Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Ask AI: "What tasks did a female perform as a housewife in the 1890s?"

The Artificial Intelligence tools (like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Meta, CoPilot, GenSpark and Perplexity) can provide much useful and nearly instant information about subjects in a concise format, especially when they have been pre-trained on a large volume of information about the subjects.

1)  I wondered if the FREE AI tools could provide me with information about the housewife duties in the 1890s in a small New England town like Leominster.

(image created by ChatGPT4 AI)

Here is my prompt:   "What tasks did a female perform as a housewife in the 1890s do living in a Massachusetts small town with her husband and her son's family?"

1)  The ChatGPT4 response was the most detailed, especailly after I requested more detail:

In a small Massachusetts town during the 1890s, a housewife's daily responsibilities were extensive and vital to her family's well-being. Her tasks encompassed a wide range of domestic duties, including:

1. Cooking and Meal Preparation

  • Daily Meals: Breakfast might consist of oatmeal, eggs, bread, and coffee, while lunch (often called dinner at the time) could include soups, stews, or meat pies. Supper was typically lighter, featuring leftovers, bread, and milk or tea.

  • Seasonal Cooking: She adjusted menus based on seasonal availability, ensuring fresh vegetables in summer and relying on preserved goods in winter.

  • Wood or Coal Stoves: Cooking required constant management of the stove, including chopping wood or maintaining a coal supply, starting fires, and regulating heat without modern temperature controls.

  • Bread Baking: Bread, biscuits, and other baked goods were made weekly or even daily, requiring kneading, proofing, and baking—a process that could take hours.


2. Cleaning and Maintenance

  • Sweeping and Dusting: Floors were swept daily, as dirt and dust were a constant problem in homes with open windows, wood-burning stoves, and dirt roads outside.

  • Laundry: Laundry day was often a full-day event. Clothes were soaked overnight, scrubbed on washboards, boiled in large pots, rinsed, wrung out, and hung to dry. Ironing involved heating heavy irons on the stove and carefully pressing clothes.

  • Carpets and Rugs: Without vacuum cleaners, rugs were taken outside, hung on lines, and beaten to remove dust and dirt.

  • Window Cleaning: Homemade cleaning solutions (often involving vinegar and water) were used to clean windows, which were essential for letting in natural light.


3. Sewing and Mending

  • Clothing Production: A housewife often made clothes for the entire family using patterns from magazines like The Delineator. She tailored dresses, shirts, aprons, and undergarments to fit family members.

  • Repairs and Upcycling: Worn-out clothing was patched or repurposed. For example, old dresses could be turned into quilts, aprons, or children’s garments.

  • Decorative Work: Sewing extended to embroidery and lace-making to beautify clothing and linens, showcasing the homemaker’s skill and adding a personal touch to her home.


4. Childcare and Education

  • Basic Hygiene and Health: Mothers bathed children, cut their hair, and monitored their health in an era when access to medical care was limited.

  • Homeschooling: Before formal schooling, children learned letters, numbers, and prayers at home. Mothers used slates, chalk, and early readers like the McGuffey Readers for instruction.

  • Moral Teaching: Emphasis was placed on teaching good manners, work ethic, and obedience through storytelling and example.

  • Entertainment: Games, songs, and storytelling kept children occupied. Toys were often handmade by the family.


5. Gardening and Animal Care

  • Garden Cultivation: A housewife managed vegetable gardens, growing staples like potatoes, carrots, beans, onions, and squash. She often maintained a herb garden for cooking and medicinal purposes.

  • Canning and Storage: After harvest, she canned vegetables, dried fruits, and stored root vegetables in a root cellar.

  • Livestock Duties: Chickens needed feeding and their coops cleaning; cows required milking twice daily; and pigs were fattened for eventual slaughter. Excess milk might be turned into butter or cheese using time-intensive processes.

  • Egg Collection: Collecting eggs from hens was a daily task. Any surplus eggs might be sold or traded locally.


6. Preserving Food

  • Canning: Using a boiling water bath or pressure cooker, she preserved fruits, jams, pickles, and tomatoes in glass jars. This prevented spoilage and ensured food supplies during winter.

  • Meat Preservation: Salt-curing, smoking, or drying meat like bacon, hams, and fish was common.

  • Dairy Products: Cream was skimmed from milk for butter churning, and cheese-making required careful handling to prevent spoilage.

  • Root Cellar Storage: Potatoes, carrots, and apples were stored in cool, dark cellars to last through the cold months.


7. Social and Community Engagement

  • Church Activities: Attending services on Sunday was a vital social and spiritual activity. Women also participated in church societies that organized fundraisers, potlucks, and charity efforts.

  • Sewing Circles: Women met regularly to sew quilts and garments, fostering social bonds and sharing skills.

  • Supporting Neighbors: In small towns, neighbors often exchanged labor, such as helping with childcare, barn-raising, or sharing surplus harvests.

  • Hosting and Visiting: Entertaining visitors with tea and baked goods was a way to maintain friendships and exchange news.


8. Multigenerational Living

  • Caring for Older Family Members: A housewife living with her husband and son's family often took on caregiving roles, ensuring older relatives were fed, clothed, and comfortable.

  • Supporting the Daughter-in-Law: In a multigenerational household, she might mentor her daughter-in-law in domestic skills or take on tasks like childcare or sewing to ease the workload.

  • Passing Down Traditions: She played a key role in teaching family recipes, traditions, and cultural practices to younger generations.


9. Seasonal Work

  • Spring Cleaning: At the start of warmer weather, she deep-cleaned the house, aired out linens, and scrubbed walls and floors.

  • Harvest Season: During late summer and fall, she spent weeks preserving the harvest, often working from dawn to dusk.

  • Winter Preparation: Stocking firewood, sewing heavier garments, and ensuring all supplies were ready for the cold months were essential tasks.


10. Emotional Labor

  • Family Support: The housewife was often the emotional backbone of the family, providing encouragement, advice, and comfort in times of stress or hardship.

  • Home Atmosphere: By decorating, cooking special meals, and organizing holiday celebrations, she fostered a sense of warmth and belonging.


This extended set of responsibilities highlights the immense workload, creativity, and resilience required of housewives in the 1890s, especially in small-town settings where resources were limited, and community ties were strong.

2)  Perplexity provided some online reference materials:

3)  I don't have the education or available information (in books, etc.) to be able to judge if this material is credible.  The responses from the free AI tools seem credible and realistic.  We always have to verify information, and the Perplexity links really help.  

Every life and household is different - the size of the family matters (two people, five, or ten, or more?), the composition of the family matters (e.g., my great-grandparents and their three boys lived with my 2nd great-grandparents throughout their lives), the size of their home, their livestock and poultry supply, their access to foodstuffs and tools, their access to paid help, their income, etc.  

I asked ChatGPT4 how many hours might my typical New England housewife of the 1890s with 7 family members work each week, and the estimate was roughly 70 hours per week (that's 10 hours a day on average).   

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My blog posts, and those of other genealogists, using Artificial Intelligence tools are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver


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