John Winthrop and the First Sinful Fork in America (episode 328)

Automatic Shownotes

Chapters

Transcript

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

Welcome to Hub History

Jake:
[0:13] This is episode 328, John Winthrop and the first sinful fork in America. Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’m going to take a break from our series of episodes on the American Revolution in Boston.

Jake:
[0:28] Turns out that there weren’t a lot of big events 250 years ago this week, but we’ll get back to it in the next episode, when I’ll try to tackle the Battle of Bunker Hill. That gives me a chance this week to take a break and talk about something that has nothing to do with a revolution. Instead of 250th anniversaries, we’re going to rewind the clock 392 years to the spring of 1633, when the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was given the first fork in America. We’re going to explore why forks were unknown in Boston at the time, and why they were indeed unfamiliar in England until just a few years before. We’ll talk about why it took Boston over a hundred years to fully embrace the idea of eating food with a fork, including changes to 17th-century table manners and the belief that the fork was an inherently sinful utensil. But before we talk about John Winthrop and his sinful fork, I just want to pause and say thank you to everybody who supports Hub History financially. Without your help, I literally could not make this show.

Jake:
[1:35] Now, usually in this segment, I’d call out our newest Patreon sponsor, but every so often, I’d like to recognize our existing sponsors. I think that the last time I did this, I shouted out the five sponsors who’d been supporting the show for the longest time. So, instead, this time, I’ll mix it up and say thank you to the five sponsors who have contributed the most over the lifetime of the show. Michelle S., who spells her name with one L, has been a Patreon supporter since 2019, and she is our top sponsor of all time. Michelle’s followed by Georgia S., Joshua L., and Susan L., who are all at a comparable level. Georgia actually hasn’t been actively supporting the show in a while, but since she was such an early, generous sponsor, she still has one of the top spots. Susan has been a pretty frequent correspondent, and she suggested a couple of really cool show topics that I’m going to get to just as soon as I feel up to tackling the research.

Jake:
[2:38] Rounding out the top five is another former sponsor who was generous early on, but this person has a pretty inscrutable screen name. I think it might translate to William L., but don’t quote me on that. I’m incredibly happy to have such a great group of listener supporters, and especially for those who have been around since we launched our Patreon in February 2019. To everybody who’s already supporting the show, especially these longtime sponsors, thank you. If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory, or visit hubhistory.com and click on the Support Us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

Main Topic Introduction

Jake:
[3:24] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Jake:
[3:29] Without a big 250th anniversary from the American Revolution to talk about this week, I had to think about what other topics I might like to cover on the show. A lot of the time when I’m looking for show inspiration, I try to find something from Boston history that reflects our current events. But right now, current events are a bit too depressing for that. I never thought that Americans would elect a government with values that are, as far as I can tell, indistinguishable for the ones that my grandpop got blown up on Utah Beach and almost bled out fighting against, and reflecting on that doesn’t exactly make for good podcast material. So, instead of trying to reflect on current events, I went to my giant Google spreadsheet of podcast ideas, and I chose one that’s just about as far from current events as you can possibly get. Just a couple of years after the Puritan town of Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula, the Puritan governor of our Massachusetts Bay Colony was given a sinful gift. The gifter was Edward Howes, a minister, teacher, mathematician, and wannabe alchemist back in Essex in Old England. He was a Puritan and a supporter of Winthrop’s colonization project, and he’d been a classmate of the governor’s son, John Winthrop Jr., remaining lifelong friends with both Winthrops.

Jake:
[4:52] In March of 1633, Howell sent a care package to the elder John Winthrop. The accompanying letter was full of news from the old country, political developments that might impact the Bay Colony, and the well-wishes of friends and neighbors who assumed that the colonists were all starving and on the brink of giving up and sailing back home. In the care package were a book on making fireworks, and another one written by the inventor of the slide rule, explaining how to use his creation. There was also a small case containing a collection of silver tools or utensils that Howes describes in the letter. I have sent you a short weapon. You may call it an Irish skein, a knife or what you will. Together with a small saw and a steel hammer, and a bodkin and a fork, all in one case. The useful application of each I leave to your discretion.

