Dining in Style
 Families ate
formal meals in the dining room. Here guests were entertained and
children learned manners. The dining room was also used for informal
activities. Children and adults played cards or board games, read,
sewed, or visited with friends and family.
The dining room
was the second most formal room of the house (after the parlor), but
only at meals. The room was principally designed for eating. Breakfast
was served in the morning, dinner at noon
and supper in the evening.
Explore the
Dining Room
Standard
furnishings included a central table that could be expanded to
accommodate a large number of guests or shortened to serve the average
size family of six.
The table was spread with the second best cloth of white
linen, the best being reserved for the later, and greater occasion of
my father's birthday. Miz' Esty laid the plates one at each place . . .
instead of piling them chin high before the server as was the usual
country custom. We did not even use the gold-banded china for
Christmas, but the sprigged rose pattern that my mother had bought not
so long ago with carefully hoarded egg money.
Della
Thompson
The sideboard,
often ornately carved with fruit or game motifs, held side dishes during
meals and—when not in use for a meal—held the family tableware and
linens for display. Six or eight chairs were also included among the
room furnishings.
In addition to a
sturdy table, chairs, and sideboard, the family also needed tableware.
The most popular patterns came from Haviland factories in Limoges,
France, or the plainer more serviceable ironstones from England.
Glassware, both pressed and cut, was available through mail-order
catalogs and department stores. Glassware found on most tables included
tumblers, goblets, saltcellars, water pitchers, cruet sets, and nut and
honey dishes. Fine silver and silverware completed each place setting.
Electroplated silverware, a late 19th century invention, allowed the
middle class housewife to dress her table with the appearance of fine
"silver" at half the cost. Silver or silver-plated sets
included water pitchers, trays, crumb knives, spoon holders, maid's
bells, and a variety of holders, stands and baskets.
Learning to use
all of the correct tableware in polite company was indeed a formidable
task for children as well as adults.
What's for
Dinner?
Meals were large
and, for most middle class families, plentiful. A breakfast menu might
include a variety of the following:
-
meat—some
form of pork, sausage, bacon or ham
-
fish on days
when the work was light
-
potatoes—fried
or boiled
-
pancakes
-
mush
-
sweet breads
or cookies
-
eggs—fried,
boiled, or poached
-
biscuits and
gravy
-
milk
-
coffee
Dinner varied
with the seasons. In farm homes the table was spread with enough food to
satisfy the men as they went back to work in the fields. The menu might
include selections from the following:
-
fresh
meat-from the barnyard, field or stream
-
vegetables—fresh
from the garden or, in winter, canned or from the root cellar
-
potatoes
-
bread
-
pie or
donuts
Supper, the
evening meal, was lighter as most of the day's work was done. It was a
repeat of dinner in one form or another.
We commenced cleaning home to day though we will not clean
very extensively as we moved in so late in the fall. I took all the
tacks out of the dining room carpet this morning and Ma and I washed
the wood work this after noon.
Adeline Eliza
Graham
Monday, May 24, 1880
 Although not as
heavily decorated as the parlor, the dining room contained its share of
framed prints, mostly of fruit or game and a few family mementoes on
shelves. House plants graced the parlor and dining rooms of many late
19th century homes.
The dining room
also served as the family's informal meeting room. Parlor manners were
not practiced in the dining room on these occasions. Board games and
cards, homework, and the making of holiday decorations often found room
on the dining room table. The late 19th century dining room served many
functions, but bringing the family together for meals or fun was its
main purpose.
Here [in the dining room] was mother's sewing machine and how
she loved it—work seemed to flow out of that machine in speedy
contrast to the old days of hand sewing. It was in the year that she
was born, that Isaac Singer patented his machine and was sued by Elias
Howe who had marketed his machine in England a few years before.
Alice Laura
Stevenson
Not every family
was fortunate enough to have a home with a formal dining room. Many ate
all their meals in the kitchen where they appreciated the warmth of the
stove during cold winter months. James Corrothers, who lived much of his
young life with his grandfather or uncle, often had no home as a
teenager and wrote of accepting handouts from townspeople as he traveled
looking for work.
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