Shultz House in Old Salem

The Schultz House was built in 1819.  It's red clapboard is a contrast to most of the brick and plaster buildings.  When I think about it, a form to make bricks and finding the ingredients to make bricks is pretty easy.  Cutting tree trunks into usable clapboard is a whole 'nuther bucket of worms.  Maybe bringing bricks in from Philadelphia was an expensive proposition; lumber brought in took fewer wagons and beasts of burden (ox? horses?)  Or maybe by the time this house was built there was a saw mill in the area.  Then again, maybe the Schultz's just wanted to be able to change the color of their home from time to time...

As far as the red paint, according to Eric Sloane's "Do's and Don'ts of Yesteryear" that I picked up in one of the stores in Old Salem, what is known as early American "kitchen red" paint is a pretty simple recipe:  Do mix Indian red or powdered red earth with black from a lamp and bind it with sour milk.  Milk was a source of the earliest paints and its lasting quality founded the first plastic paints.  (Another who knew!)

The black paint on the shutters could be from another of Mr. Sloane's comments:  Do make black paint from an ancient recipe by baking potatoes (first slowly and then briskly) until they are completely burned or charred.  This black powder ground well in linseed oil produces a fine black paint.  (Ooookaaaay!)

The white trim?  "Do make New England glazed whitewash by taking two gallons of water, a pound and a half of rice and a pound of moist (?) sugar.  Let this mixture boil until the rice is dissolved, then thicken it to a proper consistency with finely powdered lime.  This whitewash gives a lasting satiny finish seen in the earliest farmhouse walls.  By adding milk or eggs the paint becomes plastic and more lasting."

Now, if you take these recipes and make your own paints and there's a problem, well, it's not my problem.  I'm just the messenger.  Dirt, lamp black, sour milk, charred potatos, rice, sugar, milk, eggs?  Who knew!