You see in major cities, there was still no antibiotics, no cars, no flush toilets, no toilet paper, no automatic showers with warm water, lack of hygiene, and still really backward ideologies.Everyone in your family tree was young once, but childhood today is very different from what it was a century or more ago. Before the Victorian era, children as young as 6 or 8 years old might work in a mill or factory, they might run errands and make deliveries for a store keeper, they may be apprenticed to a skilled craftsman or woman Kids--well boys mostly--might move the outhouse over, so that a-body making the trek outside in the middle of the night would fall into the pit. You see, often the walkway to the outhouse would be outlined with white rocks, so that you could see your way on a moonlit night. Move the outhouse over a ways, and a half asleep person would just follow the path. Lighting firecrackers and slipping them into the outhouse was also quite fun.
The barn dance. If your barn was reasonably in the center of things, you might host that. Of course the women folk would bring pies and cake, preserves and all kinds of food, and Pa would spike the punch, and get the preacher drunk. Square dancing was fun. Fiddle players were mostly self-taught
