Before British taxation efforts & the American Revolution politicized tea, the acquisition of new domestic equipment for serving this hot beverage & the display of genteel behavior when drinking it had come to signal social know-how & refinement among colonists, especially the women. Although the casual perusal of travel journals, letters, diaries, & other personal writings from the period might suggest that tea drinking almost immediately became widespread throughout the colonies, further examination reveals different patterns of consumption at various times & within differing populations.
Around 1750 Israel Acrelius (1714-1800) asserted in his history of the Swedish settlement on the Delaware River that “tea, coffee, & chocolate are so general as to be found in the most remote cabins, if not for daily use, yet for visitors, mixed with Muscovado [a partially refined sugar].” Israel Acrelius was a Swedish Lutheran missionary & priest. Beginning in 1749, Acrelius took a post in Wilmington, Delaware, site of a Swedish Lutheran congregation. He returned to Sweden in 1756 & in 1759, he published his History of New Sweden, which dealt with the religious & secular history of the area. This book was translated into English by William Morton Reynolds, who learnt Swedish for the purpose, & published in 1874.
The Virginian Devereaux Jarratt (1733-1801) presented a different picture, however, when he reminisced about his childhood in the 1740s:"Our food was altogether the produce of the farm, or plantation except a little sugar, which was rarely used. We made no use of tea or coffee for breakfast, or at any other time; nor did I know a single family that made any use of them…. I suppose the richer sort might make use of those & other luxuries, but to such people I had no access. We were accustomed to look upon, what were cdlcd gentle folks, as beings of a superior order."Jarratt was the rector of Bath Parish in Dinwiddie County & one of the most influential evangelical leaders in Virginia’s Anglican Church whose autobiography, The Life of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt, was published in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1806.
See: Determining The Growth And Distribution Of Tea Drinking In Eighteenth-Century America
