If you rub any dry leaf, or old cloth remant, or many other dry items that can be found in the woods, including bark with the ash and black charcoal found in old fires, the blackened areas will catch a flame much faster. For people who lived in a wood culture, rather than the industrial age, and our age of plastics, there was no need to write these things down because everyone learned firemaking as soon as they were old enough. NO kid at the school house had to be instructed on how to set a fire in the pot bellied stove that heated the place. Kids had been doing that chore to help out at home for years before they attained school age. My grandfather grew up on a poor farm, walking for miles to go to school. He could not remember when he first learned to make a fire, and, in his 80s, had forgotten much of what he had learned when he found a better way to live. He was wanting to know why we grandsons wanted to know all that stuff! Why work so hard, when you can just use a stick match???
My point is that just because something is not written down does not mean it was not done. Nothing was thrown away, and was used as wisely as it could be, through multiple uses, before being confined to a fire. No cloth was allowed to be thrown away, but instead became material for quilts, or patches for clothing, after first being resewn as hand-me-down clothing for the younger children. Rags could be cut in strips, and braided to make hot pot holders, or even were used to stuff pillows that were used on the buckboards. After that, they might be used as a horse blanket, or bedding for a family dog, with pups. Only after all these uses had exhausted the fabrics, was the fabric allowed to be broken down to be used for something as lowly as wads, or charcloth.
