Social History Resources: Family and Home Life

Resources on the Web

Family Life 1780 - 1820

Colonial Kids: A Celebration of Life in the 1700s

Childbirth in Early America

Life in the 1880s: Women's Roles in the Late 19th Century

The 1900 House
A web site based on the PBS series.

Courtship and Marriage in the Nineteenth Century

Housework in the Late 19th Century

Courtship in Early America

American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century

The Authentic History Center - Images of artifacts and historic sounds from American popular culture from the Civil War era to present day.

Print Resources

An abundance of print resources are available to help you research the daily life activities of our ancestors. Many of these books are available at your local library, favorite bookseller, or online at www.amazon.com.

Home Life in Colonial Days
by Alice Morse Earle
A lively account about the daily customs of the people of pre-Revolutionary America.

Child Life in Colonial Days
by Alice Morse Earle

A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony
by John Demos
The Puritan life in early New England.

As Various As Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth Century Americans
by Stephanie Grauman Wolf
This book emphasizes the diversity of the American experience during the transitional eighteenth century.

The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840
by Jack Larkin
A delightful tour of America during its infancy.

American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services
by Thomas J. Schlereth (editor) and Jessica Ho Foy (editor)
The essays in this volume offer an interpretive tour through a Victorian house and the way that people lived.

Frontier Living
by Edwin Tunis
This book brings to light every significant aspect of daily life on the American frontier, with vivid text and more than 200 drawings.

The Uncertainty of Everyday Life 1915-1945
by Harvey Green
A chronicle of American life between the two world wars that examines the impact of change on daily life.

Never Done: A History of American Housework
by Susan Strasser
Beginning with a description of household chores of the nineteenth century cooking at fireplaces and on cast-iron stoves, laundry done with wash boilers and flatirons, endless water hauling and fire tending-Susan Strasser demonstrates how industrialization transformed the nature of women's work.