If This House Could Talk - Blog #16

 Charles decided to build a separate summer kitchen after the summer of 1878. It was a scorcher. Charles complained that there was hardly a cool place anywhere and eating was a burden. It would be 95 degrees at supper time, and it didn’t cool off at night which made sleeping difficult.

With spring came the annual ritual of moving the cooking and washing from my kitchen to my summer kitchen. The move usually happened the first week of May. Cooking and washing utensils were brought to the summer kitchen from my kitchen and my cook stove was taken away and stored. The furniture was rearranged in my kitchen and dining room. Meals were brought from the summer kitchen to my dining room or sometimes they were served under the portico. The process was reversed in the fall.

Young women were hired to help with washing and ironing clothes and cooking. There was a crisis late one afternoon when Cousin Muth Schmidt was visiting the children. A pan of lard left unattended on the stove by Emma suddenly caught fire. Muth went to the office to fetch Charles. When Charles got to the summer kitchen, he found the ceiling all charred and the windows cracked. Fortunately, the gardener, Mr. Forter, put the hose to the pump to extinguish the fire.

Not only did Charles build the summer kitchen, but he built a woodhouse to store an ample supply of wood for the stoves and an icehouse for a good supply of ice. To ensure there was plenty of water for all the cooking and washing going on in the summer kitchen, he had another cistern, the third, dug just outside the south entrance to the woodhouse.

The summer kitchen and its portico are pictured in the photo above from 1881. Monday was wash day. It began at four in the morning while it was still cool. The hired help pause from their ironing.