Crafts & Chores

THE WORK OF DAILY LIFE

We often wonder what sort of work people did on frontier homesteads. The answer depends on age and gender. Men spent most of their days outdoors tending crops and animals, repairing farm buildings and fencing, hunting game, and chopping wood. They sharpened their blades, mended farm implements, and during harvest time, toted corn, pulled flax, split rails for new fencing, and cut wheat.

Women prepared and preserved food, cleaned house, washed clothes, milked cows, dyed and wove cloth, repaired clothing, made rugs, linens and quilts, baskets, brooms, soap, candles and an endless list of household items as well as the job of looking after children. Women also served as the family doctor with their knowlege of home remedies.

Classroom Activity: A Pioneer Sampler

Classroom Activity: A Frontier Bed

Children assisted their parents in these chores as soon as they were old enough. Even very young children helped card wool, grind corn into meal, stir pots, and sew. Daniel Drake, who grew up the in the town of Mayslick, Kentucky in the 1790s wrote a series of letters about his childhood experiences. His letters show that some chores were strictly divided along gender lines, and a person's everday work reinforced their role in the household and in life.

Lesson 7: Daniel Drake's description of chores

DYEING FABRIC

Plain homespun was the color of oatmeal. People used natural dyes to color thread before weaving or to brighten faded fabrics. Common substances used to make dyes were fruits, vegetables, plants, and bugs. Dye preparation was very time-consuming, but advertisements by local dyers indicate that this process could be done by a professional.

A good rule of thumb was to gather about a pound of dye material for each pound of fabric. Some dyes require a fixative to set the color. The dye material would be soaked in water overnight then crushed and boiled for an hour. The strained dye concentrate was then added to the water. The fabric would be simmered in the water until it reached the desired shade, then rinsed in cold water and dryed away from the sun or heat. The table below is a list of some common dye materials.

Classroom Activity: Dyeing Fabric

SOAP MAKING

Making soap was one of the hardest and nastiest of chores, but also one of the most important. Soap was made from ashes, water, and fat. Early spring and late fall were the most popular times for making soap. People saved table scraps and old lard all winter for use in spring soap-making. In the fall, they used animal fat from hog butchering.

Soap-making required skill in judging correct proportions and temperatures and the process was not always successful. First, water was poured through wood ashes to produce lye. According to the domestic manual, The Kentucky Housewife, you made soft soap by boiling the lye until it was strong enough to "eat off the soft part of a feather." The grease and lye were then boiled together to produce soap thick enough to form cakes at the bottom of a cup of cold water. This produced a soft dark yellow paste for washing clothes.

To make hard cakes of soap, the lye had to be strong enough "to float an egg." Grease was added to the lye and the mixture boiled until thick, when salt was added. The mixture hardened for a day then was melted down again before forming hard cakes of soap for bathing. 6 bushels of ashes plus 50 pounds of grease yielded 1 tub of soap.

CANDLES AND LIGHTING

The fireplace was the primary light source. Rush lights, the forerunners of candles, were rushes coated in animal fat and stuck in the walls near the hearth. Betty lamps (also called boat lamps) were small lamps with a grease pan and a wick or rag in the spout. At the handle was a short chain with a hooked end for freeing the wick when it became encrusted. Dipped candles were made of heated animal fat. Wicking was tied to a candle cradle and dipped repeatedly in the tallow. Tallow had to remain a constant temperature; too hot and the previous layer of tallow would melt, too cold and the candle would not be formed straight nor burn well. Making candles was an annual chore, but an experienced candlemaker could make 200 candles a day this way. Candle molds made the process faster and easier. Hot tallow was poured into pewter or tin molds for one to eight candles.

BROOMS AND BRUSHES

Cleaning and scouring were part of the daily routine. Most people made their own cleaning tools, the most important of which was the broom. Daniel Drake recalled in his letters, how at age twelve, he was quite proficient in making a broom from a wood sapling:

Scrubbing and scouring were generally done on Saturday.... Till I went to Cincinnati, I had never seen a scrubbing brush. We always used a 'split' broom, in the manufacture of which I have worked many a rainy day & winter night. A small hickory sapling was the raw material. The 'splits' were stripped up witha jack-knife and the right thumb, for 8 or 10 inches, bent back & held down with the left hand. When the 'heart' was reached and the wood became too brittle to strip, it was cut or sawed off, & only the splits turned forward and tied with a low string.... It only remained to reduce the pole above to the size of a handle.

The broom was used for sweeping the dirt yard around the house and the floors. A short-handled broom served as a scrub brush for bowls and kettles. Even smaller brooms were used as whisks in cooking.

 

 

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