Jake:
[5:46] For the record, a bodkin is a long, thin metal tool with an eye, like an oversized needle, that women would use to pull lacing, cord, or ribbons through their corsets, bodices, or even fancy hairstyles. In medieval Ireland, a skein was a dagger or a knife. If it fit into a case with a fork, knife, and needle, the saw must have been very small. Perhaps small like a serrated steak knife. And maybe the hammer was made for cracking the shells of nuts or lobsters. At the time, case tableware sets were common because a dinner guest was expected to bring their own utensils when they came over for dinner. At the time, case tableware sets were common because a guest was expected to bring their own utensils when they came for dinner. Outside of Governor Winthrop, however, the utensil set that a guest brought might be pretty simple. In her book, Customs and Fashions in Old New England, Alice Morse Earle described how spare a table setting in colonial Boston might be. Early English books on table manners, such as The Baby’s Book and The Book of Nurture, though minute in detail, yet name no other table furniture than cups, chafing dishes, chargers, trenchers, salt cellars, knives, and spoons.

Jake:
[7:06] In a paper about the life of John Harvard that was read at the January 1908 meeting of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Andrew Davis describes what a mealtime in colonial Boston would have looked like, with the era’s limited table furniture, to use Alice Morris Earle’s phrase. Table habits and table manners must have been very different at that time from those which prevail today. We should be shocked if, when we sat down to dinner, a guest should pull out a clasp knife, cut up his meat into small pieces, and then beat himself by conveying them to his mouth with his fingers. Yet, that must have been the way in which people ate their food in 1637. There were no forks in this country at that time, and there were very few knives other than such as people carried on their persons, either clasped in the pocket or in a sheath attached to the belt. There were indeed no forks in England in general use at that time. Napkins are preponderant in early inventories in this country. Perhaps this preponderance may be explained by the absence of forks.

The Sinful Nature of Forks

Jake:
[8:13] Among other things, I just learned that I eat steak tips like a 17th-century Puritan, despite the fact that I have a whole drawer full of forks. Forks certainly existed by John Winthrop’s time, but they hadn’t made their way to Massachusetts by then. Archaeological evidence indicates that bone forks existed in China as early as the Bronze Age, and stone carvings from the Eastern Han Dynasty depict dining scenes with forks. Large forks were also used as cooking utensils in ancient Egypt. While bronze and silver forks were present in the Roman Empire, their primary use was for cooking and serving. And the materials were chosen because iron forks gave the food a weird taste and could stain it with rust. The personal table fork likely originated in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, becoming common there by the 4th century, and then spreading to Persia and on to the Middle East by the 10th century. It took more centuries for the fork to make its way to Northern Europe, England, and then even longer for it to come to the shores of the Massachusetts Bay.

Forks and Puritan Beliefs

Jake:
[9:20] Puritan Boston was slow to move from eating with fingers and spoons to spearing food with a fork, in large part because of the fork’s sinful nature.

Jake:
[9:30] In a time when it was universally believed that the devil was a real presence who roamed the countryside at night looking for wayward souls to tempt, it’s easy to understand that this sinful reputation was due to the fork’s association with Satan himself. In a book about changing Christian depictions of the devil across the centuries, Jeffrey Burton Russell describes the origin of Satan’s pitchfork. The devil’s pitchfork derives in part from the ancient trident, such as that carried by Poseidon, which symbolizes threefold power over earth, air, and sea, in part from symbols of death, and, in part, from the instruments used in hell for the torment of the damned.

Jake:
[10:14] One of the earliest portrayals of the devil holding a pitchfork is found on a 10th-century stone cross at the site of an early medieval monastery in Ireland. On it, a carving portrays Jesus fighting with a satanic figure holding a three-pronged fork. The portrayal of Satan with a pitchfork of three times was repeated throughout the medieval period, deepening the association between the two. By the time John Winthrop and Azarbella Fleet sailed to the Massachusetts Bay in the late medieval or early modern period, this association was fixed, and the isolation of the New England colonies kept some medieval superstitions alive on our shores long after they had died out in faraway Europe. After all, our local witch hunts peaked in 1692, while witch hunting back in England had reached its peak there in the 1560s and had been in decline ever since. Thank you. When I was doing the research for this episode, I ran across a lot of articles asserting that it was this close association between Satan and the pitchfork that made the utensil controversial when it was first imported to Boston. I even found a passage from a novel that’s set in the era of the Salem witch hysteria, where the fork was dubbed the Devil’s Tines.

