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Life in the 1880's

The age was marked with practical inventions that impacted everyday life – kerosene, the light bulb, the tin can, breakfast cereal and others. The population changed from producers to one of consumer of mass-marketed products churned out at far away factories and marketed through new mail order catalogs.

Farm production changed with the introduction of machines capable of plowing, planting and reaping thousands of times more than human labor could ever accomplish. More and more acres west of the Mississippi River came into large-scale production and farming elsewhere became more specialized and commercial.

As railroads spread, so did the availability of goods massed produced in urban factories. Refrigerated rail cars, first patented in 1868, brought heretofore-unavailable produce, like oranges, to remote corners of the country. Purchases that once occurred by bargaining with local shopkeepers were now transacted through mail order catalogs. Department stores, mail order catalogs and the 5 and 10 cent stores delighted the city residents, while rural families relied on the Montgomery Ward and The Sears catalogs to keep them abreast on the latest conveniences, machinery, and fashion.

The Montgomery Ward catalog first appeared in 1872. Aaron Montgomery Ward sent out a single price sheet listing items for sale and explaining how to place an order. Twelve years later, the catalog numbered 240 pages and listed nearly ten thousand items. The mail order business depended on the confidence of the buyer in a seller he or she had never seen. Ward’s products carried an ironclad guarantee that all goods were sent subject to examination, and any item found to be unsatisfactory could be returned to the company, which paid for postage both ways.

Women’s Rights in the 19th Century

To put it bluntly, women had no rights. The story of Adam and Eve appeared frequently in early schoolbooks. It endowed Eve with a feeble moral foundation and made her “the weaker vessel,” both physically and spiritually. Women inherited the shame and curse of Eve, who heeded the devil in the form of a serpent when she ate from the tree of knowledge. Expelled from the Garden, men had to grow food by the sweat of their brow, women labored in childbirth and all people must eventually die. America followed the principles established in 1765 by the English barrister Sir William Blackstone. It was asserted and accepted in America that “by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being and legal existence of woman is suspended during marriage.” Essentially, the wife “belonged” to her husband. He had a right to the person and property of his wife; he could use “gentle restraint upon her liberty to prevent improper conduct;” he could beat her without fear of prosecution. A woman’s right to hold property was either denied or restricted, and she had no right to make a will, enter a contract, or sue in court without her husband’s consent. Children belonged to the woman’s husband, and he could dispense with them as he pleased in his will.

It was commonly accepted that men held official public power in legal and business affairs, while woman’s domain was the hearth and home, thereby affirming the weakness of women.

Women’s Roles in the Late 19th Century

“The average farmer’s wife is one of the most patient and overworked women of the time.” The American Farmer, 1884

The weekly schedule of the drudge of women included laundry on Monday, ironing and mending on Tuesday, baking on Wednesday and Saturday, daily tidying of kitchen and parlor, and thorough cleaning on Thursday and Saturday. This was in addition to childcare, three meals a day, hauling water and keeping the fire burning in the stove, a chore that in itself took at least one hour each day. Then there was making the family garments and seasonal preserving of fruits, vegetables and meat. Often, the work extended to the farm itself. Women were in charge of the farm garden, livestock and poultry. She milked the cows, made butter and cheese, and butchered the meat. If she did not work in the fields during planting and harvest, she provided room and board for the extra help that did. The average workweek was 55 to 60 hours.

Clothing Fabric

Clothing the family of the 1830s was an important task, and most of the work was the responsibility of the women. Every stitch of sewing had to be done by hand. Elias Howe’s sewing machine wasn’t invented until 1846 and Singer’s version didn’t come until 1850. Even then, the machines weren’t readily available and were very expensive.

Ordinary people didn’t have the large wardrobes we expect today. They made do with one outfit for everyday, one for Sunday best, and perhaps one other, or parts of another, for seasonal change. Even the wealthy didn’t necessarily have lots of clothes, although their money allowed them to purchase ready-made items from the storekeeper, or to hire custom sewing done outside the household or even by having a live-in seamstress.

There was a great variety of fabrics available with all “natural” fabrics such as wool and linen most common, while cotton and silk were scarcer and more expensive. Hundreds of weaves and patterns were available. A rich selection of colors existed even before synthetic dyes were developed in the late 1850s. Early colors were made from plant parts including leaves, stems and blossoms of woods and meadow flowers; roots, barks, nut hulls and tree galls; berries, fruits, pits and skins; mosses, lichens, and fungi and non-plants, such as insects and shellfish. Many dye sources were imported from tropical areas, and were sold in general stores.

