"A 'shotgun' weatherboard house built in 1925. Person County, North Carolina." Dorothea Lang, 1939. {1} Shotgun houses still exist, but not too many are being built any longer. Versions of the shotgun were numerous in the 9th Ward of New Orleans - before Hurricane Katrina.
On two recent occasions, I heard visitors at Indiana Landmarks events express their surprise for the manner in which people lived, wondered how people could "live like that." It's not that the were observing anything horrendous, mind; we were not looking in on an unimproved cave dwelling, nor at a muddy hovel strewn with trash, we weren't circulating through a formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailer. No, we were only touring a couple of 19th Century structures in Wabash, Indiana, their construction separated by thirty-odd years, and both pretty ordinary for their day. What surprised people seemed to be that our forebears' ideas of "ordinary" might differ from ours so much.
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The first occasion was while I was standing on the porch of the Wabash County Sheriff's House and Jail. It's date block was put down in 1880, and the structure has two main sections: the brick house and office at the street, and a heavy stone-block jail at the rear that held iron cells on two stories. A sheriff, from the 1880s until the 1920s, lived with his family in the house, walked across a hall to his office, and through a massive iron door to gain access to the delinquents under his charge.
That a sheriff, and his family?! would live on the same premises as the prisoners was seen as strange.
I commented that for a very long time in human history, it was much more normal for people to reside alongside what-ever occupied their working lives; farmers lived under the same roof as their livestock (and if they were well-off enough, on different levels); shop keepers lived in apartments over their retail stores; black smiths worked at forges out back of their houses; sheriffs slept in the same buildings as the prisoners. Living and working were adjacent. The idea of going some distance before beginning work would have been unusual. True, there have long been the itinerant laborers, and some farmers might go a short distance to get to a commonly-held field, but for most, the distance was measured in steps.
Wabash County Sheriff's House and Jail, Wabash, IN. 2018. {2} The street front facade with a recently rebuilt porch roof.
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Amy Stewart's recent series of "Kopp Sisters" novels plays with this at-the-time normality. Following a fictionalized (but well researched) woman, Constance Kopp, who was the first female sheriff's deputy in Paterson New Jersey, it is taken for granted that the sheriff lived in a house that fronted on the jail. His morning "commute" was a through a couple of doors; how the man's wife deals with the situation also becomes part of the narrative (spoiler alert: she doesn't take it well).
Wabash County Sheriff's House and Jail, Wabash, IN. 2018. {2} The rear elevation showing the stone jail portion.
The second occasion was up the street and around the corner from the sheriff's at the Alber House; built in 1849, it is the oldest house still standing in Wabash. A "two-up, two-down" arrangement, the upstairs rooms (and attic) was the home of Philip Alber and his family; the two-down held a brewery, with a bier garten out the back. The Albers family lived and worked under the same roof for several years before the brewery got busy enough to warrant being moved to a separate location - which introduced Philip to commuting! - and the lower level was opened up for more living space.
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The Alber House, Wabash, IN. 2018. {2} The rear elevation, showing the ground floor where the brewery was initially installed. The roof has been rebuilt to include an over-sized "dormer."
The two upper rooms are modest in size, on either side of a central entry hall that also has the stair to the attic. The room on the west side has a covered-over flue port, and was likely the kitchen/living/work room; its opposite number was likely, then, to be the bedroom.
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Alber House, Wabash, IN. 2018. {2} The likely bedroom, which served for visitors' check in during the tour. The photograph shows a little less than half of the whole room - I was standing near the corner when I shot this.
Several visitors looked about and voiced their part-admiration and part-astonishment that a family would basically live in those two rooms. Our beliefs of household dynamics have changed since 1849. Many of us take for granted that we have more "personal space," and more autonomy within our society. Many of us can take for granted that we have electrical and potable water services, and that, at a whim, we can simply go purchase the things we need or want. Architecture has reflected these changes, too, and houses have got larger over time, with designs for more bedrooms, more bathrooms, larger kitchens, garages for the automobile. A fair amount of those changes have only come about in the last 50 to 70 years, but that's time enough for generations of people to have grown up with rather different ideas from their grand parents.
