The Things They Do For…Finding Clues
Still looking for ancestral treasures in a closet or attic? Family historian Craig Pfannkuche, president of Memory Trail Research, Inc., would tell you to dig deeper—into the outhouse. Outhouses, says Pfannkuche, can provide amazing information that you just won’t find anywhere else. “There is a connective feeling with your ancestors that you can’t get over a marriage license when you find bits and pieces of their lives in the privy,” Pfannkuche says.
A mustache cup can hint at a family member’s appearance. Bottles, lamps, belts, suspenders, corsets, plates, eyeglasses, and shoes do as well. “It’s all organized in chronological order, too,” Pfannkuche says. “The further down one digs in an older privy, the older the items found.”
Pfannkuche became interested in his down-and-dirty digging as a student at Northern Illinois University. “I got to do field work at Fort Zarah on the Santa Fe Trail near Great Bend, Kansas, and I’ve been researching ever since. Everything is interesting. Every little thing that comes out of a privy is a key to the folks that lived there.”
Most old outhouses have long been abandoned and their contents broken down into rich, black loam. To find the whereabouts of one for your own excavation project, look first for lilac bushes. “They are nature’s air freshener and very hardy,” Pfannkuche says. “Lots of folks grew them around their outhouses not just because they have such a strong fragrance but also because the bushes provided a very ample screen of privacy.”
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I’d never given any thought to the idea that lilacs would be planted around privies, but it makes perfect sense. My dad always called tiger lilies ‘privy’ lilies, because lots of people planted them around the privy just to improve the looks. The leaves certainly wouldn’t have been much help!
Our house was built in 1890. The lot contained 3 antique lilac buses along the property line near the alley. Betcha I know what’s under there! And there are lots of small pieces of coal, telling me that was their coal pile for the pot belly stove.