Often the whole family helped to produce the cloth use for their clothing, especially if the family were rural. Sheep were raised, fed, and sheared by the men of the household. Wool cleaning and carding were done by young children. Spinning yarn on a high wheel, dyeing it over the cooking fire, and loom weaving of the fabric were done by the unmarried daughters and aunts. Mothers, sisters and grannies sewed up trousers; coats and dresses; all the women and young boys and girls knit caps, mittens and stocking. Several sheep could provide enough wool for the needs of the average family each year.

The linen fiber came from the flax plant, which was grown as a field crop. A quarter acre of flax plants was enough to clothe the largest family. After harvest, the plants were rotted in water to break down the cellulose in the stalks. Then they were “broken”, then scraped or “scotched” with a knife, and “hackled” across several boards covered with sharp metal teeth to separate and align the fibers for spinning. These processes were difficult work and required strength and determination. When the fibers were all prepared, they were spun on a low wheel, and then loom woven in linen shirting or sheeting, or table linens. Since the only capital investment in linen fabric was for the flax seeds, and all the labor being supplied by the family, it was cheap to produce, and was the cloth used by the poorer families. It was also the cheapest to buy.

Cotton cloth was readily available, but it was imported from England. Cotton was grown in India, where there was plenty of cheap labor to perform the backbreaking fieldwork and then the tedious picking out of the cottonseeds from the harvested cotton bolls. Spinning, dyeing and weaving of the cotton – also done by hand – was done very cheaply in India. On the other hand, some of the cotton was shipped to England where the newly developing power machinery could turn it into spun threads and then into woven cloth. It wasn’t until after the American Revolution, the growing of cotton was allowed in this country.

Silk was for wealthier people to own. Most silk was imported from China and India. Silk was expensive and scarce.

Clothing Styles

Men’s everyday dress consisted of a linen pullover shirt, made with full sleeves, deep-buttoned cuffs, a generous collar, and very long trails to tuck into the trousers. Underwear was not worn, so the tails helped protect the wearer from the scratchy wool of the trousers. The pants had straight, fairly slim legs, and a flap, which buttoned to the waistband in front, covered pickets on either side of the opening. The width of the flap determined whether the trousers were known as “broadfalls” or “narrowfallls”. A wrapped tie, called a cravat, covered the throat. A vest was always worn, either single or double breasted, with shawl collar, or without any collar, whether or not a coat went over it. It helped to hide the suspenders, or galluses, which held up the trousers. Belts were not used by men at that time.

Several styles of coats were worn, depending on age, occupation and social status. There were tailcoats, which were waist length in front, but had thigh-high tails in back. A “frock” coat had a thigh-length narrow or moderately full skirt all around. A “round-about” was cropped off at the waist. Coats were both single and double breasted and the collars were cut so the vest showed beneath them. Coats were always fully lined and were made of wool, linen, or cotton, depending on the owner’s finances and the weather.

Women in the 1830s wore full or ankle length one-piece dresses of wool, silk or cotton. Simple day dresses for house and farm work opened down the front to the waist to better serve the needs of the nursing infant. They were pinned closed or fastened with hooks and eyes closely set. Sleeves were generally long, with fullness at the shoulders, skirts were very full, either pleated or gathered onto the bodice. The waist was generally higher than the natural waistline. Necklines were generally modest; although a lower cut was appropriate for festive evening or party wear.

Day dresses were apt to be made of a serviceable dark color, especially winter garments. Laundering clothing was difficult, and not done casually. Aprons were always worn to protect the skirt during work. Aprons were usually linen, though some were made from sturdy fabrics like denim.

Dressy dresses usually opened down the back, and were closed with hood and eyes. For summer and party wear, sleeves were shorter, but still very full. All bodice seams were “piped” with narrow cording of matching or contrasting fabric. Hems were deep and faced with heavier fabric to protect them from wear. Bodices were always lined.

