Staying Warm 150 years ago.

It is interesting to vist Williamsburg Virginia, where they show you exactly how the settlers lived. They have a wood mill, bar, middle class and upper class homes and even a court house and everything restored to original fashion. The rich people actually had a seperate building for cooking. But their rooms were sparcely decorated with furniture pushed up against the walls and only brought out to the middle of the room when company arrived. It was discussed how cold it was and that the cooks actually probably stayed the warmest. It is interesting.

If you have any belief in the coming of December 21, 2012 and the possible disasters in is scary to think how any of us will survive. The only thing we know is how to go to the store for supplies. Few of us have any ability to go back to surviving off the land and burning wood to survive. Let's hope the predictions are wrong, but kind of scary that it is coming from many sources, they Myans, Nostrodomus, Chinese, Indians, etc. Atleast the Hearth.com members are ahead of the game in that we sure know how to burn wood.

Back during the revolution, BB? :bug:

BrotherBart said:

pen said:

BrotherBart said:

When dad was growing up their heat was just the fireplace. His dad would fill a bucket with coals at night and put it in the kid's bedroom for their night heat.

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My grandfather still has the piece of soapstone that he and 2 of his siblings would take to their shared bed at night.

Hard to believe how times have changed just in the last 100 years. Stuff like these stories would be considered abuse now!

pen

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I didn't mention that damned chamber pot, we called it a slop jar, that was always in MY bedroom at night when we lived on the ranch. And I KNEW who was going to empty it the next day. We bathed in a number three galvanized wash tub with water heated on the stove that we had to haul from the school house because our well had to much gypsum in the water. You guessed it. You did not each get your own batch of heated water.

I have a lot of that "been there, done that" myself.

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Let me take this time to reiterate; "The good ‘ole days were not that good."

BrowningBAR said:

BrotherBart said:

pen said:

BrotherBart said:

When dad was growing up their heat was just the fireplace. His dad would fill a bucket with coals at night and put it in the kid's bedroom for their night heat.

Click to expand...

My grandfather still has the piece of soapstone that he and 2 of his siblings would take to their shared bed at night.

Hard to believe how times have changed just in the last 100 years. Stuff like these stories would be considered abuse now!

pen

Click to expand...

I didn't mention that damned chamber pot, we called it a slop jar, that was always in MY bedroom at night when we lived on the ranch. And I KNEW who was going to empty it the next day. We bathed in a number three galvanized wash tub with water heated on the stove that we had to haul from the school house because our well had to much gypsum in the water. You guessed it. You did not each get your own batch of heated water.

I have a lot of that "been there, done that" myself.

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Let me take this time to reiterate; "The good ‘ole days were not that good."

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And "Eww!"

BeGreen said:

None of the old houses had an exterior wind barrier like tar paper. Most often the boards were locally hand milled and therefore were not of the tightest fit. If they were in a hurry, the boards would be still green and shrinkage was common. Some places leaked like sieves. This might be barely tolerable in England or Holland where the winters were milder, but downright miserable when these folks moved to New England. The well to do could afford to use seasoned wood and better practices like caulking joints with horse hair or building with stone. Some of the old houses even had sawdust in their walls for insulation.

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During the very earliest settlements at Jamestown/Plymouth/etc sure... But I don't think much of the construction from the 18th century on was that bad... or at least what survived....

My house was built in 1795. We had to open up an exterior wall last year to replace a section of sill that rotted from insect damage years ago (re-doing a bad previous repair). . The frame is 6x6 hand cut post and beam with mortised joints and knee braces and its all pinned together with trunnels. The frame is sheathed with 1" thick (true 1") boards that are around 12-16" wide each, obviously sawmill cu, and the edges are beveled so they overlap and are fit nice and tight. Believe it or not most of the original iron nails were still holding! On top of that wide board sheathing was cedar clapboard. So granted its not nearly as tight as modern construction, but with the plastered interior walls I doubt it was as draft as we think.

Inside, as others have pointed out its all small rooms with doors and multiple fireplaces. They kept warm by only heating the rooms being used. Probably all slept in one room in the winter and just bundled under a ton of blankets.

If your interested in colonial homebuilding I found a really neat book in my research
Homebuilding and woodworking in Colonial America. Its an easy read... illustrated almost like a kids book but gave me a real appreciation for the craftmanship of homebuilders back then. If modern homes were all built this well..........

Removing your shoes when you come into a house or even taking your shoes and coat off before getting into bed is a relatively new activity. We are all so lucky.

Another thought I had on this fascinating topic.... What about the wood processing?

Even if we accept that most household probably just used wood for cooking and to keep one or two bedrooms warm... with open fireplaces (and not even rumfords until 1790 or so) that had to be a *lot* of wood. Imaging if you needed to fell, cut, split and stack 10 cord every year with noting but an axe and a 2-man bow saw! (and a few strong sons) I wonder if they bothered to stack years ahead to season. I wonder how folks who lived in town ( the schoolteacher or blacksmith etc) got wood - bought it from nearby farmers?

