Just how did our foremothers do their cooking?

Most often when we visit a small town museum we see an iron cook stove. So we are inclined to imagine that folks had them since the first European settlers arrived in America.

But the truth of it is that people cooked in their fireplace long before cook stoves came along. Cooking and heating fireplaces had been used since the middle ages. It was a few centuries before any improvements were made.

Some of you may have seen a fireplace used for cooking in a photo or a museum display. Often several fireplace tools and several pieces of cookware are shown. But the truth of it is that most early Americans cooked with just a few items. Perhaps a pot hook, a kettle and a ladle. An area of embers might provide heat to a small bake oven or to a make shift oven made with an overturned kettle.
So when the cook did stove come along? It wasn’t until about 1820 that efficient stoves were available making it a useful appliance home use. Though we’d like to think that this invention came about to make life a bit easier for the women of the house but the real appeal of the cook stove was that it took far less wood than a fireplace. While wood was plentiful for many of the early settlers in America as time passed people had to go further and further from home to get enough wood to keep their family warm and to cook their food.

We make a big mistake if we think that this means everyone had a cook stove by the 1830s or 40s. New technology didn’t spread like it does now. First the wealthy had such improvements to their homes. Gradually more and more other people were able to afford them. Also things spread slowly in terms of distance. Transportation was slow so we find that the stove along with other inventions took time to spread from the northeast to the south and the west.

Especially in populated regions by the mid 1800s a cast iron stove was considered a necessity in a “modern” kitchen. These stoves burned either wood or coal. Even gas stoves were available but they lacked the safety features we have today so they were not that common yet.

In the 1900s more and more American obtained electricity and by 1915 most middle class homes had electric appliances. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of folks still using wood or coal stoves. Both means and availability still affected who had modern stoves.

So next time you pop dinner into the microwave think about your ancestors who would never have dreamed of such an invention.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons)

"Hints for Immigrants" by Carl De Haas 1848

We've just discovered that the book "North America Wisconsin Hints for Immigrants" by Carl De Haas is online at the Wisconsin Historical Society website.

What makes this so special is that Carl De Haas is my great-great-grandfather. He wrote this information to help friends from Germany who might wish to immigrate to America.

He begins with advice on passage to America and warnings on packing for the journey. Much of the book is about farming. He mentions the friendliness of the neighbors and how spread out the cities are in America. Having come from Berlin this was quite different.



You can go to the site and read the entire book which has been translated into English. It gives a great picture of the life of an immigrant farmer. De Haas was a well educated man and soon turned to journalism for the rest of his life.

A Day in Paradise, Arizona

We spent yesterday in paradise. Paradise, Arizona is officially a ghost town but there are a few residences still there. At one time it was a booming mining town with stores, school and the usual saloons. George Walker founded the town in the late 1800s. His historic house built in 1902 is a lovely place to stay when visiting the area. That is, if you don't mind driving 5 miles of narrow dirt roads. But then part of the charm is being away from it all.

Whenever we come over to the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains we drive up to the George Walker Housein Paradise to enjoy viewing birds in the yard there. Jackie and Winston are the owners of the historic house and enjoy sharing information about the history and the wildlife of the area. I wondered how a town that once had close to a thousand residents could have disappeared without leaving more than a few houses. It turns out many lived in tents and when the mine played out those who did own houses and other buildings dismantled them and took the lumber with them to build at their next destination. What a different world that was!

Yesterday was not an ordinary day at the George Walker house. It was a hummingbird banding day. What a treat seeing how the tiny birds were captured, ever so gently checked and measured then given a drink to energize them. Unbanded birds are banded and all information is recorded. Sometimes the hummers need a moment to rest in a warm hand before the fly away.

Below are birds we saw in Portal, Arizona, a tiny community just five miles away from Paradise. The road to Portal is paved and the store has a very few groceries. Otherwise it's 50 miles to the closest grocery store. As you can see the area is remote!



Pictures taken by my DH Gary. AstroBird Photography

Two Inaugurations: Lincoln 1861 and Obama 2009

As I watched Obama ride the train on the route that Abraham Lincoln took to his inauguration it struck me how different were the circumstances of the two rides. I remembered reading about how distraught Mrs. Lincoln was when this happened. Lincoln had many enemies as it was well known he did not support slavery. A plot to assassinate him had been discovered in Baltimore. For fear of assassination they had to slip Lincoln into the capital in secret. You can read about his Secret Train Ride here.


How wonderful it was to be able to watch Obama's train ride as he was celebrated at each train stop. Today the crowd watching the inauguration was a wonderful mix of races and cultures. Sometimes we get discouraged with how slow progress can be but looking back to the inauguration of 1861 we see how, through the efforts of so many, our country has truly changed.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons)
Note, the U.S. Capitol, was undergoing some construction at the time.

