May 21, 2001

Herb Granny

Mama Lindsey was a “herb granny” who knew all about wild plants that cured whatever ailed you – such things as murdock tea for fever, mustard plaster for croup and pokeberry for skin infections.

Her specialty was herb soaps.

She didn’t intend to get into the hair- restoring business, but fate sometimes thrusts fame onto unwilling mortals.

My maternal grandmother grew up in the hills of Tennessee. She married Rev. Milton Lindsey, a Cumberland Presbyterian circuit-riding minister assigned to Buckhorn, Oklahoma Territory, in 1899.

There he preached the gospel to homesteaders and Indians with equal fervor. Mama Lindsey was the only medical assistance for 50 miles around.

Those were still pioneer days in the isolated hills of the south and lonely plains of the west. People lived close to nature and learned its secrets to make do with what was at hand.

Herb grannies were not necessarily grandmothers. The informal reference simply recognized mature women wise about natural bounty.

Mama Lindsey had gained her knowledge of herbs from her mother. However, it was Mama’s inspiration to put a plant extract to more pedestrian use in soap.

* * *

Soap was an essential product in pioneer households. Folks got mighty dirty clearing land, farming, and tending animals. Young-uns attracted grime just by being kids.

The basic ingredients for soap were commonplace – grease, lye and water. Turning these into soap, however, required skill and patience.

Any kind of grease would do, but most women made soap from the residue of fried bacon and sausage.

The grease can was a standard fixture in southern kitchens. Not only did it store a vital soap ingredient, it also was a cornucopia yielding seasoning for mustard greens, turnips, wilted lettuce, snap beans and milk gravy.

Many folks liked to reheat a spoonful of old grease and drip it over cornbread – washed down with buttermilk.

Grease accumulated faster than it could be recycled for internal use. When a five-gallon lard can reached capacity, it was time to make soap. For some reason, soaping usually was a springtime activity.

The hardest part of making soap was obtaining lye. Eventually, Red Devil brand commercial lye was marketed; and this greatly simplified home manufacture.

In the olden days, lye was leached out of wood ashes – hickory was best. Ashes were saved in a “gum hopper.” This was a wooden barrel lined with straw or corn shucks. A hole in the bottom allowed water poured in at the top to absorb lye and drip cleanly into a “catch bucket.”

The usual soap recipe called for a gallon of lye water to two pounds of grease. These were boiled and stirred to desired consistency. Stirring was important -- else the soap would “clabber” into granules. A few corn shucks tossed into the pot would thicken and smooth out the mixture.

The longer the soap was boiled, the harder it was when cooled in a pan and cut into blocks.

Soft soap with the consistency of jelly was popular for personal hygiene. It was kept in a wooden or pottery bowl because the lye would eat through a metal container.

Sand often was stirred into soft soap so the men and boys could get their hands clean after work in the fields or stables.

Whatever the intended use, homemade soap was brown in color, reflecting its heritage of cooked grease and wet ashes.

* * *

Rev. Lindsey died in the flu epidemic of 1904. His congregation got up a barrel of crockery and old clothes for Mama Lindsey and her five children – one of whom was my mother, Hannah.

The Presbyterian Synod paid train fare for the fractured family to Steele, Missouri, where Mama’s brother was constable of nearby Cooter.

Mamma Lindsey bought a house on mortgage -- co-signed by brother Sam Hungerford -- and operated a boarding house for railroad men. Lots of soap was needed. She helped met expenses with homemade soap.

Boarders liked her pine-tar soap and talked it up throughout the railroad system. Before long she had all the customers for soap she could handle.

Obtaining pine tar, though, was another chore. The oldest child and only boy – Milton, Jr. -- chopped wood for the cook stove and set aside pine knots for soap.

These aromatic chunks of wood, heavy with resin, were packed into an iron wash-kettle. This was turned upside down on its lid and roasted in a bonfire. The heat melted the resin, which ran down into the lid to be collected.

Other favorite soaps were “flavored” -- that is, scented with cinnamon bark, nutmegs, ginger leaves, honeysuckle blossoms or sassafras root.

Mama’s moneymakers, however, were herb soaps – used more for curing skin problems than for removing grunge.

Pokeberry soap was good for ringworm and other scalp disorders. It contained cyanide from the berries and was a guaranteed parasite killer. Murdock soap was good for boils and pimples. Willow twig soothed itchy rashes.

* * *

An outbreak of ringworm one summer kept Mama Lindsey busy making pokeberry soap. Seems like all children in the county were afflicted.

One of the victims was a lad born bald. In early childhood he grew only a few tufts of hair. A bar of pokeberry soap cured his ringworm; but what little hair he had, fell out. His playmates called him “Cue Ball.”

His parents were upset, but no one ever heard of malpractice suits for homemade soap. Medical misfires were accepted as nice tries.

Bye and bye, the boy’s hair began to grow back. First the tufts, then new tufts and, finally, a whole head of new hair that never had been there before.

The miracle hair-restoring soap was the sensation of Boot Heel Missouri and part of Arkansas.

Baldheaded men flocked to Mama Lindsey’s door. To meet demand, she had to buy lard and lye. Her kids roamed far and wide harvesting pokeberries.

She didn’t believe pokeberry soap would grow hair and told purchasers that. Nonetheless, she charged a whopping 20 cents for a small cake. This compared to 10 cents for a brick-size bar of regular brown soap.

Some men professed to have enjoyed an increased growth of hair, but those with less imagination gave up after a few bars of pokeberry.

A handsome widow, Mama Lindsey was wooed by a baldheaded widower who came often to buy her special hair-restorer. His hairline remained the same, but he persuaded her to become his wife.

Whether Uncle Billy – as the step-kids called him – was disappointed in Mama Lindsey, too many kids, or her preoccupation of soap, was never clear.

A year later, he just walked away without a by-your-leave.

Last anyone heard, Uncle Billy had rigged up a medicine show wagon and was peddling Cherokee Skin Balm out west.

Undoubtedly his balm was nothing more than soft soap made from Mama Lindsey’s recipe.

Author: Lindsey Williams

ooooooo

Cutline – 2 col. – woman and bush

Photograph provided

[Mama Sarah Belle Lindsey knew plants that cured what ailed you. ]