The Pioneer Cooking Stove, Indiana, late 1830s

I'm quite fond of this article, not simply because it is such a good retrospective account of the coming of the new technology to a midwestern frontier community in (probably) the late 1830s or early 1840s, but also because it is one of the first things I came across, years ago, when I was beginning to discover how much online resources would enrich my knowledge of the history of the stove and its users.  The Making of America project was one of the first really good historical text archives.  Its coverage seems quite limited nowadays, but back before the development of Google Books and the Internet Archive it struck me as wonderful.

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'Ronald, of Indiana', "The Pioneer Cooking-Stove," The Ladies' Repository: a Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion 17:1 (Jan. 1857), pp. 39-41, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg2248.1-17.001/47?node=acg2248.1-17.001%3A27&view=image. [p. 39]

DOES any body know when cooking-stoves began? Were they invented all at once, like bass-wood hams? or shall we answer these questions as Topsy did those involving her origin, "Don't know —spect they growed?" The first approach that I remember, was an anciently fashioned "ten-plate," with a place to boil a tea-kettle or receive a frying-pan. The idea thus suggested was subsequently developed, till, as we enjoy our patent, premium, air-tight, or combination, which can roast, bake, boil, broil, and stew all at once, we are convinced that this is truly a progressive age, and we a progressive people-progressive alike in compromises, constitutions, and cookery. 

Henry Schreiner of Philadelphia's "New Orleans Victory" Ten-Plate Stove, c. 1815-1830

Some of my fair readers may say, "No cookstoves! impossible! They never could get along without them." Softly, miss, just step over and ask your grandma. She will take pleasure in showing how breakfasts were done, and in cooking her dinners over again. She will tell you how she "baked her brains" over a roaring hickory fire--how she fretted about the oak wood, which would pop, snap, and smoke, but would not burn —how she was tried in temper by green beech, or a load of crooked limbs in harvest-time, till she raised a regular domestic row--how, fastened in the left side of the ample fireplace, was a "crane," with divers hooks of varied length, upon which were hung tea-kettle, stew-kettle, and mush-pot--how bread was baked for Sundays, rollings, huskings, quiltings, weddings, and infairs, in the brick-oven, and on smaller occasions in the Dutch-oven; and she will also tell you, what I honestly believe, that we have no such bread in these days. She will tell how johnnycake was baked on a board, hoe-cake on a hoe, and ash-cake in the ashes; also, what a sensation was produced when some cute Yankee brought out the polished tin reflector, which had most pleasing reflections, for they produced luscious pumpkin-pies and delicious, creamy biscuit -- such biscuit! I yet love to reflect upon those reflected biscuit--

They linger in my memory yet; 

Nor ever did their crust deceive me 

and how admirably it baked turkeys, and how "sound it was on the goose question." She will also tell how, when Christmas came on, the fatted turkey, after decapitation, plucking, and stuffing, was hung up before a rousing fire, by a string which was twisted round harder and harder, till the twist threw it back, and round again the other way, keeping up an impartial roasting and a "perpetual motion" on a small scale, while the dripping gravy was caught in a cup. 

And many other marvels will she also relate of the ante-cook-stove period, marvels to you as wonderful as the Arabian Nights, or the events in the life of Dred. Washing-day, for instance, was an institution then--the iron and copper kettles were carried out and swung in the shade of some willow or sycamore-tree, beside the "branch," where was plenty of soft-water. 

James "Saddlebag" Cooking Stove --
probably the biggest seller in New England and along the Northeast Seaboard, c. 1815-1825

But the cooking-stoves were invented. In an older state, and while living in town, we had owned the primitive article [see above illustration]; but when we moved to a newer state, and into the country, we did as others--cooked by the fireplace. But ever and anon came the ominous intimations of what could be done in the culinary department if there was only a cook-stove. The neighbors looked with suspicion and surprise upon such suggestions; they implied dissatisfaction with the lot Providence had assigned us, and then it was putting on city airs. If it came it would destroy primitive simplicity, introduce a new class of artificial wants, would bring in luxury which had already ruined quite a number of ancient notions, and might thus ultimately dissolve the Union. These were grave constitutional questions; but history records more than one instance in which the kitchen cabinet has triumphed over the fears of alarmists and the vox populi.*

* [Footnote] I think myself happy in having so formed this sentence as to get in this Latin. I fancy I see it in neat italics, and people looking upon it wonderingly, and saying, "What a scholar! Did he graduate at Yale?" Please don't tell them of the Dictionary of Quotations.

It stood firm; and soon an advocate appeared: near us lived a family of good neighbors--the "united head" of which had been Shakers, but had fled from "the village," because they thought it was "better to marry than to" stay there--the good ex-Shakeress said if her friends all died and left her to widowhood, it would be her last request to them to leave her a cooking-stove. Yet this only made the opposition stronger, for those who merely doubted before, were now convinced that if the Shakers used them, there could be no good in them. 