Under these garments, women wore shifts, or chemises, of linen or cotton. They were simply made, with short sleeves and necklines which could be gathered up on a drawstring. There was no waistline, but the shift was gathered by the dress worn over it. This piece served as the sole piece of “underwear”. Over the shift a woman wore her “stays” or corsets. These were constructed of heavy cotton, intricately seamed and bonded with whalebone to achieve the appropriate bodyline. In the 1830s this was a high bust, small waist, with the waist slightly high. The construction of the dress was planned with the stays in mind. Every woman was expected to wear stays, summer and winter. No underdrawers were usually worn, however, women did wear at least three petticoats at all times, more when it was cold or if the dress required it.

Country women often wore a simple work boot, but the more fashionable city women wore light weight kid leather slippers, black for everyday, but pastel colored to match their party frocks. Heels were very low and shoes were worn with knee-high stockings knit from wool, cotton and linen. The finer the gauge of the yarn, the dressier they were.

There was great interest in fashion, with the nuances of changing fashions coming from London and Paris. Most women remade older dresses to reflect the more modern trends, altering sleeves, waistline heights, replacing pleats with gathers or vice-versa. The cloth was too dearly obtained and too many of their scarce hours had gone into making the original dress to cast aside. It was not uncommon for a dress to be remodeled a half dozen times, finally to be entirely re-cut and made into a garment for a child.

The cloak or great cape endured for many decades. It was the usual outer cover of a woman’s dress for a couple of hundred years, with changes coming very slowly. Some had extra shoulder capes for added warmth and rain protection. The usual fabric was wool, but silk capes for dress were often made. These were usually lined with wool. Some capes had attached hoods; others were intended to be worn with bonnets.

Women kept their heads covered most of the time. They wore “day caps” of fine linen or cotton, with ruffles around the face, and chin ties. These were even worn under the cape hood, or under the summer straw bonnet or winter-quilted bonnet. Ladies of fashion wore elaborately decorated bonnets when they left home with flowers, feathers, lace, ribbons, and ruffles abounding.

For sleeping, many women wore night shifts or nightgowns, usually full and straight falling, with long, full sleeves and high neck, of cotton or linen, and a nightcap.

Children’s clothes were similar for boys and girls until about the age of six. Both wore dresses of cotton or wool around the house. Occasionally, a boy’s dress would be worn over “drawers” to match, which showed beneath the dress. Little girls often wore pantalettes peeking beneath their dresses. The dress was long or short sleeved to suit the season, with slim sleeves, round or boat-shaped neck with the waist lightly fit with a set-in belt. Preferred fabrics were linen and cotton for ease of care. As children matured into pre-teen and teen years, their clothing more and more resembled that of adults. Often they wore hand-me-down clothing from parents or older siblings including shoes.

Health

Rural women were required, by the nature of their work to be healthy and strong. After long days of labor, they were often exhausted, mentally and physically. For every 100 women who were twenty in 1865, more than 5 would die of tuberculosis by age 30, more than 8 by age 50. Disease was real, and devastating. Women worried that a family member, friend, or neighbor would be dying prematurely from typhoid, cholera, food poisoning, or a simple infection. There was little women could do about their concerns. Living in a time before the formulation of the germ theory of disease, women and men were unaware of the important connection between the lack of proper sanitation and illness. Early Midwesterners lived side by side with their own waste and that of their neighbors. They drank polluted water and ate poorly prepared, tainted food. Their diets were poor and heavy in starchy foods. In addition they were grossly outnumbered by the disease bearing insects, which swarmed around them, bringing malarial fevers and other illnesses. With the general lack of cleanliness and other environmental hazards, the settlers had to keep a wary eye out for symptoms.

The treatment of disease was crude. Charms, potions, and home remedies were taken to battle ill health. For instance, a bag of live insects hung around the victims neck was thought to cure whooping cough, while “punkin seed tea” was prescribed for convulsions. Similar concoctions were proposed for the cure of bleeding lungs, cancer, shortness of breath and cough. These home remedies were often supplemented with a myriad of patent medicines, many with high percentages of alcohol, and the liberal use of laudanum.

Women’s Education

By 1860, it was almost as likely for a white girl as a white boy to attend school, even in farming regions of the country. In 1870 there were only 160 high schools in the country. By 1880, the figure was almost 800 and by the end of the century, the number had grown to 6000. From 1870 to the middle of the twentieth century, female high school graduates outnumbered male graduates. In the Census of 1880, the proportion of literacy for young women was actually higher than of young men.

