Re: Henry Wiencek said: ...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.
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Not Always Done Down On The Farm.

Or, There's more to soap than what meets the lye.

"Soap making as a trade had grown in direct proportion with the growth of 
the colonies. Even in the very early days there were tradesmen making and 
selling soap, who were called soapboilers. Since tallow was the main 
ingredient for both soap and candles, many tradesmen were producers of both. 
These tradesmen were called chandlers. The first soapboilers arrived with 
the settling of Jamestown in 1609."

"In New England also, we find signs of the early soap making trade. 
Christopher Gipson, who landed at Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1630, and 
then later in 1649 was elected Surveyor of the Highways of the Town of 
Boston, was a soapboiler. It is logical to conclude since it probably 
required then as now a source of money and influence to engage in politics 
Mr. Gipson's soap trade was keeping him in a comfortable style."

Conversely, with strong argument and great disdain for those making the 
above claims:

"At first the earliest settlers simply brought a plentiful supply of soap 
along with them. The Talbot, a ship chartered by the Massachusetts Bay 
Company to carry persons and supplies from England to its colonies at 
Naumbeak now known as Salem and Boston, listed among its cargo 2 firkins of 
soap. A firkin is an old measurement which was a wooden, hooped barrel of 
about nine gallon capacity. John Winthrop, who was to become the first 
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when writing to his wife in 1630 
from Boston included soap in a list of necessities to be brought on her 
crossing to the New world."

"After the colonists were settled and had been able to survive the first 
years of hardships, they found it more advantageous to make soap themselves 
using the copious amount of wood ashes, a natural result of their 
homesteading activities. With also a plentiful supply of animal fat from the 
butchering of the animals they used for food, the colonists had on hand all 
the ingredients for soap making. They did not have to rely on waiting for 
soap to be shipped from England and waste their goods or few pieces of 
currency in trade for soap."

More here with pitchers and all:

http://www.alcasoft.com/soapfact/history.html

As to Thos. Jefferson's plantation, one source says a vibrating soap was 
invented for obtaining an effortless lather....?

Is it Friday already....?

Neil McDonald