Pilgrims and Patriots: Toys, Games, Music, Everyday Life

1600s to 1783, period appropriate products from Cowings Mill.

The early 1600s saw the influx of thousands of European colonists in North America. No longer primarily military outposts or temporary fishing and trading settlements, the newly established colonies were attracting families of emigrants. 

In the early North American European colonies, children worked hard to help the family, and they made toys and games from whatever was at hand. Children may have been surprised to find that Native American children had toys and games very similar to their own. Folk music was a simple pleasure for adult and children alike.

As the colonies grew and prospered, fortunate children would have received toys and games imported from Europe. By 1713, Ben Franklin notes a toy store in Boston; by 1759, advertisements for toy stores appear throughout the colonies, naming bilboquets, toy drumsticks, fifes, whistles, and jaw harps, among other items.

From the "shot heard 'round the world" in 1775 until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, colonial life was upended by the Revolution and its aftermath. Manufactured goods became scarcer, and once again "homemade" was the norm. Many women and children lived in military camps, as necessity found them following husbands and fathers off to war. Soldiers hammered musket balls into dice, toys were made from old coins, and children practiced for the militia. Other families tightened their belts and made do as best they could.

The patriots prevailed in their War of Independence, and a new day dawned on the United States of America.

Our products are either reproductions, interpretations, or adaptations of historical periods items. We'll make a separate blog post on those definitions, but for now we'll say that each Cowings Mill product is packaged with information placing it in appropriate time periods. In this timeline, Pilgrims and Patriots, the only product that would not have been seen as a version of what we know today is the harmonica, which was invented in this form in 1821.