I made no comments at the Alber House, but the want to express something more fully realized, complete with images, is what led to this illustrated writing. I am both surprised and not that the history of how our foregoing families lived in the United States (and in the North American colonies); history as a subject in schools is not always the most engaging topic, and even when it's presented in an interesting manner, covering numerous decades in a semester or two means some details will be run over quickly or left out all together to get to more pressing items.
The "Rotary Jail" Museum, Crawfordsville, IN. 2016. {2} Another example of the sheriff having residence to the front, and the jail in the rear. In this case, though, the jail was innovative: the cells were pie-shaped and built into a revolving barrel of steel - imagine a lazy susan with prisoners. It worked well enough (and, now restored, it still works) but as the idea went "national" prisoners also lost a few arms when the barrel o' cells went 'round, so most were rendered stationary.
That's really another story, though; do have a look at their website (and c'mon, who doesn't have a website these days?).
Unless someone takes up the study of history for their own reasons, the subject is often dropped like the proverbial hot rock when school's out. To be generous, the variety in history can be daunting, and portions studied won't necessarily include how folk lived in two rooms. I don't claim to be an expert either, as my own readings in history have been fairly general, and then mostly concerned with the first half of the 20th Century (witch extensions forth and back on occasion). I would certainly not "go up against" someone who has made a life-long career, or avocation, of studying the American Civil War, though some of my reading has run over that span of years.
As for this writing, it's far from exhaustive or comprehensive. It's a sketch, a brief look at how some houses and households were built and conducted in our past, drawing from some popular history texts that I pulled off my book shelves, and meant to provide a measure of contrast to "how we live now." For all the things I'm leaving out (and there are many) I would refer you, dear reader, to the uncountable books that author historians have written and placed out for sale or access via the web.
And with that disclaimer stated, where to begin? How 'bout we go way back to the 1600s?
"Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 11th December, 1620." Currier & Ives print. {web}
I don't know how well the "Pilgrim Story" is covered any more. Maybe it's got more nuanced since I was in school, and hopefully it is at least at university level. For a long span of decades the Puritan's arrival in North America was upheld as something to inspire the children, and instill in them the notions of faith, perseverance, rectitude, and healthy living. Or something along those lines.
Anyway, say what you will about those Pilgrim Puritans, they did have a rough time of it when they landed in what would become the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They sailed at the wrong time of year, and so arrived as a brutal New England winter was just beginning; the pilot of the Mayflower may have been bribed to steer the dissenters away from the settled Hudson River area; they were not farmers or fishermen and brought little if anything to aid them in those pursuits; and like the earlier settlers of Jamestown, down in the Virginia Colony, their outlook during those first months was bleak. {3}
Reconstructed early Puritan houses at the Plimouth Plantation Museum.
In a rush to get under cover as the snow, and the temperatures, fell, the first houses built were hasty constructs of roughly hewn planks with thatched roofs over one or two rooms. Many Puritans elected to winter on the Mayflower, rather than face the prospect of trying to build houses in the cold. {4}
As the weather warmed, and their prospects brightened somewhat, the Puritans of New England expanded their nascent settlements, and put up more of these rough houses. Fences held in livestock and, it was hoped, kept out the "barbaric Indians." Their earliest houses mostly had one door, and maybe a window or two; the floors were mostly left to dirt, and the fireplace drafted through a crude chimney. As their situation slowly improved, what had been ordinary in Europe became ordinary in the "New World," too. Housework was conducted in the main room (if there were more than one): food preparation, cooking and eating; implements were made and repaired; any spinning, looming, sewing or mending; candle making and the like. Sleeping was at the other end, in the one other room, or in the attic.
Everyone in the family was expected to take part, and they all squeezed in to their common spaces.
2015's The Witch: A New England Folk-tale, was set in this milieu. I won't speak to the level of authenticity, but the production design appeared pretty convincing to me in its depiction of a Puritan family on their rough, settler's farm. Above, a view of the house and farm yard, and, below, a meal in the house. Note the low ceiling and ladder leading to the sleeping quarters in the attic. The family lived and worked on the ground floor, and slept above. {5}
The Puritan's fortunes did improve over time, as they got down to the businesses of trade and farming. Those first few years, along with the rough houses and stockades, were left behind. With improved fortunes, families were able to trade the thatch for shingles, and constructed framed wooden houses in larger towns.
