matches in the 1840's

[hayshaker]

were matches in use in america in the furtrapper days of the 1840's someone had mentioned
that on another forum.

[natertot]

were matches in use in america in the furtrapper days of the 1840's someone had mentioned
that on another forum.

I don't know if they were used or not, but I would say it is plausible. The Chinese are the "pyros" of the world and just like they figured out gun powder and explosives, they also figure out the first match back in the 500's. They took sticks and covered them with chemicals to ease the fire making process. These picked up popularity over time and stayed in use for nearly a thousand years. The first self lighting match was invented in the very early 1800's by a Frenchman. He covered an end of a stick with a mixture of chemicals and would then dip it in sulfuric acid and it would then ignite. Not long after this, the English came up with the first striking match (I think 1820's - 1830's).

So although I do not know if the 1840's trappers used matches, I do say it is possible in some form or another and wouldn't discredit someone for saying they did. The matches that would have been used would not have been like the modern match as we know it which didn't really come to be until the great depression.

[finallyME]

Hey Rick!.....did you use matches when you were a teenager. That was in the 1840s, so he should know.

[natertot]

Hey Rick!.....did you use matches when you were a teenager. That was in the 1840s, so he should know.

(snort.... snicker....)

[hunter63]

Funny you should mention that....I carried, (actually still do) strike anywhere matches (Lucifer's) in a smoking pouch at rondy....with a magazine article that out lines the history of matches......
So when some one said, Hey that not "period"....I would whip out the article .......
BUT

As far as a practical daily useful method of light you fire.....I sure the average mountain man didn't carry them, or be able to afford them if he even knew about them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match

So, the flint (rock) and steel (not ferro rods) burning glass, and I would suppose bow/hand drill were pretty much normal.
BTW Ferro rods were patented in 1903 by Carl Auer von Welsbach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Auer_von_Welsbach

[kyratshooter]

First off, the 'fur trapper days" were over by the 1840's. The market for furs had collapsed in the late 1830s and most of the beaver were trapped out by then. Beaver were nearly extinct and did not recover until the 1990s when they became one of the greatest invasives known to man.

Today we mark the reenactment events of the fur trade as pre-1840, but the enforcement of that rule has become very relaxed and I often wish they would change it to the end of the "gold rush" and run it right up to the start of the Civil War.

Friction matches of very bad quality and performance were around by 1800, but they were very expensive, very fragile, and they were slightly dangerous. One never knew exactly what chemicals were in them and they might burst into flame in one's pocket as one stood by the fireplace on a cool evening.

The match was finally "perfected" just before our Civil War so they would hold up to moisture better, strike reliably and not burst into flame in ones pocket.

The ones we have today are a pitiful excuse for a match compared to what was available around 1900 and have been degraded even further since 2001 when the government forced a chemical change to prevent their use in bomb making.

I can still remember when a waterproof match case was an essential to every outdoor ditty bag and ferro-rods were an unknown commodity.

[Faiaoga]

We might mention the "tinderbox" that seems to have been used a lot. I have no personal experience with these, but I see illustrations of them and have seen these mentioned in literature of the 1700's. A metal box with flints, a striker and char cloth seems to have been small and easy enough to carry before the modern era of Zippos and "flick your Bic".

[Rick]

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did have matches but as Kyrat pointed out they were not terribly reliable. Here's a pic of me in 1839 as the result of sitting on the edge of a large rock. Or could have been the beans from the night before. That was a long time ago, ya know.

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[WolfVanZandt]

They didn't replace the white phosphorus in matches until the 1850's. If I were a trapper before then, I wouldn't have trusted them.

[jdbushcraft]

We might mention the "tinderbox" that seems to have been used a lot. I have no personal experience with these, but I see illustrations of them and have seen these mentioned in literature of the 1700's. A metal box with flints, a striker and char cloth seems to have been small and easy enough to carry before the modern era of Zippos and "flick your Bic".

Probably wasn't char cloth. Lenin was expensive. Maybe in a home after it was no longer useful as a rag. Outdoors it would be natural tinder. Charred grasses and barks. The sparks would be struck directly into the tinderbox and after the fire was going the lid closed to snuff out the charred tinder.

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[hunter63]

Quote>
Traditionally a substance called "tow" was used as tinder. Tow is lint created from flax or hemp. Flax tow can still be purchased from catalogs, but "da guv'ment" frowns on hemp, in any form. ("Honest, officer, I'm just using it to start fires!")< Quote

From
http://www.texianlegacy.com/fire.html

[hunter63]

I think it's kinda funny that so much time and effort has been devoted to the "best tinder (meaning, catch a spark...in this case.)

