May 2004

Departments

Colonial Challenge

Philly resident Julia Friese traded her liberal life for indentured servitude in Colonial House -- and survived!

By Anna Christopher

26-year-old Philadelphia resident Julia Friese had always fantasized about traveling back in time. But, unlike most people with such seemingly unrealistic dreams, Julia’s was realized when she was selected out of 5,000 applicants to return to the 17th century as part of public television's latest “hands-on history” series, Colonial House.

From May to October 2003, Julia traded her position as an educator at the Please Touch Museum® and liberal, city life for a role that placed her on the lowest rung of the colonial social ladder -- a female indentured servant in the ultra-conservative governor’s household.

“When I saw the ad for participating in Colonial House on the PBS Web site, I was thrilled and thought ‘I can’t pass this up!’” she recalls. “Even if it meant that I’d have to be an indentured servant, I considered that payment for being able to travel back in time.”

Donning rough, woolen skirts, a corset and simple bonnet, Julia, along with 25 other modern day time travelers and livestock, arrived at the circa 1628 colony in Maine by tall ship. The resulting five months spent living in cramped, primitive structures, surviving off the land and adhering to the repressive laws of the time would be a test of character, ingenuity and strength. There were extremely difficult times -- constant suppression by male superiors, little privacy, and hours spent milking the goats -- but Julia says the positive experiences outweighed all moments of doubt and desperation.

“I am so, so very grateful that I had a chance to participate in this -- it was literally a dream,” she says. “I wish that somehow everybody could get to do something like this, because it does put a lot of things into perspective.”

Colonial House premieres Monday, May 17 at 8 p.m. on WHYY TV12. To get more of the inside scoop from indentured servant Julia Friese before you watch her keeping house (and milking goats), read the WHYY exclusive interview below.

What interested you about the Colonial House project, and what made you want to apply?

I originally wanted to apply to the Frontier House project which aired a few years back, and they weren’t accepting applications from individuals. I kept checking back on the PBS Web site for a couple of years after that, and finally saw that Colonial House would accept applications from individuals.

You said that even if you had to be an indentured servant you would do the project. Was every single person on Colonial House assigned to servitude? How were you assigned your position?

When I was interviewing for the project, I was informed by the producers that there was a very good chance that I could be an indentured servant because females of my age -- which is 26 -- who were coming to the New World at that time by themselves unaccompanied by family or a husband would probably be an indentured servant. And, so, I went into the project knowing that that was my fate.

All of the participants -- and there were about 26 of them -- came to your colony on a ship. Can you talk about how you arrived?

Originally, 17 of us trained for about 10 days in Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts. And then we drove up to Bar Harbor on a big tour bus which was a lot of fun, and we boarded a tall ship in Bar Harbor and sailed up the coast to the location of our colony in Maine. So, we were only actually on the ship for about 30-some odd hours. Actually, it was a much shorter sail to our destination, but we had to wait for the tides because it was right near the Bay of Fundy, and as some people know the tides are very extreme. So a lot of just waiting in the fog on the ship.

At the Plymouth Plantation where you were trained, what sorts of things were you taught?

We were taught a lot of things we would need as far as the basics to survive: how to take care of animals, how to prepare food over an open hearth, how to utilize a lot of the tools which were very unfamiliar to us. It was also very interesting that we got to know each other there during that span of time because the playing field was leveled: none of us knew the roles we’d have or who we were living with until we were actually heading to the destination on the ship. So it was fascinating to kind of have that mystery surrounding our entire training, which was then finally revealed to us when the hierarchy took place once we set foot on the colony.

When you arrived on the colony in Maine, were there buildings already existing there? Did you find the colony in a state of disrepair, or was everything organized?

When we arrived at the colony, there were several buildings built. There were four houses that were nearly complete; there were also several very rickety animal structures that had to be improved upon immediately. That was definitely a priority for us. Halfway through the project an entirely new batch of colonists arrived, and we couldn’t fit everyone in the four houses that were built so we had to build another home for the Verdecia family. That took about a month to do and it took everyone’s labor and it was an incredible experience. I felt like I was part of Habitat for Humanity or something like that. So we did have to pay attention to building our animal shelters when we got there and finishing up our houses. We needed to build fences; we needed to build workstations for the men. The men did a lot of the hard labor with the building and construction, but the women did help out a bit with that.