As noted earlier, our ideas of the household dynamic, and how it relates to the community, have changed to some degree. For the early settlers referenced here -
"...views on privacy and family autonomy were far removed from the notion that 'a man's home is his castle.' In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, city officials, social superiors and prying neighbors regularly entered homes and told people whom to associate with, what to wear, and what to teach their children; families who did not comply were punished..." {6}
"General view - House, Pilgrim Village, Salem, Essex County, MA." Charles E. Peterson, 1937. {1}
The early New England Puritans had many concerns among their community, like who owned what plots of land, and where boundaries between plots were; their marriages across the community put some families in good stead, and cemented grudges between others. The daily rounds of chores within and without the house continued of course: tending to the cooking, the livestock, the mending, and the study of Scripture, led by the father of the family. Surrounding them on all sides were the dense wildernesses of North America, and the Indigenous Indians that dwelt there, both of which threatened their physical lives, while Satan and his devils threatened their souls. All while the members of the bustling households rubbed elbows and got along, or didn't, within their four walls. {7}
"Given the shared beds and cramped, cluttered quarters - the average...household consisted of six people in four rooms - the beef in the parlor and the loom in the kitchen - privacy proved a New England rarity. More than a few Massachusetts residents woke to giggling, sometimes in the very bed in which they slept." {8}
In the late 1680s, Samuel Parris took up the post of minister in Salem village (yes, that Salem village) and moved, with his wife Elizabeth -
"...their three children, and slaves moved into the parsonage at the village crossroads. A comfortable two-story home on two acres of land, it was configured around a cavernous chimney with four fireplaces. Parris constructed a large lean-to behind the parsonage's four whitewashed rooms; the children presumably lodged upstairs with the help." {9}
"A Puritan Hearthstone." circa 1906. {1} I'd guess that, like the bedroom of the Alber House seen above, the rest of this room was probably not much larger than what is visible in the photograph.
That eponymous hearthstone, of course, is the all important fireplace. The fire may have been the most important features of a European style house; it provided heat for the house in the winter, and provided heat for cooking year 'round. When such a scene as above was the reality, those logs likely would have been ablaze, or at least sitting atop a well-banked pile of coals. Preparing meals for the family and its dependents could occupy a good deal of the hours of a day. Food had to be procured, prepared, and set on to heat, and in enough quantity that everyone got something.
And everyone in the household may have included more children than just those of the marriage -
"For reasons that made sense at the time but have not been adequately explained since, a third of New England children left home to lodge elsewhere, usually as servants or apprentices, often as early as age six... As a result, most households included several unrelated adolescents. Boys learned a trade while girls mastered...'housewifery.' All were sent off to be disciplined by adults other than their parents... 'Binding out,' as it was called, occurred across the social spectrum." {10}
Ah! The Puritans in New England. Their society did get ameliorated and folded into the wider Colonial Era eventually (though their strict views never really have gone away). The period of large scale settling on the Eastern Seaboard brought other dynamics, but I'm skipping past the "proper" Colonial Era and its houses, large or small, and the importation of Enlightenment Principles that brought about some, shall we say "revolutionary" thoughts. Instead we'll remain out in the wildernesses, and have a look at another kind of house and home that has a firm root in the American Mythos: the log cabin.
"A Home In The Wilderness." Currier & Ives print, 1870. {web}
A popularized, and popularizing, image of frontier homesteading. It occurs to me that some people were still living in log cabins when this was produced. I have to wonder if they identified with the scene, or wondered why their lives were not so idyllic?
