Alcohol and Drinking History in America: A Chronology

The Early Colonists

• The Puritans brought more beer than water on the Mayflower before departing for the New World.¹ Specifically, they carried 42 tons of beer (in contrast to only 14 tons of water) and 10,000 gallons of wine.²
• Early immigrants to what is now the U.S. made alcoholic beverages from fruits such as blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, gooseberries, elderberries, and currants; from vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots, beets, onions, squash, and celery; and such products as flowers, corn silk, herbs, dandelions, goldenrod, and oak leaves.³
• Colonialists maintained the traditional view of Europeans that distilled spirits were aqua vitae, or “water of life.”⁴
• One insurance company increased its premiums by ten percent for the abstainer, whom it judged “thin and watery, and as mentally cranked, in that he repudiates the good creatures of God as found in alcoholic drinks.”⁵
• A special high-proof “groaning ale” was brewed for pregnant women to drink while they were giving birth.⁶
• Religious services, court sessions, and public meetings were often conducted in the biggest tavern in a town.⁷
• Historian Dr. R.J. Rorabaugh has written that

Alcohol was pervasive in American society; it crossed regional, sexual, racial, and class lines. Americans drank at home and abroad, alone and together, at work and at play, in fun and in earnest. They drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn. At nights taverns were filled with boisterous, mirth-making tipplers. Americans drank before meals, with meals, and after meals. They drank while working in the fields and while traveling across half a continent. they drank in their youth, and, if they lived long enough, in their old age. They drank at formal events, such as weddings, ministerial orations, and wakes, and on no occasion - by the firesides f an evening, on a hot afternoon, when the mood called. From sophisticated Andover to frontier Illinois, from Ohio to Georgia, in lumber camps and on satin settees, in log taverns and at fashionable New York Hotels, the American greeting was, “Come, Sir, take a dram first.” Seldom was it refused.”⁸

• Although alcohol consumption was ubiquitous, informal social pressure, reinforced by religious teachings, helped maintain the understanding that the abuse of alcohol was unacceptable. If this failed, there were always legal sanctions available, although the evidence suggests a general sobriety among the colonists.⁹
• As the colonies became increasingly urban and industrialized, emerging social problems were increasingly blamed on intoxication. “This simplistic scapegoating of an intoxicant...now seems a predictable accompaniment of social unrest and economic problems. the basic scenario has been repeated often -- opium, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, each takes its turn as demon....”¹⁰

Sixteenth Century

1563. Wine was made in Florida from wild grapes by the Spaniards.¹¹

1587. The first beer brewed in the New World was in 1587 at Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony in Virginia. It was brewed from Indian corn or maize.¹²

Seventeenth Century

• Except for several tribes in the Southwest, Native North Americans did not have alcohol beverages before their introduction by Europeans in the 1600s. The Apache and Zuni drank alcoholic beverages which they produced for secular consumption, while the Pima and Papago produced alcohol for religious ceremonial consumption. Although Papago consumption was heavy, it was limited to a single peaceable annual ceremony and the drinking among other groups was also infrequent and not associated with any drinking problems.¹³
• Cultivation of hops began in Massachusetts, and both brewing and distilling were legislatively encouraged in Maryland.¹⁴
• In the "Triangle Trade," rum was traded for West African slaves, who were then traded to the West Indians for more molasses to be made into more rum. This three point trading arrangement became a part of colonial commercial life and prosperity.¹⁵
• Almost every important town from Massachusetts to the Carolinas had a rum distillery to meet the local demand, which had increased dramatically. Rum was often enjoyed in mixed drinks, including flip. This was a popular winter beverage made of rum and beer sweetened with sugar and warmed by plunging a red-hot fireplace poker into the serving mug.¹⁶
• The Virginia colonists continued their traditional belief that alcoholic beverages are a natural food and are good when used in moderation. Beer arrived with the first colonists, who considered beer essential to their well being.¹⁷
• Colonial Connecticut required each town to ensure that a place could be made available for the purchase of beer and ale.¹⁸
• Tavern owners in the American colonies were expected not only to disperse food, drink, and hospitality, but also to monitor behavior and keep their customers in check.¹⁹
• Tavern owners in the colonies typically enjoyed high status in the community, as indicated by the early records of Harvard. There, where names of students were listed according to the social position of their fathers, tavern owner's sons preceded those of the clergy.²⁰
• “Beer brewing was one of the earliest industries in colonial America.”²¹
• ”While distilling industries were slow to develop, they expanded in the mid-to-late seventeenth century. The rise in distilling industries was driven in part by the expansion of sugar production in the Caribbean, which provided an enormous base material (molasses) for local Caribbean distillers as well as distillers in Europe and North America.”²²
• Winemaking began in what is now New Mexico.²³
• Habitual alcohol abusers "were whipped or forced to wear a mark of shame. Once so labeled, they could be refused the right to purchase liquor. During the seventeenth century, all of the colonies specified a fine or prescribed the stocks for the first drunkenness offense. Repeated offenders often received sentences to hard labor or corporal punishment"²⁴

1609. The governor and the council of Virginia advertised in 1609 for two brewers in an effort to reduce the death rate.²⁵

1614. “The first non-native American is born in New Amsterdam, (perhaps the first non-native American male born in the New World) in Block & Christiansen's brewhouse. Jean Vigne grows up to become the first brewer born in the New World.”²⁶

1619. The Colony of Virginia enacted a law against playing dice, cards, idleness, drunkenness and excess in apparel. It required that drunkards be “reproved by ministers.”²⁷