Jake:
[11:31] The main character is familiar with large carving forks that have two tines, but when she’s handed her first table fork, she reflects, These smaller versions with three prongs? She’d heard of these utensils with three tines, and she knew that they were the tools of the devil. She was considering saying something to that effect to her mother when her mother anticipated what she was thinking and said, Governor Winthrop had a fork himself, my child. But why wouldst thou want to try such a thing? Why wouldst thou want me to? Father says that they are growing more common back home now. I rather doubt that. Back home now, they have better things to do than invite temptation with the devil’s tines.

Jake:
[12:17] This explanation of early Massachusetts’ discomfort with the fork fits neatly with our mental image of the sour, joyless Puritan, but I couldn’t find much in the way of primary sources to back it up. And John Winthrop’s ownership of a fork, which he then passed down to his son John Winthrop, casts some doubt on this explanation. Winthrop was a devout Puritan and he was an influential lay leader in Boston, and it’s unlikely that he would have held on to a gift that he considered satanic, and even less likely that he would have bequeathed that gift to his son. After doing some more reading, I believe that the sinful reputation of the fork in early Boston had less to do with the association between pitchforks and the devil and more to do with the utensil’s association with the sins of pride and vanity. If the first images of the devil holding a pitchfork were carved in the 10th century, the utensil’s association with vanity was just as deep-set. It arose as soon as the table fork arrived in the noble courts of Western Europe, which was also in the 10th century. Credit for transplanting the fork from Byzantium to Western Europe goes to one woman, Theophanou, niece of the Byzantine emperor and teenage bride of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II.

Jake:
[13:39] Theofenu was 14 years old in the year 972, when her arranged political marriage took her from Constantinople to Rome in Saxony to meet her 16-year-old husband.

Jake:
[13:51] After Otto took the throne from his father, the young empress took on an increasingly public role in his court, though she faced criticism for clothing and jewelry that were considered too luxurious, and manners that people thought were overly fussy.

Theophanu and the Fork’s Journey

Jake:
[14:07] In a 2010 profile of Theophanu, Laura Diaz-Arnesto writes, Theophanu’s arrival on the Rhine created quite a stir. Dressed in silks, she insisted on bathing daily, was quite literate, and most upsetting of all, she used a fork. Chronographers mentioned the astonishment she caused when she used a golden double prong to bring food to her mouth, instead of using her hands as was the norm. Theophanie was also criticized for her decadence, which manifested in her bathing once a day and introducing luxurious garments and jewelry into Germany. The introduction of the fork to Western Europe was met with some resistance, as seen by the astonishment it provoked in the courts of the Holy Roman Empire, with even the Vatican condemning the utensil as a vain pretension, whose use flirted with the deadly scent of pride. Writing about another Byzantine princess who came to Italy about thirty years after Theophanu, cardinal, and future saint Peter Damian wrote, Such was the luxury of her habits that she deigned not to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs, and thus carry it to her mouth.

Jake:
[15:31] God, in his wisdom, has provided people with natural forks, his fingers. Therefore, it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them while eating. Nevertheless, the fork was increasingly popular in Italy by the 11th century, particularly with the rise in pasta consumption, and it became commonplace there by the 14th century. From Italy, the fork gradually spread to southwestern Europe in the 16th century, but Northern Europe was more skeptical of this new contraption, and thus slower to adopt it. In his book, Rudeness and Civility, Manners in 19th-Century Urban America, John F. Kasson describes how the slow adoption of the fork was part of a larger shift in table manners late in the medieval era. Beginning in the 16th century and continuing through the 19th, However, Europe saw an extraordinary elaboration in table manners, first among the nobility, and then among the middle classes.

