December Object of the Month

Toasty Toes in Colonial Times
By Amanda Nesci

As winter approaches, Curatorial & Collections Intern Amanda Nesci highlights one of the most asked about objects on display in the Museum: the colonial foot warmer.

During the winter, homes and public spaces before the mid-1800s were typically poorly heated. As a result, foot stoves, also known as foot warmers, were particularly common in Northern Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries to add supplemental heat.

A popular style for foot warmers, particularly in the eighteenth century, was a metal box with a hinged door within a wooden frame with a wire handle or bail. The metal box contained a tray to hold the embers or charcoal. Some variations of the design include wooden frames with square or turned pillars, only wooden frames on the top and bottom, or a solid wooden box with holes. In some cases, the box, or inner container, could have been made of earthenware. Holes could be found both in the wood or metal, and usually appeared in patterns, such as hearts or geometric shapes. These holes allowed for ventilation to release the warmth from the coals. Women’s skirts or blankets were usually hung over the foot warmer to insulate the heat.

Foot warmers were used in various settings, most notably in carriages, sleighs, churches, and meeting houses. Such use is illustrated through this except from Sabbath in Puritan New England (1891) by Alice Morse Earle:

“In bitter winter weather women carried to meeting little foot-stoves,--metal boxes which stood on legs and were filled with hot coals at home, and a second time during the morning from the hearthstone of a neighboring farm-house or a noon-house. These foot-warmers helped to make endurable to the goodwives the icy chill of the meeting-house; and round their mother's foot-stove the shivering little children sat on their low crickets, warming their half-frozen fingers.”

The foot warmer pictured above can be found in the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s collection and is currently on view in the Museum’s Long Room, a period room recreating an 18th century public dining room and the site of General George Washington’s famous farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolution. This particular foot warmer, with a wooden frame and a metal box with a geometric puncture pattern, dates back to the year 1800 and was used in old St. George's Church on Beekman Street in Lower Manhattan. In order to heat a foot warmer for church, it was common for people to stop at nearby taverns and homes to replace their supply of embers. With Fraunces Tavern in close proximity to the old site of St. George’s Church, it is likely churchgoers might have stopped by to replenish their foot warmers before service.

References

“18th Century Foot Warmer.” The Old Stone Fort, n.d. https://theoldstonefort.org/18th-century-foot-warmer/

“Carriage Museum of America-Library Annual Newsletter.” Carriage Museum of America-Library, 2005. https://www.carriagelibrary.org/uploads/b/43c9e690-5c67-11e9-9de1-0f740f01cd9b/2005_Carriage%20Foot%20Warmers.pdf.