Judah Benjamin - The Jewish Confederate

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(11-04-2014 03:30 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Roger! The Gamble Plantation is a wonderful, fascinating place with a unique atmosphere! Absolutely worth a visit - I'd love to see it again.
One more interesting aside: There were only few (I can remember two) closets in the entire big house, which were a sign of wealth. Since Colonial American times, houses had often lacked closets because of a "closet tax" imposed by the British crown. (No taxes for Mary's trunks...)

Be careful on the reference to "closet taxes." That's one of the historical myths that have been busted over the years by thorough research with groups such as Colonial Williams;burg Foundation. http://www.history.org/Foundation/journa.../stuff.cfm

HOUSES DIDN’T HAVE CLOSETS IN COLONIAL DAYS BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED TO AVOID PAYING THE CLOSET TAX
Inventories and floor plans of the period show that many houses had closets. Typically found on either side of a fireplace, they were used for general storage. Clothing was usually kept in such furniture as a chest, a clothespress, or a chest of drawers, not hung on hangers in a closet.

“When people today think of a closet, they are thinking of a clothes closet,” says Patrick Sheary, DAR curator of furnishings, “so when they come across a closet in the dining room, they call it a cupboard.” The myth regarding the closet tax, he says, “probably results from a misunderstanding of how closets were used in the eighteenth century, and the fact that they were not always located in every bedroom, as they are today.” Taxes varied colony to colony, but research has turned up no examples of a tax on closets in any of the thirteen colonies that broke with Britain in 1776.

“People didn’t have as much stuff in those days,” says Alden O’Brien, curator of textiles and clothing. “They didn’t need to call California Closets to come organize their stuff in big, walk-in closets. Even a well-to-do colonial woman would have had just a few dresses.”

The myth of the second story tax is a variation on the closet tax story. The claim is that people in the eighteenth century built story-and-a-half houses to avoid the tax on the second story. Historians are aware of no building taxes in, for example, Virginia, where during the colonial period story-and-a-half houses were common. The story-and-a-half house with dormers was simply a popular style.