Can you describe what your colony looked like -- the houses, the scenery in Maine and where exactly you were?

We were located on the coast of Maine, in a very isolated area. It’s about as far north on the coast as you can get before you get into Canada. It was beautiful -- rocky coastline, lots of pine trees everywhere, hills, and we were located on a blueberry barren. The houses themselves were probably some of the most primitive buildings I have ever stayed in in my entire life! There were dirt floors, about 300-square-feet, thatched roofs, clapboard siding which was very drafty because it didn’t have any caulking or anything to go over the cracks, and so it was very tight living quarters. At one point we had about 12 people living in my house and I was servant to all of them, which made preparing meals pretty much like Thanksgiving every single night.

What were your responsibilities as the indentured servant for the governor’s household?

I was the indentured servant to the Wyers family, and my responsibilities primary included cooking, doing laundry, cleaning the house, maintaining the garden, milking the goats and just sort of helping out anywhere else I was needed at the time. Cooking probably took up the most time. And, laundry was something we did about once a week -- we tried taking it to ocean, we tried boiling laundry.

Was it more difficult living under someone who, in addition to being your master, was also the head of the whole colony? What was that dynamic like working for the governor’s family?

Being a servant in the governor’s house provided me with a very unique perspective on how the colony was run. I got input from members of the community that were subject to the governor’s rule as well as a lot of insight as to what the governor was going through himself. It was a difficult place to be. I had a hard time with it at times because not only was he the most powerful man in the community, but he also -- a lot like the other men -- had absolutely no problem developing a superiority complex because of his gender. And so I think more so than the fact that he was governor, was the fact that he was my male superior.

There was only one other female indentured servant on the colony. What sort of difficulties and challenges did the two of you face as compared to the male indentured servants, or would you say that you had less of a hard time?

As a female indentured servant I was basically the lowest rung on the ladder: that was something I’d never experienced before. I was born in 1978 and gender equally was never something that had affected me, so to all of the sudden find myself subject to this male rule and being told on a fairly regular basis that my opinion did not matter, that I never had the right to ever question any judgment the men made or any of the decisions they made…it was shocking to my system. And Clare, who was also a female indentured servant who came in halfway into the project, I think she was very startled by this as well. It’s not something that we’re used to dealing with, and so it felt degrading at times and it was certainly humiliating but it made me a lot stronger in the end. It certainly made me appreciate how far women have come since that time.

There were three families, and seven or so single people involved in Colonial House . Was it more difficult going into this on your own?

I think as a single person going into the project it was perhaps a little bit more difficult than if I was a member of a family. I did live in a household with a family and they were very tight knit, and I almost viewed them as a 1950s TV perfect family that I was going to get to be part of. It didn’t really turn out that way, and I think a lot of it had to do with conflicting personalities. They were very conservative, and I was liberal, and so I didn’t exactly get to feel part of the family.

For the single people participating in the show, we didn’t have the security of having a family around us. We didn’t have that reliable unit to go to when we had a problem. It was very difficult for me -- I missed by boyfriend a lot and there were a lot of things I was experiencing that I just desperately wanted to share with him at the time, or I wished I could call my mother on the phone and tell her what I just did. And, you know, I’m lonely for someone I know, and so I wish so much that I can have them there to turn to, to help me get through this. It just didn’t happen for the single people.

From the moment you stepped onto the colony, was there ever any time where you were able to just relax and step out of character for a moment or were you completely immersed into the colonial life?

I think only in reflection is it odd that we never really came out of the whole 17th-century mentality. We basically behaved the same on and off camera. It wasn’t like once the cameras left at night we suddenly became our 21st-century people again. We had to always abide by the rules, we had just sort of put ourselves in this place mentally that was going to let us get through the whole experience. We couldn’t flip flop back and forth because I think it just would have been very, very confusing for us. We’d get together at night after hours, after all of the chores had finally been done. I’d go over to someone else’s house and we’d sit around and have beers and pipes and talk about movies or our favorite books or some of the foods we were missing. But we always were aware of the fact that to do this authentically we had to be true to our roles.

