Amanda's+Topics+On+The+19th+Centrey

http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=822
 * EQ: Is life better now or then?

Figure out whether your life is "better" than someone living in the early 19th century using the [|data base] of 19th Century (1900-1899) primary and secondary source documents from Old Sturbridge Village. In class we will discuss what "better" means. Hmmmmm....you must utilize at least two primary and two secondary sources.

General guidelines: Having five sons beside the youngest, who died in infancy, the farm was carried on under his oversight by a hired man with the aid of the boys, during the summer, the boys taking care of the stock and doing the chores, and going to school during the winter. Pick two topics that you will research. Find four things from the 19th Century about each topic. Find a primary source example for each. Compare and contrast them with the 21st Century Come to a conclusion on whether life was better in the 19th Century or the 21st Century

= Topic: Farm Work/Chores =

''We owned six cows; my grandmother four. Having milked the ten cows, the milk was strained, the fires built, and breakfast prepared''
 * Example 1 : Milking the cows-woman**

[|http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=856**ple**]
 * Example 2 :Boys worked the farm**

Having five sons beside the youngest, who died in infancy, the farm was carried on under his oversight by a hired man with the aid of the boys, during the summer, the boys taking care of the stock and doing the chores, and going to school during the winter.


 * Example 3 : Lots Of Farm Work**

Shapley ploughed, harrowed, tilled, hayed, mowed, ditched, picked stones, spread manure, built fences, tended cattle; in short, his work encompassed the whole range of farm chores.


 * Example 4 Children and Chores**

//''// In spring and fall, the busiest seasons of the year for farmers, children of all ages and sexes did whatever they could to help with the planting and the harvest. On every farm there were many chores that children customarily performed, such as carrying water, feeding livestock, carrying and chopping wood, and helping with the garden. In a world where many tasks were gender specific, boys learned from their fathers and girls from their mothers. Girls were learning to sew by the time they were four and boys might be driving teams of oxen by the age of eight. As they grew older and more responsible, they assumed other tasks that involved skills necessary to manage a farm and household. Early nineteenth-century New Englanders believed in the moral as well as economic value of hard work for their children.''

Example 4:One classroom with all ages of students they had only one room with students of all ages and abilites
http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=822

Our district school was taught by a man in the winter and a young lady in the summer, this we attended while it kept, some six or eight months in the year, in the intervals it was not unusual for some young lady to set up a private school, at a charge of a New York or Yankee shilling per week for tuition; these too we attended until we reached an age when our services were needed in housework or on the farm." http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=987

Most of them attended one-room district schools within walking distance of their homes." http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=146

Now the chores are much easier. Girls knew had to sew by the age of 4!!!! And boys were driving oxen by the age of 8. now mostly machines do the work for us. Washer machine is just one of these machines. in the 19th children started chores in early ages and now it seems we wait long to start our hard work.Boys worked outside most of the time and girls were helping their mothers cook. now some girls dont even no how to cook a meal till much older than they were supposed too. boys dont useally work in the farm unleast they live n one.

i think school is much harder now. there is so much more presure put on us. we go to school 6 months straight but in the 19th century they dint go to school while there were needed on the farm. ||