Ordinary Life from Sundown to Sunrise in a Colonial American Home | History for Sleep

Hey guys! We're now on Spotify 🎧 Join us here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0z2GXOz... Fall asleep to one summer night in July 1776, on a 130-acre Quaker farm on the Brandywine in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with the wheat just cut by sickle and nearly 15 hours of daylight behind it. A household like this burned perhaps 2 candles a week, made by hand from the autumn tallow, at a time when common tallow fetched about 6d a pound in Philadelphia. In the garret slept a 16-year-old German girl working off her passage across the ocean, 4 years of service for about £14, owed a new suit of clothes and perhaps a cow at the end of it. And at the edge of the woods sat a whippoorwill, the bird one patient observer once counted calling 1,088 times without a break. So what did an ordinary farm family's night actually hold, from sundown to sunrise? Subscribe to the channel: @quiethistoricnights In this video, we talk about one July night on a Colonial Pennsylvania farm in 1776, including the wheat standing in its shocks, the cows brought home at sundown and turned out again for the night, milking in the barnyard, the springhouse and its rising cream, the outside kitchen and the bake oven, a Quaker silent grace over bread and milk, the cottager walking home to his own house, the first whippoorwill on the doorstep, fireflies in the orchard and the insect that did not yet have a name, hens roosting in the trees, the news of the Declaration read in Philadelphia, the cost of one candle, knitting and mending by candlelight, the Quaker silence before bed and the slow turning against slavery in 1776, smoke against the mosquitoes, the trundle and the cradle, the rope bed and its straw tick, the bound girl in the garret, latching the door, first sleep and the waking hour, Benjamin Franklin's rules for pleasant dreams, a stranger on the night road, the springhouse in the dark, and the whippoorwill calling the sun up. 🔔 Subscribe so the next long, quiet night of the American past is here whenever you need it. 💬 Tell us where you're listening from, and which hour of this Pennsylvania farm's night you would most like to have spent: milking at sundown, fireflies in the orchard, or the first fire at dawn. 📢 Share this with someone who loves Colonial history or old farmhouses, on Facebook, Reddit or the family group chat. You're the reason this channel exists. Chapters: 00:00 Opening 15:12 Milking in the barnyard 34:14 A plain supper and a silence 53:38 Sparks of fire in the orchard 1:12:42 Hands busy by the candle 1:33:09 The little ones in the trundle 1:55:09 The latch, the dog and the dark 2:16:31 Where the whippoorwill rests 2:37:33 The second sleep, the deepest 2:57:43 The sun comes up over the stubble Sources: Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America, Volume 2 (1771), Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72103 Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 (1898 translation) https://archive.org/details/cu3192402... Benjamin Rush, An Account of the Manners of the German Inhabitants of Pennsylvania (1789) https://archive.org/details/accountof... Extracts from the Journal of Elizabeth Drinker, 1759 to 1807 (1889) https://archive.org/details/extractsf... Benjamin Franklin, The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams, in Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 2, Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40236... Eastern Whip-poor-will, Audubon Guide to North American Birds https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/b... History of Brandywine Valley, First State National Historical Park, National Park Service https://www.nps.gov/frst/learn/histor... DISCLAIMER: This video is based on real historical events and figures, drawn from the sources listed above alongside primary archives, biographies, court records, period press, and leading historical scholarship. While every video is heavily researched, occasional minor inaccuracies in dates, quotes, or specific details may occur — historical sources sometimes disagree, and interpretation is sometimes required where the historical record is silent. Any errors are unintentional. #QuietHistoricNights #HistoryForSleep #SleepStory #BedtimeStory #History #AmericanHistory #ColonialAmerica #1776 #Pennsylvania #ChesterCounty #Brandywine #Quakers #FarmLife #Farmhouse #Whippoorwill #Fireflies #SummerNight #Springhouse #IndenturedServants #FallAsleep #SleepAid