Comparison with Other Mill Towns
Domestic life at Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 appears to have been similar to that at the contemporary Sampson textile mill village house site (38GR190) in Greenville, South Carolina. This includes similar household goods and other items as well. Dietary aspects of the Sampson mill village community and the Front Street residents included fresh meat and vegetables, though canned food was a particularly important aspect of their diet. “Many of the [mill] informants mentioned that people had gardens in the rear yard. This was a source of spring and summer vegetables. Garden vegetables were also canned for use in the winter months. The sparsity of animal bone at the mill village has also been noted....Informants remembered that very few people raised poultry or cows, although a pasture and a cow barn was provided by the mill” (Adams et al. 1993:64). Overall, botanical and faunal evidence from Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 indicates that the diet of the Front Street tenants may have been quite varied.
The relative sparsity of architectural items recovered from Sites 44PY178, 44PY181, and 38GR190 provide insight into mill housing. Researchers at the Sampson Village site suggest that the low percentage may be due to the substantialness of mill housing compared to other tenant houses. However, the low percentage of architectural items recovered from Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 may be the result of the structures having stood for a long time, during which there was little alteration or significant improvement even though the structures were generally maintained.
The occupants of the three sites shared similar leisure activities, activities that were familiar to others in the community. The recovery of marbles, doll parts, pieces from toy tea sets, a toy gun, phonograph record fragments, and other items reflect the play of children and household diversions that were an important part of domestic life in the mill community (Adams et al. 1993:64, 65; Higgins et al. 1999:50). Marbles was played “in the bare spots in the yard where the grass had been totally worn out”; other games, some of which extended into the evenings, included hide-and-seek and kick-the-can. “We spent hours on each other's porch,” recalls Mrs. Newman, “swinging and singing, playing jack rocks or pick up sticks. They [neighbors] looked after each other's children. In the late afternoon, parents would sit on the porch and visit with each other.... On Sundays during the summer, we would go up the street to my grandparents or they would come to our house and we would make homemade ice-cream in our wooden freezer....”
