Keeping House

Woman with spinning wheel
Archives & Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville

The house may have been a one-room cabin, a plain frame square of weathered boards, or an elegant mansion. Yet all had one thing in common - the woman who made the house a home. Her responsibilities were varied and her roles were diverse. She was a housekeeper: wife, mother, maid, teacher, cook, and nurse. In the nineteenth century the home played a crucial role in the economic viability of the family, and the woman of the house was the central figure of the household and her work never ended. The husband worked at his occupation and made the living. The woman tended the house and made the living worthwhile.

Keeping house without modern conveniences was a major undertaking for any woman in the frontier period. Few homes in rural areas had indoor plumbing, and a fireplace heated the dwellings. Cooking meant much more than turning on a stove. Women chopped wood to build the fires, to heat water, and to cook food, swinging axes with strength and skill that surprised European visitors. They learned as young girls how to "bank" a fire during the night, covering embers with ashes to keep the fire going, very slowly, all night, since it was difficult to relight a fire from scratch.

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