Episode 64 Milk & Butter Money

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Episode 64 Milk & Butter Money

The Dairy Maid arrives on the scene.  Unlike so many depictions of this or that type of colonial person or other, which tend to be overly idealized depictions, the representation of Dairy Maids is not too far off.

She's going to be seen in a colonial dress (don't forget the cap or head wrap), and apron and carrying pails, hanging out with cows, or seated at a churn.  The main place they miss is giving her slim forearms and shoulders.  Between the milking,  the carrying and the churning, she would be a first pick for any arm-wrestling team.  

Colonial Williamsburg did lots of the heavy lifting for me - and has excellent photographs of 18th century dairymaid dress, and the dairy out buildings - as well as longer explanations of how they functioned.

Dairy House in Colonial Williamsburg
Long eaves and slats - but no windows.  And a stone foundation.

Dairy Cow and Dairy Maid
Colonial models - both with headgear appropriate to the 18th century

Useful & Interesting Resources:

Perot, Sandra W. (2017) The Dairymaid and the prince: race, memory and the story of Benjamin Banneker's grandmother, Slavery & Abolition, 38:3, 445-458.
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1327094)

Ganev, R. (2007). Milkmaids, Ploughmen, and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 16(1), 40–67.
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/30114201)