The Most Ordinary & Exotic Things: 
Water and Lemonade

Drinking water from Healing Springs near Blackville, South Carolina

One of the first questions I wanted to tackle in thinking about living on the frontier was a question about one of the essential needs of life: water. Was common water drank regularly and used regularly in cooking in the backcountry?

A popular belief out there is that everyone in colonial America drank alcoholic beverages because of the poor quality of the water. This would be true if you lived in a town or city like Charleston or Savannah. Many water sources were contaminated by various human and animal wastes. Bodies of water became places of garbage disposal. Carcasses were thrown into rivers and chamber pots were dumped into wells. Other unpleasant items were thrown into the streets and washed down storm drains or carried by other means into the water supply and so created water unsafe for humans to drink. This pattern repeated the pattern in Europe where unfit water in crowded cities like London or Paris was blamed on diseases and deaths and to be avoided. General knowledge about health and sanitation was many decades away.

Chamber Pot dumped on street in 18th Century London.
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Because in most cases it was unfit to drink, common water was discriminated against in Europe and colonists brought this same mentality to America.  Water was free but why would you drink it if you could afford to drink ale or other potables that had a longer shelf life and which rarely made you sick? Only the poor drink common water—and at their own risk. Andrew Boorde, a 16^th century English dietitian said that, “water is not wholesome solely by itself for an Englishman . . . If any man do use to drink water with wine, let it be purely strained, and then [boil] it; and after it be cold, let him put it to his wine.” A Swiss visitor to London in the 1720’s wrote: “Would you believe it, though water is to be had in abundance in London and of fairly good quality, absolutely none is drunk? In this country . . . beer . . . is what everyone drinks when thirsty.”

So, in towns and cities in America, once sufficiently established to abandon common water for imported and locally distilled spirits, colonists drank alcoholic beverages. Even children drank diluted qualities of beer and cider and other alcoholic drinks. As for good water, you could buy it by the cask or by the bottle. This water was sometimes referred to as “tea-water.” This was good water found just outside the city. It was used to make tea and other beverages. It was expensive to purchase and only the rich could afford to keep it in any quantity. Beer, ale, and distilled spirits were cheap and the majority of urban citizens drank these rather than water. As far as for cooking, the water drawn from wells, stream, and rivers could be strained and boiled to make it safe for cooking purposes.

What about the frontier? The backcountry? Here was a different reality. Water was safely drunk from springs and streams and water drawn from lakes and rivers was used to cook in without boiling it. It was mixed with corn and salt to make the batter for corn cakes, ashcakes, and cornbread. It was drawn from wells to make tea and later to make coffee. Spirits were produced here too, but were not consumed for the same health and class conscious reasons of urban folk. Water dominated meals and spirits dominated community gatherings and celebrations. All of this drinking water was an annoyance to some Englishmen traveling the Southern hinterlands beyond the cities and towns in the late eighteenth century. In his travels in the Carolina backcountry in the late 1760’s the Anglican minister Reverend Charles Woodmason who encountered Scotch-Irish settlers and others was appalled at their lack of English civility and dismissed these settlers and their food and drinks on many an occasion.

 He reported that,

In this Circuit of a fortnight I've eaten Meat but thrice and drank nought but Water -- Subsisting on my Bisket and Rice Water and Musk Melons, Cucumbers, Green Apples and Peaches and such Trash.

He was less focused on the clean and healthy water he encountered and was "forced" to drink on the frontier than on the fiery distilled spirits these people produced. He tied their strong spirits and drinking habits to their morality and their lack of civilization to their upbringing in the wilds of his own Great Britain: Scotland and Ireland.

Despite Woodmason's prejudices, many colonists settled in places where they did have access to good, clean water. They, like Native Americans before them, drank it and used it for many daily purposes and treasured the springs and other places they drew it from.

Healing Springs near Blackville, South Carolina 

So the drinking and use of water was dependent on where you were in colonial America. Beyond filtering and boiling water to make it safe, could water be transformed into other more palatable beverages with the addition of various adjuncts or the use of various processes? The answer is yes!

By changing the nature of water, water was made more drinkable by all. Water boiled and fermented with cereal grains and fruits became alcoholic beverages. Coffee and tea made from ground coffee beans and tea leaves added to boiling water along with sugar as a sweetener became popular for both rich and poor and spread widely in colonial America. Then there was the use of exotic fruits to flavor a sugar-water concoction that became the ultimate American symbol of a refreshing, non-alcoholic cooling drink: lemonade.