There were, with each wave of immigrants landing along the Atlantic coast, some who wished to push on past the already settled landscape. A large percentage of European immigrants during the first decades of colonisation were bound to indenture, and for them the west beckoned with the hope of being one's own master; later decades saw immigrants without need of service joining the children of earlier generations pushing into the hills and mountains because much of the land of the coastal plains was already owned (whether they gave much thought to the growing numbers of non-white servants and slaves I can't say; some might have, many probably didn't). Getting into the west, though, and carving out a livelihood in the woods, was likely to have been a rougher journey then the days spent crossing the ocean in a tossing ship, but the promise of working one's own fields instead of someone else's was a bright one.
Before you can farm, you'll need to remove some trees. The Chemung River Valley near Elmira, NY. 2015. {2}
"The crudeness of the pioneers' homes reflected the conditions they encountered. They came mostly on foot, a journey the hardship of which we can scarcely imagine... In most cases, even those who traveled with a wagon had to walk. Only those who could not walk - infants, the elderly, and the sick - were allowed to occupy precious space... Some room had...to be reserved for farm implements and provisions on the journey itself, not least among them food...
Once they had reached their destination, the pioneers' first major job was to clear the woods... Until they could build more permanent housing, pioneers constructed temporary shelters of three sides with a sloping roof called a half-faced camp...
But the goal of those who made the journey...was not to rough it in a semi-open camp. Settlers came with the same motivation as immigrants anywhere: to make a better life. As soon as they could [they] built a cabin. These were not the log cabins of our own time, but the roughest hand-hewn accommodations. Often a one-room affair with a dirt floor, the cabin would have an opening for a door and perhaps a single window... The kitchen was set up in a corner..." {11}
"A little log cabin - relic of the old day - now occupied by a small family (F.T. Castle) who are gradually giving up farmind and depending upon mining and odd jobs. Oct. 12, 1921. (Dogs) Location: Big Chimney, West Virginia." Lewis Wickes Hine. {1}
"Historians agree that the log cabin was introduced to America by the Swedes who first settled in Delaware around 1638... The Scandinavian countries had plenty of forests, and their people were accustomed to cabins and houses made of logs. So they built them on this side of the Atlantic too. It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that non-Swedes built log cabins; the Scotch Irish and German settlers in Pennsylvania were the first." {12}
"Interior of an old log cabin, shows fireplace and a child holding a smaller child inside doorway of an adjoining room." Circa 1895. {1}
The Puritans and their dynamics in thatched-roof cottages was much of their place and time, but many of those dynamics were just those that they brought along when they emigrated from Europe. Having large numbers in the family, living in small quarters, working day-in and day-out to get by, those were simply the ordinary aspects of existence. With the advancing decades the spaces and daily needs of existence meant that the lives lived as the "frontier" was pushed westward were still not so very different from those on the coasts. Wood still had to be cut, livestock tended, fields worked, bread made, food prepared in the fireplace, implements crafted or repaired. There were more in the way of manufactured goods to be had by, say, the middle of the 1800s, but those still needed to be traded for or purchased outright.
Some of those families who began with a log cabin would go on to better economic situations, and would leave the cabin behind - either by supplanting it in the same place, or moving on to a different location all together. For some, though, the lives and dynamics led by earlier generations would remain little changed for the descendants.
"William Morris Log Cabin, Saluda, Polk County, North Carolina." Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1935. {1}
By the time this photo was taken, the man here (Mr. Morris?) has gained a fiddle with a case, and a clock and other mementos have pride of place on his mantle, so his situation looks to have had some improvement.
But while he might have added to the cabin, that fireplace looks like it has remained the same as when he or his father - or grandfather - built it "back when."
One could build log cabins only where there were plentiful trees, naturally, unless someone wanted to pay to have logs hauled where there were no trees. No trees you ask? As settlers pushed the frontier farther out, they left the woodlands behind for a vast expanse of grasslands where trees were at a premium where they grew at all. Europeans roamed across the Great Plains of central North America long before, but for much of that time they had adapted and adopted the modes of the Indigenous peoples who already roved there; they had little interest in setting up house and home and farming. The settlers that came out of the early United States were looking for places to homestead, though, which certainly did include stopping and building a house.
The Great Plains were a different sort of environment. Known for a time as "the Great American Desert," the Plains had their own particular ecosystems, flora and fauna that were often different from the eastern forests.
