Please enter the door to your right and enter the room we interpret as the Brown’s dining room.
Throughout the rooms in this museum you will see exhibits that not only highlight the collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, but that also illuminate aspects of daily life in the New Republic.
In the 21st century, we have notions about how to use particular rooms in our homes, but early Americans often used space much differently from how we do today.
In the eighteenth century, a dining table allowed for great flexibility of use. It could be taken apart and its pieces set up either against the wall or in various places to suit the needs of the occasion. In fact, although called the “dining room,” we know that early Americans, like John Brown and his family, varied where they took their meals and tea, including in their bedchambers.
Breakfast usually consisted of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, bread and butter, cold meats or a hash made from leftover meats. The biggest meal of the day, and the most elaborate affair, was the midday dinner. To get a sense of how many people were entertained here, James Brown wrote in his diary in 1791: “We have a Turtle dinner, 22 gentlemen in our Dining Room. The Turtle was relished the finest I ever tasted, some of the company sat till 12 O’clock.” Servants were certainly needed to do most of the cooking, but we know from the family’s letters and diaries, that Sarah did make pies and cakes.
Notice that to your left, you can see where the original house built in 1788 ended. The Gammells, who lived here in the second half of the 19th century, added on to the house beyond the red brick wall that you see behind the window. If you look up, you will see a portion of the Colonial Revival ceiling that Marsden Perry added when he lived here. To your right is a bas-relief portrait of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is to your left.