An Old Fashioned Christmas

When early Americans observed Christmas it was in a far simpler way than we do today. Though they honored the day as Christ’s birthday most of them neither decorated their homes nor gave gifts.

There were regional variations though. Southerners celebrated by gathering their extended families for a time of feasting and dancing. The Pennsylvania Dutch decorated a tree as they had done in Germany.

New Yorkers lit a Yule log and told stories of St Nicholas. Prosperous families exchanged gifts and that is where it all started. By 1830 gift giving and decorating with evergreens took hold and had been adopted by much of the country.

By 1860 most present day Christmas traditions were in place. Cards were sent, Christmas trees were decorated, families gathered for a Christmas feast, stockings were hung and Santa Claus was anticipated.



And, of course, gifts were bought. At first the shopping flurry occurred just before Christmas, especially Christmas Eve. But the period of shopping expanded. In 1924 The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade started the tradition of Thanksgiving marking the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

And here we are today still getting Christmas presents for those we care about. Though this year we may be buying some of them online. A shopping method no one would have ever imagined not so very many years ago.

(Visit a Kiwanis Christmas Party for a 1926 children's home Christmas.)

Jane Kirkpatrick: History Through Historic Novels

Historic novels are a great way to learn about what life was like in the past but you always wonder what of the story is true and what is filled in by the author’s imagination. In the case of the “Change and Cherish” series by Jane Kirkpatrick I had a unique opportunity to find out.

My curiosity led me to visit the Aurora Colony Museum near Portland, Oregon this summer. There I learned that Jane Kirkpatrick doesn't just drop by a museum to read their records on the people she is writing about. She goes on to interview her character’s descendants, then digs even deeper to learn more. I found that not only were Emma’s experiences true to history but even her personality was crafted from the authors research.

The three books in the series tell the story of Emma Wagner Giesy’s life as part of a German communal religious colony. Emma is a determined women whose independent nature often puts her at odds with the autocratic rule by Dr. Kiel, the colony leader.

The first book, A Clearing in the Wild, introduces us to Emma as young woman in the Bethel, Missouri colony. It goes on to tell of her experiences as the only women in a scouting party led by her husband to find a new colony location in the Willapa Bay area of Washington. Emma was appalled when Dr. Kiel arrived and rejected the very location that he had sent them to. He blamed the scouts and looked to Oregon for a better place to settle.

The second book, A Tendering of the Storm, tells of the tragic loss of Emma's husband leaving her with three young children. In her determination to stay at the Willapa settlement and to care for her children on her own she made a fateful decision.

The final book, A Mending at the Edge, is about Emma's life in the Aurora Colony in Oregon where she moved to excape from past mistakes. There she finally makes peace with the community and finds a home.

Throughout the series I found myself identifying with Emma; feeling her determination to be independent from community restrictions, her pain when it appeared her efforts only hurt her more, and her sense of resignation and finally acceptance when she joined the colony in Aurora, Oregon. I felt as if I too had experienced Emma's journey west and struggle to survive under such difficult conditions.

Learn more about Emma and her community:
The Aurora Colony Museum in Oregon
Jane Kirkpatrick: History Through Historic Novels

(Find these books at Amazon.com by clicking the linked titles in this entry.)

Growing Up Ranch Style

I’ve been reading a great book telling the experiences of a girl who was born in New Mexico in 1874 and grew up on a remote ranch in that territory. Angus Morley Cleaveland wrote this book, No Life for a Lady, about her own life and what a life it was!

She describes a world where children were depended on to run many an errand both near and far. When something needed to be done the answer was, “Put a kid on a horse…” resulting in encounters with bears, outlaws and Indians.

How dramatically different her childhood was from her mother’s who had been raised in Iowa to be a lady. How much stronger a woman Angus became because of it.

Almost a half a century later Sandra Day was born. She too wrote a book on growing up on a ranch in the southwest. The book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, was written with her brother.

Things had changed from when Angus was young. Cars and trucks were on the scene and fences were more common. But beyond that life wasn’t all that different.

Horses were still needed to round up cattle and many other ranch jobs. Sandra relates, “My skill with a horse was not great, but I was not afraid of horses, and I loved to get out around the ranch. I cannot remember a time when I did not ride.” She had to prove to the cowboys that she could hold up her end handling cattle.

That ability to hold her own in a man’s world certainly helped her when Sandra Day O’Conner was appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice.

Wildfires Across the Years

"The wind was rising and wildly screaming. Thousands of birds flew before the fire, thousands of rabbits were running ... Laura wanted to do something, but inside her head was a roaring and whirling like the fire. Her middle shook, and tears poured out of her stinging eyes."
from Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Thankfully we are safe far enough away from the fires in northern California that all we see is the smoke filled sky. We can hear helicopters coming and going taking water to control the backfire that has been set to the west of us. I think how small they look with what seems like so little water. I know there is a plan and gradual steady work will gradually get the fires under control.

