What did our ancestors do about water in winter?

Were hand pumps that common in the rural 1880's? I would have thought the most common would have still been dug wells and buckets. I guess it could all come down to how wealthy is your pioneer family? I agree w/posts about the hand pump not freezing....that's why those first few pumps had to be fast (to prime them). With no hand pump or well bucket/rope it was chop ice and haul to heat. Probably easier on the men folk as they could haul ice for half a day and have several days "water" stacked outside the house......let the women melt it

P.S. The first house my wife and I bought had the well built into the house (utility room). Searched around and looked up the lady who built it with her husband- she said no one enjoyed going out in the cold to draw water so when they built their house they built the well first and then built the house around it. Once electricity arrived, they just converted the "well room" into a laundry room. By the time we bought the house- rural water had arrived and the well had been abandoned. I installed a jet pump on it and we used it for all outside watering (or when the rural water was down).

David

What a wealth of helpful information and what a variety of experiences! This family was quite poor, so perhaps they would not have had a yard pump. It would have been a shallow dug well, so a bucket would work. I'll check to see if well pumps were common on farms in 1885. An area that had been settled for a long time tended to hang onto existing methods longer than an area such as central Hastings County, which was just being settled. Without an infrastructure already in place, they woud have gone for the best "technology" that they could afford. I wonder what hand-pumps cost in those days?

Good point about hauling ice. It would be easier than carrying water as the horses would be doing the heavy work and it could be done in advance. People used to cut ice on lakes here in Ontario, but I thought it was mainly for ice-houses... but I coudl be wrong about that.

I can see that I need to give the whole matter more thought and research before tackling this section of the novel! Thanks, everyone, you've been terrific... and next time I need information about rural life, I know where to come!

Depends what you're calling central Hastings Maggie. We were here in 1829, Tweed, Madoc and Marmora were pretty well settled by 1850 or so. The townships just north had been settled and a lot of the farms abandoned again by 1885 because farming just didn't work very well on a lot of areas along the edge of the Canadian Shield. That's why you can go into a lot of old forests up in Lake, Elzevir etc. and find old rail fences and homestead foundations in the middle of the forest. Also the Eldorado Gold Rush ended in the mid 1870s so a lot of people left after the money left. I think there would have been lots of pumps around for the taking, I think I remember something like 90% of the population of Eldorado left in the few years after the mine closed.

O'Hara's Mill or the Hastings Museum of Agricultural Heritage would both have a lot of information. You just missed the Amish getting their ice by about 6 weeks. Send me a private message if you like.

Great info, Dale! Yes, I am aware of the impact of the gold rush and the way it fizzled. Also that there were other smaller finds for years after that and that some stubborn people believed that they had only to persevere to find the motherlode. I will PM you later. I have been very curious about that area of Lake that even now has no roads and apparently no development. It may figure in a later part of the novel. The family I am writing about would be a few miles north-west of Madoc. I may have to adjust this in a second draft... but that's where I have put them for the moment.

Some of my own ancestors came out from Sussex, England and settled at Bridgewater (now Actinolite, of course) in the 1860s. The surnames were Credicott, Packham and Greatrix. I speculate that they were perhaps drawn to that area by to the area by the Methodist influence of Billa Flint.

Maggie I'll think up some contacts for you in the meantime. I went to school in Tweed and Madoc, know most of the farmers up that way. There's still a lot of prospecting for gold up there and some for diamonds, there's a pretty well-heeled outfit from South Africa looking and a couple of developments that won't pan out until/unless the price of gold gets a fair bit higher to pay for extraction.

Wow, Dale, that would be great! I have to go and do some paying work for a while but I am very excited about all the information you and others have given me... and am eager to learn more. Catch ya later.

Adding my little bit:

Growing up I read and reread the Little House series. In Farmer Boy, Almanzo's family harvested ice every year from a lake. They stored it in blocks in a barn packed tightly with sawdust between each block. This way they had ice in the summer and water in the winter.

I guess the folks back then had several options on winter water

RedTartan - who lives in a house built in 1825 with an old well in the basement.

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I have not read the other responses, but outdoor pitcher pumps will freeze in the winter even if the water drains back down the supply pipe. What freezes is the wet leather seals or cups in the pump. A deep well hand pump will not freeze in the winter. The pump (or cylinder) for this type of well is in the groundwater and since the groundwater does not freeze the leather seals will not freeze. We have a deep well hand pump and it supplies water all winter long. You can watch ths video clip below from our "Survivor Minnesota" competition which was held this last January when the temp was colder than -20ºF and the hand pump supplied water just fine....just "click" the photo below to watch.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

RedTartan, my Amish friends here still keep their ice in sawdust in the barn, but they have an old fridge stuck at the bottom of the ice pile with just the door exposed where they keep everything they want kept cold in the summer. Just seems a little out of place when you see it.

Dale, I don't suppose you ever watched Dr. Who...

http://img.livingwithstyle.com/tengu/dalek.jpg

Dick Proenneke, if i remember right, would cut a whole in the lake ice and scoop water out. I think he would have to chop away new ice every day to reach water.