The first college education opportunity opened for women in 1837 in Ohio. The Michigan legislature founded a state university that same year, providing a place for women, although they were not allowed to attend until 1870. When women were allowed to attend colleges, they were not treated as equals. Educators of the day feared that, although women possessed the mental capability to do college work, their health was threatened if they were forced to follow the intellectual rigors of the male curriculum. Even so, a college-educated woman was seen as a benefit to herself, her husband and her family. Until, of course the results of a college education on women became know.

Figures showed that at least a fourth of women who graduated from college never married, more than double the proportion of non-college women. If they married at all, they did so later in life, and consequently had fewer children. The intent of educating women – making them better wives and mothers – showed every indication of doing just the opposite.

Children

Parenthood in the eighteenth century often included the ordeal of watching one or more of your children die. The absence of immunization, fever reducing drugs and antibiotics meant that illness claimed the lives of many infants and young children.

Adults in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed that children were dangerously unfinished people who needed to be hurried into adult manners and dress as quickly as possible. By the 1780s, new childrearing philosophies encouraged Americans to think of childhood as a separate and natural stage of development. As advice books held that recreation to play an essential role in raising healthy, intelligent children, games and toys assumed new importance and acceptability.

Play in this period was very gender specific. Toys for boys tended to promote physical activity. Boys rolled hoops, walked on stilts, and played ball. Even jumping rope remained very much a boy’s game until about 1830. Girls’ toys and games were less diverse and more sedentary. No toy was so popular or considered so useful in preparing a girl for her future role as a wife and mother as a doll. Dolls could be purchased, but many people made them at home. Some were made of rags, some cloth, and still others out of cornhusk.

At the turn of the twentieth century, boys and girls usually played separately. Dolls continued to be a very popular toy for girls, as did miniature tea sets and other objects that allowed young girls to act out the domestic routines of adult women. Jumping rope now became more and more a girl’s activity in this period, in part because girl’s clothing styles had changed. Rolling hoops remained extremely popular among boys and some girls too. The culture of the period generally assumed that boys engaged in more aggressive and physical games. Toys for boys reflected this belief. Boys received sturdy wheelbarrows, pony whips and hoops. Like girls, boys acted out adult gender-specific activities. Play soldier was a popular game. Although the Civil War had ended over thirty years before, it loomed large in the imagination of the boys.

Farms

The early farmsteads, often log buildings, consisted of a house, a small barn, a granary, a modest chicken house and sometimes a hog shelter. The barn often had a lean-to attached on one or both sides to provide shelter for milk cows.

Many wheat farmers did well, and they soon advanced from log buildings to those constructed of sawed lumber. A new house appeared, a more substantial barn, and perhaps an icehouse, a smokehouse, a summer kitchen, a well house, a larger chicken house, a carriage house for the buggy and wagon and a granary to store grain for the horses and for sale.

Advancing from log barns, many settlers built small, one-story frame threshing barns. These barns were used for threshing and storing grain. Grain harvesting was handwork. The wheat was cut with a cradle (a special kind of scythe), and then hauled to the barn where it was threshed on the floor of the building. The actual threshing was done by driving horses or oxen over the grain, which removed the kernels from the wheat. Sometimes the wheat was threshed with a flail, a stick to which a leather thong and another smaller stick were attached.

The mechanical reaper was invented by Cyrus Hall McCormick in 1835, the threshing machine was invented in 1837, and the grain drill in 1841. With these machines, wheat could be planted, harvested and threshed more easily, thus making the threshing barn obsolete. By the middle 1800s many of these early structures became horse barns and later dairy barns.

The farm buildings were located for ease in doing chores. The chicken house, and the horse stable were often close to the house. The corncrib was near the hog house. Prevailing winds were also considered. No one wanted to live in a house downwind from the pigpen.

By the late 1860s, a major shift began occurring in Wisconsin agriculture. Growing wheat, for years a reliable crop, was no longer dependable. As farmers planted wheat crop after wheat crop on the same land the soils nutrients were eventually used up. With repeated cropping and with vast acres of a single crop, disease potential became great. Insects too presented major threats to the crops.

With reduced fertility, disease and insect pests, the wheat farmers began looking for alternatives. Some moved further west and continued wheat farming. In central Wisconsin farmers grew potatoes, further south farmers began growing tobacco and raising sheep was popular there also. Dairy farming took hold in the state at this time. By 1885, Wisconsin had become a dairy state.