The discussion lasted several months, and took a wide range, including, in addition to the political aspect, economics, hygiene, and aesthetics, and was argued objectively, subjectively, synthetically, and analytically. But there was an energy in the kitchen cabinet no opposition could subdue —it prevailed; and it was agreed that the stove should [p. 40] come if the "Union had to slide". What sort it should be, where to get it, and how to bring it, were grave questions. The farm lay about sixty miles from the Queen City, and about forty-seven from the then young capital of our own state. [Which would place it in the neighborhood of Rushville]  The comparative advantages of the two points were duly considered, and decided in favor of the capital, much from the same reason which induces a man to employ a quack in preference to a good physician, because he belongs to his own Church.

The stove and its furniture were purchased, and wagoned the forty-seven miles, much of it over our primitive railroads, so trying to eggs and elliptic springs. Having been long expected, the news of the arrival spread rapidly; and our kind neighbors gathered in to help unload--very kind were they, and much disinterested--albeit they did want to see how the thing looked.

Well might they. It was a curiosity--it would be a greater curiosity now. Its total cost was sixty-five dollars in good money, the transportation some ten or fifteen more. It was a substantial stove, containing, in the matter of metal, enough for six such stoves as are cast in these degenerate days. As to appearance, I would describe it if I could. I find myself much in the predicament of a teamster, who was given to undue profanity. While hauling a load of ashes up a long hill, some mischievous elves came softly up and displaced the bottom of the bed so that the ashes would gradually escape. They then slipped past him, and secreted themselves where they knew he would stop his team, expecting to hear him swear like "our army did in Flanders;" but when he discovered the trick, and saw the rich trail up and down the hill-side, he drew a long breath, heaved a deep sigh, and said, "It's no use--the English language can't do justice to the occasion." The readers of this magazine know my acquaintance with, and command of the nervous, explosive descriptives of our language; but I "can't do justice" to that stove! Venerable mass of monumental iron! vast pile of pot-metal!

"Who knows what master laid thy keel,

What workman wrought thy ribs of iron;

What forges rang, what anvils beat,

In what a blast and what heat 

Were made thy" cap, dampers, etc.?

The inventor's name has escaped my memory--strange it should, for it is my mature conviction, that many a poor fellow has been pilloried for less atrocious deeds than inventing that stove.

Its plan was a double rotary movement. The top, pierced for several boilers, was rotary, and, using the language of a boarding-school young lady, "all devolved on a pivot," so each kettle and pot was in turn directly over the fire chamber. The oven also rotated by a cog-wheel movement, and was worked by a crank, so, after one side had baked awhile, the other could be wheeled next the fire and share its turn. Where, or how the pipe was placed I can't tell; I know it was so fixed it wouldn't draw.

Stanley Rotary Stove Patent Drawing (original version, without oven)

It was lifted out, the pieces counted, compared with the bill, and pronounced correct. The double-rotary movement, the cog-wheel, and crank, excited much admiration. The machine was run nearly all that night.

The capacity of the stove to prepare alimentary substance was then argued in detail. The great question was, "Will it bake corn-bread?" It was argued pro and con. I, miserable sinner, hoped it wouldn't, for I didn't want to see a dodger for six months. We had no distilleries then, and the best we could do was to eat the corn-we and the hogs-hence, corn-bread was an essential. The young suitor asked, ere he popped the question, "Can she make good corn-bread? Lacking this, music, drawing, embroidery, French, and dancing went for nothing. The majority decided in the negative; but the kitchen cabinet and the ex-Shakeress argued the affirmative most strenuously-subsequent developments proved the majority half right, for it never did more than half-bake a pone.

Of course the autobiography I published in this monthly some years ago, is distinctly remembered by every reader. I had occasion in that document to state that I have ever been a persecuted man. Take this fact in proof: I was made wood-purveyor of this stove. Green wood it refused to recognize, and ignored some sorts of seasoned. It would burn none unless split into kindling. But the selection and hauling of the fuel depended upon others. I found myself as bad off as the Israelites required to make brick without straw- finely-split dry wood was required of me by the kitchen cabinet, while I received nothing but load after load of green limbs or unsplittable chunks. At length even my sweet temper gave way, and I stopped the team, saying, unless I could have dry wood I wouldn't cut another stick and they might do the best they could for dinner. The master of the team saw that my purpose was taken, and said, "Why, the man is in earnest!" The seasoned wood came, and I ever bore the title of the man.

That stove seemed possessed of strange intelligence. Let strangers, or especially honored guests, arrive, and bake it wouldn't. In vain did [p. 41] I split the wood fine, and cross the wood; in vain would I fall an ash rail and "cut up the lap," bake it would not. In vain did we take out the ashes and soot; in vain did we ply the crank the more we tried the more it refused to bake.

