Healthful Recreations

Sources

Walking. Perhaps the earliest New Englanders were afraid of the wilderness, but during most of the colonial period settlers, especially in the older, established areas, enjoyed getting out into the open air and walking. Some did it just because they liked being there, while others considered walking healthy. They went to visit sights such as Cohoes Falls outside of Albany or Passaic Falls in New Jersey. Especially in the eighteenth century they enjoyed going to streams or pretty woods and climbing hills to look at the vistas. Abigail Franks of New York City wrote to her son in London that “you’ll be Surprised that I have taken a ramble for a day twice this Summer.” The Lutheran minister Henry Melchior Muhlenberg “wanted a little exercise and some fresh air, so with out friends

we climbed three miles up to the highest peak of the great mountain from which we were able to see about thirty miles in all directions.” William Byrd of Virginia rambled the grounds of his plantation most days, often with his wife and other company. During the eighteenth century both Northern and Southern elites laid out gardens which they walked themselves and invited other people, sometimes perfect strangers, to enjoy.

Riding. Horseback, carriage, and sleigh riding were also considered pleasant, healthy ways to spend discretionary time. Both men and women rode on horseback, but while women rode in carriages and sleighs, it does not seem that they learned how to drive them. When Muhlenberg’s congregation wanted to show their appreciation of his efforts by giving him a gift, they gave him some money to buy a horse so that he could ride for his own recreation. Carriage rides were also a way to get away from the city, or home, and be refreshed. Muhlenberg, ministering to the congregation in New York City and therefore away from his more usual rural haunts, noted, “In the afternoon, Captain Hartel, an upright man and steadfast confessor of our religion, took me outside city in his chaise to an estate where his brother-in-law, whose wife is a member of our congregation, lives, in order to preserve my health. I had suddenly been taken away from the vigorous exercise to which I had been accustomed for years and away from the fresh country air of Providence.” In the winter sleighs replaced chaises. Snow, oddly perhaps, made traveling easier. Madame Sarah Kemble Knight, in New York City on business in the winter of 1704, fondly remembered being taken out to a farmhouse in a sleigh. Rev. John Sharpe, chaplain to the fort guarding New York harbor, loved all sorts of outdoor recreations, including fishing and hunting. On 6 March 1710 he recorded in his diary, “I rid out in my Slae with & c, the day was unprofitably spent Lord pardon me Scgive me grace to redeem my time!” But he did not get rid of the sleigh. All ages and both genders enjoyed the exhilaration of riding out on a cold day. The poor, unable to either own the equipment or rent it, would not have had this winter sport available to them.

Swimming. European and African males and both genders among Native Americans enjoyed swimming. The Indians were excellent swimmers, and Africans, many of whom came from the rivers and coasts of West Africa, also were good swimmers. In the Carolinas slaves swam and dived and even showed their skills in the water by hunting sharks armed only with a knife. Europeans swam both as a recreation and as a means of bathing in an era before bathtubs and showers. Men swam in ponds, creeks, and rivers in all the colonies. William Byrd II noted one warm June evening in 1711 that he “took a walk about the plantation and then swam in the river to wash and refresh myself.”

A WINTER’S RIDE

Madame Sarah Kemble Knight, a shrewd observer of society, journeyed to New York City in the winter of 1704 on business. She was unusual in that women did not often conduct their own affairs and rarely traveled other than to see family. She kept a diary in which she recorded:

Their diversions in the Winter is Riding Sleys about three or four Miles out of Town, where they have Houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, [Dutch for farm] and some go to friends Houses who handsomely treat them. Mr. Burroughs carry’d his spouse and Daughter and myself out to one Madame Dowes, a Gentlewoman that lived at a farm House, who gave us a handsome Entertainment... I believe we mett 50 or 60 slays that day—they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they’le turn out of the path for none except a Loaden Cart.

Source: Madame Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madame Knight (Boston: Godine, 1972).

Sources

Leo Hershkowitz and Isidore S. Meyer, eds., Letters of the Franks Family (1733–1748) (Waltham, Mass.: American Jewish Historical Society, 1968);

Madame Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madame Knight (Boston: David R. Godine, 1972);

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, volume 1, translated by Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1942);

“Journal of Rev. John Sharpe,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,40 (1916): 257–297;

Nancy L. Struna, People of Prowess: Sport, Leisure, and Labor in Early Anglo-America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996);

Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Great American Gentleman: The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709–1712 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963).