What was the most difficult thing to adjust to about 17th-century life at first, and did that change at all as the months progressed?

I think the most difficult thing to adjust to at first about 17th-century life was how very long it takes to prepare meals! We’re so conditioned in the 21st century to open a cabinet and grab a piece of pretty prepared food, and that just does not happen in the 17th century. I think that the fastest thing to prepare would be a boiled egg, and since they were so rare we hardly ever had them. And so, that was one of the goals of the women who were participating in the project, to master the food, and I think by the end of it we did.

I’m really proud of all of the culinary accomplishments of our 17th-century colonists. We really stuck to the basics that we were taught at Plymouth Plantation, and prepared peas pottage, made stewed meats, but after awhile desperation kind of kicked in and we really started being inventive with the ingredients that we had. I created a beef wonton, another erson created some crab cakes. We just did the best with what we had, and I think that was very accurate to what the colonists of the 17th century would have done. They would have been working with a lot of new ingredients, too. We were given some training by Native Americans who came to visit us, and they showed us which plants were edible, and they explained to us better ways to catch food and to hunt, and we just we so grateful to them for that information.

When the Wampanoag tribe came to visit your colony, I ead that many of them were angered that people could recreate colonization when it had so hurt Native Americans. Can you talk a little bit about this visit?

When I signed up for the project, I was really excited by the fact that there was going to be interaction with Native American people. I think a lot of us learned the story of the pilgrims and Plymouth Rock at school, and we have this sort of stereotypical view of what that experience was like for the Native Americans as well as for the new colonists. And so I as excited that this program was going to be sort of demystifying a lot of these preconceived notions of how the colonists and the Native Americans actually interacted.

They did visit us a few times -- we had members of the Passamaquoddy tribe as well as the Wampanoag tribe visit us. We had a chance to speak with them one on one, and I remember there was this one woman who explained to me how very angry her female ancestors were at the colonial women especially, because ‘why weren’t the colonial women keeping their men under better control? Why weren’t we raising our children, our little boys, to respect women more and to respect one another more and to respect the land more?’ And a lot of the conversations that we had changed our perspectives on that time period and I’m so grateful for that. At the same time, I had to respect that they were shocked that we were doing such a project. I really wish that their side of the story got more coverage because it is half the story.

Did those emotions make the project more real for you?

I think that visiting with the Native Americans brought a lot of things into perspective -- talking to them about what their ancestors went through when the colonists first arrived, as well as learning about their plight now, which I was aware of, but not to the degree that they informed me. And it’s just shocking, I think, to realize how so many of the things they experienced then are still being played out today. The repercussions of the land being taken away from them -- it hasn’t ended, it’s still continuing in many parts of the country. And I don’t think the American public is aware of that, and hopefully this series and other similar projects are able to give the issue that kind of exposure that it deserves so that these injustices can be righted.

Let’s talk a bit about the laws of the 17th century and consequential punishments. How were you made aware of the specific rules you’d have to abide by?

During our training at Plymouth Plantation, we took classes on 17th century worldviews, laws and order, so a lot of us had an idea of what we were getting into and what to expect as far as punishments and general behavior of the 17th-century colonists. I think a lot of people found it difficult to abide by these rules, and I think we certainly wanted to abide by them as much as possible. The men especially had an especially tough time with the profanity rule. One British participant in particular was wearing a scarlet letter ‘P’ for profanity pretty much all the time. And so I don’t think that breaking the rules was something that we all intended to do, I think it was more a natural reaction to our 17th-century and 21st-century conflicting mentalities.

What do you think was the most outlandish or absurd rule that you had to try to adhere to, and did you ever have to receive any sort of public punishment during your time?

I think that the most outlandish rule we had to adhere to was the females’ ability -- or I should say inability -- to participate in any sort of policymaking, any sort of governing. That was very difficult. And I think some of the women sort of found devious methods, ways to influence their husbands do that women’s rights could surface in one way or another.

