Caldwell County MO Archives History .....WASH DAY IN OZARK PIONEER DAYS 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 3, 2008, 6:52 pm

WASH DAY IN OZARK PIONEER DAYS
	Narrator:  Mrs. Wm. Irwin, 78, of Iberia, Mo.

     We lived in the 60's in a clearing which father had made when he and 
mother came to Miller County in a mover-wagon.  Mother died of malaria fever 
and as I was an older girl, much of the work on washday fell on me.  It was a 
mighty poor housekeeper who did not wash on Monday.  So I would crawl out of 
bed two hours earlier to get our big wash done by ten o'clock.
     After I put on the ground grain (which stood us for coffee) to cook at 
the fireplace, I hurried down to the branch.  There I dipped water into the 
great iron kettle which swung over open fires.  Some women near us heated the 
wash water by throwing into it red hot stones from a fire but our way was 
easier.  After the breakfast work was done, we went back to the branch and 
poured the hot water in tubs which were made of sawed off barrels.  Then the 
clothes were smeared with soft soap (which we made) and put into the tub.  
This soft soap was made twice a year and answered for both laundry and toilet 
purposes.
     After the clothes had soaked half an hour, we stretched them on clean 
wide boards and vigorously beat them with a clothes paddle or a clothes 
spanker as some call it.  This took the place of the wash board which we did 
not have.  This was not as bad for the clothes as it sounds, for all our 
things were made of a coarse homespun which lasted a long time.  As a matter 
of fact, I did not have a store calico dress till I was eighteen.
     Next came the wringing which was done by hand.  A sheet was wrung by two 
people holding the sheet and twisting in opposite directions.  Our boilers 
were either the big iron kettles or a regular copper boiler with a rim but no 
handles.  Usually we had three boils by the well established rules that 
governed a wash.  The first had the men's white shirts, our Sunday white 
skirts and dresses, sheets and pillow cases.  The next had towels and 
underwear, the third dish cloths, dust rags and grimmy things, all three boils 
boiled in the same suds.  There was no blueing, so we rinsed our clothes in 
three waters to take out the suds and dirty water; and our clothes were very 
white.
     We had no clothes lines and no clothes pins.  We spread the wash on the 
grass or bushes or even on the broad clean rocks.  The sun whitened them all 
day long.
     Our ironing day was Tuesday.  The irons were heated red hot in the 
fireplace and then lifted out by tongs and cooled a little in a pail of 
water.  The men's white shirts had stiffened bosoms and often I spent a half 
hour on one.


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