Early American soap making (2024)

FAQs

Early American soap making? ›

Animal fat was melted and added to the potash. The mixture was stirred until the chemical reaction turned the fat into soap. The soap was poured into wooden molds and allowed to cure. When it hardened, it was cut into bars.

Yucca has many practical purposes – Native people and Euro-American pioneers made an effective soap from the roots, thus it was often referred to as “soap weed.” Medicinally, the root was used to treat upset stomachs, arthritis, and inflammation (and still is today).

Ancient Mesopotamians were first to produce a kind of soap by cooking fatty acids – like the fat rendered from a slaughtered cow, sheep or goat – together with water and an alkaline like lye, a caustic substance derived from wood ashes. The result was a greasy and smelly goop that lifted away dirt.

The soap was handmade using tallow, lye, and water. Lye is made from wood ashes usually gathered from the fireplace and put in a wooden hopper. They typically needed about one wooden barrel of ashes to make the lye. The pioneers poured about 4 liters of water over the ashes to soak them.

The process of making soap was surprisingly dangerous and all around unpleasant. Once folks made their lye, they concentrated it by boiling it over a fire. Lye is a corrosive chemical so colonists had to work carefully to avoid burns. Next the animal fat had to be rendered, melted, and mixed with water.

People in the 18th and 19th centuries made their own soap. They'd save tallow from butchering and grease from cooking for the fat. They'd reserve wood ashes to make potash, the alkali. Folks would put wood ashes in barrels, hollowed-out logs, or V-shaped troughs lined with hay.

Chlorogalum pomeridianum, called “wavyleaf soap plant,” “soap root,” or “amole,” is a low-growing plant of California and Oregon. It is used as soap by the local peoples.

Ancient Middle East

A formula for making soap was written on a Sumerian clay tablet around 2500 BC; the soap was produced by heating a mixture of oil and wood ash, the earliest recorded chemical reaction, and used for washing woolen clothing.

Evidence has been found that ancient Babylonians understood soap making as early as 2800 BC Archeologists have found soap-like material in historic clay cylinders from this time. These cylinders were inscribed with what we understand as saying, “fats boiled with ashes” (a method of making soap).

Before soap, many people around the world used plain ol' water, with sand and mud as occasional exfoliants. Depending on where you lived and your financial status, you may have had access to different scented waters or oils that would be applied to your body and then wiped off to remove dirt and cover smell.

How was soap invented in America? ›

Soap likely originated as a by-product of a long-ago cookout: meat, roasting over a fire; globs of fat, dripping into ashes. The result was a chemical reaction that created a slippery substance that turned out to be great at lifting dirt off skin and allowing it to be washed away.

Melt and pour soap is made without ever touching lye yourself. Purchase the premade soap base, cut it into chunks, and melt it down on the stove top until it becomes liquid. Then, stir in whatever your little soaping heart desires. The melted base is poured into a soap mold, and left to cool and harden back up.

Here are couple of old fashioned soap recipes: A typical Southern recipe: “One half-box of concentrated lye, four pounds of grease, one pound of rosin, five gallons of water. Boil all together until the soap is made…then add a half pint of salt dissolved in a quart of water, boil a few minutes longer, and pour off.”

There are also Biblical accounts of the Israelites making soap gel from ash lye and vegetable oils showing that the importance of personal hygiene was realised. Scripture reads that Moses gave the Israelites laws governing personal cleansing through the use of 'borith' - Hebrew for soap - shortly after their Exodus.

Romans would manually combine ashes and animal fats to produce soap products. In fact, a soap factory was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, complete with finished soap bars preserved from 79 AD.

Until the introduction of commercialized soap-making, plants were the only soap medium used by Indigenous peoples of New Mexico and Arizona as well as by the Spanish settling in New Mexico. Many Indigenous peoples including the Tewa, Navajo, Ute, and Apache used yucca suds in washing ceremonies.

Native Bar Soap has the following ingredient: Sodium Palmate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Water, Glycerin, Sodium Gluconate, Shea Butter, Palm Acid, Titanium Dioxide, Coconut Oil, Sodium Chloride, Palm Kernel Acid. Our scented bar soaps include a proprietary blend of oils.

Yarrow as a Hair Shampoo

Yarrow is a small perennial plant that was used by Native Americans as a fragrant hair wash. The Syilx of British Columbia mixed Yarrow leaves and stems with other plants to create a cleansing shampoo.

Many Native Americans used ground corn to cleanse and purify the skin. It was rubbed onto the skin before ceremonies to rid the body of impurities. Ground corn may also be used as an exfoliator.