And all this time I thought Taco Nite was something the local bar did on Tuesday nights. 
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oh no! Getting hungry for tacos … 
Well water, that is. I live in Duluth and the city water pulled from Lake Superior is amazing. The water quality has attracted many craft breweries to the city. But, yeah, our family cabin had well water and the iron content was so high you couldn’t drink it.
If you still have that slingshot, let me know, I can send you some taconite pellets. 
Ok, if you are a native, can you answer this? When my son was in med school up there, he rented space in an old lumber baron mansion. Forget the address but near down town. In the bedroom was a cabinet in the closet. Not by the dumwaiter or anything just a small cabinet with a door on it. We thought it might have been for storing daily milk or something but didn’t make sense. No lock so not for jewelry or anything but just about a one foot cube. The interior was high quality so no expense would have been spared. Just not aware of how the 1% would have lived around thev1890s.
In the early 1800s, many home did not have closets, there was little reason as most folks did not have that much clothing… But as rich folks bought and built more luxurious homes, they needed a place to put the clothing that they acquired with their riches… like your Lumber Baron…
In the later 1800s, closets were becoming popular instead of the more usual storage cabinets know as wardrobes, which is merely furniture…
So the late 1800s were a period of significant advancement in built-in closet design and with the expansion of closet design and usage, custom-built closets for wealthy homeowners contributed to the evolution of built-in closets as we know them today.
These closets were often made of luxurious materials such as mahogany and were designed to blend seamlessly with the surrounding décor and were designed to meet their specific needs.
The small cabinet in the closet might have been to store something precious to the owner rather that something expensive such as jewelry, cash, bonds, etc, where a safe might have been more appropriate…
Ah, maybe a hat box.
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My guess is storage for valuables. If the owners weren’t home their staff would be and having the house occupied all the time would discourage crime. If there was any theft the staff would be implicated first and they probably were smarter and more honest than to get caught with their hands in the jar.
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To hide the chamber pot ?
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Yeah that might be it. Never thought they didn’t have plumbing then.
I have an old millwork book/catalog that has interior trim products seen in older homes. No date on it but has a model t shown so thought maybe 1920s or so. I think the outfit was in Wisconsin. Used to think carpenters did their own trim detail but appears they just ordered it like kitchen cabinets. I’ll have to page through it again for clues. Slow day.
I’ve written about this previously, I was 7-years old, living in a log cabin in the Adirondack Mountains of up state NY and we did not have inside plumbing. If you needed to go, at night, on a cold, windy, winter night, it was either the chamber pot (that you had to clean out the next day) or the out-house… If it was rainy, sleeting, etc… it was the chamber pot and you do not want to have to go “hunting” for it “in a cabinet in a closet,” it needed to be handy… L o L . . .
Yeah maybe but this was all high end trim through out the house. Didn’t find anything in the book except copyright 1920 but the did show an exterior milk door. I assume in the kitchen for milk to keep it cold before ice boxes.
I would have thought they would have ice boxes by then. Cutting ice on the lake in the winter was a big deal. Stored the blocks over the summer in ice houses. I vaugly remember picking up a block of ice in one once. I think they delivered to the wealthy like milk men. Maybe they shipped ice south even. I’m not a good historian.
The upper part of the graphic is from the an old “Monkey Wards” catelog and that is probably the type of “plumbing” the Lumber Baron had, but only nicer…
Underneath, that was what we had… L 
L . . .
Since I started this thread, I will ask this: were these chamber pots sold with additional document fees?
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Looks like a soup kettle. A magic marker is your friend. “Soup”, “not soup”.
Ok I’ll shut up but I remember reading about Indians during the winter would maintain a pot in the teepee. They just kept adding more stuff to the stew as the winter progressed. Got a rabbit? Throw it in. Never been able to look at stew the same since. Don’t remember the author but think it was factual at least for some tribes. Kinda like bath water. Want to be the first.
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Until the 1930s, my mother’s family lived in a very old wooden building in NYC’s Greenwich Village, and while they had cold running water in the kitchen sink, there were no indoor toilets. Yes, believe it or not, there were outhouses in active use in Manhattan at least up to the 1930s. In addition to being freezing cold in the winter (and smelly all year-round), they were pitch black because there was no lighting in the outhouse.
They thought that they had really moved-up in the world when they could finally afford a small apartment on the Upper West Side–with a toilet!
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Of my 8 to 10 years living in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, I learned that Native Americans generally did their “business” in the most convenient place not far from their tipis or lodges. they dug latrines away from the tipis and fresh water. During the most brutal weather, these latrines would be placed close by. Most understood the hygiene issue and you only heard of mass pandemics (black plaque, cholera, smallpox, etc…) after they came in contact with Europeans.
There is no record of how the cliff dwelling ancient Pueblos handled human waste, it is believed that some of the chambers might have been used as a common place to relieve themselves and that the waste was mixed with organic material (plants, grass, weeds, etc…) and then used as fertilizer, but this is all speculation…
I know, TMI… But I bet they had no document fees… L o L . . .
Depends how close to the floor the little cabinet was. When I responded above, I thought about a cabinet above the waist. If close to the floor, then a place for the chamber pot makes sense.
Trying to remember but up may four feet or so from the floor.