Tenement housing backyard, Johnstown, PA, circa 1910.


In this backyard there are several lines of laundry hanging from lines that are attached to the house and extend to poles. Several small children pose underneath one of the lines for this photograph. The house is a long, two- story, wooden, structure with eight windows across the top floor. On the bottom floor there is a window to the left and two small children peer out from the inside. To the right of this window are two doors, with a wash tub hanging between the two. To the right of the doors, five windows fill the rest of the bottom floor walls. The yard is filled with debrie.
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"There was always a lot of dirty clothes around there, [and I was] rubbing, scrubbing, freezing, and hanging them up. When I sit and think how hard I did work when I was younger, I get so tired and can't hardly move - just thinking about it. I had one of those big boilers [used in washing clothes]. I would save my bacon grease; then I would mix it with lye to make scrub soap. [ You needed to balance the amount of lye used] according to how much grease you have in the water; you know you use about half cup for a quart; that is what I would do. Put it in the water and let it boil, and [it] turned to soap; stuff was strong too." Lena Walton, oral history interview.

Courtesy of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, http://www.jaha.org/