men such as Benjamin Chase who each paid a subscription fee of £5 for the maintenance of foxhound kennels.[5] William Paca himself probably hunted in private, informal packs with men of his station, perhaps on their plantations. His interest in hunting is clear from his sleeve button. It is also known that he had a keen interest in horse sports as he was a member of the Maryland Jockey Club.[6] Its members in 1783 included other Annapolitan elites such as Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[7] Charles Carroll was known for his love of foxhunting; perhaps the two neighbors and signers spent a few afternoons hunting together.

Many of William Paca’s contemporaries expressed in writing their fondness for the sport. George Washington in particular records diligently in his diary the pleasant and sometimes frustrating hours he spent indulging his hobby. In September of 1768 he laments that he “Went fox hunting in the Neck. Started and run a fox or foxes three hours and then lost”.[8] John Adams, at a Sons of Liberty meeting in 1769 records in his diary that they watched a Mimickry of “The Hunting of the Bitch Fox” indicating that it was an accepted part of the culture of the Anglo-American elite.[9]

Figure 2: Fairfax Fox-hunting with Washington. Engraver Henry Bryan Hall (after Felix F.O.C. Darcey). in: Irving, W. (1855) The Life of George Washington.

Maryland: The home of American fox-hunting?

Colonial Maryland had a special association with fox-hunting and it is apparent that its residents had a particular fondness for the sport. Maryland, like other the other prominent hunting colonies, Virginia and Delaware, was free from a puritanical influence which condemned sport.[10] Foxhunting could therefore flourish free from any moral condemnation. It was in Maryland that the sport first came to America. An English settler to Queen Anne’s County brought his pack of foxhounds and held the first fox-hunt on record in America around 1650.[11] It was also in Maryland in 1730, on the Eastern Shore that a few tobacco planters, talking wistfully of the red foxes of ‘merrie England’, decided to import eight red foxes from Liverpool to hunt in place of Maryland’s native gray.[12]

An apocryphal tale of Charles Carroll of Carrollton demonstrates the distinct sense of pride that Marylanders had in their sport. The story goes that Charles Carroll claimed that “fox-hunting was the grandest sport ever invented by man and [was] sanctioned by an all-wise providence”.[13] In response, Light-Horse Harry Lee commented that “tis hell if your nag is slow and your hounds poor”.[14] Charles Carroll immediately responded, with an unabashed sense of state pride, “I refer to fox-hunting in Maryland, sir”.[15]

Fox-hunting held a special place in the heart of Marylanders in the colonial period, so much so that it altered the lawmaking process. The 1765 Dog Bill which imposed a tax on owning more than two necessary dogs faced so much outcry and opposition that it was later amended to include the exception that

the keeping of Fox Hounds for destroying of Foxes is usefull and Necessary and that therefore they should be Allowed to be kept Tax free.[16]

Considering all this, one can imagine William Paca riding out on his prize horse, wearing his Tallio sleeve buttons and spending an enjoyable afternoon hunting.

Bibliography

Black, J. (2005) A Subject for Taste. Hambledon and London.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Museum Purchase [http://emuseum.history.org/view/objects/asitem/search@/0?t:state:flow=3744955c-83b4-4822-b4ea-ee4b940333e4] Last Accessed: 09/04/2014

Culver, F. (1922) Blooded Horses of Colonial Days: Classic horse matches made in America before the Revolution. Kessinger Publishing.

Fine, N. (2010) “Tally-ho Back”Foxhunting in North America and the MFHA. Centennial View. MFHA Foundation.

Founders.archives (2014a). Washington Papers. Online [http://founders.archives.gov/?q=Series%3AWashington-01&s=1511211112&r=1561] Last accessed: 09/04/2014

Founders.archives (2014b). Adams Papers. Online [http://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Adams%2C%20John%22&s=1511211112&r=1] Last accessed: 09/04/2014

Schemmer, C. (2011). Scanning pieces of past. Online 

[http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/092011/09272011/654031/index_html?page=1] Last accessed: 09/04/2014

Hiss, H. (1897) The Beginnings of Fox-hunting in America. Outing Magazine.

Maryland State Archives (2014). Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1766-1768 vol. 61. Online [http://aomol.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000061/html/am61--242.html] Last accessed: 09/04/2014

Stewart, S. (1971) A Historical Survey of Foxhunting in the United States, 1650-1970. Ma Thesis. Denton, Texas.

South, S. (1969) The Paca House: A Historical Archaeology Study. Contract Archaeology Inc, Alexandria, Va.

