The Artificial Intelligence tools (like ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, Grok, Meta, Grok, 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.
I wondered if the FREE AI tools could provide me with information about a middle-aged wife andm other in Prince Edward County, Ontario in 1845. My 3rd great-grandmother, Sarah (Fletcher) Kemp (1802-before 1850) was age 43 in 1845. I attached my genealogical sketch for Sarah ( 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 54: #61, Sarah (Fletcher) Kemp (1802- before 1850).
1) I chose to use the response from free Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 (as of 8 October 2025) today.
My prompt was: "Please describe the life of Sarah (Fletcher) Kemp in 1845 in Prince Edward County, Ontario "
2) The Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 response was:
A Day in the Life: Sarah Fletcher Kemp in 1845
The Kemp Household in Prince Edward County
In 1845, Sarah Fletcher Kemp was forty-three years old and living in Prince Edward County, Ontario, with her husband Abraham and their large, bustling family. After twenty-seven years of marriage, Sarah had given birth to ten children, with her eleventh and final child, Wesley, still two years away. The Kemp household that year was filled with activity, spanning multiple generations and ages.
The Family in Residence
The Kemp farm home in 1845 would have been crowded and lively. Sarah's oldest daughter, Waity Catherine was married to John T. Rose three years earlier in 1842 and probably had their own household. The rest of Sarah's children still lived at home:
Mary Ann, age 22, certainly was helping her mother with the cooking, preserving, gardening, cleaning, laundry, needlework, and child care
Stephen J., age 19, was likely helping his father with the farm work in the fields
William Henry, age 16, strong enough to do a man's work in the fields
James Abraham, age 14, growing rapidly and learning the farming trade
John L., age 11, old enough to handle chores and tend animals
Peter Evans, age 8, still young but eager to help
Andrew Hait, age 5, playing around the farmyard
Sarah Jane, age 2, a toddler requiring constant attention
Charles W., born just that September 14th, 1845—a newborn infant
Sarah's Daily Life
As the mother of a large family on a working farm, Sarah's days began before dawn and ended long after sunset. Her responsibilities were endless and exhausting:
Morning Tasks
Sarah would rise in the darkness to stoke the fire in the wood stove, the heart of any farmhouse. She'd prepare breakfast for her large family—likely porridge or cornmeal mush, perhaps eggs from their chickens, and bread she'd baked the day before. With Abraham and the older boys heading out to work the fields, they needed substantial meals to sustain them through hours of physical labor.
Caring for the Youngest
With two-year-old Sarah Jane and newborn Charles W., Sarah's attention was constantly divided. Infant Charles would need to be nursed multiple times throughout the day and night. Little Sarah Jane was at that adventurous toddler stage, requiring vigilant supervision to keep her safe around the farm's many hazards—open fires, farm animals, tools, and the water pump.
Household Management
Between caring for her young children, Sarah would have been responsible for:
Cooking three substantial meals daily for a household of ten or more people
Baking bread several times a week in the wood-fired oven
Preserving food for winter—in 1845, this would mean canning, pickling, drying, and salting
Laundry for the entire family, done by hand with water hauled from the well, heated over the fire, and scrubbed on a washboard
Sewing and mending clothes for her large family, as ready-made clothing was not available
Spinning and weaving or at least managing the household's textile needs
Cleaning the house with handmade brooms and soap
Tending the kitchen garden where vegetables and herbs grew
Caring for chickens and possibly dairy cows, churning butter and making cheese
Making soap and candles from animal fat rendered on the farm
The Farm and Community
Abraham Kemp worked as a farmer, and the family's livelihood depended on the land. In Prince Edward County in 1845, farms were primarily subsistence operations with some surplus sold or traded. The Kemps likely grew wheat, corn, oats, and hay, raised cattle, pigs, and chickens, and maintained an orchard. The entire family would have participated in the farm work according to their abilities.
