Today, most Americans purchase soap at the grocery store, where there is a wide array of choices, from scented bath bars, to powerful chemical cleansers. Once, Americans had only one option: to use the soap they had made themselves. They used then the same two main ingredients used today which are lard and lye.
To make soap, families saved up leftover scraps of fat from meat that they had eaten during the year, and they also saved the ashes from the fireplace, pouring water over them to release the lye contained in the ashes. On the day that they made the soap, they first cooked the fat in a large pot over a fire for several hours, until it was smooth. They then added the lye water, and stirred for several more hours. Lastly, they would pour this mixture into wooden molds to harden. The soap usually took about one day to harden.
With the advent of general stores to the smaller towns, most families abandoned the hard work of making soap, and instead purchased it at the store. The soap making process was actually considerably dangerous, because of the hot fire, and the fact that undiluted lye, or sodium hydroxide can be harmful if ingested, and if splashed in the eyes can cause blindness within minutes.
The soap was used for laundry, dish-washing, and bathing; pretty much the same uses as today, but in reality very different. One is bathing. Today we use special scented and deodorent soaps, bathe almost every day, and have hot water in our homes. Back then, they bathed generally only once a week, for example: on Saturday night, before church the next morning. They bathed in a wash basin, with water they had hauled to the house from either a well or a creek, and the whole family often used the same water.
Laundry has changed just as much. Today, we merely dump our clothes in the washing machine, add a little detergent soap, and wait until it finishes, then put the clothes in the dryer. Then, the women had to scrub the clothes by hand in a wash basin, using only soap, water, and a washboard. The clothes were then hung on the line to dry, or in later times, put through a clothes ringer. Dish-washing has also changed considerably.
Today, we use soap for purposes that it would not have been used for by earlier people. For example, many people lived in homes with dirt floors, so that scrubbing the floor was not possible.
And if one of these pioneers were to visit a modern soap factory, they would be quite amazed. All of the manufacturing is done by machine, making huge amounts daily to satisfy the American consumers. Though the ingredients of lard and lye are still the same, much has changed. The process has evolved, just as the rest of America has. 
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