Only some of the new version Sub. You'll have to talk to my parents, they named me after my father's college roomie, Dale

Good luck on your book! I'm working on a novel set in Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1850. I've always lived in the south and so wasn't sure about some things in Pennsylavania. This is great info.

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Jessica Israel
Southern Valley Ranch
Fayetteville, NC

Melt snow on the stove.

Last year we had the driest year in 45 years, that was a drought! But this winter we had over three feet of snow on the ground, so this winter we melted snow for much of our water, used the out house, (we did buy bottled water from town for drinnking, which we do most of the year anyway.)

Also this month, during breakup, snow melt from the roof into our barrel and gutter collection system provided plenty of water.

The outhouse and pee-in-the-yard (we only do that at our quarter -- 160 acres which is very private) and off-the-deck (only at quarter) are the big secret -- do you know how much water (and energy) that saves every day?

Between melting snow and conserving early homesteaders would have had lots of water, even without a deep well.

Write on,

Alex

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Thanks, everyone... You've been terrific. It is wonderful to have a place to ask questions like this. I'm going to copy and paste this whole thread into one of my research folders for future reference.

I know this is an older thread, but I want to pass on a story my mom told me about when she was a young girl in Minn.

In the winter they took wagons out on the lake where they cut blocks of ice about 2' x 4'. Some people cut bigger blocks. They loaded them in the wagons and took them back to land where they stacked them in "ice houses". The ice blocks were packed in sawdust. They did this all winter long. Come summer, they would dig out blocks of ice and the ice wagon would carry them up and down the streets selling blocks to people who used them in their iceboxes.

When I bought my house, the lady that lived here had an icebox. She kept it in the kitchen as a decoration.

When mom was a girl they had a pump in the kitchen. They were one of the lucky families. She said that some families melted the ice blocks in winter for their water. Others had hand dug wells with buckets, some cut holes in the river where they scooped out buckets of water for the house before they let the horses drink. She said a friend of hers had a hand dug well on the back porch. They kept a board over it and just went to the porch and moved the board when they wanted to lower a bucket on a rope to get water. Different families used different methods.

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They had wooden pumps that was way cheaper than manufactured metal pump, Anybody could make a hand pump themselves with the skills they had those days. The (pipe) could be made of say 2 to 4in boards fastened to the bottom of the pump

Another thing is that if your family has a spring house, you should have water there that wouldn't freeze.

Running water and electric lighting are two of the biggest benefits of having electricity -- from someone who's lived without electricity for a pretty good chunk of her life.

Kathleen

LIFE would have been good for them! Typically a spring house would have had running water and a constant cool but above freezing temp so they could hand carry water if they needed to. BUT usually long before the spring house was built there would have been a pipe into a trough.
Its not likely the well would freeze but in a very cold snow less winter its possible for the ground to freeze down as deep as a shallow well. Ive seen it freeze a well 25' deep before. Then of course the well runs dry cause the water wont move into it.
Funny as it seems its likely the spring will run longer than the well. although its shallower the running water will usually keep it open longer.
Hope this comes in time to help.
Is the book done yet?

But I think you will need to expand the volume of your book. One way to do this is to expand and expound on the hows and whys of how they lived and got by, and succeeded in their farm. Ie. What machinery did they take with them? How did they make do without what they didnt bring? I told you how they could have made a pump, but I think you need to go back further than the time they would have had a pump. A pump to them would have been like having a 50in plasma tv. Nice to have, but definatly not needed. They would have used the wagon to live in and under, spreading the canvis out into a V to cover more area, They would have found a likely high enough bank, and carved into it making a cave. That would have b een their house for a year, maybe 2 depending on their fortunes, and how nice it was made. While liveing and makeing this cave, they would have been cutting and clearing the land around them, makeing firewood for winter, They would have cut the tall brush, and made hay for winter. They would have planted a small garden, but got little out of it. They would have been in a frenzy to make sure they had way more than they needed for a winter of which they would have had no knowledge. They would have made a frame either like a barn, or like a U, and laid tall grass around and over it high enough to repel snow and keep the livestock warm. They would have shot anything that got within range, and jerked what they didnt use fresh, as they probably wouldnt have had salt enough to put it up salted. They would have smoked it, maybe in a small smoke house. They would have farmed around the stumps of the trees they cut down. They would have hauled some of the stumps into a line to make a lot fence to hold the stock close to the barn as it were during winter. They would have dug a hole into a small stream and used poles to box it in to a depth of say 3ft. after a day or 2 they would have had a source of water they could dip buckets in without scrapeing the bottom and muddying the waters. They would have done as much living outside as possible, using the cave to sleep in for the most part. maybe 15 sq. This would have been possible to keep warm in winter. probably no window, maybe no hinges, dirt floor, no neighbors for all or most winter depending in the severity of the winter, and the distance of nearest neighbors. Now, my question to you is, how did they plow? what with, what make plow, if they had one. Did it have a wood tongue or steel. wood moldboard or steel. How did they disc, harrow, sow, mow, rake, haul hay, How did they butcher, dry garden stuff. Ect. Flesh all of the above out to explain to your reader what they dont know themselves. Make them feel like they came to that new place with your people, and like they could have been living there them, back in those times, by the time they finish the book, Good luck. Bu the way, some of the above question was a trick question. Gotta make it a little hard,