Yet, with all its faults and foibles, that old stove had a mission. It is true we afterward sold it for fifteen dollars, yet it did a work. It was pioneer. Others followed in swift succession. Soon one of our neighbors reported a better stove bought with twenty dollars less money. We were compelled to own up; but he was soon reminded that crowing was uncertain. One of his neighbors bought the "newest style," with the "latest improvements," and laid out fifteen dollars less! He was wonderfully crest-fallen, and grew amazingly philosophic, and hastened to an old couple, and urged upon them the importance of a cooking-stove, and so desirous was he to add to their comfort, that he would sell them his, as good as new, for five dollars less than it cost. The old gentleman received the proposition gravely, but declined to purchase; and was soon seen hauling home one, span new, glittering all over with tin-ware, bought for twenty-five dollars. The ex-Shakeress, too, had one without waiting till her friends all died.

I must also mention, as a faithful historiographer, that soon after the stove came, a debating-club was organized, and kept up till the questions were exhausted. Then came on thrashing-machines, false-teeth, reapers, daguerreotypes, and hooped skirts. They came after our stove. Noble pioneer! it "headed the column on."

I do not, however, believe that it had any appreciable influence upon the compromises of 1850, or the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas troubles. I do not believe it, if it was prophesied that there was danger of a dissolution if cooking-stoves came in. History must settle this.

But much as stoves are improved, I still think some things are not so well cooked as in the days of fireplaces and ovens. 0, how often have I sighed for a good old-times, fireplace-cooked "potpie," such as was prepared in those days at rollings! I ne'er shall look upon the like again. What mush was then made! How we young folks would sit the winter night by the ingle side, and watch the bubbling up of the coming supper! No unskilled hand was permitted to use the mush-stick-too much was at stake. Did any body ever pretend that a bona fide pone was ever baked in a stove? Impossible! But I refrain -- savory memories come up; but what good will it do to think them over?--the substance can't be had. More's the pity.

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What kind of stove was "Ronald" recalling?  It's hard to tell, because his description is a bit odd in that it speaks of the oven as having been rotary too.  However, the most popular rotary stove in the region was also the most celebrated, Henry Stanley's, made in Poultney, Vermont since the early 1830s, and by other manufacturers under licence.  Here is a contemporary recommendation:

Caroline Gilman, The Lady's Annual Register, and Housewife's Memorandum-book for 1838 (Boston: T.H. Carter, 1837), http://books.google.com/books?id=twlaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA27.

[p. 27] The Kitchen. Let us look into the kitchen; we need not  be ashamed of the place ... What a contrast between the kitchen of modern times and that of the period when King Alfred baked his cake on a  wooden board!  Kitchen utensils have fast accumulated, and dressers and closets are crowded with forms that would  puzzle a mathematician. This was the natural consequence of the restless ingenuity of civilized life until the present philosophy of mechanics was attained, by which cooking  and washing are reduced to the most simple forms. Among  the most admirable inventions for cooking are the cooking-stoves of Dutcher, Rathburn [RATHBONE], Whitney, James [the "Saddlebags," illustrated above], and the Rotary  stove -- the prices of which vary from twenty to forty  dollars, according to the size, and extent of apparatus; they  can be obtained in any of the principal cities .... With either of these //p. 28 cooking-stoves, even the mother of a family in delicate  health need not fear the overwhelming warmth which has  heretofore driven her from the kitchen; and her fair daughters  can prepare the most elaborate cookery without injuring  their complexions. One of the great charms of these inventions  is the air of neatness they throw around a kitchen... 

• Josiah Dutcher, New York, NY, "Method of Raising and Lowering the Grates of Stoves," Pat. No. 822, 30 June 1838 -- another way of controlling the intensity of heat under cooking pots, http://www.google.com/patents/US822?dq=822;
• Joel Rathbone, Albany, NY, "Flat Cook Stove," Pat. No. X8677 (6 March 1835), http://www.google.com/patents/USX8677;
•  Amaziah Whitney, Albany, NY -- no stove patents before "Designs for Stove Ornaments," Pat. No. D22 (19 July 1844), but WilliamWhitney was in business there as a manufacturer and dealer between 1830 and 1839 -- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkRq04JLJpZMdG5mN280OGFlNjN2TTR4UUNHX3JibGc&usp=sharing
• William T. James, Union Village and New York, NY -- "Stove," Pat. No. X2296 (26 April 1815) and "Sink or Box-Hearth for Stoves," X3854 (23 April 1824), do not survive, but some of his stoves do -- see above.

Stanley's rotaries and their Cincinnati maker figured in a widely reported patent case of 1839, Henry Stanley v. Emor Whipple [2 McLean, 35. December Term, 1839], for which see James B. Robb, compiler, A Collection of Patent Cases Decided in the Circuit and Supreme Courts of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854), Vol. II, pp. 1-10, http://books.google.com/books?id=8co9AAAAIAAJ or http://www.archive.org/stream/acollectionpate01courgoog.  According to Whipple, his versions of the Stanley "had superseded all others" wherever it had been introduced (p. 5).