Linen most like likely was expensive,... Lenin more so......but many things most likely were used to catch a spark, long before cotton balls dipped in PJ, packed in soda straws, dryer lint, and all matter of soft fluffy media.
I can't picture Jeremiah Johnston, stopping at the general store...."Hey do you have any cotton balls with PJ on them?"

Our factory used a product ....cotton waste...left over for mills that processed cotton, ...cloth, thread and other products.
We used it as a wiper on a couple of processes, bought it super cheap, by the bale.....

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I used this for many years....but didn't think to salvage a bunch, before the plant closed.....

Worked well,....but I wouldn't know who else would have access to this......
Point is to keep stuff like this in the back of your mind..... to use what you find.

[kyratshooter]

We get our terms of the pre-20th century mixed up with our terms of today. The words had different meanings back then.

Tow was real flax waste. It was used as fire starter, pot scrubbing material, twisted into rope or as a replacement for gun cleaning brushes of today. Every ram rod in every gun had a "tow worm" attached to the end so they could run the worm down the barrel after every three or four shots to clear the fowling. Tow was really useful stuff in the frontier homestead or on the trail.

Tinder was stuff shredded to the consistency of coarse thread, much like tow, and kindling was match sized splinters and twigs.

They generally called char cloth what it was. Linen was the cheap fabric if that era, grown by every farmer and woven in every household. It was the common material for both char-cloth and bullet patching material. It was traded and sold for that purpose and is often recorded in the trade ledgers with powder and flints as part of the shooting supplies.

If all else failed one could cut up their spare shirt for patching on a long hunt, which is probably why so many of them returned wearing buckskins.

The most common char was made from punk wood. Maple was the most favored, but any punk wood would char if buried under the dirt of the campfire and baked to a crisp.

The fire steel was a common item but most of the hunters of that era before 1825, when the percussion cap arrived, made their fire using the flintlock on their rifles. No char was needed. The "fire kit" which we see today was an item that sat on the mantle of the fireplace. It was not usually carried on the trail. One use his rifle for stating fires in the bush.

They would plug the touch hole of the gun with a tight fitting twig or a feather, lay some tow in the pan on top of the priming charge an snap the trigger. The tow would burst into instant flame. No huffing and puffing and chasing a spark of the glowing edge of a piece of char-cloth. It worked better than a Zippo!

And no, the main charge of rifle would not go off because you plugged the vent hole. I do have record of one man that was killed by his hunting partner after nearly being shot when he had an "accidental discharge" due to forgetting to plug the vent while lighting the fire,,,twice in a week. So yes I am sure they used the flintlocks in this way.

They also did things we do not in today's world. The would soak tow in dissolved salt peter or dissolved gunpowder and let it dry. As soon as a spark touched it there was instant flame!

Just think of all the times we see "experts" on TV who can not get a fire going in difficult conditions to save their lives. The trappers and pioneers faced those situations daily and they absolutely had to get a fire going, so they "cheated" in any and every manner possible. I would too!

Another amazing thing I have found while studying is the number of people who were totally unskilled in fire making, especially the women. There are many instances where the fire died and the family sat freezing until papa came home.

That was probably due simply to lack of skill since fire strikers were give-away items in most trade posts and cost only a penny or two if purchased, so everyone could have one.

[LowKey]

Linen was a fairly common commodity in the 1800s. It was used, abused, worn and traded. It was a major component of the barter trade. Linen scraps were bought and sold by the pound, from the housewife for store credit or in trade for goods, then cashed in by the merchant at paper mills. During the time, paper was made from linen scraps, not wood pulp. Wood pulp wasn't used for paper much in the US until after the Civil War. I've often wondered if a newspaper is sometimes called a "rag" or "ragsheet" because of its once linen rag makeup.

[hunter63]

Just an interesting side light.
I have mentioned "cotton waste"....most like likely like linen waste...etc.
...And mentioned that we use it for a wiper in a wire making process....
Came in a big bale like 100#.....only part was left...had been there for ever.

One day it ran out...or was so nasty....needed to "reorder", had a hard time finding a modern day supplier
Turns out that the company owner was friends with the owner of Jockey International...(in town as well) and he had just got a bale from their factory.
Seems big shots all went to lunch together...good old boy network and all.

So now we had to find a source with out buying a ship load.....LOL

Seems that factory did have some left around.... but we ended up leaving it behind when our factory closed.

[Faiaoga]

We get our terms of the pre-20th century mixed up with our terms of today. The words had different meanings back then.

