Carl Sandburg wrote in his autobiography, Always the Young Strangers: “It could be that if I should stand before St. Peter at the Gate and he should ask, 'What good deeds did you ever do on earth?' I would answer, 'For years and years when I was a boy I carried out the stove ashes of a house at 622 East Berrien Street, Galesburg, Knox County, Illinois'.”

Clara Sandburg did her cooking on a cast iron stove in the kitchen. There were lids in the cooking surface which could be lifted with an iron handle for adding more coal. The placement of the lids allowed for putting pots and pans at several cooking temperatures. To simmer soup or brew coffee, the kettle or pot was put on a rear lid where the heat was lower.

Mrs. Sandburg learned from experience which places on the stove top were best for cooking various foods. She could tell by placing her hand near the open oven if the temperature was just right for baking cookies or bread.

The kitchen stove was a high maintenance piece of equipment. Coal had to be added regularly to assure a proper fire. The fire had to be “banked” at night so it could be brought back to a hotter temperature every morning. Clinkers and ashes had to be removed regularly and carried out to the ash pile in the backyard. This was a task assigned to the boys in the family.

Later, the old cook stove was put in the basement and used for boiling water for the laundry during the summer. A gasoline stove was purchased for the kitchen when the Sandburgs could afford it. The stove was a much more efficient piece of equipment, but very dangerous to use. More than one homemaker was seriously burned or killed when her long skirts caught fire.

The Sandburgs also added a parlor stove to their abode for warming the front room. It was upright with a door on the front. There were eisenglass windows in the door so one could look inside to check on how the coal was burning. It stood on metal legs above the floor and was connected to a pipe which fitted through the wall into the chimney.

This kind of stove was somewhat more efficient than a fireplace, but the work of keeping it burning coal and removing the ashes was still time-consuming. A right angle in the stove pipe helped to keep the smoke in the stove longer and thus provided more heat. Along with the smoke and cinders of the many steam engines traveling though Galesburg and the hundreds household stoves being used in the city, it must have been a smokey time for the residents.

Next week, a description of putting up the parlor stove for winter use and taking it down when warm weather arrived.