I’ve been thinking a lot about how our New England forefathers lived and ate 200 years ago. As we clean out the Silvermine Tavern, it’s fascinating to see how many of the antiques that hung on the walls came from early kitchens or were for homemaking tasks.

The artifacts have all been off the walls at one time or another for cleaning and maintenance, but never all at once. As they are organized into categories, it’s plain to see that the kitchen tools of the time were very different than ours. The early ones were one of a kind. A few were manufactured, but only in later years as industrial production expanded. Metal was obviously hard to come by. Lots of the cutting implements are handmade with metal blades that have been re-purposed from some other use.

Apple peelers are a good example of what I’m talking about. Apples were an important staple of early American culture. Every farm had a few apple trees for home use (eating, baking and cider) and some had even more as a trade crop. Apples were introduced by early settlers from Europe, but did not produce well because there were no natural pollinators for apples. Honey bees had to be brought from Europe to do the job. Most farms had a hive beside the barn along with their trees. (A hive smoker to calm the bees is another item in the collection.)

Apples could be stored in the root cellar along with turnips, carrots, cabbage and preserves for consumption over the winter. The expression, “One bad apple will spoil the barrel” refers to apples in cellar storage. One spoiled apple could spread decay to the others. Only sound fruit would last.

A good apple peeler was an essential tool to prepare this staple food for cooking. Nine apple peelers have been gathered together from all the antiques on the Tavern’s dining room walls. That’s a lot! It shows what a prevalent tool they must have been. They range from simple to sophisticated; home made to manufactured; and hand powered to machine driven. All show signs of regular use.

The simplest are just a board with a cranking shaft mounted on legs. An apple would be speared on the forged metal fork at the end of the shaft. The blade, mounted on a wood handle, was held against the apple by hand to cut away the peel. One of these has the innovation of a rest to hold the end of the blade handle, which must have made the job much easier. These board-mounted designs were used on a table top.

There are a couple that work on the same principal but clamp to the table, freeing up a hand. These have top and bottom parts that can be squeezed together on the edge of the table with a wooden screw or a wedge in a slot – a more sophisticated design requiring more complex parts and manufacturing.

Innovation next brought mechanical advantage to the problem with designs with a pulley that amplified the cranking power. One example of this is still a largely handmade, but more efficient to use. The other is manufactured with many cast iron parts and is meant to be driven by a mechanical power source.

Finally, there are two that are entirely made of cast iron, manufactured to be sold and not all that different from ones you can buy in the store today.

These tools cover a hundred or more years of use and development. They show the everyday high-level woodworking skills that our forebears employed to make their own tools. By looking at them you can trace a pattern of change and innovation to improve productivity and make work easier. You can also get a sense of the hard work that made up everyday life.

In a world of Cuisinarts, Kitchen Aids, Ninja Blenders and labor-saving gadgets on late night TV, it’s easy to forget how hard it was to get and prepare food not so long ago. A hand-made one-of-a-kind kitchen tool tells the story of a very different way of living and almost forgotten skills that were essential to daily life. They were clever and hardy folks back then.

Nine Apple Peelers from the Silvermine Tavern Collection showing a range of technology and sophistication.