A decade of selling lemonade seems a long time, but nothing in comparison to the drink’s history on Boston’s Common. The park, established in 1634 as a public space, has seen business come and go. Colonial Bostonians used the park for a variety of activities including gravel mining, brick making, alms giving, and pasturing cows. Leisure, too, existed on the Common, but no one was permitted to stroll in the Common on Sunday. The owner of any horse found on the Common on the Sabbath was fined 5 shillings. (Ayer)
Lemonade, of course, is a leisurely drink. Vendors have been selling the drink on the Common since at least 1838, but Bostonians drank it before that. In 1784, wealthy Boston families founded the elite Sans Souci Club (meaning ‘Without a Care’) and sipped lemonades in addition to wines, punches, and teas. (Bushman) Elsewhere in the States, we know Martha Washington, wife to the first president, served lemonade at Mount Vernon. The drink might have made it to the Common for picnics and promenades, but the first businesses are likely pop-up stands for busy days or celebrations.
Following a Fourth of July celebration in the park in 1838 , Massachusetts’ man of letters, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “A very hot, bright, sunny day; town much thronged; booths on the Common, selling gingerbread, sugar-plums, and confectionery, spruce beer, lemonade. Spirits forbidden, but probably sold stealthily.” (American Notebooks)
Half a century later, lemonade featured prominently in another Fourth of July celebration. The Boston Daily Advertiser reports on Independence Day 1888: “And speaking of lemonade, we come to another feature of the Fourth, which is proverbial. Plain, common, every-day lemonade, dark-red lemonade, ling red lemonade, no-red-at all lemonade, every imaginable kind of lemonade from two cents to 10 cents per glass; served in small glasses, large glasses, served with straws and without; served from pails, tubs and pans, made-on-the-spot lemonade, that about covers the lemonade feature of a ‘Fourth on the Common.’” Lemonade was a colorful business for colorful days of celebration, but perhaps these carts were not the everyday summer stalwarts that they are today.