Work on the Plantation

To keep a plantation going and ensure its success, each person was responsible for many different tasks-even small children helped out in some way. Work began at sun up and continued until dark. Women and girls did the cleaning, gardening, food preparation and preservation, cooking, laundry and soap making, dairying, egg gathering, sewing and mending, and sometimes helping in the fields. Men and boys worked in the fields, mended fences, did some carpentry, fished and hunted, gathered and split firewood, hauled water, and when there were no women present, did whatever household chores and cooking were necessary.

During what little leisure time the planter and his family had, they played games such as draughts (checkers), chess, and blind-man's bluff. Children had toys made at home from scraps of fabric or wood. Free time in the evenings might be used for religious lessons, or if a parent was literate, to teach the children to read or write.