United States in the 19 century? Best Answer gets 10 Points!!!?

Question

What were the families like? What were working conditions?

Answer 1

Most of the families were immigrants.  My family were German immigrants; they received a plot of land from the newly formed state of Minnesota and farmed it.  The men worked the fields (hard, backbreaking work, with horse teams and crude equipment) and the women took care of the home, cooking, made the clothes, and did some of the farm work, too.

If the daughters got older and weren't married, they sometimes moved out and took jobs; my g-grandmother worked first in a restaurant and then in a hotel before she met and married my g-grandfather.

The men who didn't farm took jobs in various trades; my other g-grandfather worked for the railroad for 30 years as a welder; others did what they knew.  Imagine what a great opportunity it was for them to come here, build a brand new community from the ground up, and be able to provide for your family working at what you are best skilled at?  

Families weren't much different than they are now; there were more kids, as birth control was nonexistant, but because of the poor health care, oftentimes many of the kids didn't survive.

(Interestingly, back in Germany, if one child died, the next child to be born of the same s*x was given the same name as the deceased child.  Also, out of wedlock pregnancies were pretty common and not that big of a deal back in the homeland; I have encountered numerous weddings that took place a month or two before the birth of the couple's first child while doing Genealogy.)

This was life in my family; however, others probably had much different lives, especially in the cities.