What did our ancestors talk about after coming home from work?

Question

from the cornfields, remember there was no Television, radio news newspapers, ipods phones, computers, no buses

imagine you have been looking after sheep all day, come home

hi to the missus,.. had good day dear....eat'... then what ?

Answer 1

They were probably too tired to do much talking but I imagine they thanked their wives for the meals and asked how the family were before retiring to bed early for another long, hard day.

Answer 2

made me think of what my home had to be like.

12 kids.  dad in the corn fields, and mom cooking and cleaning and sewing.  I imagine dad came in ate and slept.  all they knew then was work and more work!  

Answer 3

Our ancestors didn't have fourty hour work weeks.

They worked 24/7 to survive and enjoyed keeping the family under a roof and food on the table.

I'll bet they spoke of what the future might hold.

Answer 4

What's for supper?

Corn on the cob, corn pudding, and corn bread.

Again?

Well, if you'd plant something else, or if you'd slaughter one of your precious sheep, maybe we could have a little variety.

Nag, nag, nag.  And leave my sheep out of this.

Answer 5

They sat around after dinner and had talks. He smoked his pipe, the children played outside and mom sat with him and had another glass of ice tea. They talked about things that mattered to each of them, about the children, the church supper coming up. The dog having puppies under the porch. The cow getting out of the fence and into the corn. Later mom called the kids in, gave them their baths and a kiss, then off to bed they go. Then hubby would dim the lights, she would take his hand and they would go into their bedroom. And close the door quietly.   Poppy

Answer 6

i would guess that probably there wasn't a whole lot of talking, they would be way too tired to discuss alot. they would come in, clean up, eat, and i'm sure they went to bed early. just a guess. most likely sunday would be a day of church first and then visiting with family and the neighborhood farmers...

Answer 7

Since most families were very faithful to the Bible in those days, I imagine they used to Scriptures to run the better part of their lives.

For example, I once heard a preacher joke in one of his sermons that, in the old days, the husband would come in from working hard in the fields or at a trade, tell his wife "the Good Book says "be fruitful and multiply.' We have a job to do here, so let's get busy!!"

Answer 8

They discussed their days just like we do now and I'm sure the parents talked about the children. More people read, played music, played games,wrote letters or did handiwork such as sewing because there was no TV. Before electricity, people also went to bed at sundown because they were up early in the morning to tend to chores and work. Without time saving applicances, breakfast took longer than making microwave oatmeal.

Answer 9

in my house dad would sat and drink his home brew -- mom would do some sewing -- they would discuss crops -- animals -- of course the weather and hopefully make plans for some fun outing -- we kids would being playing on home made games!!!

Answer 10

When there was no technology - not even newspapers - you would gather at a neighbour's house and spend the evening enjoying each other's company, drink some home-made wine, talking about work in the fields, events in the neighbourhood, people you know, talk about kids and weather.

The kids would play in the dirt or in the hay with one another, chase chickens, play with rocks or pieces of wood, make some pretend game with each other!

Life was tough then - you either worked or you and the animals starved.

People are too bound up in their hi tech gadgets these days I believe, and also too lazy - so they lose touch with basic common sense.

Answer 11

Well, you are going very far back into history then.

Radio was invented in the 1800's.  The first speech was sent via radio waves in 1900, and in 1906 there was a Christmas show (radio picked up steam after that).

Newspapers of course go back to at least the Roman days.  So you are now talking about people who lived several thousand years ago.

So conversations would have been about:

Taxes

Who died

If someone was born

Famine

Plagues

Livestock

Crops

Landlords/warlords/overseers

Religion

Insects (predation on crops)

Water/rainfall

Amount of stored food

Adultery

Murders

Executions

Market price of wool

Spices

Gossip about royalty (Pharaoh ect)

Firewood

Natural disasters

Possibility of war/invasion

Slaves

s*x

Sacrifices (the religious cut out your heart type)

Rabies

The weather

Clothing/jewelry/cosmetics

Transportation/road conditions

Festivals

New inventions

New /novel items in the market

The latest styles/fashions

Parties/feasts

Migration/numbers of wild animals

Fishing hauls

Quality of wines/olive oils, and such items

Cost of funerals

Dowries

Music/entertainment

As you can see, in many ways the conversations wouldn't have been so different from modern conversations.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Raising meat goats and sheep since 1999

Raising over 90% of our own food

In short my families conversations can be pretty down to earth/primative...just like what you are asking about.

Answer 12

My father was an engineer by trade and when he would arrive home from work, my mother would be boiling water on the stove top so he could have his bath. This meant pulling the tin bath out of the cupboard and placing it in the lounge, and filling it to the brim with hot and cold water. After his bath, we would all sit down to dinner.

When dinner was finished, we would help mother clear away the dishes and help with the washing up, while my father took a short stroll out to his vegetable garden - he used to do this because my mother hated him smoking his pipe inside the house.

After awhile, candles would be lit and more logs put on the fire while a cup of tea was made. Then out came the pack of cards and we would play card games till bedtime.

Answer 13

I have no idea I wasn't there.