Like most popular stove types, Stanley's rotary was not entirely novel, and it was widely imitated. Other rotary stove patents included:

Stanley, Henry -- Poultney, VT -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. X7333 December 17, 1832
Town, Elisha -- Montpelier, VT -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. X7871 December 16, 1833
Nott, Eliphalet -- Schenectady, NY -- Cooking Stove Pat. No. X7948 January 9, 1834
Town, Elisha -- Montpelier, VT -- Cook Stove, Rotary Pat. No. X8206 May 16, 1834
Burnell, Levi -- Elyria, OH -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. X8509 November 25, 1834
Spoor, Abraham D. -- Coxsackie, NY -- Cook Stove Pat. No. X8573 January 7, 1835
Gill, Bennington -- New York, NY -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. X9285 December 9, 1835
Town, Elisha -- Montpelier, VT -- Stove, Crane cooking Pat. No. 37 September 28, 1836
French, Maynard -- Albany, NY -- Stove-cap, Rotary Pat. No. X9451 March 2, 1836
Douglas, Beriah -- Albany, NY -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. X9805 June 30, 1836
Douglas, Beriah -- Albany, NY -- Heating Stove Pat. No. X9806 June 30, 1836 [records for these two patents are confused -- the description of one is with the drawing of the other, and vice versa]
Granger, Rensselaer D. --  Troy, NY -- Stoves, Adding ovens to rotary Pat. No. 282 July 17, 1837
Mott, Jordan L. -- New York, NY -- Stove, Combination cooking Pat. No. 466 November 20, 1837
Heermance, Garet G. -- Poughkeepsie, NY -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. 852 July 24, 1838
Ketchum, Micah -- Boston, PA -- Stove Pat. No. 1,159 May 25, 1839
French, Maynard -- Cincinnati, OH -- Stove, Rotary-top Pat. No. 2,666 June 11, 1842
Hart, Albert D. -- Pittsfield, MA -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. 3,164 July 8, 1843
Stanley, Henry -- W. Poultney, VT -- Stove, Rotary-top Pat. No. 4,238 October 25, 1845
Mott, Jordan L. -- New York, NY -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. 7,347 May 7, 1850
Mott, Jordan L. -- New York, NY -- Stove, Cooking Pat. No. 7,366 May 14, 1850
Hill, W.W. -- Greenport, NY -- Dampers in rotary stoves, Arrangement of, Pat. No. 11,010 June 6, 1854


These were all (or almost all) patents for real stoves, the work of leading dealers and manufacturers in some of the trade's main centers, many of them leaving significant evidence of their sale (including advertisements, prizes in trade shows, etc.).  All of them can be inspected online, either at the USPTO's own site http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm or via Google (e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US282?printsec=drawing for Rensselaer Granger's) but none of them seems to fit "Ronald of Indiana"'s peculiar description any more closely than Stanley's does.

A Chilly February in Troy, NY, 1855

A reader of and contributor to The Knickerbocker explains why inhabitants of the northern United States were so enthusiastic about the technology of comfort.  'Paul Martindale' reports on how a bitter winter has exposed the inadequacy of his old Nott stove, state of the art when it was first introduced more than twenty years earlier, and seems to express regret or dissatisfaction about his decision to respond to the advice of Andrew Jackson Downing and others, and return to using an open fire.

-- 0 -- 

'Paul Martindale,' "Thermometer Twenty-Three Degrees Below Nothing," The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, 45:3 (March 1855): 320, http://books.google.com/books?id=9McGAQAAIAAJ.

[Troy Carpet-Mills, 27 Feb 1855]

DEAR KNICK: 

I thaw my ink to say / The weather's on a spree: / Thermometers have burst their bulbs, / Quicksilver's 'duty free.'

Business is dead -- all liquids are / Solidified stagnation; / And e'en the Hudson River can't / Go on in liquidation.

The water-fall's no more a fall, / So winterish is the weather; / And all the drops are dropping up / In frozen mist together.

My wheels have wheeled into line, / As one vast solid column; / And all my works are bound at last / In one stupendous volume.

The race-way's run its final race, / The waste-weir's now no waste wear: / While in my flume the anchor-ice / Is anchored everywhere.

My colors now are colorless -- / My dyeing all is dead: / And though I'm bothered with the blues, / My nose is very red.

My boiler's quit of all its boils, / The fireman's nose is frozen: / And my hot-water pails have kicked / The bucket by the dozen.

My old NOTT's stove is not a stove, / It's just a ventilator; / And my new grate has proved to be / A great refrigerator.

The watchman's fires all 'end in smoke'; / Even daylight is ice-bound: / For the shadow of the chimney-stack / Is frozen to the ground.

'Tis thus obtuse, we 're left, dear Knick, / Opaque, dull, lifeless, stolid: / No breath of life -- no genial warmth --  / In fact, I'm frozen solid!

