The subtitle of this “How Things Worked” book is How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century. The author starts by discussing how even before the American Revolution, in the larger East Coast cities, wintertime could bring a shortage of fire wood. The heating method, and cooking method, at the time was a hearth using wood. If most of the trees in your vicinity had already been cut down and burned, you relied on others harvesting and shipping in supplies, sometimes from quite a distance. This, obviously, was not ideal, especially for the less affluent. Much of the cost of fuel was for the transportation.
However, switching from wood to coal was a complicated process. Not only did the coal have to be mined, it had to be transported from the mill to the customer, which were rather large distances. Also, you couldn’t just burn coal in a regular fire place; you needed a specialized stove. This stove could be used for both heating and cooking, just as the hearth was used for both. However, first somebody had to invent the stove, others had to manufacture and sell the stoves, and there had to be public acceptance of both the stove and the use of coal. And it was even more complicated by the fact that stoves could be expensive, were labor intensive to maintain, and coal did not burn as easily as wood. Plus, there was more pollution.
There is some discussion on the timing of all of this, but it may be difficult to determine how your ancestors heated their home and cooked their meals. It is going to vary depending on their location and income. The very rich were sometimes “early adopters’ of this new technology, because some of these stoves were very expensive. However, if you could get a less expensive stove, you would save a lot by purchasing relatively cheaper coal, instead of more expensive wood. You also needed a place to store a lot of coal, which could take up quite a bit of room. If they lived in a more rural area, they may have had access to cheap fire wood for longer than city dwellers.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Did your ancestor work in a mine, or on a railroad or canal, or as a coal dealer? As to what type of heating and cooking method your ancestors were using, you might get clues from their estate inventory. Newspaper research would not tell you if your ancestor was using a hearth or coal, but checking the advertisements, always an interesting endeavor, would tell you what was available in their area. Directory research would also tell you if stove and coal dealers were located in your ancestors’ vicinity.