The Army Laundress

A park ranger in period dress demonstrates washing laundry the old-fashioned way to a young visitor at Fort Larned.

NPS

A Hard Day’s Work

On every Indian Wars Army post was an area called, variously, soapsuds row, suds row, or sudsville, where the company laundresses lived and worked. Most mornings would find these women preparing for their day’s work. Some might be struggling with heavy buckets of water to fill their large washtubs, while others could be carrying firewood to heat the wash water.

They did their work year-round, in all kinds of weather. Sometimes there was a rough building or a tent to shield them from harsh weather, often they worked without shelter. They spent their days in the hard, back breaking labor of washing clothes for soldiers and officers in the days before modern washing machines made laundry a much easier job.

When talking about women on frontier military posts, the officers’ wives are often at the top of the list. Although mostly unsung, the Army laundress performed a valuable service in the frontier Army. They also occupied a unique position among all the civilians on the post.

"Did you not know that women are not reckoned in at all at the War Department?”

Second Lieutenant Jack Summerhayes’ question to his new wife Martha aptly summed up the Army’s attitude to women on frontier Army posts. Except for company laundresses, the Army lumped all women on Army posts, including officers’ wives, into the broad category of “camp followers.” That is, civilians without official standing who the post commander allowed on post.

Socially, officers’ wives were the “first ladies of the post” but it rankled some that they had no official standing to be where their husbands served. In her book Boots and Saddles, Libbie Custer, wife of George A. Custer, complained that Army regulations make no mention of officers’ wives.

“It seemed strange to me,” she mused, “that with all the value...placed on the presence of the women of an officer’s family at the frontier posts, the book of army regulations makes no provision for them, but in fact ignores them entirely!”

One class of women Army regulations did mention were the company laundresses.

Terms of Service

The American Army got the idea for laundresses from the British during the Revolutionary War and Congress made the position official in 1802. Until the Army ended the practice, they were included on Army organization charts, given food, housing, and fuel, and could use the services of the post surgeon.

In 1868, General Order No. 72 made one laundress responsible for the laundry of about 20 men. A post Council of Administration set their pay, which at Fort Larned was two dollars per soldier per month. This gave laundresses a monthly income of around $40 per month, more than twice the enlisted men’s $16 a month.

The laundress’ pay was deducted directly from a soldier’s monthly pay. They didn’t have to use the services of the company laundresses, though most did. Private Adolph Hunnius, a soldier stationed at Fort Larned in 1867, mentions washing his own clothes several times in his diary. Most likely he was trying to avoid paying the company laundress.

Laundresses were usually married to enlisted men and had to be approved by the company commander. Being officially part of the Army gave these women some stability, although it also made them subject to military law. And at least one laundress was court-martialed.

“Procedures for a Profitable Wash Day”

Laundress pay was good, but the work was hard. In A Guide for Army Laundresses by Lucy Williamson the “Procedures for a profitable washday” outlines the best process for washing clothes:

• Wash in the “first tub” in warm water, adding hot water for whites
• Transfer the wash to the “second tub” to soak in hot water
• Remove the wash from the “second tub” to drain on a blanket or in a basket
• “Empty the “first tub” and refill with warm water for the final rinse, stirring the laundry with a stick or ladle.
• Finally, remove the laundry, wring it out, and hang it on a line to dry

Keep in mind the clothes they removed from the washtub and wrung out were heavy, dripping wet pieces of cloth. They hadn’t been through a modern washing machine’s spin cycle to remove most of the water. If you’ve ever had a washing machine break before the water drained out and had to take out the soaking wet clothes, you know what a hard job this was. And, of course, the “washing” part was scrubbing each piece with lye soap on a wash board.

Oh yes, and most of the time the laundresses had to make their own soap.

Soap Suds Row

The Army provided quarters for laundresses, although the quality varied widely. Their housing could be tents, wooden shacks, or adobe buildings with brush roofs.

Fort Larned’s laundress quarters were two adobe buildings behind the enlisted barracks with brush, hay and earthen roofs. Built in 1860, they were 70 feet long, 19 feet wide, and 8 feet tall, with walls about one and a half feet thick. They had four rooms each, with four doors and windows in the front, as well as a wooden kitchen attached to the back.

If you’ve done the math, you figured out that each laundress had one room approximately 15 by 16 feet, for a total of 240 square feet to call home. This living space would be for her, her husband, if she were married to one of the soldiers, and any children they had.

The laundresses didn’t get new quarters when the Army replaced most of Fort Larned's sod and adobe buildings with sandstone ones after the Civil War. After the railroad replaced the Santa Fe Trail in 1872 and the post garrison went down, the laundresses moved into the east barracks building.

Other Work Around the Post

Besides their washing duties, laundresses sometimes worked as part-time cooks and servants for officers and their families and did the laundry for the officers’ families. Some baked pies and bread to sell around the post.

Laundresses even served as mid-wives and nurses. In testimony to the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1876, Gen. J.C. Kelton said that laundresses often “...afforded the only assistance on post when death or childbirth occurred in the officers’ family.”

“A rough lot” or “ladies in every sense of the word”

Opinions on the personal character of Army laundresses varied. Some officers and soldiers considered them quarrelsome troublemakers while others thought of them as honest, industrious workers. Just like the soldiers and officers themselves, their conduct and willingness to obey the rules depended on their personalities and individual circumstances.

Also like the soldiers, laundresses came from many different backgrounds. Besides those born in the US, records show laundresses came from Ireland, England, Canada, Germany, Holland, Norway, France, Scandinavia, and Italy. After 1866 when African Americans were allowed to serve in the regular Army, black laundresses were hired for these units. There were even some Native American women hired as laundresses.

Fort Larned was home to one of the new black cavalry units from 1867 to 1869. That also meant there were black laundresses working, and living, at Fort Larned during that time.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

By 1876, the Army decided to do away with the company laundresses. First came a general order in 1876 ending the practice of laundresses traveling with the troops. Laundresses married to soldiers kept traveling with their husbands, and doing the laundry, until their husband’s enlistments ended. The official end came in 1883 with an order ending the Commissary Department's authority to issue rations to company laundresses.

For some seventy years these hardy women worked and traveled with the troops, washing their clothes and sharing their hardships. Although the work was hard and the living conditions often not ideal, many women welcomed the job as a way to make good money and travel to “exotic” places they might otherwise never get to see.