1620-1776. During the first century and a half (1620-1776) of the American colonies that became the U.S., alcohol was widely and heavily used. Alcohol was viewed positively while its abuse was condemned.²⁸

1620. The Pilgrims may have landed at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, rather than continue sailing because they were running out of supplies, especially beer.²⁹ The seamen forced the passengers ashore to ensure that they would have sufficient beer for their return trip to England.³⁰

1623. The first vinifera (European grape) vines were planted in New Hampshire by Ambrose Gibbons at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. His diary reflects his pessimism about their prospects: ”The vines that were planted will come to nothing. They prosper not in the ground where they were set, but them that grow naturally are very good of divers sorts.”³²

• The Virginia Colonial Assembly ruled that "Ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinking, or riott, or spending their tyme idellye day or night."³³
• The ship bringing Governor Winthrop to Massachusetts carried “54 tuns [a tun or large cask holds about 361 U.S. gallons] of beer, 14 tuns of water, 1 hogshead of vinegar, 2 hogsheads of [hard] cider and 4 pumps for water and beer.”³⁴

1630s. The settlers were determined to overcome obstacles in their determination and ingenuity to make alcoholic beverages, as this poem suggests:

If barley be wanting to make into malt,
We must be content and think it no fault,
For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips,
Of pumpkins, and parsnips, and walnut-tree chips.³⁵

1630. The first attempt to impose prohibition in the New World occurred when Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts attempted to outlaw all alcoholic beverages in Boston.³⁶

1633.

• “The first real brewery in the New World was founded in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1633.”³⁷
• Plymouth colony prohibited the sale of spirits “more than 2 pence worth to anyone but strangers just arrived.”³⁸
• A Robert Cole of Massachusetts had frequently been punished for drunkenness and was ordered to wear a red D hung from his neck for a year.³⁹

1636. “Thomas Savery of Plymouth Colony is found guilty of drunkenness and ordered whipped.”⁴⁰

1637.

• Boston’s first brewery was established.⁴¹
• Massachusetts Bay Colony law mandated that the price of beer be “not more than one penny a quart at most.”⁴²
• Massachusetts ordered that no person shall remain in any tavern"longer than necessary occasions."⁴³

1638.

• The first vines were planted in Delaware by Swedish immigrants.⁴⁴
• Massachusetts prohibited the drinking of healths in 1638 but the law was soon abandoned because of its widespread opposition.⁴⁵

1639. When Harvard failed to supply students with an adequate supply of beer the president of the college lost his job.⁴⁶

1640. “William Kief, the Director General of the New Netherland Colony, decided that liquor should be distilled on Staten Island. His master distiller, Wilhelm Hendriksen, is said to have used corn and rye to make liquor, and since the Dutch didn’t develop a formula for gin until 10 or so years later, he must have ben making some form of whiskey.”⁴⁷

1641. Hops cultivation began in Massachusetts.⁴⁸

1642.

• The “West India Company built a brewery on a lane that became known as ‘Brouwers Straet’” in what is now Manhattan in New York City.⁴⁹
• The Dutch planted the first vineyard in New Amsterdam (New York).

1645. “In 1645, the Massachusetts General Court forbade ordinary keepers ‘to suffer anyone to be drunk or drink excessively, or continue tippling above the space of half an hour in any of their said houses.”⁵⁰

1648. The cultivation of hops was begun in Virginia.⁵¹

1649. Massachusetts required that “every victualler, ordinary keeper or taverner should always keep provided with good and wholesome beer for the entertainment of strangers who, for want thereof, are necessitated to much needless expenses in wine.”⁵²

1650. The importation of rum into New England from the West Indies began and the beverage became especially popular among poor people because of its low price.⁵³

1651. “The first mention of [rum] is contained in a description of Barbados....”⁵⁴

1652. The first distillery was established in the American colonies on what is now Staten Island in New York State.⁵⁵

1654.

• The preamble of a law in Massachusetts included the statement, presaging National Prohibition’s failure over 250 years later, that “Notwithstanding the great care this court hath had and the laws made to suppress that swinish sin of drunkenness, yet persons addicted to the vice find out ways to deceive the law.”⁵⁶ Indeed, it was’t simply alcoholics who found ways to “deceive the law” of National Prohibition, but tens of millions of ordinary citizens.
• Connecticut prohibited the importation of any spirits from Barbados.⁵⁷

1657. By 1657, a rum distillery was operating in Boston. It was highly successful and within a generation the manufacture of rum would become colonial New England's largest and most prosperous industry.⁵⁸

1662.

• Maryland Governor Charles Calvert planted a 240 acre vineyard and 100 acres more three years later.⁵⁹
• Maryland passed a law to promote the establishment of inns with a monopoly on alcohol sales within a specific geographic area. It was intended to promote inn keeping, brewing, distilling, travel and commerce.⁶⁰

1670. The first license to brew beer in New Hampshire was granted.⁶¹

1672. A Massachusetts law prohibiting payment of wages in the form of alcohol resulted in a labor strike.⁶²

1673. "In 1673, [Puritan minister] Increase Mather praised alcohol, saying that 'Drink is in itself a creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness.'"⁶³

1675. Massachusetts established the office of tithingman to report alcohol violations in homes.⁶⁴

1680. William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania, operated a commercial brewery in Philadelphia.

1693. In Massachusetts, Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote Wo to Drunkards and the next year blamed growing irreligiosity on excess drinking.⁶⁵