Jake:
[16:34] Individual plates and goblets replaced communal ones, and the use of forks gradually superseded fingers in polite society and narrowed the scope of the knife. Diners confronted a proliferating array of specialized utensils and rules for their use. Dining no longer took place in a vast kitchen or hall, but in its own distinct room, apart from the butchering, cooking, and on the European continent, even the carving of the meat. Much as the popularity of the fork in Italy and southern Europe can be attributed to the Empress Theophanou, its acceptance in England can also be traced to a single individual. Thomas Corriott was a 17th century travel influencer, a rich man who was a close friend of England’s Prince Henry and spent a lot of time in the court of King James I.

Jake:
[17:28] In 1608, he started the first of his grand tours of Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Venice, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Later journeys would take him through Greece, Constantinople, Persia, and eventually India. He was much more worldly than most of his contemporaries, except perhaps for sailors. And unlike his fellow travelers, almost all of his travels were done on foot. This gave him a unique perspective on the cultures and customs in the many lands that he visited, and the books that he wrote about his observations sold like hotcakes. The first of these was titled, Couriat’s Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months’ travels in France, Italy, etc., which was published in 1611. In this volume, he describes a peculiar custom that he observed in Italy and then brought home with him at the end of his journey.

Jake:
[18:26] I observed a custom in all those Italian cities and towns through which I passed that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels. Neither do I think that any other nation of Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italians do always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their meat. For a while with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meat out of the dish. They fasten their fork, which they hold in their other hand, upon the same dish. So that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meal should unadvisedly touch the dish of meat with his fingers from which all at the table do cut, he will give occasion of offense unto the company, as having transgressed the laws of good manners, insomuch that for his error he shall be at the least browbeaten, if not reprehended in words. This form of feeding, I understand, is generally used in all places of Italy. Their forks being for the most part made of iron or steel, and some of silver, but those are only used by gentlemen. The reason of this, their curiosity, is because the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike clean.

Jake:
[19:47] Hereupon, I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meat. Not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home. Being once quipped for that frequent using of my fork by a certain learned gentleman, a familiar friend of mine, one M. Lawrence Whitaker, who, in his merry humor, doubted not to call me at table, Bursifer, for only using a fork at feeding, but for no other cause.

Forks in English Society

Jake:
[20:19] Following the model of the courts of the Holy Roman Empire and grudgingly embracing the fork, after seeing Theophanu use it almost 700 years before, noble and upper-class Englishmen were the first to start spearing their food with the tines of a fork, instead of holding it with their fingers or sticking it with the tip of a knife. In a 2021 blog post, Berntal describes how this custom spread through English culture from the top down. The English, suspicious as always of continental customs, were slow to adopt forks. Some denounced them as a feminine affectation, while Elizabeth I refused to use them, calling spearing an uncouth action. In 1633, Charles I, proving himself out of touch with his people in this, as in so much else, declared, It is decent to use a fork. His son Charles II picked up continental manners during his exile and brought forks with him to England at the Restoration. Perhaps just one more sign of the decadence of this court.

Jake:
[21:28] Getting endorsements from two kings might have helped in some places or times, but that was not a selling point in Puritan Boston. Way back in episode 97, we talked about the friends and political allies of John Winthrop and his Puritans, who signed the death warrant for Charles I in 1649, and the military expedition that Charles II sent to Boston after the Stuart Restoration to punish our town for sheltering two of the regicides who had sealed his father’s fate. While Boston resisted the newfangled fork, London began to slowly warm to the idea.

Jake:
[22:08] In a 1616 play by Ben Johnson called The Devil is an Ass, we hear that just five years after Corriott’s crudities introduced the utensil to an unfamiliar English audience, the fork was growing in popularity, with a character commenting, The laudable use of forks, brought into custom here as they are in Italy, to the sparing of napkins. The napkins did indeed need some sparing. In a world without forks, napkins were the most sanitary way to cut a bite of meat. A 1907 article in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, attributed only to J.B.H., describes how knives and napkins were the norm at wealthy and fashionable English dinner tables on both sides of the Atlantic. The English were in the habit of holding their food with a napkin in their left hand, while with their right, they cut it with a knife and carried it to the mouth, a habit now esteemed vulgar. But it was the back of the knife, however, which entered the mouth. The protuberance on the back of old-fashioned knives being a relic of an old custom which lingered after the habit of eating with them had disappeared. In the very early inventories, mention is made of a large number of napkins, but none of forks.

