PLUMBING WAXAHACHIE

What was plumbing like for early Waxahachie settlers? Water heaters weren’t exactly common in the 1800s. The same is true for running water & plumbed toilets, baths or any of the luxuries we have at our disposal today. The earliest inhabitants of the Waxahachie area were Tonkawa, Kickapoo, Bidai, Anadarko and Waco Indians. The first Anglo settler to this area was Emory W. Rogers who came the open expanse of prairie land that was Waxahachie in 1846. Officially organized on the banks of the Waxahachie Creek, Ellis County was named for early Texas leader Richard Ellis.

It took a lot of work not only to get water but to heat up that water for a bath. My great, great aunt told a story of tying her twins to the bed post to go fetch water. With water being scarce, early settlers would conserve by bathing one right after the other. The oldest always went first starting with the grandparents. Fun fact: the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” stemmed from this common practice. Trail riders would go weeks, even months without a bath while on the trail. People used to think that bathing too often wasn’t healthy. The logic was that if you bathed too often, your pores would become more opened, exposing you to additional disease and infection.

Public bath houses were common in the old west. While some lucky few were wealthy enough to have personal bathrooms in their own homes, most of the common folk had to resort to bathing in public baths. In and around Waxahachie, most simply gathered at one of the numerous natural springs or the creek to bathe or wash clothes. Keeping the hair clean in the 1800’s wasn’t exactly what you would call hygienic. Some women used a mixture of whiskey and castor oil to give their hair that luscious sheen. Shampoo was a mix of rainwater & a sodium-based chemical called borax. Outhouses were common. Outhouses were commonly built fairly close to houses. Once the hole filled to capacity, the outhouse was simply relocated to another spot near the house. Before toilet paper was officially patented at the end of the 1800s, settlers and frontiersmen had to make do. Sach cloths and fabrics were valuable. So, people had to rely on dried grass and leaves.

Clean, drinkable water was not a common luxury in the age of the Wild West. Most water sources were either stagnant ponds that were breeding grounds for insects and bacteria brought in by thirsty horse herds, or small rivers. Many homes were built around wells or cisterns. Our home was built in 1905 and the well was just outside the kitchen. Today it is under our back porch, covered by a former expansion of the original floor plan.

Death from common diseases was rampant during the 1800s. Lack of sanitary water was the biggest culprit. While any number of diseases commonly cured by antibiotics today could prove lethal back then, cholera was the major cause of death. Massive cholera outbreaks would claim thousands of lives across the American frontier, among both settlers and Native Americans alike.