Interesting, the French had a sugar-water drink called eau sucre which was drank as a colonial version of Red Bull to pick up both farmers and slaves as they labored all day long. In the South, molasses was mixed with water and sometimes a piece of ginger was added to create a version of this power drink. This type of sweet drink would have been familiar to many of the slaves from West Africa. There, they drank honey-water which was a slightly fermented drink that provided both refreshment and nutrition. We know through various records they drank a New World version of honey-water in South Carolina too. The Christian Recorder, an African –American newspaper published in Union-occupied Port Royal, South Carolina reported on New Year’s Day 1863: “The crowd then adjourned to the eating ground, where a barbeque consisting of twelve roasted oxen and [300] barrels of molasses and water was soon disposed of.” Besides this article, we know that Africans and African-Americans both drank honey-water and the American version of it for social and sacred purposes. In South Carolina, in some slave communities, they used the beverage as a communion wine. Adding fruit flavorings to sugar-water would provide an extra zing and help it to become the soda pop of its day. Citrus fruit which was tangy and acidic and probably helped to “cure” the water (as well as provide the unknown benefits of vitamin C) was added to water and was a great flavor option for colonists in the Southern coastal cities.

Citrus fruit had originated in Asia and spread slowly into other parts of the world. The European ancient and medieval world was introduced to and grew citrons, oranges, and lemons for consumption. It appears that medieval Egyptians were the first to make a drink from lemon juice and sugar starting around 500 A.D. In 1630 in Paris, lemon juice and a honey-water were mixed together to create a beverage named lemonade. This beverage was known in colonial America by the 18^th century.

More so for the colonial South, the Spanish had brought oranges, lemons and green lemons known as limes to the New World and planted them on Caribbean islands and near Spanish settlements like Santa Elena in South Carolina and St. Augustine in Florida. Oranges and lemons could be grown in Charleston and Savannah if attention was given to keeping them warm on cold days and nights. The Southern colonies trade with the Caribbean also meant cities like Charleston and Savannah imported citrus fruits including oranges, limes, and lemons. These fruit's juices were mixed with water and cane sugar, also produced primarily in the Caribbean, to create various water-sugar fruit flavored concoctions.

Lemons, Limes, and Orange from the Caribbean

So water flavored with exotic tropical fruits like lemons, limes, and oranges (lemonade, limeade, and orangeade) grown in limited numbers in the coastal South or imported from the Caribbean islands and mixed with sugar became a popular non-alcoholic drink in places like Charleston and Savannah. If rich or lucky, one could add to their delight in drinking these concoctions by putting ice in these drinks. Ice houses in town and on plantations were built and filled with ice blocks shipped from northern rivers and streams to chill southern beverages. Cold lemonade was a treat one found in the urban ports along the coast.

What about the backcountry? Did exotic tropical fruit go there? Transporting large quantities of these fruits into the backcountry could not take place until railroads changed the face of American transportation in the late 19^th century. But in the colonial South’s backcountry, fruit flavored waters were made from such local items as cherries, blueberries, and strawberries. Only later did lemonade appear and then become a favorite for many Southerners on long, hot summer afternoons.

Ice makes Lemonade so good, cold, and refreshing
on a hot, sultry afternoon in the Carolina Backcountry

The item that really made lemonade a star was the same item that made sweet tea a star in the 20^th century South. And once again it was made from the transformation of common water. It was the production of cheap and plentiful ice in any season of the year. This only came with the creation of ice artificially. The world’s first commercial ice plant opened in New Orleans in 1868. By the turn of the center ice plants could be found all over the South. Now products could be refrigerated and shipped most anywhere. Food barriers fell and perishable foods spread east, west, north, and south. Cold lemonade became an American drink ideally suited not just for the sub-tropical coastal cities of the South but also the hinterlands and the backcountry of America. Common water, in transmuted forms, had transformed the exotic into an ordinary and most democratic American beverage by the middle part of the 20^th century. So, have a lemonade this summer and celebrate both the ordinary and exotic in American food history!

Andy Thomas

Sources used to write this blog:

Andrew Barr. Drink: A Social History of America, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, 2000.

Joseph Dabney. Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking, Cumberland House, 2008.

Adrian Miller. Eau Sucre Begets Red Drink. Edible Memphis. Summer 2009.

Melissa Swindell. “What was in colonial cups besides tea? Cider, Water, Milk, and Whiskey!” In “O Say Can You See?” Natural Museum of American History: Dec. 6, 2012.

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat. A History of Food. Wiley-Blackwell; 2^nd edition, 2008.

Wikipedia. Lemonade. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade.  Accessed May 20, 2014.

Woodman, Charles. The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution. Editor: Richard J. Hooker. Institute of early American History and Culture, 1969. P. 52.

Clifford Wright. History of Lemonade.

http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/id/95/  (Accessed May 20, 2014).