Vigo County Historical Society

Washboard, tub replace rock and stream for washing clothes

In the beginning there was a rock and a stream. It did the job.

One day on the Nile River, a washer woman noticed that her robe had fallen in the mud was cleaner than the robes she had done earlier. (later it was determined that the soil contained an earthy alkali called nitre or natron.) From that day on, the race to have the whitest whites and brightest colors was on.

Roman priests found that the lower portions of their robes that drug through the mixture of fat, wood ash and clay soil around the sacrificial fire came out cleaner than the rest of the robe.

At the same time, Greeks and other ancient cultures mixed sand, ashes and soapwort root for a cleanser. All these kinds of soap were too expensive and too rare to be used by the general population. Women continued to take their wash to the rock down by the stream.

In the ninth century, Ibn Hajan Dachabir, an Arabian alchemist, developed the first known soap formula. Soap now could be mass-produced and affordable. The first centers for the soap industry were Marseilles in France, Savona in Italy and Castile in Spain.

Even though laundry soap was now available, the actual method of washing clothes didn’t change all that much. The biggest difference was that the rock was replaced with a washboard and the stream was replaced with a tub of water.

Better yet, the wash could be done in the home. This was the standard method of washing clothes up to the mid-1800s.

Our Historical Treasure this week is a washboard and wooden tub from the Vigo County Historical Museum’s collection.

During Pioneer Days at Fowler Park on Saturday and Sunday, October 7 and 8, members of the Vigo County Historical Society working at the Peker Cabin will use a washboard, a tub of water and homemade lye soap to demonstrate wash day in the early 1800s.

They will also demonstrate many other labors of every day living from that period. Drop by to watch your Historical Society living history.