Historic Cold Spring Village

Historic Cold Spring Village interprets the domestic life of farmwomen in the mid-19th century in Cape May County, where wives and daughters on small farms faced long days of hard labor in the home while men raised crops and cared for animals. Tasks that can now be done quickly once consumed entire days: washing clothes required filling enormous iron cauldrons with water, building a fire beneath them, and stirring garments with a large wooden agitator, while cooking meant using heavy iron cookware in a fireplace where burns were a constant danger. Women also sewed, spun, and cared for children, and before domestic labor-saving devices appeared in the 20th century, their work was understood as unending. Farm women were a perpetual presence on the American agricultural landscape and played an integral role in the domestic life of their families and in the social and agricultural history of Cape May.

New Jersey · United States