Bucks County's bountiful autumn harvest set the tone for late 19th century Halloween celebrations
Traditions of Halloween were tied closely to the harvest: chestnuts, turnips, potatoes, apples, and cabbages all played a part of the lore surrounding this holiday.
Chestnuts
When the Colonial settlers arrived in Pennsylvania, the American chestnut trees stood over 100 feet tall, and their trunks were massive. Chestnuts provided food throughout the winter for forest dwellers like deer, rabbits, bears, raccoons, wild boars, chipmunks, wood rats, turkeys, grouse, crows, and jays. Even the Lenape used chestnuts, grinding them into flour.
Photo Courtesy of the American Chestnut Foundation
During the 19th century, autumn chestnut harvesting season began in September and continued through November. Families and friends held chestnut gathering picnics and stored sacks full of chestnuts in their cellars as provisions for the winter.
This practice ended with the near extinction of the American Chestnut trees due to a Japanese fungus introduced to this country by mistake in 1904. By 1940, the majority of the 4 billion American chestnut trees, from Maine to Florida, were gone.
Nut-Crack Night
It was traditional on the eve of Halloween that families and friends would get together for Nut-Crack Night festivities. The evening was filled with the sound of cracking nuts, which were thrown into the fire to divine who one's future sweetheart might be.
eligible young women would name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping, represented the girl’s future husband.
Root Vegetables
Turnips were not native to America. Brought over by English and German settlers they were considered a minor crop in Bucks County. Only the wealthy could afford to grown them as a field crop because of the high labor costs to harvest them. Growing them was better suited to English and Germans' cooler summer climate.
However, Turnips were a staple vegetable in most Bucks County kitchen gardens, which provided food for farming families. they were especially valued because they stored well through the winter.
Carving Jack-o-Lanterns
The first Jack-o-Lanterns were actually made of carved out turnips in Europe. It was only later when Halloween traditions were brought to the Americas, that the carving of pumpkins became the practice. Native to the Americas, pumpkins grew with little or no cultivating compared to the labor intensive turnip.
The name Jack-o’-Lantern comes from the story of Stingy Jack, who was an old drunk who played tricks with the devil and used a hollowed-out turnip with a flame inside it, or a lantern, in order to get out of hell.
Root Vegetable Halloween Traditions
Go to the garden where the beet patch grows full on Halloween Night and begin to pull at the Stroke of 12. If the beet is straggly, sad lot for thee. But if smooth and round a happy life, thine will be.
On All-hallows Eve, When the hour is late, Pull a root from the garden. And read your fate.
May the witches and imps on Halloween night, Do their best to give you a jolly good fright!
Apples
Surprise...apples were not native to the Americas! The first seeds were brought over by the early settlers in the 17th century. The Lenape traded with settlers for the prized apple seeds, planting trees on their lands. By the 18th century, farm orchards in Bucks County were typically 3 to 5 acres with some 50 trees.
In an 1845 ad selling the William Erwin Estate (the present day location of the Erwin Stover House), There is described a young and Thrifty apple orchard upon the premises.
Though not native to the Americas, there are several apple varieties that have been attributed as native to Bucks County including the Townsend, Smith Cider, Priestly, New Water, Jackson, and Fallawater varieties.
According to the account of the Townsend family when they purchased their lot of land from the lEnape people, the agreement included the soil "but no consideration would purchase their apple tree. That they strictly reserved to be as free as sunshine to all or any who wanted apples."
Townsend Apple Tree. Grafts from the original tree over an hundred years ago on the farm of Joseph D. Armitage. Photographed 1873.
Halloween Apple Lore
Common apple traditions for Halloween are still popular today such as bobbing for apples. More challenging was the “candy pull,” in which party guests competed to grab apples or candy suspended by rope from the ceiling with their teeth to show who would have a successful year.
The apple played a role in other prognostications during this holiday as well.
young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials
Potatoes
Potatoes were brought to North America from South America in the earliest years of European settlement. They quickly became a staple field crop in Bucks County. By the 19th century, they were grown on most every farm, harvested in the fall and, if kept in the cool and dark, lasted many months into the winter.
Photo from Images of America Bucks County by Kathleen Zingaro Clark.
