What did our ancestors do about water in winter?

My mother and father lived in a cabin with no electricty and no well in the 1950s in Tarryall, Colorado. They had to haul their water, by hand, in buckets, on foot, from a spring that was a good 1/2 mile from their cabin - at almost 9,000 feet - in the dead of winter. I cannot even BEGIN TO IMAGINE what that must have been like. My mother told me that some mornings they had to break the ice in the wash bowl when they got up in the morning.

We have it so good, eh?

I would expect, that if the well was shallow enough, that you could haul a bucket up even in the dead of winter since the temperature of the well water would be well above freezing.

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Locally many of the turn-of-the-century houses outside town had a hand-dug well under the back porch. Lots of springs and spring creeks in the area also.

It seems logical to me that in the pioneer days of buffalo, that they would have drank Buffalo Bobs bottled spring water.

Think of what it must have felt like for these people to sit in a hot bath or take a hot shower. The "normal" activities of today were luxuries in the past.

If i had to live in the past, i'd miss hot showers the most.

My grandparents lived in the Ozarks near Mountain View (Russell Township) in the early 20s. They got there late for homesteading so the acreage they were assigned was up on a ridge. Doubt they had a well. Only lasted about two years before moving back to Milwaukee.

Anyway, my father told me while there his father took a bath twice a year. Once in fall when he put on longjohns and once in late spring when he took them off. Same pair on full-time all winter.

He also mentioned water freezing solid in the bedrom overnight.

He said during cold weather the only warm place in the clapboard cabin was behind the kitchen range. They wore the floor length night gowns (or whatever they are called). You would put your's over your clothing behind the range, take off your clothing and then head for the bed. Morning was the reverse.

He did mention during summers he and his older sister took baths in a creek some distance away. Apparently it had been damed up to create a small pool. If he was alone, or with other boys, he stripped down. If others were there he kept on his underpants. You basically stood in hole and poured water over yourself before and after soaping down. Lye soap, of course.

He was in his very early teens at the time. His pride and joy was a crack-barrel .22 short rifle. His father would give him one .22 a day to go out and bring in some meat for the table. Father's rationale was with only one shot, his aim would improve - and it apparently did. However, he noted he would climb a tree to knock out a possum to save the shell. He also noted .22s were sort of a barter commodity with other boys.

Dad mentioned his father coming home very scared one day. Said he had seen a monster in the wood and described it as big and hairy. Grandmother said he had seen a bear. He said he had seen bears in the area, this one looked like the gorilla he had seen in the Milwaukee Zoo and it stank to high heaven. But then I note grandfather Scharabok had a reputation as a drinker.

We don't have running water all of our water comes from a spring about one hundred yards from the house. Before that we hauled water from a lake about a mile away. There a lot of folks living in the bush without running water most haul it from lakes or creeks.

I was a young girl in Minnesota in the early 50's and we had an ice box. A man delivered the ice every week. Us kids would run to green him in the summertime because he'd chip off a big chunk for us to suck on.

I also remember going to the ice house in the summer with my grandpa and getting ice for the picnics and to ice down our watermelons.

You are right, they were lined with sawdust and totally cool inside--all summer long. It was amazing---no refrigeration!

Oh...another thing, back in Virginia they had "Spring Boxes" where the water ran out of a spring and filled a box. The milk and crocks of butter were kept in there. And the temperature stayed the same winter and summer.

I was also going to say that Out West where I grew up, most people built their cabins right next to a river or stream. Of course they are plentiful out west.

Our house was built in the late 1700's (1777?) and the site was probably chosen in part because of the springs up the hill from the house. I found wooden pipes that led from that spring down to the house, many of them still in good condition, preserved by the boggy area's low oxygen conditions. So they had running water with pressure a looong time ago.

Other pipes I found were metal. Later occupants of the house apparently replaced the wooden pipes with more modern _LEAD_ pipes. Again they had water pressure but one wonders what else they may have gotten from those pipes.

I also found rusted out steel pipes, brass pipes, copper pipes, 1/2" plastic water line and then I put in two parallel black plastic 1" water lines.

All this comes down from a spring that bubbles up year round to our spring house and then down to the spring box which holds our reserve. It's free of snow even in the dead of winter when it gets down to -45°F. Twice over the last 18 years it's been that cold for an extended period of time with very high winds and the surface froze over but the water still flows below the ice.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

I started to pass this one by, but then, I thought "why not" LOL.
heres how this old-timer did it--Your cisterns didnt freeze, sometimes your water bucket in the kitchen did. No plastic water buckets then, you sat the bucket on the kitcken stove, that you'd got up at 4 am to build up the fire in. if you had baby animals to feed, you warmed the water for their feed too, we usually had a pond we had to take a ax to, to break ice for the cows and horses. hogs sometimes got warmed water, to make the feed mix better.we called it "slop" for them. (and during all this, there WAS a run to the cold outhouse!!)