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The Great Plains under cultivation: South Dakota, from Interstate 90. 2015. {2}
In the 1870s, geologist John Wesley Powell went on a series of expeditions, including a boat ride down the Colorado that was the first full-length survey of the Grand Canyon. During those journeys, Powell reached a conclusion that has turned out to be quite true: there are two distinct regions in North America, one wet, and one arid.
Roughly following the 100th Meridian is what Powell observed to be a boundary of the "Arid Region." To the west of that line (I'll refer to it as the "arid line") the average rainfall decreases, dramatically in some places, the rivers are fewer and dependent on snow melt in higher elevations, and the natural conditions are not conducive to the kinds of settlements and agriculture employed east of the boundary.
In the 1890s, as head of the U.S. Geological Survey, Powell went up against government officials (federal and state), land speculators, and big businesses, all of whom wanted to expand into the west. Powell, in his very considered opinion, argued that future settlement should be limited in scope, and limited by dictate in necessary. The land was just not capable of the kinds of development seen elsewhere.
But the governments, the hucksters, and the business owners preferred the "Manifest Destiny" model of expansion: the land is there, God wants you to have it, so you'd best be gettin' some afore someone else does! {13}
Map of the Arid Regions of the United States, as presented to the U.S. Senate in 1890 by John Wesley Powell. John F. Ross collection.
Today, geologists and hydrologists have confirmed that boundary, and posit that it has migrated in the last hundred years -- to the east! The line now runs roughly along the 98th Meridian.
West of the "arid line:" South Dakota's Buffalo Gap National Grassland. 2015. {2}
I note this because of the next examples of house and home I'm looking at: the soddies.
As the settlers, the homesteaders, pushed out beyond the woodlands and neared the arid line, the grasslands they rolled across held less and less of the materials that could be employed to construct frame houses. The wealthier migrants could bring along, or have shipped after them, wood framing, clapboard, and shingles, and put up wooden structures. But many many more homesteaders arrived with what they could carry, and what they could bring along in a wagon. Like their predecessors among the trees, they made do with what was at hand: sod. Two kinds of construct utilized the very earth of the plains, the dugout and the sod house.
"Oklahoma Dugout." Circa 1909. {1}
The dugout made use of the earth that was, well, dug out of the ground. Homesteaders would dig a rectangular hole, and shape the removed sod and earth into blocks that were then placed around and above the rim; this allowed for an entry (as seen above), more head room (without digging deeper) and provided a place to construct a roof. The roof and the doorway would need wood, but much less than an above ground house. Into these crude abodes the family would move while they continued to improve the land they claimed, their hope that in a few years they would be financially better off and have the where-withal to build better.
"Interior of last dugout in the Smoky Valley. Four and one-half miles from Lindsborg, Kansas." B.G. Grondal, circa 1909. {1}
It appears that the builder of this dugout was able to get some fieldstone to line the interior. Unless that's just stone-like sod.
The Lucas family arrived in the Oklahoma Panhandle, or "No Man's Land," to try their luck with farming the prairie. Like thousands of other families that were moving to the area in the early 20th Century, they had their eyes on the future.
"The federal government was so anxious to settle No Man's Land that they offered free train rides to pilgrims looking to prove up a piece of dry land... Hazel [Lucas'] father, William Carlyle, known as Carlie, built a dugout in 1915 for his family and started plowing the grass on his half-section [320 acres], a patch of sandy loam. The home was twenety-two feet long by fourteen feet wide - 308 square feet for a family of seven." {14}
"The Faro Caudill [family] eating dinner in their dugout, Pie Town, New Mexico." Russell Lee, 1940. {1}
From the earliest dugouts until well into the 20th Century, the routines remained.
As with the generations before and to the east, the homesteading settlers around and across the arid line lived and worked in close proximity to their employment and each other. Under the auspices of the various Homestead Acts, they had to "prove up" the land they claimed from the government within five years, so as soon as possible the family would put up their house and get the land under cultivation, and under the hooves of livestock. Whether on 160 or 320 acres (or later on a full section of 640 acres - a full square mile) the homesteads spread out across the grasses. Whether you liked your family or not, your life could get a bit circumscribed when your nearest neighbor was a mile or more away.
