The sink is just like I have in my kitchen and counter tops put in nine years ago except it's soapstone. I have a soapstone foot warmer, circa 1830.

I am shocked that they had Bundt pans back then! :>)

Houses of that era did not have enough chairs to seat everyone unless you were exceedingly rich and lived in a spacious manor. For one thing, space was at premium. Often, there wasn't enough space for chairs. Typically, there would have been 2 chairs. You either took you turn at the table, or sat on a keg or any other convenient surface. Some cabins were equipped with a hinged seat on the wall. It could be pulled down, and then stowed away when not used.

In winter, the lady of the house cooked in the fireplace. During warm weather, cooking was done outside or in a small "summer kitchen". The summer kitchen would have been a small smoke-house sized building separate from the cabin.

Jemdamdy,,that may have been the case where you live but here in Massachusetts even the smallest cabins had a separate dining room. Those who did not have chairs had a long bench on either side of the dining room table.

The big meal of the day was the noon meal and all cooking was done before the midday meal. The evening meal was a light meal of cold leftovers or bread & cheese.

They were very frugal with cooking fires because by 1830 over 75% of all the woodlands had been cleared and they simply did not have the fuel to keep the fires burning all day except in the winter when the temps outdoors were sub freezing and they simply had no options.

If you look on the window sill on the lefthand side of the sink you can see a bar of home made lye soap and a grater. They used that grater to shred the soap to make dishwashing soap.

Very cool!

We have a PA museum near here in Lancaster, and the kitchen there is identical to the one you showed. In fact I thought it was the Landis Valley kitchen. I have all those utensils in my kitchen now but don't use them for cooking. I have that bundt pan although I don't know what it was used for.

Old Sturbridge Village, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts is a living museum depicting life in a rural New England Agricultural & Industrial village in the time period 1790-1840. Being a living museum they have staff members in costume throughout the museum who are performing the different tasks in the original manner.

Jan & I have an annual membership and we go there 3 to 6 times a month year around, because being a living museum, it is constantly different. In spring they are plowing with oxen & planting crops & gardens. Through the summer they are harvesting hay & grains and last weekend they were cutting the corn, harvesting squash & pumpkins, picking apples, operating the cider mill, saw mill, wool carding mill as well as the blacksmith shop, shoe shop, pottery shop, and print shop.

Last weekend they were also harvesting the herbs, cabbage & root crops(parsnips, carrots, beets)in the garden and demontrating how those items were preserved for winter storage as well as smoking hams, bacon & sausages in the smokehouse.

If you look at the first picture of the kitchen you will see a large square opening on the left side of the fireplace. That is the oven. To use the oven they would build a wood fire in the oven and continually feed wood in for about 2 hours to heat the oven, then the fire was put out and the ashes removed and the items they wanted to bake were put in and a metal door was inserted to close the oven. Bread was formed in a round ball and put directly in the oven as well as a round ceramic pot of beans or pies in ceramic pie pans. (the pies were primarily meat or vegetable pies that were consumed as a main coarse item. They did not generally make deserts. (the pie on the table is an "Apple & Pork pie".

The also made caserols and puddings (corn pudding or meat puddings) but when baking those items in that type of oven
They had a lot of problems with the core of the pudding not cooking thoroughly so the ceramic bundt pan was used.

The ceramic bundt pans as well as all of their ceramic cookware & serving ware are made in the pottery shop and all of the metal cooking utensils & candle lanterns are made in the Tin Shop.

If anyone is interested I can post additional posts with showing some of the other shops and what they make.

I'd love to see some more!