---

[1] Schemmer 2011

[2] Black 2005, 72

[3] Stewart 1971, 47

[4] Stewart 1971, 38

[5] Stewart 1971, 45

[6] Culver 1922, 70

[7] Culver 1922, 70

[8] Founders.archives 2014a

[9] Founders.archives 2014b

[10] Stewart 1971, 40

[11] Hiss 1897, 13

[12] Fine 2010, 3

[13] Hiss 1897, 160

[14] Hiss 1897, 160

[15] Hiss 1897, 160

[16] Maryland State Archives 2014

The rocky road to the American Constitution

William Paca spent the better part of fifteen years in his Annapolis house before selling it in 1780 and moving to the Eastern Shore. During his time here he famously signed the Declaration of Independence and established his political career as a leading patriot. His time in the William Paca House was also his time in the political mainstream of the revolutionary movement. It wasn’t until the 1780s, however, when the debates around the Constitution arose that Paca and his good friend Samuel Chase broke away from the majority opinion. In what is perhaps the most intriguing part of his political career, Paca became a vocal Anti-Federalist. Let us explore the rocky road to the American Constitution and the continuation of Paca’s political life beyond Prince George Street.

It is easy now, two hundred or so years on, to see the American Constitution as the natural progression of American independence and a unifying bastion of the promotion of liberty and equality. Back in the 1780s, however, this was certainly not the case. Much like the path to independence, the ratification of the American Constitution was a long, drawn-out process immersed in quarrels and disagreement. 

Conflict was no longer aimed at an antagonistic empire overseas, seeking to impose top down control on American citizens. It became an internal struggle between individuals and groups with different ideas on what representation means and what independent America is meant to look like in practice. Rather than concord, the final product illuminates the very productivity of discord and political debate.

Depiction of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, Copy of lithograph by Sarony & Major, 1846. This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the ARC Identifier (National Archives Identifier) 532892.

Shortly after the 1774 Boston Port Act, which called for the complete blocking of the port, seventy-eight men gathered in Annapolis to declare that Boston was now “suffering in the common cause of America.”[1] Annapolis then joined the boycott of goods to and from Britain, with an appointed committee including Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William Paca and Samuel Chase. On August 2, 1776 all of the aforementioned attended the Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia to sign what we now refer to as the Declaration of Independence (although this name is not used in the document at all!).

View of detail of Signers of the Declaration of Independence, reproduction of the 1936 Faulner mural by Romanian Artist, Gabriel Prundeanu, under commission of Stan Faryna. Location: Bucharest, Romania. Source: flickr.com, user: stan.faryna

Not without struggle, but certainly with an overwhelming majority united in pursuit of independence, the declaration was an “us” against “them” campaign, which was easier to argue, pursue and conceptualise.

Once independent, the 1770s saw a wave of individual state constitutions produced by local legislative bodies. Maryland’s own asserted that the legislative, executive and judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from one another.[2] Maryland’s constitution was accompanied by a Bill of Rights, which was longer and more thorough than that of any other states attempting a similar document.[3]

So far so good? Not exactly.

The nature of each independent state constitution posed questions about the meaning of representation. What remained unclear was the purpose or role played by a constitution in each of these states. Was the constitution another statute confirmed by a congress of representatives? Was it a judicial statute – a law? If it was a law, and it ordered that judicial and legislative powers are separate, why was it always issued by a legislative power, therefore inherently contradicting its own principles? Was the constitution binding universally and permanently or was it, like the English common law, a document intending to evolve and be moulded by the times and people?

It was amongst these questions that Maryland underwent a “constitutional crisis”[4] illuminated by a series of discourses surrounding a paper money bill approved by Congress, but shut down by the house of senators. These public arguments were between men like William Paca and Samuel Chase, who defended the integrity of congress arguing against the constitution, and men like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who asserted the integrity of the house of senate. It only took twelve years of independence, therefore, for Paca, Chase and Carroll to join opposing political camps. Once no longer united by a common enemy, Americans began to realise that they had very different ideas of what America should look like.

John Vanderlyn (1775–1852), James Madison,  The White House Historical Collection. Public domain.

A national constitution, the child of Madison, Jefferson (who is out of the country at that particular time) and the like, was not the natural progression from independence. For many it was unfair and controversial.

These debates were not confined to Maryland. Philadelphia and Virginia, too, experienced the fervent public debate. On 18 October 1787, in what is amongst the Teaching American History’s collection of the 50 Most Influential documents of American history, an anti-federalist under the pseudonym Brutus addressed the Citizens of the State of New York. He declared that “when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force.”[5] This, for him, was what a national constitution demanded – that the people part with power.