The other sod construct was the house made of earthen blocks. It required some more framing, especially if one wanted a roof with shingles, but I suppose it was still more economical that having clapboards, lath, and plaster shipped across the grass.
"Morrison residence on Victoria Creek near Merna, Custer County, Nebraska." Solomon D. Butcher, 1886. {1}
An example of a fairly ordinary sod house.
"Isadore Haumont and family in front of two-story sod house on French Table north of Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska." Solomon D. Butcher, 1886. {1}
I'm going to guess that the Haumont family had a house very much like this - in shape anyway - in the "Old World," like in France maybe. Those turreted corners and that high pitch to the roof are not typically "American."
The Plains and the sod houses brought their own versions of problems: with no ready source of wood for the still important cooking and heating fires, settlers took to burning another material that was readily at hand: cow manure, or "patties;" "soddies leaked" {15}; and, being built of earth, or being built into the earth, meant vermin of many stripes were attracted to the shelters. Warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the surrounding grasslands, the spaces afforded places for a variety of species to take up residence.
The Folkers moved to No Man's Land in the early 20th Century, but it would take 10 years of farm work before they were able to improve their housing. Until then, they lived in a "crumbling shack" -
"... Faye [the Folker's daughter] and her brothers heard scratching and clawing in the walls... It was centipedes, nesting in the walls. Fay could never sleep when the centipedes were at work. The shack was nothing but a heap of upright splinters: one-by-ten-inch planks nailed to two-by-four-inch studs, with wallpaper on the inside and tarpaper on the outside. For insulation, newspapers were pasted to the walls. Some [homesteaders] even arranged the papers in neat, horizontal rows, so they could read the fading news stories. When the sound of scratching inside the walls to too bad, Katherine [Mrs. Folker] grabbed her flat iron and took to the walls. As the centipedes died under the crush of her iron, they made a hissing sound." {16}
"Farm land in Texas panhandle near Amarillo, Texas. Santa Fe R.R trip." Jack Delano, 1943. {1}
Centipedes were far from the only interlopers on the Plains. Many settlers suffered spider bites from Black Widows and Brown Recluse, some of which proved fatal. Snakes and tarantulas liked the sheltered homesteaders' homes, too.
The Lucas family did gain prosperity enough to look ahead to leaving their dugout.
"Within a few years, the family built a home above ground... They bought lumber, nails, siding, and roofing material from the rail town of Texhoma, forty miles southeast, and went about building a frame house, with living room, kitchen, bedrooms, fruit cellar, trim, shingles, and large windows... [they] dreamed of space enough to play music and cook without bumping into each other, or falling to sleep at night without having to scan the floor for snakes." {17}
Writing this around the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, it's also good to remember that these were the childhood living conditions - the log cabins, the sod houses - that had shaped the majority of the "Doughboys" that went "Over There" in 1917-1918.
"Paris. The 'doughboy' arrived in Paris one brisk, snowy morning to enjoy his three days leave. His is shown stepping down from the train. It is in this type of car that our boys have travelled [sic] over France." Lewis Wickes Hine, 1919. {1}
For many, the year or two that they spent in the armed services were the first that they had ever spent truly away from their families and their immediate communities. That the song and refrain would ask "How Ya' Gonna' Keep 'Em Down On The Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" makes more sense in context: thousands of "boys" who had never gone more than five or ten miles in their first twenty years of life were suddenly thrust into a much larger world. For every one them that happily returned to their former lives, there was someone who decided he wanted something different.
"Paris. One of the many statues of Joan of Arc which the 'doughboy' saw in his trip about Paris with the Red Cross Man. This is situated in front of the fine old edifice of St. Augustine's Church." Lewis Wickes Hine, 1919. {1} These images are part of a series that depict a typical U.S. infantryman on a visit to Paris. It is not noted if they were taken during the War and then only published in 1919.
