CIDER! January 27, 1768 at the Colden Store, Coldengham, New York

Wednesday January 27, 1768
Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.

Cider

The store was closed Tuesday due to the violent weather, but today it opened to its biggest crowd of the year. Purchases were made against thirty-two different accounts and 111 items were purchased.

This article is one in a series of a daily accountings of Colden Store transactions. Be sure you read the first installment for more of an introduction to the store. You should also read this article which appeared in the Journal of the Orange County Historical Society.

The large number of people in the store on this day is outside of the usual variation. On average, ten people per day visited the store over the 450-day period covered by the DayBook. Today saw 32 shoppers.

Could it be that the store was more than just a place to buy things? Could it have been a gathering place to talk about the weather or to find out how your neighbors fared during the storm?

The items purchased did not seem that much different than on a normal day...fabrics, rum, salt, sugar. A few items were relatively unique:  Bible, Primer (presumed to be a text for teaching writing), and a barrel of cider sold to the store. I doubt if this cider was for Colden's personal use as he was known to have a large mature orchard and undoubtedly made his own cider as did most of the community.

Cider Press

Many of the community had come from New Jersey where there were many old apple orchards.  They undoubtedly brought seeds with them and created new orchards in New York. Wickes in his History of the Oranges (New Jersey) wrote that New Jersey was known for its apples. They were exported as was the cider made from them. A more potent alcoholic drink was made by scraping off the ice that froze at the surface of a keg of cider during winter months. By as early as 1700, the apple orchards in Newark were mature and producing one thousand barrels of cider per year.

Peter Gumaer of nearby Peenpack wrote that apple cider was part of Peenpack life since the original settlers. Some of the original families were Huguenots from France, and were accustomed to wine. Upon arriving in Peenpack, cider became their drink. The apple trees in Van Inwegen’s orchard in Peenpack were “between two and three feet in diameter in the time of the Revolution.” Gumaer’s eighteenth century home had a cider cellar equipped with a gutter that led directly from his cider press.

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