Page of the first printing of the Federalist Papers, 1788. Authors: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Source.

In fact, on 28 November, 1787, a Maryland farmer published a letter in the Maryland Gazette demanding that the constitution be given over to the people to be discussed. This was not because of his personal principle. It was because he noticed that “in very different parts of the continent, the very same objections have been made, and the very same alterations proposed by different writers, who [he] verily believe[s], know nothing of each other.”[6]

The constitution proposed at the Philadelphia convention was national, but it was also nationally disputed. Each side claimed to be the correct interpreter of the ideological underpinnings of the constitution. Each side would call upon Classical authorities, canon law, theological writing, the English dissenters of the 17th century and the pillars of the Enlightenment (Locke, Hume, Montesquieu etc.). 

Fundamentally, however, what the constitutional debates revealed was that the two sides which formed around them relied on different ideas of ‘representation’ and ‘constitution’. America’s founding fathers of 1774 wanted independence. Less than two decades later, they realised that what they wanted were different independencies. 

Written by OUIIP intern, Mirela Ivanova

To find out more about the Constitutional Debates in Maryland, and the path to the ratification of the American constitution come along to Mirela's talk “Laws without their consent: Paca and the Constitutional Debate” on Thursday, 21st August at 99 Main Street.  The talk will be preceded by a wine reception at 5.30pm.

Bibliography

Bailyn, B. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992)

Haw, J., Beirne, F.F., Beirne, R.R. and Jett, R.S.  Stormy Patriot: the Life of Samuel Chase (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,1980)

McWilliams, J.W.  Annapolis: City on the Severn ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)

Papenfuse, E.C. ‘With what dose of Liberty? Maryland’s Role in the Movement for a Bill of Rights’ (Paper to the University of Maryland given February, 1988)

Rakove J. N. The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009)

Wood,G. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975)

Yazawa, M.  Representative Government and the Revolution: the Maryland Constitutional Crisis of 1787 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975

---

[1] J.W. McWilliams, Annapolis: City on the Severn ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) pp.87

[2] G.Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975) pp.150

[3] E.C. Papenfuse, ‘With what dose of Liberty? Maryland’s Role in the Movement for a Bill of Rights’ (Paper to the University of Maryland given February, 1988)

[4] M. Yazawa, Representative Government and the Revolution: the Maryland Constitutional Crisis of 1787 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) 

[5] Brutus I to the Citizens of the State of New York, 18 October 1787 (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/brutus-i/, last accessed August, 2014)

[6] Maryland Farmer to the Citizens of the State of Maryland, 28 November, 1787, (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/maryland-farmer/ , last accessed August, 2014)

---

Would the Paca House have kept a cat?

As part of our new 'Ask the Curator' initiative at the William Paca House, we have been researching the likelihood that the Paca House would have kept a cat. If not a cat, we asked, what other animals might have been family favorites? This blog is a place for us to share this research - and hopefully many more interesting findings in the future.

Background

Archaeological evidence from Maryland and Virginia indicates that there were many cats living in this area in the late eighteenth century and earlier. In one seventeenth-century well shaft alone, the remains of thirteen cats were discovered.[1] Many of these cats would have been kept in households to reduce the population of rodents and insects. In wealthier homes they would be fed by servants, and kept away from the family.

Domesticating wild animals

It was during the eighteenth century that pet-keeping for pleasure became commonplace in America and Britain. Pets were referred to as “favorites”; the modern meaning of ‘pet’ was not widely used until the nineteenth century.[2] From the beginning of the eighteenth century wild animals such as squirrels and deer were tamed and taken into the home for the amusement of young children, a phenomenon peculiar to prosperous households in Colonial America (and to the astonishment of their European guests). These animals would be cared for by the family personally, and often at great expense.

Philip Mercier, The Sense of Touch, 1744-47

Contemporary thought on animals

By the late eighteenth century, previously popular sports which encouraged violent treatment of cats were regarded as terribly cruel, with the advent of an intellectual movement towards humane treatment of animals. The earliest legislation against cruelty to animals had come from Puritan Massachusetts in 1648,[3] but this “humane” attitude was not fully and widely established until the 1790s in the early United States and Britain.[4] From then on it became popular for families to keep household animals, so that children may learn the quality of benevolence by caring for their cats and dogs.