Back Again ... The Naming of Stoves (2011)

Golly gosh, how quickly time passes when you're enjoying yourself (in my case, just getting sucked into the rhythm of the teaching term).  That, at least, is an excuse for leaving this blog alone for weeks on end.  I can see why so many blogs die -- it seems like a good idea to start one, doesn't cost anything apart from time and thought, and it's the middle of winter and the university vacation, so there's plenty of the former and not a lot better to indulge in than the latter.  But then you start wondering -- Why bother? What's it for?  Who's it for, apart from yourself?  So you give up.  Then again, how different is this from writing academic history?  I've often used a particular simile for the experience of publishing essays and articles (books, at least, get reviewed) -- you work at them for months on end, perhaps longer; eventually they appear; but then you throw your babies over the cliff and never even hear a bounce.  It's depressingly common (in my experience, at least) to publish something that's good in a decent journal and to get no real evidence that anybody, apart perhaps from the editors and the peer reviewers, ever read it.  But that doesn't stop me writing it, so maybe I should spend the odd late-evening hour with A Stove Less Ordinary again.

Anyway, no matter -- I shall cast a bit more bread upon the waters, and maybe some of it will come back after not too many days.

* * *

I put something rather boringly informative about this subject on my old website years ago, near the start of my current obsession -- "The Naming of Stoves" -- but there's plenty more to say.  Here's one of my favourite pieces:

"Their High Noses," Chicago Daily Tribune 17 Dec. 1877, p. 8 [reprinted from The Detroit Free Press]

"He wore shep-skin (sic) mittens, had his pants in his boots, and he covered his horses with old pieces of rag carpet, and entered a hardware store and asked to look at a sheet-iron stove. {hjh comments: this means it was cheap, and he's poor -- the customer cannot afford cast iron} He was shown several patterns, one after the other, but none seemed to exactly suit his ideas.

'I have shown you every style of parlor stove on sale by any house in Detroit,' said the dealer as they stood before the last one.

'Yes, I s'pose so, but none o' them quite fills the bill,' was the dubious answer.

'Why not!  Aren't they big enough, tall enough, handsome enough, or what is the trouble?'

'Waal, I'll tell you,' slowly replied the would-be customer. 'The ole woman she takes a story paper, and her head is chuck full of such names as Evangeline, Eunilena, Maud, Arabella, and Riverbell.  The gals they read Shakespeare, and they are all the time talking about Hamlet, Claudius, Petruchio, Romeo, and so on.  I'm kinder postin' up on astronomy myself, and I'm all the time thinkin' about Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.  Now, you haven't got a stove in the lot with a more romantic name than 'Ajax,' and just imagine folks like us sittin' round a stove with a plug name like that!'

He thought he'd look further, and, as he unhitched his team, he called out:

'Whoa, now, Lady Estella -- stand around there, Othello!'" 

* * *

Now, what's the significance of this?  It works, for me, on several levels -- for example, as an ironic and patronizing commentary on something real and, to me, attractive: the desire for education and self-improvement in Victorian America, and the lack of distance there then was between "high" and "popular" culture (see, for example, Lawrence W. Levine, "William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation," American Historical Review 89 (1984): 34-66, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1855917 if you are lucky enough to have access to this wonderful resource through a library).  

But it's also, more prosaically, about the way in which the name of a stove was an important part of what distinguished it from all of the other thousands of models in the market, most of them very similar to one another in appearance, layout, and functionality.  Alongside of the design and all of the practical selling points that dealers drew to buyers' attention, the name was a part of the total package of useful and attractive features that consumers purchased. 

Manufacturers' desperate search for novelty and what they thought of as appropriateness in a stove name led them to some bizarre inventions.  The resulting proliferation of names was part "of the romance of the stove industry.  Salesmen and retailers had dwelt lovingly on such products as Pearl, Darling, Rapture and Clementina.  Their suggestions, 'Clementina has too square a base,' or 'Bolt the legs on Darling,'  were made with a certain affection and reverence. 'Rapture must have a new cast iron elbow.'" [Melodia and Walter S. Rowe, The Story of Estate: Another Chapter of the Romance of Business in the Land of Opportunity  (Hamilton, Ohio: Hill-Brown Print. Co., 1937), p. 31.]

There's a nice explanation of the importance of attractive names to consumer acceptance of new products in Kimberley Webber's essay "Embracing the New: A Tale of Two Rooms" in Patrick N. Troy, ed., A History of European Housing in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge U.P., 2000), pp. 86-106.  Webber is writing about the takeup of American (or American-style) stoves in place of the British settlers' original open fires in late nineteenth-century urban Australia, as (wood) fuel became more expensive and in short supply -- the same catalysts that had stimulated Americans from Pennsylvania northward to adopt cooking stoves over the previous half-century.  But there was more to this change of habit than just the stimulus of cost:

