Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 33.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

The liquor called piquette was largely substituted for cider, wine and beer. It was considered to serve as a tonic, and tended to quench thirst. Directions for making it was as follows: Water was filtered through the pressed and fomented mash of grapes. The mashed grapes were put into a cask, pressed very full, and afterwards hermetically sealed and put in a cool place. When to be used, the head was taken out of the cask, water was added until the whole mass was moistened and water stood on top. Thus, at the end of the fourth or fifth day the liquor could be drawn off for daily use, the place of the portion used being furnished by a new supply of water. In this way a cask of thirty-six gallons furnished about four gallons of piquette for about twenty days. Piquette was also made from pears, cherries, plums, figs and juniper berries. The rinds of oranges, lemons and aromatic plants, angelica roots, peach leaves, etc., were often added when the drink was too sweet.

Engravers found that the different woods were of hardness as follows: First, the wild current or service tree and the apple or pear; next, the dog-wood, red-berry (azalea nudiflora), and kalmia latifolia; then the holly, when well dried; but of all, the boxwood was preferred.

The peach tree furnished a number of uses. The gum was used instead of gum arabic; a tea of the leaves given in whooping cough; the leaves used to season creams instead of vanilla; the leaves used in dying.

Beer was made from maize, the persimmon and the sweet locust.

Calycanthus (sweet shrub) was employed as an anti-spasmodic tonic in cases of chronic agues, a strong decoction of the bark of the root or of the seed being given. It was noticed that the root was strongly camphorated.

As an antidote for poison oak the bruised leaves of the Collinsonia canadensis (stone root) were employed; and also the Verbena urticifolia.

Rhus glabra (smooth sumac) was used as a gargle for cleansing the mouth in putrid fevers; and a decoction of the root employed in gonorrhoea and gleet. A vinegar was made from the berries.

Beech-tree leaves, collected in autumn in dry weather, were used for filling beds, the odor being grateful and they being very elastic.

Black oak was considered efficacious in leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea,