Do we ever admit how poor our ancestors were?

[catjac1975]

I think it is more about basic cleanliness than anything else. Before germs were discovered people did not even know the basic importance of hand washing. Babies and Mothers died in childbirth from infection more than anything. Infants died of dysentery. And then of course later in life, diseases from which now antibiotics save people every day. Though modern medicine has in many cases gone to extremes, how many of us would be here without fever reducers and antibiotics?

That's one thing that has definitely changed from last century...infant/child mortality. Personally, I think much of it had to do with the mother's resources just being depleted, giving rise to babies who were more susceptible to lots of things going around. . . .

I have been thinking about how loss of babies during the 19th century may relate to diet. Mickey brings up a very interesting point: the nutrition of the mothers. Here is a little something from the agricultural statisticians of the mid-20th century:

"The consumption of tomatoes and citrus fruit, important sources of ascorbic acid, increased gradually since 1909, but in the past 10 years the rise has been spectacular. In 1945 the average civilian consumed 116 pounds, compared to about 45 pounds in 1909. . . . Leafy, green, and yellow vegetables form another group that has gained importance in our national diet. From 1909 to 1913, annual consumption averaged about 74 pounds a person. Twenty years later it had increased to about 90 pounds. From 1941 to 1945 we had 121 pounds for each person, or nearly 65 percent more than the consumption from 1909 to 1913." Yearbook of Agriculture 1943-1947 (link)

Wow! From 45#/person to 116#/person and from 74#/person to 121#/person! Taken together: 237 - 119 = 118. Okay, if that was representative of all fruits and vegetables it would be a 100% increase in consumption!

Historian and anthropologists note the heavily weighted importance of meat and cereal grains in the diets of Americans 100 and 200 years ago. This looks like fairly strong confirmation of that.

Burt Wolf had a fun PBS show on a changing American diet. Here is something online about that, what Burt called "How Italians Saved American Cooking!" That part is about one-half way thru this 5 page pdf file (link).

Steve http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h22/Digit_007/Just 4 Fun/1sm209yum1.gif

 

[digitS']

Of course, that has to be part of it, Cat'.

In a study of US diet by historical archeologists, the authors pointed out the suspicions that people had because of cholera and fresh vegetables.

We also know that apple cider was a preferred drink during colonial times. People were a little scared of drinking water . . .

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

That reminded me of an old salloon saying: "You want water? Water can kill ya. Here. Have this whisky. Now that's medicine."

I suppose earlier than the mid 1800's it would have been more cider than whiskey.

 

[NwMtGardener]

Yeah, had an old cowboy tell me one time "Water makes yer insides rust!". Yeahhhhh, okay buddy.

 

[JimWWhite]

I'm sixty-two years old and grew up dirt poor in the south as the oldest of eight children. I don't think my Daddy ever made more than $40 a week at best. He was a tenant farmer in rural Alabama. I planted, hoed, chopped and picked cotton. We had a well and me and my brothers had to haul water back inside the house in big buckets. We lived off our garden which was probably at least an acre in size. We had to draw water and tote that out to the garden too. The entire perimeter inside our house was lined with jars and jars of canned vegetables from the garden and orchard. Every shelf was covered with jars. There were gallon cans of sorghum syrup as well. There was a giant salt box on the back porch filled with sides of bacon, shoulders, and other parts of the hogs. There was a smokehouse with a couple of hanging hams and more bacon. We had at least two hogs at any given time and a milk cow. But we didn't think of ourselves as poor. Yeah, we didn't live in the fine houses that our landowner and his kids did and we slept three to a bed but we didn't think we were poor. And to top it off, and I have no idea how my Daddy and Mama did it, we never started school in the fall without a new pair of sturdy brogan shoes and a couple of pairs of jeans and flannel shirts each. Plus, when Christmas came everyone got exactly what they wanted. Were we poor? Probably by today's standard we would be poor. But we had the Ledbetters and Abernathy families to look down on as being poor. Now they were poor, real poor. We gave them milk, butter, and food from the garden to help them out from time to time. Daddy would take them down to the County barn in his old Studebaker pickup where he showed them how to sign up for commodities and would bring them back home with enough food to get them through the month. That was way before food stamps and WIC. They were poor. We just weren't rich.

 

[Ridgerunner]

We just weren't rich.

I love it. Exccellent way to put it.

Jim, I can relate to a whole lot of what you said and I felt about the same way, but there were times we were the ones getting the commodities.

 

[JimWWhite]

I'm sorry, but when I was writing this I had this thought but it didn't get in the post above. We weren't different from most of the other families in rural Alabama at that time. Most of my friends and cousins grew up just like us. Poor but not poor. The early sixties were tough because there was a deep recession at the time and good paying jobs were hard to come by unless you went to Michigan to work in the car plants with some of my uncles who left the farm back in the fifties. I don't remember us getting commodities but I do remember friends who did. I guess Daddy sometimes had a real prideful streak in him that made him work a little harder to get by that year.

 

[digitS']

I am not sure if they had commodities in Oregon & California.

We all went off to Idaho and there, I enrolled in college. Idaho allowed me to claim residence while I was in school so I only had to pay out-of-state tuition for 1 semester. Residence also qualified me to get commodities for me, my wife and young child. I thought that it was a benefit that came with going to school, working at a gas station while my wife waited tables, and trying to keep things together at home.

It might have been the end of those efforts if we would have had a medical or even a dental :/ problem. Things seemed to be on the right course when I got out of school but the girl I married must have been pretty burned out by then. My career and married life just fell down around my ears. Luckily, there was a lot of country around here where I could decompress for a few years. I just kept right on growing a garden . . .

Steve

 

[JimWWhite]

Steve, I just went to your page and you have a really nice place there. Do you keep bees or chickens? Get some bees for sure and you'll find a great hobby plus make a few dollars throughout the year. Raw, local honey sells for $8.00 a pint here in central NC. We'll sell maybe 80 pints in a year from our 6 hives. Get some laying chickens too if you can have them. We have 24 pullets that are just about ready to start laying. If they're like our old flock they'll be putting out great big brown eggs every day that I'll take in to work and sell for $3.50 a dozen. At their peak for about 18 months we'll get about 22 eggs a day every day. You won't need a rooster so you're neighbors shouldn't complain. When we have honey to sell it's gone in a day. People beg me for eggs and wait outside my office door to buy them when I get to work in the morning.

But, nice looking little farm you have there.

Jim

 

[digitS']

Jim, it isn't a farm.

It has been several years since I updated those pictures on "My Page." Pictures from this year's gardens can be found on this thread (link), I stopped editing that 1st post when they were kind of at their peak. So, perhaps they are "during" photo's now rather than befores and afters . I will get back & update My Page with them soon.

Yes, Dad no longer lives in that house and my dahlia garden was moved. It took the place of the small flower garden, which moved on to share space with the veggies in the Big Veggie Garden.

All of those gardens are on other people's property. They are annual affairs that I have been involved in for as long as 16 years. It is only a city-sized lot here at home . . . with a greenhouse and a few beds. And, there's a chicken coop where a few hens have kept us company for quite a few years.

Steve