Ordinary Applejack

Taverns and Town Life: Alcohol’s Role in Early American Government

Old Ordinary - Hingham, Massachusetts

In late October 2024, during a candlelight tour of Hingham, Massachusetts, I visited the Old Ordinary with my two children. This enduring structure, dating to the 1600s, functioned as both a tavern and a center of civic life. It was not merely an inn but a hub of law, economics, public health, and local government.

What the Children Drink: Fermentation as Survival

Cider was the default beverage in colonial New England. Apple orchards were widely planted, and fermentation allowed for safe long-term storage. In towns where water supplies were contaminated or unreliable, cider was consumed daily. "Small cider," either naturally low in alcohol or watered down, served as a common table beverage. Probate records and household inventories of the day regularly listed cider barrels, presses, and associated tools as essential assets.

Cider appeared as a daily provision in nearly every household inventory. In diaries and letters, it accompanied breakfast as readily as it does funerals. Fermented drinks functioned as tools of survival, hygiene, and nutrition.

Making Applejack

Applejack is a concentrated form of hard cider produced by distillation. Historically, this was achieved by allowing fermented cider to freeze and removing the ice, separating out the water and increasing the alcohol content. Unlike distillation by heat, freeze distillation requires no still and no fire. It is a practical method in northern climates.

Mid-point fermentation

In New England, applejack was widely produced from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries. It is stronger than ordinary cider, easier to store, and tradable at higher value. Farmers used it as a winter ration or as a form of barter. It also appears in early medical texts and agricultural manuals as a sterile product with recognized

potency.

Ice removal

After visiting the Old Ordinary, I began fermenting raw cider at home using standard wine-making equipment. My first attempt failed due to premature clarification, which halted fermentation before alcohol could fully develop. On a repeat attempt, I allow the cider to ferment fully, then moved it outdoors during a deep freeze. I repeatedly removed the ice, and the remaining liquid became concentrated.

Where Democracy Drinks: The Political Power of the Ordinary

The term "ordinary" refers to a licensed tavern or public house, and its presence in many colonial towns was legally mandated. These were not merely businesses; they were infrastructure. Much like churches, blacksmiths, and schoolhouses, taverns formed the scaffolding of town life. Serving food and drink, they also hosted court sessions, militia musters, land negotiations, tax collections, and local elections. They functioned as post offices, news centers, lodging houses, and debate halls. Officials met there, travelers passed through them, and townspeople relied on them to communicate and organize.

Licensing of an ordinary was tightly controlled. Only individuals of good character were allowed to operate an ordinary and they remained subject to strict oversight regarding pricing, portioning, and behavior. Tavernkeepers who overserved guests or tolerated gambling faced fines or license revocation. Their role was not merely commercial but semi-governmental. They were expected to maintain order, enforce curfews, and report disturbances.

Ink, Stone, and Cider: Tracing the Lives of Tavernkeepers

The legacies of these ordinaries remains visible in New England's burial grounds and archives. Gravestones describe certain men as keepers of the ordinary or licensed victuallers. Probate inventories list cider presses, beer casks, and tavern ledgers. Tax rolls identify women who keep taverns after their husbands died, often managing complex networks of credit, barter, and lodging on their own.

In some cemeteries reside entire families of distillers, brewers, and publicans memorialized in stone. Burial plots sometimes contain three or more generations of licensed operators, with names appearing in sequential town records across decades. Gravestone placement within prominent cemetery rows further indicates elevated community position. These patterns suggest occupational inheritance and sustained civic integration. Their contributions to civic life are no less important than those of clergymen or magistrates. Gravestones frequently preserve occupational identity. Inscriptions for tavernkeepers include the terms victualler, innholder, or publican. These titles denote state-licensed individuals responsible for lodging, drink, and regulated civic function. Their presence in stone reflects both legal recognition and social standing.

Monuments for alcohol-related trades extend beyond tavern keeping. Carved designations for distillers, coopers, maltsters, and brewers appear on headstones, particularly in hubs of cider or rum production. These roles support the economy at every stage, from fermentation to distribution. Their recurrence in burial records confirms their permanence within local economies.

The widows of tavernkeepers frequently continued the business under their own names. Burial markers for these women may omit the occupation but appear in proximity to husbands who are explicitly identified. Probate files confirm continuity of trade, naming female tavernkeepers as debt holders, property owners, and licensees. The gravestone silence contrasts with legal documentation, revealing gendered patterns in public memory.

Iconography conveys occupational clues. While most New England stones use standard imagery such as willows, urns, or death's heads, some incorporate symbols of hospitality or trade. A tankard, key, or signboard carved into a stone may reference tavern ownership. These symbols appear infrequently but hold high evidentiary value when present.

Epitaphs sometimes include narrative detail about public service. In a small number of cases, the text identifies the deceased as a provider of refuge, a man of hospitality, or a figure beloved by traveler and townsman alike. Such language often signals a tavernkeeper whose service extends beyond business. When paired with official records, these inscriptions verify the tavern's role in sustaining the civic and moral order of the town.

The burial ground preserves what the meetinghouse omits. It confirms that the work of public order includes debt collection, hospitality, and recordkeeping, all of which pass not only through the pulpit and the court but also through the threshold of the ordinary. The grave marker affirms what the license once authorizes: that the tavern is a public institution.

To read these stones is to see the infrastructure of government inscribed in private memory. It is to recover the identities of those who feed, house, and host the administrative body of the town. Their names, titles, and trades are chiseled into permanence, even as the buildings they serve fall to time. The tavern, like the cemetery, operates as both physical space and cultural record. One contains the bodies; the other, the decisions. Together, they define the structure and legacy of the colonial town.

Applejack as Cultural Record

Bottling

Applejack endures as a record. Its method requires no written recipe, no imported

tools, and no institutional instruction. It relies only on fermentation, cold air, and patience. Its survival through centuries of practice, in households both rural and municipal, confirms its place in the material history of alcohol.

While gravestones preserve names and ledgers preserve debts, applejack preserves method. It carries forward the seasonal rhythm of the colonial household: the pressing in autumn, the fermentation in early winter, the stillness of freeze, and the final act of concentration on the coldest days of the year. Its clarity is not only chemical but historical.

To make it now is not to revive a novelty. It is to repeat a gesture performed by those same publicans, victuallers, and distillers whose stones remain in the burial grounds. It is an act of continuity across time and climate, grounded not in sentiment but in process. The applejack in the glass, like the gravestone in the burial ground, records the decisions of the living. One marks a body. The other marks a practice.

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• Massachusetts Bay Colony Ordinances - Massachusetts General Court. The Book of the General Laws and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusetts. Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1660.

• Probate Inventories and Cider - Greven, Philip J. Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970.

• Tavern Licensing and Regulation - Brown, Richard D. Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

• Freeze Distillation and Applejack - Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

• Role of Taverns in Colonial Government - Conroy, David W. In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

• Women as Tavernkeepers - Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

• Cemetery Records and Occupational Identity - Ludwig, Allan I. Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650–1815. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1966.

• Economic Function of Taverns - Shammas, Carole. A History of Household Government in America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002