Utah Fishing ReportsAfter posting the “Quill Pens and Ink Wells”, I got to thinking about my ancestors and how they came across the wild plains to Utah. They continued to write in their journals and I’m sure some of them wrote to folks back home. (How those letters got carried back to the folks at home is definitely a mystery to me. Perhaps another story.) But what if they ran out of ink? Then what?
So, I did some research on the issue. One place I looked called for some weird chemicals and cautions about breathing in the powder etc. Did my ancestors carry around those two ingredients just to make ink? It just doesn’t seem right to me. Perhaps they did, but I am skeptical. Certainly, once they arrived at an established town with a drug store or what have you that carried the stuff, perhaps they would buy some. But there weren’t any such places in 1847.
So further research lead me to what I would believe would have been the practice of the times.
They used berries, salt and vinegar. If they wanted blue ink, they would use blueberries or other berries of that color. Red ink…red berries. What color ink do you want? Gather up berries of that color.
How many berries? I’ll answer that with, how many pages of writing are you going to write? You will probably want to make enough ink to last a few days, or maybe you entire trip…6 months worth would probably be about a half a cup of berries. Smush them into some sort of bowl and strain the juice through your pettycoat. (Hey, that stained up pretty good. Maybe you will want to dye your whole pettycoat that color! Is this how tye-dyed began in the 60’s?) Now to keep the color nice, toss in a half of a teaspoon of vinegar and to preserve it from molding on you, a half teaspoon of salt. Mix it all up real good and put it in a container that has a pretty tight lid.
There you have it…ink!
As for the amount of ink you end up with, I’d say the juicier the berries the more liquid coloring you would have. So ripe berries of the blueberry, raspberry, strawberry variety would have more juice than say chokecherry and rose hips. But then, how would it be to get a letter from a loved one written with newly smushed chokecherry juice? I think quite nice.
Bears Butt
April 15, 2012
Oh how I love old ink wells! I even have a couple of them!! I’m not sure how old they are, but they look cool! :))
With this here story, I think your trying to confuse me though… And you have got to be real careful, cause its easy to confuse me! You typed/wrote the date as the 14th of April, but at the end of your story, your ‘blog dater’ said its the 15th of April!!!
I know you was just checkin’ to see if we were payin’ attention! 😉
Love the stories and info!!
wow never knew this im doing a progect on ink so please add
Ran across this post and thought I might add a bit of trivia even though it is six years past. Urine can also be used in place of vinegar. It’s the trace amount of ammonia found in human and animal urine.