The recipe for soap basically required animal fat and ashes. (How many
people remember the lyrics to a song about grandma's lye-soap?)
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson - "Mrs. TJ" - and her workforce made
lots of it - both soap and "soft soap" - timing of manufacture seems to
follow butchering, and time of soft soap seems linked to by-products of
_hog_ butchering, but that's just an impression (i.e., I haven't
researched the distinction between soap and soft soap as she used the
terms.)
Check out her domestic accountbooks - you can access them on-line at
Library of Congress's American Memory site : just search on her name.
They're one of the few things extant in her handwriting, and survive for
most of the period of their marriage.
Here is an example I mention in a discussion of Martha Jefferson’s
daily management of the household at Monticello in a forthcoming
chapter :
"When Martha Wayles Jefferson directed the making of soap on June 20,
1774, the result was fifteen gallons of soft soap and fifty-four pounds of
hard soap. When she made candles on March 13, 1774, she and her slaves
finished twelve dozen." . . . Etc.
In addition, there is a good discussion of soap-making, brewing (she
was evidently very good at brewing) and the like in Jack McLaughlin,
_Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder_ (New York,
1988). And of course soap shows up in lots of 18th- and 19th century
recipe books, and is discussed in some of the scholarship on cooking
etc by the likes of Karen Hess. A slippery subject of course
Jon
> And now for something completely different:
>
> I see a reference in Jefferson's accounts in 1773 to buying soap from a
> slave. Apparently the slave was making the soap, so I am asking if anyone
> can point me to a source that would explain how 18th-century farming folk
> made their soap. Nothing to get lathered up about.
>
> Henry Wiencek
>
>
Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 24528
www.redhill.org
Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463
Fax 434-376-2647
- M. Lynn Davis, Office Manager
- Karen Gorham, Associate Curator
- Edith Poindexter, Curator
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