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In Life, We Weep at the thought of Death'
Who Knows, Perhaps in Death,
We Weep at the though of Life.

Have you visited some local nursing homes? The residents there would be a valuable source of information. Obviously you're not going to find anyone there that was born in the 1880's but I bet lots of them can tell you stories about what their parents told them they used to have to do. Although I'm guessing that the residents did the same thing......there was a local senior here that just died two days ago, exactly 1 day short of their 108th birthday.....I bet someone like that could tell you plenty!

The other thing to consider is that what they did in the southern US, for example, might not have been done exactly the same way in Ontario. So before adding information to the book, I would verify that it was indeed done here in Ontario.

I would suspect that most people here could not afford to have a well dug, particularly when they first moved in. If they moved in during wintertime or early spring, forget ANY digging! So it would be the old "cut ice and melt it" process like people mentioned. Similar to what we did in that big ice storm in the 1980's.

As for pumps freezing, I bet they did sometimes! We have a below frostline water hydrant in the barn and garage. From what I gathered from two plumbers, they can indeed freeze up under the right circumstances....and this is with newer equipment and techniques than what they had back then.

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"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap."

In the great icestorm of 1998 LOL, I melted snow and ice on our woodstove. I always kept 40 Gallons on hand to water the animals, bathe and whatever... longest 15 days I ever lived!

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Biblical Argument for the Acceptance of Homosexuality

wasn't the ice storm fun!?!?!? and today is the 10th aniversary of it's coming with a forcast of freezing rain! i had forgotten about a relic i had gotten from a barn being torn down in richmond ontario, it's a windlass for a well, crudely carven it sat on 2 uprights and lowered a bucket down a well. it will have to head off too the archives when i get a chance!

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

Fun like i've never had since HAHA. I like the sound of your Windlass, got a pic?
Shhh, i don't wanna hear about freezing rain, I have a large shed that.... you know!

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UK 2005:Treasury Dept./Trade and Industry survey concluded: 3.6 m gay people in the UK/~6% of the total population/1 in 16.66
Biblical Argument for the Acceptance of Homosexuality

Some homes had (have) springs in the cellar or even piping from an uphill spring that brought water to the house. Our house, which is over 200 years old, had wooden logs that were center drilled out and laid end to end to create a pipe from the spring to the house. Later they were modernized and replaced with lead pipe. :} Then later with black plastic water line. Plumbing is quite old. Having a spring right in the house is very old. It also makes for good refrigeration.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

at present we catch drippings from the roof and put snow in a 55 gal drum with a tank heater..This allows us to use it to pour into the back of the toilet and keep a washtub on the woodstove for bathing. We pour the heated water into the solar shower.
We get our drinking water from a pipe coming out of a tree .(looks like a guy peeing" The pipe is laid "up mountain" in a stream that never freezes. This little town only got elec about 6 yrs ago and most folks still get their drinking water from the "peeing tree"

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Gord in Ontario

at present we catch drippings from the roof and put snow in a 55 gal drum with a tank heater..This allows us to use it to pour into the back of the toilet and keep a washtub on the woodstove for bathing. We pour the heated water into the solar shower.
We get our drinking water from a pipe coming out of a tree .(looks like a guy peeing) The pipe is laid "up mountain" in a stream that never freezes. This little town only got elec about 6 yrs ago and most folks still get their drinking water from the "peeing tree"

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Gord in Ontario

The origina 640 acre homestead of the family ranch (Montana in the early 1900s) did not have a creek. Available water was from two springs. Springs, if they are "springs" and running a reasonable water flow, will not freeze even at below zero temperatures because the water from them comes out at "ground temperature". Much later (late 1990s) I lived on a ranch along Pryor Creek in Montana and there were sections of the creek that had a lot of springs and even at 20-below those sections of creek never iced completely over. I got my water from one spring ... sometimes had to shovel a path to it but it ran water all winter.

At the main ranch when I was growing up, we were along a creek ... horses and cattle drank from the creek and we kept water available by chopping holes in the ice.

House water was from a well ... hand pump on the back porch. We also had a reservoir tank on the back of the coal cook stove which provided water to wash dishes, hands, etc. and was kept full by bringing in buckets of snow. Baths were in a tin washtub, filled the same way ... brought in a tub full of snow, put it on the back of the coal cook stove and kept adding snow as it melted, until you had about half a tub full of warm water.

Well, I was surprised to see this thread pop up again! Thanks so much for the additional ideas. There are a lot more possibilities than I would have thought!