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the new importance attached to homemaking and meals in Australian family life encouraged households to move away from the open fire to the cast iron stove because the latter enabled food to be cooked on top of the stove while pastries and other dishes were baking within. But it was not sufficient for the cooking stove to simply do the job: it must also look the part, and thus this pre-eminently industrial object needed to be domesticated. 'Romancing' the stove was achieved, first, by the application of romantic names to different models, and second, by replacement of the aesthetic of the factory with that of the parlour. (sic)

Of all the industrial products targeting at the domestic market in the nineteenth century, the cooking stove outstripped all others in the sheer range of models available and the ingenuity of their names. Rathbone, Sard and Co. (a major American manufacturer who exported their stoves to Australia) {of Albany, NY and Aurora, IL -- hjh} listed seventy-one different models in their 1890 catalogue, each available in at least four different sizes. Their foundry was therefore producing parts for 284 stoves. The names given to stoves were quite extraordinary and as far removed from any suggestion of industry as possible. For example, an 1887 catalogue from McLean Bros of Melbourne listed the Ascot, Derby, Gipsy Queen, St Leger, Steuben, Uncle Sam, Empress and Enchantress; and an 1895 catalogue from Anthony Hordern's included the New Matron, Dover, Criterion, Orient, and Electric Light.  Names never refer to any quality of the stove or distinguish between different capacities. Rather, this most banal of products required associations with the exotic, the patriotic or the classical in order to be desirable. [pp. 90, 92 -- there is a nice ad. on p. 91, http://books.google.com/books?id=WTYYYrLKn1MC for a Limited Preview and search for "romancing".]  

2 March 2011, minor edits 8 July 2021!

The Cook Stove (1913)

This is rather heavy-handed "humor," but it makes an interesting point about one of the drawbacks of the old iron cook-stove: it was uncontrollably too hot in summer -- a big selling-point for manufacturers or gas and kerosene stoves. In the 1830s and 1840s, some manufacturers had tried to get around the problem by providing insulating 'dress' for their stoves, so that they could be left in the kitchen and used in summer; or 'summer apparatus,' allowing the use of a much smaller fire for limited cooking needs.  But the more usual solution, especially with farm families, was just to take the stove outside into an open shed or 'summer kitchen'.

There's another side to this problem, of course: the gas or kerosene stove didn't make the kitchen warm enough in winter.  So in the late C19th through early C20th, many manufacturers sold "combination ranges" with a gas hob and a coal-fired oven for urban consumers, so that they could have the best of both worlds.

* * *

Fitch, George [Author of "At Good Old Siwash"], "The Cook Stove," Atlanta Constitution 19 Oct. 1913, p. B4.

"The cook stove is the boon companion of the housewife.

The cook stove sticketh closer to the housewife than a brother, and twice as close as a husband. The husband sits across the table from his wife and reads the paper, but the cookstove snuggles up close to her and glows in her face, and burns her apron and her forearm, and spatters hot lard in her eye.

The cook stove has a temperature of 145 in its oven and 212 in its immediate vicinity.  This is unfortunate, because if its oven were larger the housewife might sit therein and be more comfortable while the meat was roasting on a chair in the kitchen.

[cartoon]

The cook stove consumes coal and wood with visible reluctance.  It is harder to start than an automobile. ...

The cook stove is mild and dejected in the winter, and often declines to start at all.  When the thermometer is 30 below nothing but kerosene will start a cook stove, and many a bereaved husband points with pride to the patch in the roof, which covers the hole made by his wife when she went aloft by the kerosene route. But in the good old summer time the cook stove does not hesitate to burn. It will start on anything, and wll acquire a healthy red color on two lumps of coal and a shingle.  When the weary husband comes home at 6 o'clock and throws himself into his arm chair, he has to shut the kitchen door to keep from being broiled alive by the faithful and energetic cook stove over which his wife is at that moment bending, trying to restrain it from burning $1.75 worth of beef-steak to a cinder.

Women may not be mentally capable of wiping their tired hands and hurrying down to the polls twice a year, but they can do wonderful things on the cook stove. The cook stove, under woman's guiding genius, has made millions of men contented and fat.  It has also made the women of the world the principal supporters of religion.  Somehow after a woman has come to know a cook stove inside and out, and summer and winter, she has a fear of the extreme sultriness of future punishment, which cannot be obtained by a mere man."

"Farewell, Old Stove," 1850-1851

This is a nice piece about how people can get quite attached to their things, especially when those things bring them basic everyday comforts.  It's from the pen of the Reverend Henry Bacon -- a Universalist minister, and also for more than twenty years the editor of the Ladies' Repository; evidently a man who took warmth seriously, and was a discerning stove consumer.  In the winter of 1851 he wrote to his friend the Rev'd A.D. Mayo inviting him to come and admire a new acquisition: "We have a new stove in our sitting-room, with an open grate, that gives a cheerfulness to the place we have never seen before.  Come, and feel it." (p. 192)  He even drew stoves into service to provide him with analogies when he was about his ministerial duties.  His widow remembered, on his parochial visits,

"the aptness with which he  drew to his aid the common objects around him, --  a remarkable trait in his social intercourse.