Some popular potato varieties were native to Pennsylvania such as the "Neshannock potato," first cultivated by John Gilkey, an Irish immigrant who came to Pennsylvania in 1797. The 1850 agricultural census for the Stover House indicates that tenant farmers harvest 75 bushels of "Irish Potatoes" on the 126 acre farm. Perhaps these so called "Irish Potatoes" were actually of the Neshannock variety.
Halloween Potato Cake Tradition
Hailing from Ireland the Halloween tradition of eating Colcannon cake for dinner came to the America's with the immigrants. Made of potatoes and kale, the baker would hide a prize in each cake or slice for their guests whose fate would be revealed with their prize.
"The ring for marriage within a year; The penny for wealth, my dear; The thimble for old maid or bachelor born; The button for sweethearts all forlorn; The key for a journey to make all right; And this you will see next Halloween night."
Cabbage
Cabbage was brought to the Americas by European settlers as well, but was in common use by both the colonists and the Lenape by the 18th century. In the 19th century, German settlers grew cabbages and prepared it by cutting it into slaw, packing and stamping it with salt to form brine and make a favorite dish Saur Kraut.
Cabbage Night
In neighboring New Jersey, the Eve before Halloween was called Cabbage Night, akin to what we know as Mischief Night. Pranks were prevalent on this night on both sides of the river. Cabbages were stolen from neighbors gardens and thumped against doors, steps were removed, wagons were taken apart and pieces put up high in the trees.
Cabbage heads were used on this holiday for divination purposes, as well. Lore had it that on Halloween, young women would steal into a neighboring garden, and blindfolded, would pull up a cabbage. Depending on the shape and condition of the vegetable, it would determine if she would marry and what type of husband she would have.
If the cabbage were fully grown, she would have a handsome and healthy husband, but if the cabbage were rotten, her husband would not be good to her. If the cabbage pulled was small, it would mean she would be left a widow early in life.
There are other versions of the Cabbage's divination properties.
On Halloween a girl is to go through a graveyard, steal a cabbage and place it above the house-door. The one on whom the cabbage falls as the door is opened is to be the girl’s husband
20th Century Pageantry and Parades
In the beginning of the 20th Century, Halloween in Bucks County was transformed into the holiday we know today. Halloween Parades became the standard for towns. Bristol hosted its first Halloween parade in 1910, Perkasie in 1913, and Hatboro in 1914.
In the 1930s, the "Halloween Carnival" became popular with booths featuring food, skill games and even fortune telling.
These events grew in size and activities over the next few decades. Costumes and floats were judged and prizes awarded.
Old photo of the Quakertown Knauss twins in costume for Halloween c. 1912.
For the duration of World War II, most of the Halloween parades and carnivals were cancelled, but they returned to communities bigger and better after the war ended. New traditions were added. Downtown shops held contests for window decorations, scarecrow design or jack-o-lantern carving.
Halloween Candy--a Pennsylvania Institution
Candy corn, designed to look like chicken feed, is perhaps one of the oldest Halloween candies still eaten today. It was supposedly invented by George Renninger in the 1880s. He was a candymaker at Philadelphia's Wunderle Candy Company. In 1900, the Goelitz Candy Co. began making it in large quantities.
Halloween candy became quite popular around the turn of the 20th century. Hershey's chocolate factory in Pennsylvania allowed the chocolate to be mass produced for significantly cheaper prices. Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar was first produced in 1900, with Hershey's Kisses following seven years later.
Trick or Treating was fully established in the United States by the 1950s, even showing up in the October 31, 1951 Peanuts comic strip.
Trick or Treat became so much a part of the Bucks County Halloween Experience, that in 1969 the Daily Intelligencer gave away 6,000 Halloween Trick or Treat bags for free in the Central and Upper Central Bucks area. Safety was a priority: the exterior of the bags was designed to reflect the headlights of oncoming cars.
You might be asking after this blog, how can I experience Halloween the old fashioned way, today?
Come to the 1890s Decades Club-Spiritualism Gathering at the Erwin Stover House in Tinicum Park on Thursday October 26 from 5-9 pm.
- Gather round the Ouija Board
- Listen to Gothic tales
- Learn the future with the turn of a card or the pull of a root vegetable
- Enjoy the lively music by Fig for a Kiss
- Try dancing the Tango
- Explore Victorian Funeral traditions
- Taste a cocktail from the era, offered by County Seat Spirits.
The event is free, but space is limited. There are two shows: one at 5pm and the second at 7pm. Reserve your spot by emailing ashollander@buckscounty.org