Answer 14

If they talked it had to be while they worked or maybe they waited to talk in the winter when they were snow bound.

This will take some time to read but I hope you will find it interesting. After 10 years research, I wrote and compiled 500 pages of the history of my ancestors on my fathers side of the family. Keep in mind this  takes place in the late 1800's and early 1900's. This is about my Grandfather and Grandmother with 14 children.  Lost 3.

~

We went to bed at dusk.  We didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing.

Dad also believed that one should get up early in the morning.  He would get up at 3:00 am and get everyone up as the day was started.  With a large family there were always many chores to do as they always had horses, cows to feed and milk, chickens, pigs and sometimes other animals.  

Mama would bottle fruit, vegetables and meat numbering in the thousands of quarts to feed the family of eleven children and two adults.  (They lost three children.)  All this bottling was done on a coal stove which adds heat to a house that is already hot with summer heat. When it was time to bottle fruit, peaches, pears, apples, etc., each child would only get one piece of fruit; the remainder had to be bottled.  I remember Dad saying if any one of the children would try to sneak anything out of the kitchen, his mother would call their name and tell them to put it back without seeing them.  There was not a lot of food and the normal breakfast was cooked germaide, a wheat cereal from the Flour Mill, but if one or more of the children were sick they would get an egg.  Father, on a few occasions would fake being sick so he would get an egg for breakfast.

He  raised alfalfa to feed the horses and cows in the winter.  It was a lot of work raising hay.  The furrows had to be marked in the spring so the alfalfa could be watered during the hot summers.  They had to dig ditches from the canal to the fields to get the water to the crops.  Irrigating water is hard work.  You have to make sure that the water gets distributed evenly in each furrow because too much water can wash the furrows out.  A shovel has to be carried to dig the ditches and keep the furrows free of weeds, clods, sticks, dead fish etc.

When the hay was ready, it had to be cut.  He used horses to pull a mowing machine which would cut the hay.  It had to dry and then a hay rake was pulled by the horses that would turn the hay into windrows.  Then when it was dry enough, it was hauled on a hay wagon with a large bed, pulled by the horses.

Someone had to throw the hay on the wagon and then it had to be tromped, which means someone had to walk back and forth on the wagon to pack the hay down so  they could get a full load of hay on the wagon.  I often got the job of tromping.  And every once in a while, a live snake would be in the hay which was thrown on the wagon and I would be ready to bail off the wagon.  The hay was then taken to the stack yard and unloaded with a large fork to pile on a hay stack, ready to feed the stock.

Some years he raised grain.  It was a lot of work too.  It had to be watered and when it was ripe, a threshing machine came and cut it and put it in bundles.  Then it was hauled to the thrashing machine and the bundles were thrown in a mouth and the grain would be separated from the straw.  One place put out the wheat kernels and another place spit out the straw.  The straw was used for bedding material for the animals.  The wheat was gathered in sacks and hauled to the granary and dumped in a large bin.  It was great fun to get in the bins and try to walk in the wheat.  It was also good to eat and chew on.  Dad then took it to the flour mill and had it ground into white flour, whole wheat flour and mush for cereals.

They raised potatoes, wheat, oats and hay.  Apricots, peaches, cherries, pears, and apple trees.  He raised strawberries and raspberries and a large garden.

Their eldest daughter helped raise two hundred to five hundred baby turkeys every year for five years.  They sold them to the local Mercantile.  They sold half for Thanksgiving and the other half for Christmas.  It was a big job dry picking the feathers off all of the turkeys. She  would separate the cream from the milk and made butter from the cream to sell.  She picked the strawberries and raspberries and also sold them.

They  lived to see many modern day miracles, cars, without clutches and stick shifts, electric refrigerators, electric stoves, bakers bread, telephones, and paper towels.

~

I’m 73 and knew my Grandfather.  My Grandmother died in 1930, five years before I was born.

Proud of my ancestry.

DeeJay.

Answer 15

They would talk about how their work was going, the weather and if the crops would pull through, if they'd have enough food to last through the winter, their aching body parts, compliment the food that took all day to prepare from scratch, talk about neighbors, family and friends, talk about and with their children and help with their homework, play a board game or cards, knit, sing songs or play an instrument, have coffee, take a bath, wash their work clothes, relax, read a book or tell stories. There was probably only a couple of "free" hours when they got home anyways until it would get dark at which time they'd go to bed because they wouldn't want to use up their kerosene fuel to light a fire for light. Then they'd get up at dawn.

Answer 16

hi honey how was your day

fine how was your day

fine whats for supper

meat loaf

again?

if you want steak give me more money

i don't know what you do with the money

i give you now

well if you don't like the way  i handle things

do it yourself

i work thats enough

thats all you do..you never have time for me

or the kids

ya see? it hasn't changed a bit.

Answer 17

thats such a good question. probably about food, or what they've done all day :) xx

Answer 18

Read books, talk about the neighbors, play with the kids before bedtime,  haul water from the well to do dishes, take a bath, cuddle, and make more babies . . . .remember they all had huge families ! !