By George Grantham Bain Collection, via Wikimedia Commons
In the farming communities around St. Louis, women not only sewed the family’s clothes, they made the fabric. And the lye soap to wash it, boiling laundry in a tub and lifting it out with a stick. They gardened, cooked, canned, tended the sick, prepared their loved ones’ bodies for burial.
As part of a Smithsonian traveling exhibit on “The Way We Work,” Sue Oerter interviewed dozens of elderly residents of Monroe County about women’s work. She also culled from books like The American Frugal Housewife, dedicated, in 1844, “to those who are not ashamed of economy.”
Locally, one remedy for a cold was loaf sugar and brandy; for cough, grease and turpentine rubbed on your chest; for an earache, blowing smoke into the ear. Wounds were treated by placing warmed soaked bread on top. Every woman Oerter interviewed remembered the same family tradition: laundry was done on Monday. The usual schedule that followed: ironing on Tuesday, cleaning on Wednesday and Thursday, baking on Friday and Saturday. They spoke of children having one outfit for school, one for church, and a nightgown. Last year’s good clothes became this year’s “at home” clothes, and when they were too worn to wear at home, they were re-used to make towels, quilts, aprons and much more, with the doubled fabric for collars and cuffs saved to use for mending.
Much of a woman’s life was spent doing work “that perished with the usin’,” as one writer put it.
And yet, it’s still remembered.
Oerter will repeat her presentation at 1:30 p.m. on June 24, at the Monroe County History Museum in Waterloo, Ill.
