This is the season of dancing and there has been a good deal of it, in fact one is looked for every Sunday night.
February 3, 1848, Sherman’s Family Letters
Writes Sherman to his family from Monterey California. More than a year earlier, that is New Year’s eve of 1846 he was still en-route by ship to his new assignment. The voyage lasted close to one year. And the new year celebration of 1846-1847 was marked by a pleasant stretch of “fair wind and truly Pacific sea crossing the equator in Longitude 117 West”.
While the passage to California provided enough adventures to satisfy anyone looking for them, the tasks that lay ahead at first seemed to young Sherman dull with little prospects of career advancement which he deemed essential to eventually supporting a family. The war with Mexico including the battle of Monterey in July 1846 ended by the time Sherman arrived six months later. Thus, instead of participating in combat, he was assigned tedious duties of managing military affairs in an outpost that also served as the port of entry of foreign goods in Alta California.
The young lieutenant’s reaction to his assignment in California was ambivalent. Letters to his family and future wife reflect his mixed feelings. On the one hand he lamented that there’s no hope for military promotion and more pay now that the Mexican war had ended. On the other, he was clearly enjoying hist post in a bustling port town still heavily dominated by Spanish and Mexican customs and ways of life. At that time it seems that theater productions, dances and horse racing far surpass church activity despite the cathedral being one of the oldest and most prominent building of the town. And so, after complaining of the scant career opportunities he reports on the party life and leisure activities even as he critiques the frivolity with his typical ironic humor.
“The officers gave the ‘great ball’ of the season on New Year’s Eve – wrote young Sherman. ‘You have no doubt heard of the Mexican custom of filling eggshells with cologne and other fragrant water to break upon passers by. Here it is carried to a great extent but confined to the house and chiefly at balls and dances.The shells are mostly filled with gilt and colored paper cut very fine, which broken overhead leave it covered with spangles. The ladies break over the gentlemen’s heads and the reverse, and so great are the liberties taken to accomplish the feat that some from behind will clasp your arms tight whilst others shower on the Cascarones’ (filled eggshells). They do not like the shell filled with perfumed water as it produces stains on the dresses and also causes colds to which these people are very subject. It is polite to avoid a Cascacron and even to grasp a lady’s hand to crush the shell in it, if she be in the act of breaking it, but when a gentleman gets a Cascaron on his head he is bound to return it which is sometimes quite difficult when the ladies are skilled in dodging. You can scarcely imagine the extent to which this is carried [out]. At a small party a few nights ago, there were upwards of four hundred Cascarones broken among a party of not over twenty-five persons. “
February 3, 1848, Sherman Family Letters
Women’s Evening Dress c. 1842 By MET Museum – 
Men’s Jacket By MET Museum
He continues describing how ‘the ladies’ can spend the whole day preparing the cascarones, which apparently are still in use today in Mexico to mark various celebrations. And he concludes:
I have often laughed to see a whole party of grown men, myself included sitting round a table clipping this stuff in preparation for a coming dance, but the customs of Monterey are as sensible as the customs of other places, and must be respected.
Sherman Family Letters 1848
While cracking egg shells on the heads of our family, friends and neighbors may not be our thing, may our own welcoming the New Year be as festive and safe as Sherman’s in Monterey.