I was given a scarlet letter ‘B’ for blasphemy. It’s kind of a funny story, because the night that it happened we were all having a bonfire, and we usually had it at one end of the colony but because of the winds we ended up having it at the opposite end near the governor’s house. The governor had gone to bed, and the lay preacher’s wife started instigating and saying, ‘oh the governor can’t hear now, let’s all start cursing.’ And so we were a little bit drunk, and sitting around the bonfire waiting for the moon to rise, and she yelled out ‘where’s the f-ing moon,’ and I yelled out ‘where’s the gosh darn moon,’ except not those words. And as I came down from the loft the next morning, the governor informed me that he had heard, and that I had committed the absolute worst offense in the entire colony and that I was to be tied up in the cornfield for two hours.

I was eventually tied out there, and it felt a little bit more like positive reinforcement for negative behavior, because I got to stop working for two hours. I was very sad that I had slipped up and I was very, very sorry that I had personally offended him. He’s a very religious man -- a Southern Baptist minister in the 21st century -- and it was not my intention to do that. So I think the punishment came more from the guilt that I was feeling myself than from actually being tied out in the cornfield.

You mentioned religion, which is another topic I wanted to get to. Everyone was required to observe the Sabbath, and I’m sure there were many different religions, many different beliefs. How did that work out? What sorts of issues everyone having to abide by the same religion cause?

Religion actually ended up being a huge dividing factor in the colony, which is not something that I expected entering the project. I was never raised under a specific denomination -- my parents basically said that I could explore life and choose religion based on my own inclinations. And so I was intellectually curious entering that project that I would get to talk to so many different Christians. We had Unitarians, Lutherans, Southern Baptists, every walk of life, and I was excited that I was going to get to hear so many different perspectives.

But, what ended up happening was that the Christians were fighting so much amongst themselves, and it just divided the colony at times. I don’t think it was anyone’s intention to do so, but it made it hard. We also had agnostics and atheists participating in the project, and it was very difficult for them to come to Sabbath services every single Sunday for three hours and be preached to and be asked to repeat hymns and prayers out loud, basically saying something that they felt was a lie. So, it was very interesting for me to get the perspectives of everyone, but also to see how hurtful it was to the agnostics and to the atheists to be forced to participate in something they didn’t believe in.

I want to go back to the relationships among the colonists for a moment. You mentioned that some people came to the colony halfway through, and I was wondering if there was ever any hostility or tension felt by the people who had arrived by ship and gone through training, towards the new people who suddenly arrived. What was the feeling among the colonists?

When the new colonists arrived, a lot of us were very, very excited. We hadn’t seen new faces in a long time and we were thrilled at the prospect of having people to help with the projects. For me, it was great to have people to help milk the goats, to help cook. It was sort of a mixed blessing, because it also meant that there was going to be a lot less room for those of us who were there already. I had 12 people living in my house at one time! We had the Verdecia family and the Wyers family living together under one roof while we were building a new house. So it was happy time, and it was a hard time. But overall, they definitely were well adapted into the colony and became integral members of it, and just added to our big, screwy, crazy family.

Can you describe your clothing?

The 17th-century indentured servant would have worn something very similar to the other female colonists. I had a shift which looks a lot like a white, puffy nightgown. On top of that I wore a corset and because I was a servant my clothing wasn’t as flashy -- it was made out of more humble materials -- so I had a rough shift and kind of a linen-colored corset. The skirts were wool, and that was to protect us from the fire. You usually would wear a linen skirt and then a wool skirt on top of it, and in the warmer weather we’d wear just a linen skirt. We also wore a coif on our heads, which is a lot like a bonnet, to keep our hair covered at all times. If you went outdoors, you probably wore a hat, and we had these delightful little socks that we wore all summer long that went up above the knee and tied on with garters. We also had jackets that went overtop of our shifts, but the jackets were very cumbersome so the women ended up stripping down to what at the time was considered our underwear, and just having the corset and shift on. But for Sabbath services, we definitely always tried to dress up.

