Outhouse/Indoor Plumbing

The Schumacher family, like many in rural Wisconsin in the early 1900s, did not have an indoor toilet. Instead, they used an outhouse like this one. Although this building is not original to the farm, it stands in the same place where the Schumacher outhouse was once located.

The flush toilet was first created in the 1500s, but in 1940, almost half of the homes in the United States still lacked an indoor toilet. Plumbing in rural houses in America tended to be very basic in the early 1900s. The Schumacher family had simple plumbing in the house when it was built. A cistern under the kitchen floor collected rainwater gathered from the gutters and runoff around the house. A hand pump in the kitchen drew this water into wash basins, one of which the family used to wash dishes, and the other for washing their hands. When the family needed to dispose of this water, they dumped it into the sink, and a drain pipe carried the waste water to a small cesspool a few feet from the house. In the winter, Henry Schumacher had to build a box around the drain to keep it from freezing and sometimes would have to place a kerosene lamp under the pipe to thaw the frozen water.

This outhouse was moved here from the Ferdinand Pape house in Springfield Corners in 2004 and was restored in 2022.