(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
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Frances and Mary Allen costumed and posed these four women cooking to illustrate Alice Morse Earle's Home Life in Colonial Days. Earle's books played an important role in making the colonial era popular during the Colonial Revival. The photograph displays eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century kitchen equipment, which would change greatly with the introduction of the cookstove in the mid-1800s. It also shows that the kitchen is the world of women, not men, and a young girl prepares for her adult responsibilities by working with and observing older women.