Did you have a change of clothes or were you in the same set the entire time? What was the hygiene like on the colony?

We didn’t change our clothes very often, especially during the cooler months. Sometimes you’d go a week or so and never see your feet because you kept your socks on all the time! We bathed -- bathing in the loosest sense of the word -- probably once a week, once every two weeks. Some of the men, because they were working so hard and became so very dirty, hopped in the 45-degree ocean water almost every day. But we didn’t really have too many options for clothes. I had three skirts, and we’d sometimes wear multiple skirts at the same time depending on the weather, so it was pretty dirty living!

One of the freemen said that he expected to meet his future wife on the colony. Did any relationships form during this time, and if so how was that received?

Everyone who asked about relationships on the colony is very disappointed with the answer I have to give them. No, nobody formed a romantic relationship on the colony. I think we all bonded in a way that was much closer to brother/sister relationships than boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. And, I kind of compare it to, you know, if you’re eating a meal with garlic and your significant other is eating a meal with garlic, you guys can kiss and it sort of balances itself out. But if you haven’t bathed for a week and a half, and the boys haven’t bathed for possibly even longer than that, you don’t want to get anywhere near them and there’s no way you’re going to develop these kinds of feelings for someone else.

Do you still keep in touch with a lot of the people from the colony?

Although there were no romantic relationships on the set, there were a lot of amazing friendships that blossomed, and I do keep in touch, especially with all of the single people -- Jonathan Allen, Jeff Lin, Craig Tuminaro. Those were my best boys on the set and they still are in the 21st century, and I’m so grateful for those relationships. It’s important I think that we all continue to talk to one another because it was such a strange experience. When you wake up in the morning and you just had a dream about the colony, there’s no one else around you who can relate to that. So when you call these people on the phone, they’re like ‘oh yeah, I just had a dream about that, too!’ It’s very comforting.

Some of the colonists, in some of the quotes that I’ve read, said that they learned from the colony that in the 21st century we’ve lost the ability to be good neighbors. What are your feelings on this?

Don Heinz who was the lay preacher on the colony said it best when he talked about our colony as a model neighborhood. It’s a type of neighborhood that you just don’t see these days. I mean, we were at each other’s houses constantly. You woke up in the morning and walked down the main street, and you saw the same faces every day, you met everyone eye to eye, you always said hello. And I come back to the 21st century and I walk down the streets of Philadelphia and I try smiling at people, I try nodding and that’s as far as it goes. I don’t know 99.99 percent of people I see every single day, and it’s strange. There was this great comfort that we all found in getting to know each other so well.

It was hard at times, because there was certainly a lack of privacy -- at any moment somebody could come barging through your door -- but I can’t even tell you when I’ve been into either of my next door neighbor’s houses in the last six months since I’ve been back. I think it’s really sad.

What about the things that we’ve become so used to in the 21st century -- TV, movies, cars, travel, things like that. Have these become devalued at all since you’ve been back?

I think that some of the things that I took for granted before like the speed of flight, television and the Internet especially -- just having that instantaneous access to whatever knowledge you want -- I appreciate a lot more now. At the same time I can sort of see that those things, and more so the superficial stuff like fashion and makeup, have become devalued in my eyes. I don’t think it’s so important now to look like the people in the magazines because I know that there are a lot more important things out there.

I think a perspective I received from participating in the colony is that things that bothered me in the past, that once seemed so important, suddenly became trivial. Once you wake up every single morning and know that the goal of your day is to exist, to survive, to prosper, it’s so different from how we wake up in the 21st century where it’s like ‘oh I need to make myself look beautiful today. I need to go out and earn a lot of money.’ It just seems so trivial in comparison.

Do you think that participating in Colonial House has changed you, and if so, how?

I think that we all wanted to be changed, and wanted to maintain the changes that we felt forever and ever after we came home. And, we wanted to be good neighbors, and we wanted to definitely value some of the more fundamental things as opposed to some of the superficial things of the 21st century. In speaking with my fellow colonists now that we’re home…we’ve all tried. It’s hard though; you lose sight of those things that you valued so much on the colony. With your friends, you get together and go out and see a movie instead of getting around the table and talking for a few hours. I really hoped to maintain more of those things.