Many homesteaders went on to become prosperous, even if only for a few years. But in the span where the money was good, and families felt flush for the first time maybe ever, houses were built, towns improved, and Sears and Montgomery Ward sold like "gangbusters." The southern Great Plains had record breaking harvests of wheat a century back, much of which grain was sent to Europe to aid the food crisis in the aftermath of the Great War.
Two views of farm houses. Above left: "House of a small vegetable farmer near Santa Maria, Texas." Russell Lee, 1939. Above right: "The home of a prosperous beet grower near Sterling, Colorado, who moved here six years ago from South Nebraska and owns four hundred acres now." Lewis Wickes Hine, 1915. {1}
The prosperity of the southern Plains in the early 20th Century was due to a "wet" period, when the rain fall was above average, demand was higher than normal, and the people moving into the area were more than happy to keep putting more and more acreage under cultivation. Bankers took notice, credit got easy, and the new farm houses filled with furnishings, pianos, and phonographs, and Model T Fords were parked out front.
The prosperity began to slip when the harvests began to outstrip demand, and the rainfall returned to normal. Even so, the farmers might have got by O.K., except for the next two events: the Great Depression and what came to be known as the Dust Bowl. But, that's another story.
Among other things that have put those harsh conditions to history, we can credit the coming of rural electrification. Wabash, Indiana, touts having been the first city in the world to introduce municipal electrification back in 1880, the same year the jail was laid. Other cities soon followed suit, but those utilities were only strung "so far." Rural electrification, like improved rural roads, would only come about with major projects at the state and federal governmental level, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority project begun as part of the recovery efforts during the Roosevelt administration in the 30s.
"Transformer at TVA's Chickamauga Dam near Chattanooga, Tenn." Alfred T. Palmer, 1942. {1}
Electrification made it possible for farmers to stop using oil lamps and candles for lighting, and start using electric stoves for cooking instead of cow patties, wood, or coal. Other utility improvements followed, which allowed for better heating of homes, and faster communications with the telephone.
It's largely forgotten now, but rural electrification would not encompass the most part of the United States until after World War Two.
The spread of massive utility projects also meant that the Arid Region would get settled after all: better roads, better irrigation, better machines, and air conditioning meant that the "Great American Desert" would become the subject of a decades-long experiment in settlement that's still on-going.
But it was those improvements that made it possible for the less photogenic, less memorable aspects of life to be left in the past. Attitudes about housekeeping changed and those who built followed the demand for difference. Mass marketing and mass media had their effects, as did zoning and loaning practices in the years leading up to and following World War Two. Many children born post-war would live lives that their parents or grandparents hardly recognized. Not all of them, no; there were, and are, still people whose conditions and economic situations are much less than the "average," but many people now won't know "how it was" unless someone old enough can tell them, or they take up interest enough to read about it.
As for the houses themselves, many, maybe most, have been flattened for newer houses, or left to collapse on their own terms while a newer house is occupied some yards or some acres away. When Theodore Dreiser was on his road trip in 1915, he went looking for the houses where he'd spent his childhood years. He related that several of them were old when he resided in them with his mother and siblings, and that was 30 years before he went back looking. Those that remained were in worse shape. None of them exist now.
As I roamed through Terre Haute, Indiana, looking for a couple of the addresses or intersections Dreiser wrote of having lived at or near, I found Indiana State University instead. The campus has completely rebuilt the area north of Terre Haute's downtown, added a new chapter to the history of the place, if you will, but there is nothing there now other than the street grid (mostly) that relates to the city during its existence of 100 years ago.
Indiana State buildings, Terre Haute, IN, 2014. {2}
Warsaw, Indiana: where once stood a house Theodore Dreiser called "home" are now several houses of varying vintage. This was the site of the first brick house, the "Thralls Mansion," in Kosciusko County. It was already old when the Dreisers took up housekeeping there. 2015. {2}
Unlike the Alber House, many of the plots in our cities and towns have been "turned over" many times since they were platted, since the first homeowner built a house there. And the houses that do remain, houses of "of a certain age," likely remain because they were built better to begin with, and they remained occupied by a family (or families) that cared about the upkeep. They received the "upgrades" with successive generations and available utilities - they got the indoor plumbing, the modern kitchen appliances, central heating! - so while they still have their "good bones," they are also at a remove from their original state. The smaller houses, the lesser houses, those that were subjected to a rental market, are simply gone.
