The Taste of Chocolate in Colonial Newport

A Brief Local History of our Favorite Natural Mood Elevator

If you lived in Newport during the Colonial era, you would be familiar with many smells, both pleasant and unpleasant. And if lucky, you would be familiar with some of the best: those of roasting cocoa beans and hot drinking chocolate.

And you would have had one of Colonial America’s foremost businessmen, Aaron Lopez, to thank for your ready access to one of life’s most delicious pleasures. Lopez, who seemingly never missed a money-making opportunity, was involved in trading of many types. He traded women’s shoes, silk handkerchiefs, ships and barrels, building materials, furniture, spermaceti candles and, of course, chocolate.

He was also involved in the slave trade on and off. (Chocolate, as with sugar, was tied to slavery from the early days of its overseas trade.) Lopez came to Newport from Lisbon, Portugal, in 1750 at the age of 19, and by age 40 he was one of the wealthiest men in Newport, and an early supporter of Touro Synagogue.

Historically, chocolate was not the highly refined ambrosia we enjoy today. In their earliest uses by Central American people, as long ago as 1900 BC, cocoa beans were almost always made into a drink of some sort. The Mayans liked theirs warm—a “bitter, frothy” potion—while the Aztecs preferred a cold brew flavored with flower petals, chili pepper, allspice, vanilla or honey.

It was the Spanish who, after conquering Mexico in the 1520s, brought the cocoa bean back to Europe, where it was enjoyed as a drink, sweetened with cane sugar—another New World commodity—by those who could afford it.

Cocoa beans were imported into Boston as early as 1682. Chocolate making in North America during the 1700s was almost wholly concentrated in the northeast cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Newport, with several individuals in each city working at the trade. Because of close trade ties with the West Indies, the market for the product in the colonies—especially New England—was wide open, allowing anyone of modest means to afford a stimulating morning cup of chocolate. It was even plentiful enough that chocolate was included in provisions given to the poor in almshouses.

Manufacturing raw chocolate is a fairly simple, albeit labor intensive, process. It starts with a cacao tree (ideally, many of them), on which grow football-shaped pods about six inches long. The pod is the fruit of the cacao tree. Once harvested, the beans are separated from the pods and left out to ferment for a few days. The beans are then dried for several more days in preparation for shipment. All of these steps must take place at or near the point of origin, within 20° latitude of the equator, where cacao trees grow best, to prevent spoilage in transit. In the 1700s, most of the labor would have been performed in or near Central America by African slaves.

The next steps were best performed in more temperate climes, which is one reason why Rhode Island and other northern colonies were the big producers of chocolate, despite the fact that southern colonies like Virginia were big consumers.

Similar to coffee beans, cocoa beans need to be roasted to attain a uniform color, bring out the chocolate flavor and loosen the hulls. Winnowing—repeatedly tossing the beans in a basket—separates the lighter hulls from the heavier meat of the bean—the cocoa “nibs”—which can then be ground into chocolate.

All these steps could be done at home, if you were so inclined. And this, in fact, is what Aaron Lopez undertook. Or rather, he employed people to do it for him, one of whom was recorded as a “negro” named Prince Updike, a master chocolate grinder. I say “employed” because Updike’s exact status at the time—enslaved or free—is not clear.

The Newport Historical Society has in its collections about 75 of Aaron Lopez’s account books, very detailed, spanning three decades of diverse business interests, of which chocolate was but one.

Lopez’s ledgers for the years 1766 to 1769 contain entries detailing Updike’s ground chocolate output, for which Lopez supplied the raw materials. In just one year, from 1766 to 1767, Updike produced 2,000 pounds of chocolate from 2,500 pounds of cocoa. He doubled the amount the following year to 4,000 pounds.

It’s not clear if Updike did only the grinding, or if he was also responsible for the roasting and hulling. Nor is it known if he enlisted members of his family or subcontracted in order to produce such quantities. For his efforts he received five shillings per pound of product.

It should be noted that these large quantities of chocolate produced by Updike coincided with the passing of the Revenue Act of 1767, which imposed a tax on, among other things, tea imported into the North American colonies. One result of this was that colonists switched to drinking chocolate or coffee as an alternative to tea. There’s an anecdote told of Martha Washington, that when imported tea was in disfavor because of the tax laws, she would instead enjoy a sort of chocolate tea, a brew made from cocoa hulls steeped in hot water.