North Salem Kids Compare Colonial Life with Their Own

ERIC GROSS Children from Southeast and North Salem enrolled at the Pequenakonck Elementary School groom oxen at Philipsburg Manor during a live study of Colonial America. Grooming cows, carding wool and putting on yokes to carry milk for making butter were practices unheard of by some local six-year-olds, until they visited Philipsburg Manor.

The first graders at the North Salem Pequenakonck Elementary School ventured to the Sleepy Hollow working farm last week and got a taste of what it was like living in Colonial America.

Teacher Marcy Rudolf said her children were fascinated by the trip. “Some of the kids felt it would have been much more difficult living during Colonial times,” she reported, “while others decided it would have been easier. They all agreed, however, the field trip was positively awesome.”

North Salem Superintendent of Schools Ken Freeston explained the trip coincided with the children’s study of Colonial America and a special social studies unit called “Now and Long Ago.”

Philipsburg Manor employs techniques typical of the 1750s on land once owned by the Philips family— prominent Anglo-Dutch landowners and merchants.