Not a haunted house (well, at least not a haunted house created for a Halloween event!), this is just an abandoned Indiana farm house. It appears to have got some improvements in some decade or other, but ultimately it was left behind. 2014. {2}
Contrast the farm house above with the Peterson House in Lafayette, Indiana (with visitors on an "Unseen Lafayette Tour," 2014). While this house was originally built seven years before the Alber House, and if I recall correctly it was turned into two apartments some time in the mid-20th Century, at least some of the landlords kept it maintained well enough that the current owners were able to restore it to a nicely appointed single-family dwelling. {2} "Good bones," I think, plus all the "modern amenities."
Sitting here in the early 21st Century, there are few left who can remember living in house and home so very different from ours. With their passing and the loss of their buildings, so too go some of the stories of who we were. There are some aspects of history that we should leave behind -- not forgotten, but no longer in common usage; there are aspects of history that need to be uncovered still, or told-of more, so that they can illuminate where we came from; the stories of the buildings and the people who lived in them need to be retained so that we can learn what worked -- and what failed -- lest we only repeat ad nauseum without any human progress.
If any of this has sparked some measure of interest, then please delve further into the histories. I've barely touched on the wealth of information available, and admittedly focused on a very limited set of experiences. New information concerning the lives of the various peoples in North America is coming available with some frequency, and often the new research is overturning long-held ideas of how history played out. Enjoy yourself!
Cooking with coal! Volunteer interpreters at The Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI, prepare the midday meal in a restored farmhouse utilizing coal-fired stoves. The foodstuffs are those grown in the village, and are served to other interpreters who work at the site.
Walking into the room on a summer's day put the truth to the old phrase "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen!" {2}
Notes:
{1} The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. (There are literally hundreds of thousands of images that have been made available for viewing here. This resource is nigh on endlessly fascinating, but is subject to occasional loss of service for I don't know why; if the portal isn't working properly, go back later -- it's worth delving into.)
{2} Author's photographs, 2014-2018.
{3} Charles C. Mann, 1491 (second edition). New York, NY: Vantage Books, 2011. General information.
For more concerning this work, please see Jake Ponders n'at. (Mann's compact histories of life in the Americas, both before (1491) and after (1493) the "discovery" of the continents by Europeans is very readable and enlightening.)
{4} Caleb Johnson's Mayflower History.com. has a nice look at the conditions and lives of the Pilgrim Puritans.
{5} The Witch, a New England Folk-tale. Written and directed: Robert Eggers; production design: Craig Lathrop; U.S. distributor: A24. 2015.
{6} Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were - American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.
New York, NY: BasicBooks (a division of HarperCollins, Inc.), 1992. Pg 126.
(One of the first books I read that had me thinking maybe history was not as "straight-forward" as I'd grown up believing.)
{7} Stacey Schiff, The Witches. New York, NY: Little. Brown and Co., Hachette Book Group, 2015. General information.
{8} ibid: pg 19.
{9} ibid: pg 38.
{10} ibid: pg 138.
{11} Nancy Hiller, The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. Pg 17.
{12} Ron Woodward, Hidden History of Wabash County. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015. Pg 28.
{13} John F. Ross, "The Visionary John Wesley Powell Had a Plan for Developing the West, But Nobody Listened." : Smithsonian.com, 2018. General information and map. (A condensed introduction to Mr. Powell's story.)
{14} Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: the Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.
New York, NY: Hougton Mifflin Co., 2006; Mariner Books Edition, 2006. Pg 37.
(Egan's narrative includes a good introduction to the grass prairies of the Plains, and how they were affected by homestead farming.)
{15} ibid: pg 36.
{16} ibid: pg 49.
{17} ibid: pg 39.
"Commuters on Train to New York City." John Collier, Jr., 1941. {1} Living at a distance from your job means adapting to the situation, like taking mass transit to the office. Probably a Long Island Rail Road scene.