I have a picture of my great-parents kitchen, ca. 1900, with a cookstove prominently installed in front of the old cook fireplace; clearly as soon as they could, they switched from the open fireplace to a cookstove.

I wonder how many of us could heat with wood, without the benefit of chainsaws, trucks & splitters? So even wood burning currently relies on fossil energy.
I read that in the old Hudson's Bay factories (trading posts) the men were strictly limited as to how much wood they were allowed to burn, because otherwise the staff would spend too much time on wood cutting instead of other work. Of course, the bosses were back in coal-heated London...

On a more cheerful note, looking at my Pacific Energy Super27, I think all the materials and construction could have been done in a blacksmith shop in 1900 or even 1800.
It would have been more expensive than the current assembly line production, but the real difference is combustion physics and engineering. So in addition to using energy faster, we have learned how to do some things better.

Srbenda said:

How did people stay warm 150 years ago?

Anyone ever studied this? Did they just stay a lot colder in the winter?

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150 years ago. Williamsburg. Jamestown. How about in my own lifetime? My grandparents lived in an uninsulated farm house until 1965, heated only by a wood burning pot belly stove and a wood burning kitchen range until they got propane in the early 60's. The house was essentially four small rooms (kitchen, living area, two bedrooms) and even with the two stoves granddad's teeth occasionally froze in the glass by the bed. I remember well trying to get warm by the pot belly stove - roasting on one side and freezing on the other. I often wondered what the point was since the fire seemed to make so little difference.

They used to wear more clothes to bed. Rather a lot more. All of them highly flamable, and the combination of untreated cotton or wool with open fireplaces or the other heating lighting appliances of the day caused a lot of horrible injuries and death. People also had feather mattresses to sleep on AND under (I used to have some pillows made from the last of my grandparent's feather mattresses). And down comforters. And all those quilting bees were not just for conversation. And, of course, people slept together. Three, four, six children to a bed.

As for processing the wood, I can only imagine. I have been trying to estimate how much wood my grandparents burned each year. Keep in mind the kitchen stove ate wood 52 weeks a year; I am guessing 15 cords or more. I do know that granddad cut sycamore and pawpaw saplings down by the river so he didn't have to split wood for the cookstove. I do not remember the years prior to the Homelite chain saw, but until after WWII granddad cut, bucked, split, hauled, and stacked with just an ax, saws, horse and wagon. Any conversation about the old days among the old timers would eventually come around to this or that person killed or crippled by a logging accident.

But you only know what you experience. I overheard granddad talking about HIS grandparents one time: "Those folks had to WORK, let me tell you." Not long ago grandmother (99 in another month, doing very well, thank you) told me how much she enjoyed using her old wood burning cookstove, so apparently there were at least some "good old days".

While we are on the topic of the old days I read about some of the sayings we still have to day that have their roots in the past. Like Dirt Poor, meant you could not afford a wood floor and had a dirt floor. Or raining cats and dogs, I heard referred to the fact that old houses often had a straw roof / attics and the pets would stay up their because it was warm. When it would rained really hard the cats and dogs would come falling through.

DanCorcoran said:

If you visit Ireland, you can go to an historical park at Bunratty Castle. There's an Irish cottage with a peat fireplace in use. Talk about horrible! The peat was smoky, smelly, put out very little heat, and was in a stone cottage. We are definitely blessed in this day and age (and country)...

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while I'm sure it was miserable, I quite love the smell of peat! Too much time in Ireland perhaps....

golfandwoodnut said:

While we are on the topic of the old days I read about some of the sayings we still have to day that have their roots in the past. Like Dirt Poor, meant you could not afford a wood floor and had a dirt floor. Or raining cats and dogs, I heard referred to the fact that old houses often had a straw roof / attics and the pets would stay up their because it was warm. When it would rained really hard the cats and dogs would come falling through.

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Yes, the farmhouse I own originally had dirt floors. I think the wood floors came in at some point in the 1800s.

What 150 years ago? WHen i was a kid (about 40 years ago) We had an old heatrola (hand fired coal stove) in the living room and no heat upstairs in the bedrooms. At night you would have to damp down the coal fire so it lasted till morning so it put out very little heat. By morning our uninsulated house was freezing. I remember one night there was a snow storm and a small taped on piece of glass fell out of my bedroom window and there was snow on the floor from the night before and it was NOT melting. To this day i keep a warm house in winter about 76 Deg.

I always thought that the Native Americans had a pretty good idea with their tepee design. Smear some hides with bear grease to keep the wind out and wrap them around poles that create an instant chimney. Keep a small, efficient space toasty warm for a family. That is what I am going to do for the 2012 pole flip if I can find any intact hides left.

Original section of our house was built around 1810 and was moved to this site around 1870 when an ell was added. (Moving buildings was a common practice locally in the 19th century. Many teams of oxen available, no overhead wires to contend with and easy sliding over ice and packed snow in the winter.) Construction is very similar to that described by jharkin: cedar clapboards, 1.25" sheathing, lathing and 1.5" to 2" of plaster. Pretty draft proof even without insulation. As far as I've been able to determine, there was a coal fired floor furnace in the central part of the old section, plus an oil stove in the kitchen and a very small coal stove in one upstairs bedroom. All three of these vented into just one chimney.

Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a neighbor who grew up in a very large old house nearby. She has very vivid memories of using 12 cords of wood to heat it each winter in a combination of wood stoves and floor furnaces. Her father was a doctor who was otherwise occupied much of the time, so a cutter was hired to fell trees on their extensive property and buck them into suitable lengths. The splitting, stacking, and fire tending fell to the mother and kids. Even though there were 6 kids, her memories of the autumn and winter rituals are not entirely pleasant. She's currently a big fan of central heat.

Many good posts so far and I don't think I can add much but will add at least a little bit.


150 years ago was 1860. My grandfather was born in 1880. I do remember a few stories that my grandfather told me but wood cutting did not change a whole lot until the chain saw came into being. Mostly it meant that after the crops were harvested in the fall then the wood cutting began. Many farmers spent a lot of time cleaning fence rows and along ditch or creek lines. Not many cut big wood but rather cut the smaller trees because it took so long to cut or axe through a big tree.

In the 1800's they cut mostly really small stuff that did not need splitting. They cut the tree and limbed it and loaded it onto a wagon. It was then hauled to a spot near the house or barn and piled into big piles. Then a sawhorse or two was set up and they continued to cut those lengths into firewood lengths and it was a daily chore through the winter.

In the 1900's the wood was cut to buzz lengths, usually up to 12' long and was stacked into a huge pile. Usually in December a group of farmers would work together. The would all gather at one place and buzz all the wood before moving on to the next. Usually there was only one saw and upwards of 10-12 families depended on that one saw.

In my father's time wood was still done that way and I can remember only a few times seeing it myself. After the chain saw (those early ones were heavy things!) wood cutting became an individual thing. Of course at first it was still team work but eventually all or most farmers bought a chain saw. Wood was still cut into buzz lengths but now they cut a lot bigger stuff too which meant more splitting.

When I was a little boy I do remember my father and a neighbor cutting wood on a sawhorse using a two-man crosscut saw. We also owned a one-man crosscut and I used that until I was about 10 years old or so. (btw, my father still farmed with horses when I was a small boy.)

I also remember that my father did things "the old way." This meant that the house was not heated at night. This also meant the house got a little on the chilly side at night! No, we did not have running water in the house until I was about age 11. I had 2 brothers and one sister. Our bedroom was directly over the room which had the heater stove. We had to keep the register closed during the daytime and were not allowed to open it until morning. It was a quick job jumping out of bed to get over to the register where heat was coming up. We'd dress really fast. More than once I recall snow being on the floor by a couple of windows!

I do not remember using the soapstone block in the bed unless we were sick. I do remember using that soapstone block in our old Model A though. We also had a really heavy horsehair blanket that we put over our feet and legs with the soapstone under the blanket. It did not do a terrific job of keeping us warm but we managed and the trips were usually quite short anyway.



Back in the 1800's there were lots of homes where animals were kept. Some were kept in one room and others were kept on the lower level. This helped keep the home warmer. There were also homes that were connected to the barn. The home had entry doors that faced the driveway but also you could go, usually off the kitchen or pantry, right into the barn. That had to be nice for the dairy farmers not having to go out into the snow and cold to get to the barn. Then the milk also was taken directly into the house; milk houses were not very plentiful at one time.

Now try to imagine the folks out on the plains. Many of them lived in sod houses and wood was scarce. Most could not afford coal either. As most know, they burned a lot of "buffalo chips." Plus cow chips, horse chips, etc. They also saved all the corn cobs to use as fuel (and I remember doing that also).


Cooking on the wood stove. Somehow it just seems that anything cooked on a wood stove always tasted better. The same with baked bread. We used to burn a lot of pine, soft maple and corn cobs in my mother's stove.

My wife had an aunt who received as a gift a gas cook stove as an anniversary gift (I think it was around 1960). After 2 days use she was begging to get the wood cook stove back inside so she could cook! She always preferred it but eventually did learn how to cook on the gas stove. I think what finally got her to change was seeing the difference in home comfort in the summer and having more hot meals in the summer without cooking everyone outside.

Backwoods Savage said:

My wife had an aunt who received as a gift a gas cook stove as an anniversary gift (I think it was around 1960). After 2 days use she was begging to get the wood cook stove back inside so she could cook! She always preferred it but eventually did learn how to cook on the gas stove. I think what finally got her to change was seeing the difference in home comfort in the summer and having more hot meals in the summer without cooking everyone outside.

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The room I am sitting in right now is called the 'Summer Kitchen'. It has a huge fireplace and originally was kind of like a porch. It had the main stone wall, that had the fireplace and chimney, and a roof, but we are pretty sure it didn't have any real side walls until it was renovated in the late 1980s. This is where a lot of the cooking was done during the warmer months.