A Room in the Zum Anker (1777)

ZumAnker1

The year was 1777 – “We crossed the Schuylkill, dined at Millers near Dunkard’s Town (Ephrata), and stopped at Leditz, where we lodged in clover. We slept in cabins three feet wide (German box beds). A straw bed was at the bottom, a feather bed on that, sheets, a thin soft feather bed supplied the place of blankets, with a neat calico coverlid over all. Our rooms were kept warm during the night by neat earthen stoves, which in form resembled a case of drawers.”

The above was entered in the diary of the Hon. William Ellery, a member of the Continental Congress, describing his trip on horseback from Massachusetts to York, where Congress was in session. (Scribner’s Magazine, Jan. 1880)

Probably the only “box-bed” in America today was discovered in the Schwenkfelter Museum in Pennsburg, PA, It came from Germany originally.

A “Tile Stove” that was actually used in “Old Litiz” is now in a Nazareth museum. An early church entry records that “Seven stoves were bought in Bethlehem. A potter arrived with them to set them up.” The cost, set up, was about eleven dollars each.

 

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