Dancing with the Demon Rum

I’ve always asked too many questions. From childhood, I was always asking “why”? All the time. About everything. It can get sort of annoying, or at least so I’m told. So I’m always the one asking bartenders and servers questions that stump them. But bartenders, if you’re lucky, are fonts of great knowledge about history, culture, imperialism, macro and micro-economies - so much is tied up in the history of DRINKS.

And it’s more than just asking WHY. I am the ED of a historic house museum, and I spend so much of my time trying to find myself in a different present. What was it like to work on the Hill House (as our site was originally known) in 1856, far from "town”? What was it like to look across a prairie to the east from behind our massive columns? What was it like to try to eat in the dining room in July, with food carried across a yard by enslaved people dodging chickens and God knows what else? What was it like to be the enslaved person toiling outdoors in the heat…in an even hotter kitchen?

Food and drink give us the chance to dip our toes into another world, to for a moment try to place ourselves in a different present. So during the COVID-19 shut down, as we are working to remain connected, I dove deep into rumbullion…killdevil…demon rum…with the results you can watch here for yourself in this video. You can tell so much of the history of the New World through rum, but I do have one confession - there is no way to actually drink the stuff. What we drink today is far removed from the nasty swill called killdevil in the 17th century, fermented with animal carcasses and dung (at least sometimes).

So, bottoms up! Enjoy the history, enjoy a drink, and look for another installment soon!

- Rowena Houghton Dasch