Jake:
[23:30] In houses with less money, people would still use their hands and a knife to eat anything that didn’t require a spoon. The only difference was the absence of cloth napkins that were ubiquitous in upper-class households.

Jake:
[23:44] Alice Morse Earle’s Book of Customs and Fashions in Old New England makes it clear that this proliferation of napkins was just as common among the wealthy here in Boston as it was back in Old England. The colonists had plenty of napkins, as had all well-to-do and well-bred Englishmen at that date. Napkins appear in all the early inventories. In 1668, the opulent Jane Humphreys of Dorchester left two wrought napkins with no lace around it, half a dozen of napkins, and napkins wrought about and laced.

Jake:
[24:22] In his book on the development of manners in 19th century America, John Casson points out that Boston’s table manners lagged behind London’s in John Winthrop’s time. This went way beyond the absence of forks, and the state of dishes and table manners at the time helps explain why smallpox and other communicable diseases cut such a wide swath through early New England. He writes, Americans saw a similar transformation in dining, though perhaps lagging slightly behind Europe. In the 17th century, two people still shared a single wooden trencher and drank from a common vessel. Only the very best houses boasted individual plates, trenchers, cups, and mugs. Early colonists ate with their fingers, supplemented by communal knives and spoons.

Jake:
[25:14] John Winthrop and his very first fork in North America came at the cusp of the late medieval and early modern periods, between eating with your hands and eating with a fork. Lydia Blackmore explains how Winthrop’s fork started a trend that became more widespread about a half century later. In a 2010 thesis for the College of William and Mary, she writes, Winthrop’s fork had two prongs and came in a leather case with a matching knife. Winthrop was a rare Englishman with a fork in the 1630s. Three-pronged forks did not appear on any English tables until the mid-17th century, and forks were still not in wide use in England late in the century. People brought their own knives and forks with them to dinner, if they had them. They carried their utensils around with them in small cases, similar to the one Governor Winthrop had for his fork. It was not up to the 17th century host to own enough utensils for all the guests.

Jake:
[26:16] Forks seemed a strange, newfangled invention for a long time and were not in wide use in England until the early 18th century. Most Americans did not have forks until the third quarter of the century.

The Rise of Fork Usage

Jake:
[26:30] While the use of forks at the table didn’t become universal in Boston until the era of the American Revolution, John Henry Buck used probate inventories to trace the increasing popularity of this sinful utensil in the final decades of the 17th century. In a 1903 book about the history of silver flatware. In 1675, in the inventory of John Freak of Boston, eight forks are mentioned among the items of his plate.

Jake:
[26:59] In 1676, one silver hafted knife and fork are valued at 10 shillings in the inventory of Freegrace Bindle of Boston. In 1684, one knife and fork with silver hafts are found in the inventory of Thomas Pals of Boston and eight knives and forks and that of William Harris, also of Boston. In 1692, two cases of knives and a dozen forks are inventoried at 14 shillings in the estate of Jeremiah Fitch of Boston, and in 1693, nine forks are mentioned in the inventory of James Lloyd of Boston as having been part of his silverware. From this time, the mention of forks in the probate records occurs more and more frequently until their use became general.

Jake:
[27:48] As we’ve seen many times in past episodes, Samuel Sewell was a stickler for the biblical rules that guided Puritan Boston. He fought against music and dancing in Boston, against the celebration of the pagan-inspired holiday of Christmas, and against slavery as unbiblical. While he later publicly apologized for it, he even fought against Satan as a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. So in his diary entry for July 26, 1718 includes a note about forks. We can be pretty sure that they had lost the reputation for sinfulness by that time. I go in the hackney coach to Roxbury, call it Mr. Walters, who is not at home, nor Governor Dudley, nor his lady. Visit Mrs. Denison. She invites me to eat. I give her two cases with a knife and fork in each. One with turtle shell tackling, the other long with ivory handles squared.

