Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.
Soap
On the last Saturday in March, 250 years ago, sixty-five items were purchased in Colden's store by fifteen different people. This was twice the average number of items sold per day at the store.
One of the many purchases was one-half pound of soap by Jacob Millspaugh Jr.
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This article is one in a series of a daily accountings of Colden Store transactions. Be sure you read the first installment for an introduction to the store. You should also read this article which appeared in the Journal of the Orange County Historical Society.
In the prior seven months, the store sold almost twenty pounds of soap (often spelled 'sope') in fifteen transactions. The amount is dwarfed by the large quantities of fabric purchased at the store, which leads to a few conclusions.
First, this soap may have been an imported luxury item. Perhaps it was specially formulated for shaving or bathing.
Secondly, most of the soap consumed was probably made locally. They had all of the ingredients to do so.
Lye (NaOH) was extracted from wood ashes and concentrated. It was then boiled with animal fat to effect the saponification resulting in soap. The resulting mixture could be poured into soap molds to solidify or used as a liquid. We know the community processed animal fats as they sold tallow to the store. They also had access to tons of ashes from the home fires that were continually burning.
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