American Agriculturist, 1878

Periodically we stumble upon a contemporary account relevant to our Mennonite forebears; the most recent is an 1878 article in a monthly periodical titled American Agriculturist for the Farm, Garden, and Household (conveniently found in Google Books here).

To set this in historical context, the article was published just a few years after the first Mennonites emigrated from Russia to North America and a year before our ancestors Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller took up residence west of Henderson, Nebraska. One imagines that what is written and shown in the article applied to them as well, though we cannot know that for certain. I trust that readers will learn from and enjoy this interesting article.

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How the Mennonites Warm Their Houses and Cook with Straw as Fuel

The European Mennonites, whose religion prohibits bearing arms, have within a few years come to this country in large numbers, and have formed already prosperous colonies in Kansas and other Western States. In their new homes they follow their former pursuit—farming, and many of them brought with them the implements they formerly used, affairs so quaint and cumbersome, that they appear more like a collection of antiquities than articles for real use. Besides their farm implements, they brought over their household effects, conspicuous among which are a large clock to hang upon the wall, and a huge, curiously ornamented chest to hold the household treasures; these are to be seen in almost every Mennonite home. Though they could not well bring their enormous stoves to their new homes, they have brought their domestic customs with them, and the house in Wisconsin and Kansas is heated, and their meals are cooked in the same manner that they were in the old home in Russia and Prussia. Mr. H. Worrell, of Shawnee Co., Kas., sends us several remarkably neat sketches of Mennonite interiors, made with special reference to their methods of warming and cooking by the use of such an unusual fuel as straw. A portion of his sketches have been engraved and are given here. He also furnishes the following description:

“‘The Americans burn money, we burn straw,’ says the Mennonite settler; how they manage to keep warm in winter, and to cook the year round with no other fuel but loose straw, is a mystery to the average American. The Mennonite immigrant, when choosing a locality, is quite unconcerned at the total absence of timber, and will settle many miles from wood or coal, with indifference as to the fuel question, in localities where an American would never think of making a farm. He sees fuel for the first year in the miles of grass about him, the second and succeeding years he will have the straw from his crops, and straw stacks are his favorite substitute for the wood-pile and the coal-bin.

“We first saw straw in use for fuel at the house of a Russian Mennonite bishop in the colony in McPherson Co., Kansas. Dinner for four of us was to be prepared. A vigorous young Mennonite girl vanished with a bushel basket, and returned with it full of loose straw, then placing her kettles, etc., on the top of the cook range, fig. 1, opened the fire-door, and thrust in two large handfuls of straw, touched the match, closed the door, and the kettle commenced singing almost immediately; in about two minutes the door was again opened, and two more handfuls of straw were thrust in and the door closed. Our dinner consisted of ham, eggs, potatoes, Russian waffles, and excellent coffee, all cooked in less time than an ordinary stove could have been made ‘hot for biscuits.’ The fire was ‘dead out’ before the dinner was half consumed, and the house none the warmer for the fire, the surplus heat all escaping through the broad chimney.

“The cooking place and doors of the straw stove that heats the building, are all in the base of the chimney, which is eight feet square, with a stone floor; the walls are vertical for about 8 feet, when they are gradually brought in, reducing the interior of the chimney to about 13 inches at the comb of the roof. Figure 3 is a lengthwise section of a house of this kind. The upper portion of the chimney is the family smokehouse, in which are stored hams, shoulders, sides, and festoons of sausages hung on poles, permanently set in the walls, access being had to them by a ladder. On one side of the base is a large cauldron, for wash days, set in a furnace of adobe or sun-dried bricks; on the other side the cooking-range, also of adobe, having a sheet-iron top, with holes cut for the pots and kettles; both ranges, that for washing, and the one for cooking, have a flue of adobe four feet high.

“The heating stove, seen in section in fig. 3, and in the ground-plan, fig. 2, is 9 feet long, 8 ft. 6 in. high, and nearly 3 ft. wide, and forms part of the partitions of the three rooms heated by it. The ovens in this stove are formed at top and bottom of narrow plates of rough cast iron, set loosely in the stove walls, to admit of expansion and contraction, the doors are of sheet iron, and the walls two bricks thick. In ordinary winter weather, fire is made in the stove every morning, when two good armfuls of straw is consumed in from 30 to 30 minutes, this heats the stove sufficiently for the whole day; in very cold weather, the fire is made two or three times each day, burning an equal amount of straw at each firing. So soon as the fire is out, the flue connecting the stove with the chimney is carefully closed by a damper, in order to retain the heat. Bread is baked in the ovens, and also in the fire chamber of the heating stove, where it is placed, immediately after firing, on a wrought iron stool, which will keep it above the ashes of the straw.

“The most primitive cooking arrangement was seen in Harvey Co., it being a ‘hearth,’ like that in figure 4. This is merely a block of adobe or masonry, two feet high, built in the base of the ordinary style of chimney. The cooking is done on this by building a fire with straw and corn-cobs under each cooking vessel, much the same as with persons camping out. The material used in the construction of these straw-burning stoves is brick, stone, and adobe; brick is preferred, next stone and adobe for economy in the first construction.

Work Cited

How the Mennonites Warm Their Houses and Cook with Straw as Fuel. 1878. American Agriculturist. 27:474–73.