I think that I am changed permanently because I do always have the 17th-century perspective, not only the 21st-century perspective. So, everywhere I go, everything I see, I can compare it in those two ways. I can compare the way women are treated, I can compare how we use the bathroom, I can compare the different types of food from both time periods. And I’m very grateful that I’ll always be able to carry that with me.

What do you miss most about the colony and what’s something that you hope to never have to do again?

I absolutely positively miss the closeness with the land that we all developed while we were in the colony. You just became so in tune to things like the tides, and you’d look up at the clouds and you’d know exactly what the weather was going to be like. And that was very exciting. I live in Philadelphia, and you can hardly see the sky from the buildings. I have to turn on the Weather Channel and find out what the temperature’s going to be, whereas on the colony we just knew these things. You live your life so much based on the elements that there’s just this sense of unity with nature that we just don’t have in the 21st century. I’m sure that we all felt it, and it’s something that we talk about that we all just miss terribly.

I think a lot of us have fantasies of going back to that somehow -- having a cabin in the woods somewhere down the line. Some of us have even talked about, ‘oh wouldn’t it be neat if we could buy some land and start a colony on our terms, our rules,’ and it’s just something that most of us would like to get back to. I think that we’d probably bring a lot more modern food. I would not like to live off of salted meat ever again if I had any say in the matter! And I also was not too fond of milking the goats.

What did you miss most about the 21st century when you were out there? What is the one thing you wish you had with you?

It’s going to sound very hokey, but one of the things I wish I had with me was toilet paper. The location was beautiful and fabulous in so many ways, but there were lots of spruce trees and pine trees and trees with needles, and not a lot of leaves. The leaves we did have were small alder leaves, so toilet paper would have been great.

It’s funny because when I got back to Philadelphia I found myself walking around the streets and noticing the leaves, it was autumn, and thinking ‘Gosh, those are huge leaves! I wish I had some of those on the colony.’ No -- we had tiny leaves. Tiny leaves are not good when you’re eating a lot of fiber. We ate mainly peas and oats.

Is there anything you brought forward from the 17th century that you find yourself using in everyday life now, or even thought process that changed while you were there?

I brought a lot of food preparation techniques back to the 21st century with me. Several of the ingredients were just so gross that we really had to find better ways to adapt them. While I was on the colony I wrote a cookbook, because there were so many recipes that we developed that were so delicious that I couldn’t help but prepare them in the 21st century. And it’s nice, because when I do eat them, I feel a lot of nostalgia. I’ve forced other people to eat them, too, and they’re not so fond of them as I am!

Do you think the television version of your experience is accurate?

I think that what people are going to see on television when they watch the show is a really interesting glimpse of what happened, but it is just merely a stone skipping over the ocean. It was five months, and to just kind of summarize that into eight hours of footage, you’re just barely, barely, barely getting a glimpse at how harsh it was, how fun it was, how trying to the nerves it was. It’s going to be difficult to sense some of these personalities, and there are so many wonderful personalities that participated.

I also think it’s hard because there’s so much stuff that happened off camera that people will never get to see, so many conversations, and sometimes those things affected us more that what people are going to get to see on television. Every single night, a lot of us would get together and we’d sit at the table in the Voorhees’ house and smoke pipes. Those were some of the greatest moments, just sitting around for hours, drinking our warm, flat beer and smoking our pipes and just talking about life, and talking about all of the conspiracies that we thought we going on in the colony, and our relationship with the production company which we always mistrusted. We always thought that they were going to trick us or try to through something at us, some curveball that was going to drive us mad. A thousand things went into the experience that I don’t think are going to come across in the show, and they were a big part of what we went through.

I am so, so very grateful that I had a chance to participate in this -- it was literally a dream. While I was there, there were days that I was definitely wishing I could go home. I wish that somehow everybody could get to do something like this, because it does put a lot of things into perspective.