Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article

October 10, 1993
By Jan Buffington
Vigo County Historical Society

Hardtack kept many from starving

While research my last article about the interior of a covered wagon, I ran across information for the subject I selected for this article--hardtack.

Hardtack is a thin, unleavened bread made in large hard wafers. The bread will keep well as long as it is kept dry and stored in an airtight container. It can be used whole, in chunks or pounded into a powder to use in recipes as a substitute for flour.

I have come across several recipes for hardtack but the oldest and simplest comes from a Scandinavian recipe book. It calls for flour (any one kind or a combination of several), buttermilk, lard, sugar, baking soda and salt. It is baked, broken up and stored in containers with airtight lids.

In a book written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail there is a list of supplies pioneers used as a guideline to estimate how much they would need for one adult to last 110 days (barring one disaster or another). The first thing on the list was 150 pounds of flour or its equivalent in hardtack. Just think of how much a large family would need.

Now, to get that much hardtack, you would have to spend a lot of time baking, or you could buy it. In the store, hardtack came in perfect squares much like crackers do today. It was sold by the pound in several sized tins or in barrels, depending on how much you needed.

The pioneers were not the only people who used hardtack. Sailors and soldiers consumed the most hardtack.

The piece of hardtack in the collection at the museum is displayed in the Military Room of the first floor. In one corner is a a table with several artifacts from the Spanish War.

Inscribed in pencil on the hardtack are the words: “Hannah Cheek, Sep. 1898, Spanish War.” I don’t know who Hannah was or who donated this unique artifact, but this gift to the museum is a fascinating one to me.

It is said that hardtack sometimes was so hard the soldiers had to pound it with their rifle butt and the rifle was the object that broke first.

No matter how hard it got, hardtack was a versatile food product. It could be eaten on the run or broken up and put in a pot of stew for an easy dumpling. It would be pulverized to make bread, gravy or anything that needed flour.

Hardtack may not be gourmet fare, but it kept many soldiers, sailors, pioneers, miners and countless others from starving.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

Return Home