Tow was real flax waste. It was used as fire starter, pot scrubbing material, twisted into rope or as a replacement for gun cleaning brushes of today. Every ram rod in every gun had a "tow worm" attached to the end so they could run the worm down the barrel after every three or four shots to clear the fowling. Tow was really useful stuff in the frontier homestead or on the trail.

Tinder was stuff shredded to the consistency of coarse thread, much like tow, and kindling was match sized splinters and twigs.

They generally called char cloth what it was. Linen was the cheap fabric if that era, grown by every farmer and woven in every household. It was the common material for both char-cloth and bullet patching material. It was traded and sold for that purpose and is often recorded in the trade ledgers with powder and flints as part of the shooting supplies.

If all else failed one could cut up their spare shirt for patching on a long hunt, which is probably why so many of them returned wearing buckskins.

The most common char was made from punk wood. Maple was the most favored, but any punk wood would char if buried under the dirt of the campfire and baked to a crisp.

The fire steel was a common item but most of the hunters of that era before 1825, when the percussion cap arrived, made their fire using the flintlock on their rifles. No char was needed. The "fire kit" which we see today was an item that sat on the mantle of the fireplace. It was not usually carried on the trail. One use his rifle for stating fires in the bush.

They would plug the touch hole of the gun with a tight fitting twig or a feather, lay some tow in the pan on top of the priming charge an snap the trigger. The tow would burst into instant flame. No huffing and puffing and chasing a spark of the glowing edge of a piece of char-cloth. It worked better than a Zippo!

And no, the main charge of rifle would not go off because you plugged the vent hole. I do have record of one man that was killed by his hunting partner after nearly being shot when he had an "accidental discharge" due to forgetting to plug the vent while lighting the fire,,,twice in a week. So yes I am sure they used the flintlocks in this way.

They also did things we do not in today's world. The would soak tow in dissolved salt peter or dissolved gunpowder and let it dry. As soon as a spark touched it there was instant flame!

Just think of all the times we see "experts" on TV who can not get a fire going in difficult conditions to save their lives. The trappers and pioneers faced those situations daily and they absolutely had to get a fire going, so they "cheated" in any and every manner possible. I would too!

Another amazing thing I have found while studying is the number of people who were totally unskilled in fire making, especially the women. There are many instances where the fire died and the family sat freezing until papa came home.

That was probably due simply to lack of skill since fire strikers were give-away items in most trade posts and cost only a penny or two if purchased, so everyone could have one.

It is amazing how some valuable and essential, once commonplace, skills can easily be lost through neglect and lack of practice. I am reminded that my father grew up on a farm in Wisconsin where they cooked with a woodburning cast iron stove. Today, I have to look on websites like this to even have the slightest idea of how to keep such a stove going - my experience is with a microwave.

[kyratshooter]

When I was director of a museum down in middle Tennessee we used to get "donations" of all kinds of gear because we had both a working grist mill and blacksmith shop and an agricultural machinery section that was extensive.

I would often run out and catch the senior citizen tour busses that came for a look at the facility just to mine for information from the old men. The guys in their late 80s and 90s were the only ones that knew what some of the horse drawn farm equipment and harness gear was or how it was used.

They loved to give the "college boy" an education on things everyone knew 75 years ago that are all but forgotten now.

The really pitiful thing was that if you had "time warped" an ancient Egyptian into that shop he would have known exactly what every item was, just like the guys from the first half of the 20th Century.

We have lost almost 10,000 years of knowledge in two generations!

It is almost like what happened when Rome fell and the technology was lost to the "Dark Ages", only in reverse.

We have lost the material culture of the past to modern technology.

[Faiaoga]

I have just come across the book "Northern Bushcraft" by Mors Kochanski. In this book, the author mentions using "quarzite" to make a spark from carbon steel, and he illustrates methods of dropping quartzite rocks to obtain a sharp edge for making sparks. Could the early mountain men and explorers done something similar? Mors Kochanski writes about surviving in the boreal forest of Canada, so the technique may have been used by mountain men sorry for the revived thread, but I have never had a chance to see his book before, and I think Mors Kochanski has quite a bit of useful knowledge.

[Rick]

Flint and steel (or any rock that will spark) has been used forever. No reason they wouldn't have used that or a similar method. It was one of the few, quick, reliable methods for making fire. The other method was to carry your fire with you.

[kyratshooter]

"Back in the day", actually when I was a kid, almost all pocket knives had a hardened carbon steel back-spring. You could open the blade half way so that spring popped out a little and strike sparks from it with a piece of flint. It was a common way of making emergency fires.