The 19th century housewife

Even that most notorious of Southern Belles, that most notoriously pampered of wives, Mary Todd Lincoln, had a heavy (literally) work load. This was especially true for Mary while she was wife of that poor rising lawyer in Springfield. Here is Catherine Clinton’s description of a 19th century middle class urban housewife’s duties, from Mrs. Lincoln. A Life (Harper-Collings, 2009, pages 70-71):

Even a woman with servants [Mary Lincoln's were Irish for the most part] had a long list of chores to perform. Someone was expected to check the mattresses for fleas and bedbugs. While servants might make beds, empty chamber pots, dust and polish, swab and sweep, most housekeepers prepared their own family meals.

Lincoln was notorious for missing his and Mary often had to send one of the children to fetch him. Wives of men of genius seldom have it all that easy. Lincoln loved to hang out and talk and politic and lose all track of time. Clinton tells a story of how he was once pulling the baby along the street in a wagon. When the baby fell out and lay crying in the street, Lincoln didn’t noticed, but walked on, deep in thought, pulling the empty wagon.

Monday was one of the most challenging of weekdays, as it was traditionally laundry day. The household laundry was an onerous task, and women were expected to not only use starch and bleach, but to hang clothes to dry and press most of the washing with hot irons, as well. Thus the “Monday blues” had an additional meaning for most housewives, alluding to the compounds used to counteract the yellowing of white fabrics.

Monday washdays like this were still a fact of life when I was a child, though my mother had a wringer washer with an electric motor that, no doubt, made her life somewhat easier than Mary Lincoln’s. Though, on the other hand, my mother had no servants of any kind to do the heavy lifting. Anyway, I remember the washer and two rinse tubs on a raised frame. The wringer would swing on its axis so you could wring clothes from washer to first rinse and then from first rinse to second, and finally into the basket for hanging. The second rinse always had blueing in it to whiten the sheets.

I’m not sure my mother starched sheets.

Food preparation was a constant daily and seasonal burden. Yes, the woman in town, unlike her rural sister, did not have to slaughter or pluck, plunge her arms up to the elbow in brine, or grind her own flour. But many kept chickens to collect the eggs, and cows to ensure unadulterated milk. The Lincolns kept both a cow and a horse (for Lincoln’s travel) housed in one of the outbuildings on the property.

My mother did a fair amount of slaughtering and plucking. See my poem “How to Dress a Chicken.”

There’s a lot more, some of which sounds very similar to the way life was lived in mid-twentieth century rural Kentucky. Some interesting facts from the Clinton book: the Mason jar was introduced in 1850; the metal eggbeater was also a 19th century innovation. And the Lincoln children were given a Saturday night bath.

Possibly related posts:

A perversely cruel press

A snowy woods in the 18th Century

“First Lady of Controversy”

Abraham Lincoln

Slave state

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