The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1892-04-09
The History of the Stove,
From the Philadelphia Press.

who was born in England, but came here,
as did Franklin from Boston. And how
many deople in Philadelphia elsewhere
in the United States-know that we are
indebted largely to Franklin for the stoves
which less than century ago began to
replace the ireplaces and more crude ar
rangements for giates warming our houses2
The Franklin stove, which in its days of
early development was merely portable
iron fireplace, with open front in which
wood was burnt to heat an apartment, was
given its name because it was invented by
BENJAMIN Franklin, and was really the
connecting link between the rude ireplaces
of the last century and the stoves of to-day.
The word stove, as applied to q heater for
a room, seems to be of about the same age
as the article to which the name is now
applied; as, while the word as a pame had
an existence in early English, it was used
in different sense.
Both Lord Bacon and Woodward used
it as referring to a house or room arti6cially
warmed, and particularly hot-house for
plants. Bacon also used the word as Il
verb in the way of keeping warm in
house or room, as "to stove orange trees
and myrtles, to quote from his writings.
Pepys used the verb in nautical sense, as
heating for the purpose of making pliable,
as s'to stove bolt ropes" But all these
definitions are obsolete now, such disuse
dating from the time when DIR. Franklin
made his Discoveries and applications. The
French word etuve, it may be, added, des-
cribes hot-house or bathing room, and
hence is parallel in meaning with the early
English word.
Many people are living to-day who dur
ing their entire bOyhood never saw stove.
The writer of this article, who was boy
in Ohio from 1910 until 1850, remembers
distinctly the first stove he ever saw, which
was in lS47. OF course, there we're stoves
in existence there before that time, but
they were not common and were to be
found only in the houses of well-to-do
people, and sometimes in the school houses.
Houses were heated and meals were cooked
at the old-fashioned fireplace. The boy
who has seen an old smoke-begrimmed
crane, covered with hooks, from which
was suspended iron pots in which to boil
bauty of Longfellow's graphic poem of
''The Hanging of the Crane" better than
he who knows of it only by reading,
Back in the '40s well -to-do-people never
had such thing as match in the house.
During the winter a perpetual fire was
kept in the fireplace At bed time good
sized stick of wood partially consumed was
Al kol g Il
Goals, and in the morning these were raked
open, wood was thrown on, and in a few
minutes a rousing fire was the result.
Sometimes, through carelessness, the fire
would 90 out The writer remembers
several occasions when as a boy he went
to a neighbor's third or half mile
away with a big fire shovel in which he
bought back live coal with which to start
fire. This was no desirable jaunt to
make on a cold morning with the wind
blowing savagely.
What poetry and sentiment linger around
the old fashioned fireplace Here the fami-
lies gathered, down to the middle of the
century in many cases. Before one Of
them in Kentucky the boy Abraham
Lincoln learned to read, the hut in which
he lived being too poorly furnished even
to allow him the saucer Of lard with the
burning lampwick floating therein. Here
the sturdy manhood and the buxom woman
hood lived, loved and died, learned, dream
ed and went therefrom to make name and
fame or to plod on through life in an
humble capacity.
The stoves of the Middle Ages and of
the era of the Roman empire and through
out Germany and Scandinavia generally
were built of brick, tiles, or similar mate
rial, and were so large as to be stationary,
sometimes taking up the whole side of a
room; and in the latter country in winter
the couches and blankets were spread there
on, and the family used them in lieu Of
the bedsteads of subsequent years.
The fire was built at the bottoa, and
the heat and smoke passed through vari-
GUS fues, distributing warmth, before they
made their exit into the chimney. Some
Of them were faced with porcelain, and
were highly ornamental. 1t may be re-
membered that specimen of one of these
was shown in the Swedish department of
the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia
in 1876.
One of the first attempts at making
closed stove of iron was made by Cardinal
Polignac in 1909, and seven years latter an
attempt was made to introduce stoves Of
this kind into England, hut without sue
cess, owing to the prejudice of English
people in favor of seeing their fire.
The Franklin stove mentioned above
was Invented by DIR. Franklin in 1745, and
a qudrtar of century later, in 1771, and
during the few years following the dis
coverer of electricity invented several other
stoves-one of which was intended for
burning bituminous coal and which had
downward draught and consumed its own
smoke.
Count Rumford was the next person to
make an invention looking'to tn eimprove-
ment of stoves, and during the ten years
between 1885 and 1895 devised several
improvements,
Up to the year 1885 stoves in this coun-
try were made generally in blast furnaces,
directly from the ore, and were very rude
and imperfect specimens of work. New
Jersey and Pennsylvania furnaces made
the great majority Of them, though few
were made in Connecticut and Vermont.
Not long ago in London a preacher in
dulged in a little bit of sarcasm over a
small collection, and did it very neatly,
aWhen look at the congregation, said
he, "I ask, Where are the poor and when
7 ls.l- - H. oolioaf,o, aok Where are