Potash production provided late 18th and early 19th century settlers in North America a way to obtain badly needed cash and credit while they were in the process of clearing their wooded land for crops. To make full use of their land, excess wood including stumps needed to be disposed of. The easiest way to accomplish this was to burn any wood not needed for fuel or construction. Ashes from hardwood trees could then be used to make lye, which could either be used to make soap or boiled down to produce valuable potash.
To create potash, one takes an open-bottomed barrel, and places it on a stone base with a groove cut into it, which will direct the resulting liquid into another container. Then one places a layer of straw at the bottom, covered by a layer of sticks. This filter layer will prevent the ashes from contaminating one's solution. Then one fills the barrel with wood-ashes and pours water over it. The water will leach out the potash into one's receptacle.
This product will be of variable quality. Historically, it was measured by seeing how high an egg would float in the solution.
The liquid was then boiled away to give a black, impure potash.
If desired, the potash could be further refined by baking in a kiln to produce a less impure form of potassium carbonate, known as pearlash for its pearly white colour. The refined potash was in increasing demand in Europe for use in the production of glass and ceramic goods. American hardwoods, besides being more abundant, are said to have provided a higher yield of quality potash than European wood. In some parts, potash receipts became a common form of currency. Some settlers found potash production to be quite lucrative, resulting in faster deforestation than farming alone would have caused.
The first U.S. Patent (Patent number 1) was issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process."