I couldn’t help but think of Laura in the “Little House on the Prairie” feeling so terrified as she and her sisters watched the prairie fire approach. But Laura’s father had a plan and he carried it out with the greatest speed possible. He plowed a ring around their house and lit backfires. Then her parents used wet gunny sacks and their stomping feet to stop any fire that got inside their fire line.

I wonder if those helicopters are doing the same thing as I hear their propellers droning across the sky. Ma and Pa Ingalls would never have imagined helicopters but their method to save their home wasn’t that different than what we do today. We still have to have fire fighters in danger on the ground and the sky isn't all that safe either. I'm so thankful for these brave men and women.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons)

How Did They Ever Survive This Heat?

We are traveling in the southwest in our RV right now and when we arrived at the RV park today our air-conditioning just couldn’t get the trailer below 95 degrees until the sun went down. We got by mind you, and it was noting like the time it couldn’t get below 105 but that time it was 117 outside. But this really got me to thinking about how miserable the heat must have been for Arizona’s pioneer women in their layers of undergarments and long dresses. I wonder if they ever just slipped on their lightest weight dress without all those underpinnings.

Now we are spoiled by modern air-conditioning but there were a few things that helped a little back then. For one thing adobe was common for homes. I remember going into an old adobe structure at a national monument on a hot day and I was amazed at how much cooler it was inside. Nothing like AC mind you, but better than the 105 degrees that day.

But as the” modern” world came to the southwest there was a great cooling system that helped folks make it through those long hot days of summer. It was the swamp cooler and it helped people cool down from the 1930s until air-conditioning became widely available in the 1950s and 60s. Actually some people still use them preferring them to the cold blast of air-conditioning.

I love that name “swamp cooler”. It sounds so down and basic, nothing highfaluting like “air conditioner”. I’ve read they are sometimes called desert coolers but I’ve never heard a southwesterner use that term. These coolers do a pretty decent job through the dry, hot months because they work by blowing air though dampened materials. But they only work well when the humidity is low and aren’t worth much once the monsoons hit Arizona.

Before swamp coolers people did what they could to stay beat the heat. One solution was to sleep out on the porch with wet sheets hanging down from the rafters to make the breeze feel a little cooler. Sort of a very crude swamp cooler. Hurray for the resourcefulness of the human spirit!

(photos from Wikimedia Commons)

A Home on Wheels

As I was browsing through the book, Pioneer Women I ran across a page titled "A Home on Wheels" showing a family standing in front of their prairie schooner. It brought to mind how I call our fifth wheel trailer our "home on wheels".

We recently returned from a birding trip around southeast Arizona and we felt like we had really gone back in time at one RV park with no cell phone service or TV. Then it occurred to me living in an RV would have seemed like heaven to pioneers traveling west.

Hmm, let's look at the differences:

A covered wagon or prairie schooner used by pioneers measured about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. --- Our trailer is about 30 feet long and 8 feet wide with slide outs to make the bedroom and living room bigger.

Some prairie schooners had a false bottom to carry supplies. --- Our RV has storage under the floor plus many drawers and cupboards to carry supplies.

Lists of non perishable food items to bring on the overland journey suggested pioneers include ample amounts of flour, sugar, bacon, dried fruit and rice. Starting with 5 barrels of flower you can imagine how much space all this took. --- We have a refrigerator that works on either gas or electricity and a grocery store is rarely more than an hour away.

Pioneer women had to cook over an open fire. Some had a Dutch oven or a rare stove. --- I do most of my cooking in the microwave and sometimes light up the gas stove or oven. Roughing it is having my dear hubby barbecue on our little gas grill.

(covered wagon picture is from library.byways.org/)
(RV picture by Judy Breneman)

Cultured Clutter in Things Victorian

I'm finally beginning to understand the apparent chaos we see in things Victorian. Recently we visited The Amerind Foundation: A Museum of Native American Archaeology, Art, History, and Culture. It's in the middle of the desert in southeast Arizona and we found a treasure there.

Among many other fascinating exhibits was a small room arranged like a museum would have done during Victorian times. The information on the display explained that instead of an orderly exhibit by time and type Victorians preferred to have a bit of everything mixed together, a way of showing the variety in their travels and other cultural experiences.

This is seen in Victorian quilts as well. An obvious example is the crazy quilt but as I worked designing a Log Cabin quilt I realized even a simple Log Cabin was made in such a way as to show off the variety of fabrics used. In fact after looking at several quilts of the period I had to really force myself to avoid my modern tendency to put the fabrics in perfect order from light to dark.

(artifacts graphic from Karen's Public Domain)
(log cabin doll quilt by Judy Breneman)