We were discussing the differnces between American’s and European’s use of eating utensils. My mother, the history buff, said that during the American Revolution, the Son’s of Liberty used the switching of knife and fork to cut meat during a meal as a signal of identification for eachother in public places.
It sounds like a myth to me I can’t find any historical information on the subject.
I’ve heard it before, and here’s an old thread that discusses it.
I’ve also heard a slight variation on it in that it wasn’t specifically a signal, but it was something that Americans did differently than Europeans, so those wanting to differentiate themselves from Europeans adopted the custom as one more way to show that they were “real” Americans and not Europeans living in America.
As far as I am aware, there isn’t any real support for any of these theories. It’s been presented as fact enough times that your mother should certainly be forgiven for repeating it, but it’s not historical fact by any stretch of the imagination.
Another theory is that Americans ate differently because of a notable lack of forks in the colonies in the 1600s, the theory being that back in harsh frontier times, folks had more important things to worry about (and more important things to waste valuable space and weight carrying across the ocean) than fancy tableware.