One day, on being ushered suddenly into a parlor, he found four persons in eager conversation. An  old gentleman, of his society, with his Bible open before him, had evidently been holding an argument  in behalf of his peculiar views:

The compliments of 'the call' being over, the old gentleman  referred to the subject of conversation at the time I  entered the room, and said, with the Bible still wide open on  his knees, 'Isn't it strange I can't make these folks read  this book as I do?' laying his right hand with emphasis on  the ample page of the holy volume.

'I do not think it so strange, sir,' I replied. 'We 've just  got at our house a new stove, and I can't make anybody  agree with me about kindling the fire in it; but we get a good  fire somehow, and keep very comfortable. If we differ about  so simple a matter, I don't see why it should be strange that  we should differ about the meaning of the Bible, while we all get comfort from it somehow, and keep the heart from a  chill. Do you agree about this stove?'

I spread my hands out towards the glowing  grate, and found that it was involuntarily a symbolical  act, signifying that, we should open our hearts to the warmth  of the Divine Word, however we might differ about the way  of kindling its materials into a glow by our methods of interpretation." (pp. 286-7).

Anyway, here's the main story -- from Eliza Ann Bacon, Memoir of Rev. Henry Bacon (Boston: A. Tompkins, 1857), pp. 208-14, http://books.google.com/books?id=w5RHAAAAYAAJ&pg=208#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Farewell to the Old Stove" is all about nostalgia -- about the renovation of the Ladies' Repository's office at 38 Cornhill, Boston.  After a couple of pages, he finally gets down to business -- at least, he does in good mid-C19th style, i.e. he drizzles on for several pages, saying not a lot, but doing it quite elegantly.  What interests me about all this is:

(a) the way that the Stove -- a thing -- is apostrophized;
(b) Bacon's conceit, as an Abolitionist writing for a Northern audience, in describing the Old Stove (black, a loyal servant) as "our venerable colored friend" or "that venerable African" or "our black friend" who does not deserve his fate; in the winter of 1850-1851, this is not just Bacon's "genial good humor" (p. 208) talking, there's a gentle political observation being made. More prosaically,
(c) note the way in which stove heat has now been thoroughly domesticated -- it's the replacement hot-air furnace that's now the disruptive new technology.

* * *

[p. 211] ... that sight of passing wonder, beyond the counter and the post, the Old Stove, is removed. Will nobody stop this march of -- no, this rush and tumble of improvement? Cannot one Old Stove be spared? Must we part with our warmest friend? How could the sun look down through that square of lights in the ceiling, and give aid to the nefarious business of making that 'colored' friend of ours 'a fugitive from service?' We never saw such meek submission as we witnessed in the 'arrest' of that Old Stove. Venerable friend! would that we could have taken thy part in that hour of destruction! To think what kindly warmth thou hadst diffused around so many circles; what bowels of mercies had been thine; what a fiery heart could be tamed to manifest only the warmth that cheers but harms not, like the wine of the gods, that exhilarates but does not intoxicate! What a fate to be reserved for such goodness, was that we saw before thee! 'New birds for new cages,' seemed to be the voice issuing from thy depths, running through thy pipes out upon the morning air. This is a wicked world, Old Stove! No better evidence can be asked for than the treatment reserved for you. What have you done that you should be discarded? To be removed for a time, like a miner to search for new riches in the dusty realms of old things, might be very well; but to be borne away, never to be replaced in power and authority, that is too bad! New building, new stove! But thou shalt have revenge! When didst thou ever refuse to answer a draft, to make all discounts needed to fill with the one thing needful the exhausted treasuries of the chilled and frozen? And when thy mouth was opened, was it to give any other but the warmest welcome? Let them have their furnaces, Old Stove, and they will soon wish thee back again. The heat of a hidden furnace is like hearing a friend without seeing him; and if it is pleasant to see the lip move, and the eye kindle, and the cheek wear the suffusing of sensibility, then is the stove better than the furnace. And then, too, what theologian loves to think about furnaces? They are the most difficult things in the world to spiritualize. We cannot help thinking of the plains of Dura and old [p. 212] Nebuchadnezzar and the golden image (the golden image might be pleasant to some, if it was not by the side of the fiery furnace), and what comfort is there in the poetry of a furnace that always burns best on warm days, and will not let you see what it is that is blessing you when you cry, 'Poor Tom's a cold' ? "

