The cylinder at the top of the picture was revolved by hand in the fireplace; the skillets were set in the smouldering ashes
The old-time coffee houses of New Orleans were situated within the original area of the city, the section bounded by the river, Canal Street, Esplanade Avenue and Rampart Street. In the early days most of the big business of the city was transacted in the coffee houses. The brûleau, coffee with orange juice, orange peel, and sugar, with cognac burned and mixed in it, originated in the New Orleans coffee house, and led to its gradual evolution into the saloon.
How the United States Became a Nation of Coffee Drinkers
Coffee, tea, and chocolate were introduced into North America almost simultaneously in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the first half of the eighteenth century, tea had made such progress in England, thanks to the propaganda of the British East India Company, that, being moved to extend its use in the colonies, the directors turned their eyes first in the direction of North America. Here, however, King George spoiled their well-laid plans by his unfortunate stamp act of 1765, which caused the colonists to raise the cry of "no taxation without representation."
Although the act was repealed in 1766, the right to tax was asserted, and in 1767 was again used, duties being laid on paints, oils, lead, glass, and tea. Once more the colonists resisted; and, by refusing to import any goods of English make, so distressed the English manufacturers that Parliament repealed every tax save that on tea. Despite the growing fondness for the beverage in America, the colonists preferred to get their tea elsewhere to sacrificing their principles and buying it from England. A brisk trade in smuggling tea from Holland was started.
In a panic at the loss of the most promising of its colonial markets, the British East India Company appealed to Parliament for aid, and was permitted to export tea, a privilege it had never before enjoyed. Cargoes were sent on consignment to selected commissioners in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The story of the subsequent happenings properly belongs in a book on tea. It is sufficient here to refer to the climax of the agitation against the fateful tea tax, because it is undoubtedly responsible for our becoming a nation of coffee drinkers instead of one of tea drinkers, like England.
This machine, known in Holland as a "Coffee Burner," was used late in the 18th century in New England. It hung in the fireplace or stood in the embers
The Boston "tea party" of 1773, when citizens of Boston, disguised as Indians, boarded the English ships lying in Boston harbor and threw their tea cargoes into the bay, cast the die for coffee; for there and then originated a subtle prejudice against "the cup that cheers", which one hundred and fifty years have failed entirely to overcome. Meanwhile, the change wrought in our social customs by this act, and those of like nature following it, in the New York, Pennsylvania, and Charleston colonies, caused coffee to be crowned "king of the American breakfast table", and the sovereign drink of the American people.
These exhibits are in the Museum of the Maine Historical Society at Portland. On the left is Kenrick's Patent coffee mill. In the center is a Britannia urn with an iron bar for heating the liquid. The bar was encased in a tin receptacle that hung inside the cover. On the right is a wall type of coffee or spice grinder
Coffee in Colonial New England
The history of coffee in colonial New England is so closely interwoven with the story of the inns and taverns that it is difficult to distinguish the genuine coffee house, as it was known in England, from the public house where lodgings and liquors were to be had. The coffee drink had strong competition from the heady wines, the liquors, and imported teas, and consequently it did not attain the vogue among the colonial New Englanders that it did among Londoners of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Although New England had its coffee houses, these were actually taverns where coffee was only one of the beverages served to patrons. "They were", says Robinson, "generally meeting places of those who were conservative in their views regarding church and state, being friends of the ruling administration. Such persons were terms 'Courtiers' by their adversaries, the Dissenters and Republicans."
Most of the coffee houses were established in Boston, the metropolis of the Massachusetts Colony, and the social center of New England. While Plymouth, Salem, Chelsea, and Providence had taverns that served coffee, they did not achieve the name and fame of some of the more celebrated coffee houses in Boston.
It is not definitely known when the first coffee was brought in; but it is reasonable to suppose that it came as part of the household supplies of some settler (probably between 1660 and 1670), who had become acquainted with it before leaving England. Or it may have been introduced by some British officer, who in London had made the rounds of the more celebrated coffee houses of the latter half of the seventeenth century.
The First Coffee License
According to early town records of Boston, Dorothy Jones was the first to be licensed to sell "coffee and cuchaletto," the latter being the seventeenth-century spelling for chocolate or cocoa. This license is dated 1670, and is said to be the first written reference to coffee in the Massachusetts Colony. It is not stated whether Dorothy Jones was a vender of the coffee drink or of "coffee powder," as ground coffee was known in the early days.
Mortar and pestle for "braying" coffee to make coffee powder, brought over in the Mayflower by the parents of Peregrine White
There is some question as to whether Dorothy Jones was the first to sell coffee as a beverage in Boston. Londoners had known and drunk coffee for eighteen years before Dorothy Jones got her coffee license. British government officials were frequently taking ship from London to the Massachusetts Colony, and it is likely that they brought tidings and samples of the coffee the English gentry had lately taken up. No doubt they also told about the new-style coffee houses that were becoming popular in all parts of London. And it may be assumed that their tales caused the landlords of the inns and taverns of colonial Boston to add coffee to their lists of beverages.
New England's First Coffee House
The name coffee house did not come into use in New England until late in the seventeenth century. Early colonial records do not make it clear whether the London coffee house or the Gutteridge coffee house was the first to be opened in Boston with that distinctive title. In all likelihood the London is entitled to the honor, for Samuel Gardner Drake in his History and Antiquities of the City of Boston, published in 1854, says that "Benj. Harris sold books there in 1689." Drake seems to be the only historian of early Boston to mention the London coffee house.
Granting that the London coffee house was the first in Boston, then the Gutteridge coffee house was the second. The latter stood on the north side of State Street, between Exchange and Washington Streets, and was named after Robert Gutteridge, who took out an innkeeper's license in 1691. Twenty-seven years later, his widow, Mary Gutteridge, petitioned the