WINTERING THE HOMESTEAD/ AUGUST 27TH, 2021

Continuing on with this week’s theme, we want to talk about how settlers would have stayed warm during the cooler seasons and how methods of heating changed over time.

Heating the Home

For every new home in Canada, a fireplace was of utmost necessity in order to live through the winter. Gathering enough food to last the winter was difficult enough, but it all meant nothing if the family froze to death first. The hearth also provided a place for cooking, which was also very important.

In the first home settlers would build, it would be difficult to heat a house built in the same fashion they are today, with many rooms scattered on multiple floors. Settlers lived well with simplicity in the beginning, so most houses were built to have one main room. This made it easier to heat because the heat the fireplace gave off would not have to be dispersed through different rooms. In the evening, the family would gather around the hearth to stay warm and complete smaller, but still important, tasks like carting wool or sewing.

At O’Hara, we have a beautiful smoke-free hearth in the log cabin. Although its construction is relatively new, the volunteers built it as close to what would have been in an old log cabin. The slope of the roof built into the brick-work creates a current of air that prevents the smoke from entering the room. Genius! To hear all about our fireplace, click the link to hear about it from one of our volunteers, Dave Little: https://fb.watch/7EIGZQAdNx/

As time went on and the family was more settled and began building larger and more sophisticated homes, cast iron and glass wood stoves were introduced to the home. Because the fire was contained, it allowed the heat to become more condensed. Wood stoves were four times more efficient at heating the home than open-hearth fireplaces. The heat could also be redirected throughout the different rooms by routing the chimney pipe through the house, making it convenient for the ever-changing homes of the settlers.

Helpful Tools

There were also a variety of different tools and pieces of equipment that assisted in keeping the settlers warm.

One of these items is a bed warmer. Bed warmers looked like little pots and were made of conductive materials like copper. The idea was that you took hot coals from the fire, placed them into the chamber of the bed warmer, and then placed the entire unit under or in your mattress. This simple idea would have kept settlers from freezing when they weren’t directly in front of the fire.

Another useful piece was a foot warmer. The same principle applies, hot coals would be placed into the chamber and it would be placed at the settlers feet to keep them warm. Foot warmers would have been most commonly used during carriage rides in colder seasons and prevented the attack of frostbite on the feet of travelers.

Soap stones were also used as multi-purpose warmers. A large stone would be placed directly into the fire and then wrapped in cloth to prevent burns. Soap stones would have been placed in the bed or the carriage to provide warmth.

Needless to say it was always an up-hill battle trying to keep the homestead warm during the winter, we much prefer today’s advancements and not having to worry about staying warm!

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 & 𝓜𝓲𝓪