We are serious in our regard for our venerable friend. Our readers will not doubt our seriousness. They must have felt it. And 'is there not a cause ?' 'Thy friend and thy father's friend forsake not,' and, especially, when there has been a great warmth of friendship, giving a full return for all bestowments, kindled to intensity of heat by every appropriate appliance, keeping even its ashes alive that no man should make a lye out of them. We should have secured a daguerreotype of our venerable colored friend, had there been any opportunity, but there was not. It seems too bad that it should be so. It would be some comfort to look upon even the shadow of his ebony phiz [physiognomy], and his tall form so evidently made for use, and not for mere ornament. He was tall and compact, bearing every evidence of having been well fed and with fine digestive organs. He was never troubled with the dyspepsia. His coat was generally clasped, -- he disdained buttons, -- but when it was thrown open, there was every evidence that he had a kindly bosom and a warm heart. He wore a pointed frill about his neck, very much after the Queen Elizabeth fashion; the points thereof were very sharp, seemingly to give warning of the character of the old hero, 'Touch me rashly, and you will get hurt.' Despite all the changes in the fashions, he stuck to the conical hat, and was always as prim as any could desire a great personage to be. He had a queer way with his arms; they were always stretched up over his head, reaching up to the sky-light, to waft away, as with a blessing, the incense of his smoking pipe. Whatever of wrong thought may have been indulged in at any time in presence of our old friend, no man can say that that venerable African ever pointed to anything earthly, for he always piped a heavenward suggestion, like the lark, 'soaring as he sings.' What a song he would pipe, some blustering winter morning, when his whole vocal apparatus had an extra clearing, and the whistle was in perfect order! Sometimes people would look in, as they rushed through Franklin avenue, to see if the law had [p. 213] not been invaded by a steam engine being placed in the store. And what a warm backer did many a one find our friend to be while writing a letter at the desk! -- many a greeting being sent forth abounding with a warmth that the writer or reader little thought of attributing to the right source. What a richness of color, strange as it may seem, did our black friend bring to the countenances of those who stood up and faced him! Wrinkled faces have been smoothed, and a rose hue has tinted the cheek late so pale and sallow, 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' When the ladies came (for, old friend, many and beautiful did come to thy charmed circle), so readily did they receive the cordial welcome of their ardent servant, that they always expressed a fanciful want, and a trumpet was transformed into a fan to cool their cheek and brow. A strange life did our Old Stove live. How nobly did it stand up there, half way between discussions of business and the knotty things of theology! What changes of opinions and methods has it heard plead for and adopted! What greetings for new comers into the circle; the critical as ready to penetrate to the salient points of character, as its warmth was to enter the flesh and vivify the circulation! What a transformation of feeling in a western or eastern brother, who had been dreaming that 'distinctive Universalism' was exiled from Boston, but who found that the Old Stove had still its Murray fire! We well remember the coming of a dear brother from the South, and, as he stood there, he was a new stove, all a-burning, with the door wide open, the draught clear, the pipes singing. Our friend came with his heart alive to everything good, but with some ideas that the air of New England was to waft away. He was clear-spoken on any topic that came up; bold, uncompromising, steadfast to conviction; and, when the controversy waxed earnest and severe, how he would feel the extra heat of our endeared servant, and, snatching his hat from his head, thrust his fingers into his massive raven locks, and then drum a tat-too on the crown of his beaver! The Stove was too much for him, and he would rise and sway round in the area, with a Johnsonian stride and a little of a Johnsonian imperativeness. The moral, reformatory, evangelical warmth around the Old Stove vivified many a sympathetic thought then latent in his rich nature, and what a rivalship obtained between those two round, compact, large-breasted, [p. 214] and large-hearted friends of ours, to contribute to the genialities of the place! The rapid fire of wit never came from a better marksman than he; and, as for a story, who could excel the power of his telling? ' A man of infinite jest,' jocund as the summer morning, yet as ready with kindly sympathy and sterling thought as if a Barnabas and Paul were united with Apollos, the 'eloquent man.' His freest humor never reminded you of defilement, but of high-bred joviality, where wit is in and wine is out; and things sacred were never profaned to add to the mirth of the moment. The Old Stove never played false, but was ever up to its promise; and so was it ever with thee, great-hearted friend! eloquent champion of truth and humanity, gentle as a lover's lute where the theme required it, and stirring as the peal of the mountain bugle, when the alarm must ring through the intricate windings of a worldly conscience.'

---

The work of ruin is consummated ! The light above, the light and doors and walls around, are all gone; the thoroughfare is filled with rubbish, and we cannot, if we would, look in upon the deserted spot -- the brave Old Stove removed. Well, be it so. Many a man stands yet in the place of power who may well envy thee, Old Stove, when his mission time on earth is ended, and who then must recall the consuming fact that he has permitted the fire of soul to burn, not to warm the kindly charities into livelier activity, and to give energy to the chilled love of liberty and right, but to shrivel up the enlarging sympathies of a humanity that was striving to give the speediest answer to the command of God,'Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free !'
'Take away the Old Stove!' is better to be heard while its glory is acknowledged and its beneficence is diffusive. Surely, this has a significance to those whose creed tells them of a fiery furnace that will show its heat when the mortal stove is taken down. Farewell, Old Stove!

'I care not in these fading days 

To raise a cry that lasts not long, 

And round thee with the breeze of song 

To stir a little dust of praise.' 

There has been dust enough stirred around thee in thy time, and now thou art down, poor Stove!