Coffee, Camelia, and Cacao: Caffeinated Beverages in the Atlantic World

A Stenton Symposium

10:00 AM – Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States by Michelle Craig McDonald
McDonald’s talk follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans, and ultimately to the growing import/export businesses of the early nineteenth-century United States that rebranded this exotic good as an American staple.

11:00 AM – “Very Courteously Entertained: Teawares from James Logan’s Stenton” by Dennis S. Pickeral
Pickeral’s presentation will examine the material culture and social history of tea consumption at Stenton through rare tea, coffee, and chocolate serving and drinking vessels that descended in the Logan family. A large and unusually intact assemblage of archaeological vessels, and Logan family manuscripts illustrate the meaning and importance of the tea taking ritual in the age of politeness.

12:00 PM – Lunch (provided)

1:00-2:00 PM – Stenton Ceramics Workshop with Ron Fuchs II
Participate in a hands-on examination of archeological ceramics in Stenton’s collection.

2:00-3:00 PM – Extend your visit and join us for our FREE public program with Mary Crathorne!
Meet an 18th-century chocolate maker and learn about the history of chocolate in Colonial Philadelphia.

Registration Fee: $20 (lunch included)