Jake:
[28:51] And you know that Samuel Sewell was not going to give you a sinful gift. So by 1718, the fork was accepted in Boston.

Acceptance of Forks in Boston

Jake:
[29:02] Now, I don’t know that that means there was an accepted way to use a fork by then. And of course, even today, we can argue about the proper way to use a fork at the table with our friends across the pond. People who have traveled to Europe often comment that Europeans tend to use their forks and knives wrong. I was an exchange student as a kid, and ever since I’ve tended to use my fork in the European style. When I’m eating meat or anything that I need to cut up, I hold my knife in my right hand and my fork in my left, with the curve of the tines pointing down. The fork holds the meat down securely while I cut a bite, and the tines stay pointing downward while I bring the bite to my mouth. In the U.S., the right way to use a fork is called the cut-and-switch, where you would hold the knife and fork the same way that I do while cutting a bite. Then you set the knife down and switch the fork to your right hand so the tines pointed up before bringing the bite to your mouth. Until researching this episode, I didn’t realize that this difference is a relic of America’s late adoption of the fork, which, as we said, didn’t become universal until the American Revolution.

Jake:
[30:18] In 1996, James Dietz wrote a book about all the small details of early American life that artifacts in archaeology can reveal, called In Small Things Forgotten. In it, he notes that the fork was adopted in England earlier than in New England, leading English table knives to be redesigned with rounded tips, since the diner no longer used a sharp-pointed knife to spear meat and bring it to the mouth.

Jake:
[30:46] When forks appeared in quantities in England, knives changed in shape and rounded blade ends replaced the pointed ones, since forks had assumed the function of the pointed blade. However, since most knives were made in England, and the fork appeared later in America, this relationship did not prevail in the New World. Using a round-ended knife and not having a fork, one would have either made considerable use of the fingers conveying solid foods to the mouth, or made do with a spoon. This raises an interesting, if conjectural, point.

Jake:
[31:25] Americans often comment that Europeans use their forks upside down. In fact, by the simple rule of priority and majority, it is we Americans who are upside down. Since we did not learn to use forks until sometime after the ends of knives were rounded, the change in the manner of food conveyance was not directly from tip of knife to fork-tine as it was in England. The only intermediate utensil available was the spoon. One could cut food and transfer it into the spoon bowl. If even one generation used knife and spoon in this manner, the fork, upon its belated appearance, would be used in a manner similar to the spoon, which is precisely the way we use it today. Yet, in its function of anchoring the food for cutting, the fork is held curved down. It is turned over while transferring the food from the plate to the mouth. This distinctive way of using the knife, fork, and spoon came into existence during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. And thus, is one more American idiosyncrasy arising from the isolation during that period.

American Fork Usage Explained

Jake:
[32:35] I love this little piece of trivia that shows that our belief that Europeans use their forks wrong can be traced back to the American Revolution, and back eventually to John Winthrop’s sinful fork from 1633.

Jake:
[32:51] To learn more about how Boston introduced the fork to North America, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 328. I’ll have links to all the materials that I used in putting this week’s show together, starting with the letter from Edward Howes that’s transcribed in the Mass Historical Society’s John Winthrop collection, a copy of Thomas Corriott’s 1611 Crudities that introduced the fork to England, and Samuel Sewell’s 1718 diary entry about giving a silverware set that included a fork as a gift.

Jake:
[33:26] There will be links to the papers I quoted from Lydia Barrett Blackmore, Andrew Davis, and the author only credited as J.B.H. I’ll include online copies of the books Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle, John Henry Buck’s Old Plate and Its Makers and Marks, The Devil, Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, by Jeffrey Burton Russell. Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, by George Francis Dow. And John F. Casson’s Rudeness and Civility, Manners in 19th Century Urban America. Plus, I’ll link to a picture of a 1705 fork in the collection of the MFA. It’s one of the earliest surviving forks that was made and used here in Boston, so you can see what an early American fork actually looked like.

Jake:
[34:26] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. I still maintain profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but I’m most active these days on Blue Sky, where you can find me by searching for hubhistory.com. I haven’t been as active on Mastodon, but you can find me over there as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston. If you’re taking a break from social media, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link, and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.