Text by Ben, a Presque Isle Middle School student
Images from the Presque Isle Historical Society
Rena, 74-year-old lady, provided me with information about the history of laundry. She has lived in The County all her life, so giving me the information was easy.
Rena’s mother, Sadie, usually had a tub, which she filled with water from a lake, stream, well, or river. She would bring the tub down to these sources of water and clean the laundry there. Some preferred to use buckets to bring the water to the tub. The water was cold. She usually started this in the morning because the clothes took all day to dry.
Sadie bought big blocks of soap and sliced them with a knife. She then took the soap and dropped it in the tub to let it dissolve and make suds. Then the real work began. She took the scrub board and placed it in the tub, then took the clothes and ground them against the board to make sure they got clean. Each piece of clothing had to be done individually. Once a piece of clothing was washed, she wrung it to get out all the excessive water.
Sadie took the clothes and hung them on a line outside. Some people also hung their clothes in the basement next to the wood stove. This process took a good portion of the day. Drying took all day. Only when the clothes were dry, did the ironing take place.
To iron the freshly dried clothes, Sadie took the iron and set it on the stove to heat up. Then she placed the clothing on a pantry board, or table, and one piece at a time ironed the clothing to get the wrinkles out. This could only happen when the iron was hot. She did this for all of her family’s laundry.
When Rena was young, her mother did this chore. As Rena grew older, she helped. Washing the clothes took two to three hours. Some women also did laundry for other people, such as neighbors and friends, to make extra money. This, of course, was not as easy as people think. Women, such as Rena’s mother, put a lot of effort into keeping not only their clothes neat, but keeping their families in order as well.