Slaves would often own dogs, for hunting, protection, and companionship. This was more common near plantations than in a house such as the William Paca House. Slave owners would not give animals to their slaves as favorites, because ownership of animals indicated authority over the household.[5] Sarah Hand Meacham claims that ‘Chesapeake elites … kept favorites in part because doing so gave them unconscious validation of their right to have slaves’.[6]

Gifts of domestic animals were highly gendered. Women and girls would be given small ‘decorative creatures’ such as birds and squirrels,[7] which they would take care of themselves. Birds were particularly popular because they were thought to be signs against witchcraft,[8] even at the end of the eighteenth century, and unlike the traditional ‘familiar spirits’ thought to be kept by witches.

 
The Annapolis gentleman’s animal of choice: a cat or a dog?

Towards the end of the eighteenth century cats became popular domestic animals amongst urban professionals, merchants, bankers and the like in Britain. While the trend for importing, or capturing and keeping, animals to domesticate was as evident in Colonial America as it was across the Atlantic, cats were rarely the animal of choice. Very few letters and journals from the Chesapeake Bay area mention cats, and there are no advertisements for missing cats in the Maryland Gazette or Virginia Gazette. Significantly, although many portraits of the time feature birds, squirrels, and dogs, nobody in the Chesapeake area chose to pose with a cat.[9]

John Singleton Copley, Young Lady with a Bird and Dog, 1767

Men in this region tended to keep working animals as “favorites”. Working dogs were significant as indications of an individual’s connections and social standing. Emotional attachment to a dog displayed that a man was in touch with English cultural trends. George Washington is said to have proudly informed visitors that he had paid two hundred dollars for a “superb bull[dog] of English breeding”.[10] Greyhounds, pointers, and spaniels were popular English breeds. Eighteenth-century men knew each other’s dogs by sight, taking advantage of opportunities to return dogs to their owners as a sign of goodwill and friendship. When Washington admired the female spaniel belonging to Richard Sprigg in Annapolis, Sprigg sent Washington one of the spaniel’s pups.[11] The exchange of animals was an arena for the demonstration, and even formation, of social connections.

There were some men who owned cats at this time, but it was not fashionable to do so in Maryland and Virginia. Robert Wormeley Carter of Virginia recorded the death of “our old cat Corrytang” in his diary in 1780. The animal had been “a favorite cat of my fathers [sic]”, and Carter had “taken great care of him on that account, tho’ troublesome”. Taking good care of the cat, and doing so personally, was a means of demonstrating filial duty to Carter’s young son.[12]

However, Charles “Nasifer Jole” Cole was ridiculed at the Tuesday Club, Dr. Alexander Hamilton’s social club in Annapolis, for his attentions to his cats. Hamilton commented that “Some may think it very Strange, that Mr Jole, a gentleman born and bred in a christian [sic] land, should pay so much deference and respect, to these brute creatures”.[13] It was highly unusual for a grown man to take an interest in cats.

Conclusion

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson arranged for a pair of angora cats to be transported to his residence in New York City from Paris.[14] However, these cats were likely purchased for the entertainment of guests – to be displayed as exotic animals. If William Paca kept a favorite animal, it was probably a dog. An English dog would have represented Paca's English connections and status. The women of the house were more likely to have favored birds and squirrels above cats. The cats that almost certainly resided in and around the Paca household would probably have remained out of his sight, curtailing the local population of rodents and insects behind the scenes.

Written by OUIIP intern, Elena Porter

[1] Sarah H. Meacham, ‘Pets, Status and Slavery in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake’. The Journal of Southern History. vol. 77, no. 3, August 2011, p.540
[2] Tague, ‘Dead Pets: Satire and Sentiment in British Elegies and Epitaphs for Animals’. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2008, 41, 3, 289-306, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
[3] John D. Blaisdell, "An Ordained Compassion: The New England Puritans and Their Laws against Cruelty to Animals," Argos, Speciale Uitgave, Zomer 1991. 11-17.
[4] John D. Blaisdell, ‘A Most Convenient Relationship: The Rise of the Cat as a Valued Companion Animal’. Between the Species. Vol. 9, (1993). Issue 4. p.227
[5] Sarah H. Meacham, p.525
[6] Ibid., p.524
[7] Ibid., p.525
[8] Ibid., p.541
[9] Sarah H. Meacham, ‘Pets, Status and Slavery in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake’. The Journal of Southern History. vol. 77, no. 3, August 2011, p.540
[10] Ibid., p.531
[11] William Oxley to William Galt, July 29, 1837, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 35 (October 1927). Quoted in Sarah H. Meacham, p.539
[12] Sarah H. Meacham, p.540
[13] Ibid., p.548
[14] Silvio A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson Statesman of Science, McMillan Publishing, New York, 1990, 201. Quoted in Blaisdell, 1993.