What was the attitude of our Germanna people toward alcoholic drinks? There is no question but that they partook and enjoyed it. Alcoholic drinks could be made readily on the farm where the fruits and grains were grown. Some of it was made by fermentation and, if you had the necessary containers, it could be made by most anyone. Some of the drink involved distilling for which more elaborate equipment, a still, was necessary.
Apples were favorites with which to start. Every respectable plantation had an orchard numbering in hundreds of trees. (One of the requirements to prove a patent was an orchard.) The season for fresh apples is relatively short, where, if stored in the coolness of the cellar, they might last a few months. Many apples were cut into pieces and dried in the sun and such dried apples were a staple of the diet. Perhaps even more apples were cut and pressed to make cider. There were several options as to what was done with the cider and not all of them resulted in a soft drink.
Our Second Colony Germanna people came from a wine region and probably several of them were experienced in the vineyards. Michael Clore was listed, I believe, as a vineyard worker. In Virginia, Robert Beverley, one of their first sponsors, was devoted to wine production and he encouraged the Germans to raise grapes. Whether this carried over to their permanent homes is unknown but probably they did have vineyards.
In the Hebron church financial account, alcoholic beverages are mentioned several times. When the church bought land in 1733 from William Carpenter on which to build the glebe house, the bargain was sealed with "drink" in the amount of eighteen shillings and six pence. This sounds as if every member of the congregation had a hand in sealing the bargain. The account doesn't state what kind of drink was involved. Every time they had communion, they had to purchase one or two quarts of wine. A typical price seemed to be around one and a half shillings per quart. This makes the confirmation of the land purchase look as if it took all afternoon.
Stronger drinks than wine and beer included brandy and rum, the latter being imported from the Caribbean.
Christian Herr, in Lancaster Co., PA was a Mennonite minister who farmed, had an apple orchard and two stills when he died, in 1750. Though the Mennonites are thought of a conservative people, they used alcohol in the eastern United States until late in the last century. By then the western Mennonites had decided that the use of alcohol was not wise and they prevailed upon the eastern Mennonites to adopt the same view. To promote unity, the view was universally adopted about one hundred years ago among Mennonite congregations.
Drinking was an unquestioned practice among Germans until at least the second quarter of the eighteenth century. It was probably a common practice far beyond that time. Sorrow, grief, and labor were drowned in brandy or whiskey. Klaus Wust quotes Lutheran candidate Joel Swartz, who spoke of the "genuine, life-giving apple brandy, without which we could not have reaped our harvest nor sawed our winter wood".
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.