On the Importance of Lost Moments Found

Puritan men drinking (from https://seventreesfarm.wordpress.com, but I couldn't find
the artist). OK, so my ancestors (or at least these ancestors) weren't Puritans, but it's
surprisingly hard to find a picture of colonial men drinking.

While researching the family of Margary Dean Canan, the daughter of my 6xgreat-grandfather, James Dean, I came across a book, The History of Centre and Clinton Counties (Pennsylvania), by J.B. Linn (1975).  The book re-prints the journal of James Harris, who surveyed the area in 1784 (p.21-22). James Harris appears to have worked with, and possibly boarded with, John Canan, Margary Dean's husband. I was intrigued by the following journal entry:

"27th [of November], Mr. Brown goes for his horse to the Warrior Marks and returns to Mr. Canan's. I drink cyder with Mr. Canan at Mr. Mitchell's and Mr. Dean's his father-in-law."

A simple sentence, "I drink cyder with...Mr. Dean...", but so evocative. I imagine the men huddled close to the light and warmth of a hearth, the crude plank house dark around them. I can almost smell the wood smoke, tangy apples, and wet wool of homespun clothes. Perhaps they could hear Margary and her mother in the kitchen, or were the ladies sitting with them near the fire, working by it's light? The Revolutionary War had ended earlier that year. Did they talk about the new government, or old conflicts with their neighbors?

There is something visceral about this sentence. It captures the imagination and the senses in a way that no historical overview of colonial Pennsylvania ever could. It brings the dead to life in a way that no tombstone, no formal portrait could match.

Here, then, is the link between ethnohistory and archaeology. These records affect me much as I am affected by holding a the remains of an ancient pot, or tool, or meal. A person (not a number, not a label, but a person) once created or shaped the object, and now a person holds it again and wonders, remembers. A physical connection is made to the past. We are cultural creatures, and that cultural connection binds us to the people of the past just as strongly as the flimsy strands of DNA.