Methodist Faith
The Kemps were Wesleyan Methodists, and their faith was central to their lives. Sundays meant church services, likely involving a lengthy wagon ride to the nearest Methodist chapel. For Sarah, Sunday was not truly a day of rest—she still had to prepare meals, care for the children, and manage the household, though the heavy labor ceased.
Community Connections
Prince Edward County in 1845 was a well-established community of farmers, many of them Loyalist descendants or British immigrants. Sarah would have known her neighbors well, and women often helped each other during childbirth, illness, and harvest times. Social gatherings might include church socials, quilting bees, barn raisings, and harvest celebrations.
The Changing Seasons
Spring
In spring 1845, Sarah would have been in the late stages of pregnancy with Charles. Despite her condition, the work continued—spring meant intensive cleaning, planting the kitchen garden, and preparing for the farm's busiest season. The older boys would have been helping Abraham with plowing and planting.
Summer
Summer brought the birth of Charles in September. Sarah would have been attended by a midwife, possibly a neighbor woman, and perhaps her married daughter. The birth of her tenth living child at age forty-three would have been both joyful and physically demanding.
Fall and Winter
Autumn meant harvest—all hands were needed to bring in the crops before the frost. Sarah would have been recovering from childbirth while simultaneously preserving the harvest for winter. As winter approached, the family prepared for months of cold, with Sarah ensuring they had sufficient food stores, warm clothing, and firewood.
Challenges and Realities
Life in 1845 was not easy for a farm wife and mother:
Physical exhaustion was constant, especially with a newborn and toddler
Medical care was limited; infant and maternal mortality were real threats
Isolation could be profound, especially in winter when travel was difficult
Economic uncertainty meant the family's survival depended on good weather, successful harvests, and everyone's health
No modern conveniences—no running water, electricity, refrigeration, or labor-saving devices
A Woman of Strength
At forty-three, Sarah had spent twenty-seven years as a wife and mother, bearing and raising children in the demanding environment of 19th-century rural Canada. She had married at fifteen, and by 1845, she had been pregnant or nursing for much of her adult life. Yet she persevered, managing a complex household, supporting her husband's farming operation, raising her children in the Methodist faith, and maintaining the countless threads that held frontier family life together.
In 1845, Sarah couldn't have known that she had only a few more years to live, or that her youngest son Wesley would be born in 1847. She lived day by day, season by season, doing the necessary work with the quiet strength that characterized pioneer women of her era. Her life was one of service, sacrifice, and steady devotion to her family—a life lived without fanfare but with profound impact on the generations that would follow.
Historical Context of 1845
The year 1845 was a time of transition in Canada West (as Ontario was then known). The province was still recovering from the Rebellions of 1837-38, and discussions of responsible government were gaining momentum. In Prince Edward County, the community was well-established, with roads, mills, churches, and schools serving the farming population. The county's limestone quarries were becoming economically important, and the surrounding waters of Lake Ontario provided fishing and transportation routes.
For women like Sarah, however, these larger political and economic developments were distant concerns. Her world was bounded by the farm, the family, the church, and the community of neighbors who shared her daily struggles and triumphs. It was a life of hard work, deep faith, and enduring love—a life that, though largely unrecorded, laid the foundation for all that would come after.
3) The Google NotebookLM Audio Overview about Sarah (Fletcher) Kemp's life in 1845 is here.
The Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this post is below.
4) I have no easy way to double check on these responses from Claude. I don't have many book resources for the subjects and the locality, but there are published books available for this time period and general location. The AI tools have been pre-trained on historical events, social history, geography, education, occupations, literature and other disciplines so they can provide information for questions like this one, and now have the ability to search the Internet for website articles.
5) As genealogists, we can often find the later19th century vital and census records for Ontario families, and we may find occupation, immigration, land and probate records. The family mentioned is my ancestral family and I have significant information about their lives from the available records, but I know nothing about their daily lives other than what the records tell me.
6) After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit the Kemo family in Ontario and witness their daily lives. I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.
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