Friday, 29 December 2017
Friday, 22 December 2017
Friday, 15 December 2017
Friday, 8 December 2017
Monday, 4 December 2017
Friday, 1 December 2017
Friday, 24 November 2017
Friday, 17 November 2017
Friday, 10 November 2017
Monday, 6 November 2017
Solving Family History Mysteries | Expert Series | AncestryDNA
Elizabeth is a retired physician who has been using DNA tests to assist her in solving genealogical mysteries for the past decade. She shares a personal success story with us.
Friday, 3 November 2017
Friday, 27 October 2017
Friday, 20 October 2017
Friday, 13 October 2017
Friday, 6 October 2017
Monday, 2 October 2017
85 Years in the Making: Siblings Reunite | AncestryDNA
Dale took an AncestryDNA test expecting to find clues on his long lost half-sister. With no immediate close connections, he started to lose hope. A year later, he received a message from someone located in California, curious to know how they could be so closely related. Turns out, it was the connection he had been waiting his whole life to find.
Friday, 29 September 2017
Tuesday, 26 September 2017
Sir Nicholas Winton Saved 669 Children From The Holocaust
I thought I would share this story and video on my blog, as it is a really inspiring story.
He saved 669 children from the Holocaust - now watch the audience when his secret is revealed
Sir Nicholas Winton was born in London in 1909 to Jewish parents. His mother and father had moved to England two years earlier. They changed their German-Jewish surname from Wertheim to Winton in an effort to integrate, and they also had Nicholas baptized after they converted to Christianity.
Nicholas Winton, who later worked as a stock broker, planned to go to Switzerland for a ski holiday in the winter of 1938. But he changed his mind and instead went to Prague to meet a man named Martin Blake, who had asked him for help.
Winton then single-handedly started an organization to help Jewish children threatened with annihilation by the Germans.
He set up his office at a dining table in his hotel room in Wencelas Square in central Prague.
A short time after "Kristallnacht," a massacre of Jewish people in Nazi Germany in November 1938, Winton received word that the United Kingdom would accept refugees under the age of 17. They just needed to have a place to stay and enough money to ensure their eventual return home.
A major obstacle to getting the children to Britain was getting them through the Netherlands, where they would take a ferry to the UK. Despite the horrors of "Kristallnacht," Dutch border guards sent all Jewish refugees back to Germany.
But thanks to the promise from the British government, Winton successfully brought 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain.
Winton's mother helped find families for children, most of whose parents would perish in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The last group of 250 children were scheduled to leave Prague on September 1, 1939. But the train never left. Hitler invaded Poland on the same day, marking the start of World War II.
Only two of the children who would have left on that train survived.
Winton never spoke about what he did for the children until his wife, Grete, found a notebook in their attic 50 years later.
It included names and pictures of the children that Winton saved.
Grete Winton gave the book to a journalist, which led to her husband being invited on a BBC program to thank him for his work.
But what Winton didn't know was that everyone in the studio audience was a person whose life he had saved.
Sir Nicholas Winton later received many honors, including the Czech Republic's highest distinction, the Order of the White Lion.
Winton died in 2015 at the age of 106.
Watch Sir Nicholas Winton's emotional reunion with some of the refugees he saved here:
Source: - http://en.newsner.com/he-saved-669-children-from-the-holocaust-now-watch-the-audience-when-his-secret-is-revealed/about/family
He set up his office at a dining table in his hotel room in Wencelas Square in central Prague.
A short time after "Kristallnacht," a massacre of Jewish people in Nazi Germany in November 1938, Winton received word that the United Kingdom would accept refugees under the age of 17. They just needed to have a place to stay and enough money to ensure their eventual return home.
But thanks to the promise from the British government, Winton successfully brought 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain.
Winton's mother helped find families for children, most of whose parents would perish in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Only two of the children who would have left on that train survived.
Winton never spoke about what he did for the children until his wife, Grete, found a notebook in their attic 50 years later.
It included names and pictures of the children that Winton saved.
But what Winton didn't know was that everyone in the studio audience was a person whose life he had saved.
Sir Nicholas Winton later received many honors, including the Czech Republic's highest distinction, the Order of the White Lion.
Watch Sir Nicholas Winton's emotional reunion with some of the refugees he saved here:
Source: - http://en.newsner.com/he-saved-669-children-from-the-holocaust-now-watch-the-audience-when-his-secret-is-revealed/about/family
Monday, 25 September 2017
Found Louis Dagenais In The 1881 Census Of Canada
I found my 2nd great grandfather Louis Dagenais in the 1881 Census Of Canada
Here is the information I learned from the census:
Louis is living with his parents and siblings in Pontiac, Quebec, Canada
Narcisse Dagenais (Father) Age - 36 Birth Year- Abt. 1845
Esther Dagenais (Mother) Age - 33 Birth Year - Abt. 1848
Leon Dagenais Age - 18 Birth Year - Abt. 1863
Esther Dagenais Age - 16 Birth Year - Abt. 1865
Catherine Dagenais Age - 14 Birth Year - Abt. 1867
Narcisse Dagenais Age - 12 Birth Year - Abt. 1869
Margaret Dagenais Age - 10 Birth Year - Abt. 1871
Louis Dagenais Age - 8 Birth Year - Abt. 1873
Celine Dagenais Age - 6 Birth Year - Abt. 1875
Enchene Dagenais Age 4 Birth Year - Abt. 1877
Rose Dagenais Age - 2 Birth Year - Abt 1879
Fred Dagenais Age - 1 Birth Year - Abt. 1880
Narcisse Dagenais (Father) occupation was a farmer. 4
Religion - Catholic
Nationality - French
Here is the information I learned from the census:
Louis is living with his parents and siblings in Pontiac, Quebec, Canada
Narcisse Dagenais (Father) Age - 36 Birth Year- Abt. 1845
Esther Dagenais (Mother) Age - 33 Birth Year - Abt. 1848
Leon Dagenais Age - 18 Birth Year - Abt. 1863
Esther Dagenais Age - 16 Birth Year - Abt. 1865
Catherine Dagenais Age - 14 Birth Year - Abt. 1867
Narcisse Dagenais Age - 12 Birth Year - Abt. 1869
Margaret Dagenais Age - 10 Birth Year - Abt. 1871
Louis Dagenais Age - 8 Birth Year - Abt. 1873
Celine Dagenais Age - 6 Birth Year - Abt. 1875
Enchene Dagenais Age 4 Birth Year - Abt. 1877
Rose Dagenais Age - 2 Birth Year - Abt 1879
Fred Dagenais Age - 1 Birth Year - Abt. 1880
Narcisse Dagenais (Father) occupation was a farmer. 4
Religion - Catholic
Nationality - French
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| 1881 Census Of Canada |
Friday, 22 September 2017
Friday, 15 September 2017
Friday, 8 September 2017
Ghostbusters Skit Video
I thought I would share the Ghostbusters Cosplay video that I did with my nephew Carter Hemphill and niece Katie Hemphill. It stars Katie and I as movie-goers, and is camera work is done by Carter. The video was posted on my YouTube page on Jan 23, 2011
Monday, 4 September 2017
"Welcome to Our Family"
In honor of National Sisters’ Day, our friends at British Airways helped us unite two sisters from Texas, for the first time, with their long-lost sister in the UK.
Saturday, 2 September 2017
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Create a Gravestone
View on Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-sngf.html
1) Create your own gravestone at http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/. And/or create one for a relative who doesn't have one, or one for an event or significant issue.
2) Share your creation with the genea-sphere in your own blog post, on Facebook or on Google+. Be sure to drop a link in a comment to this post.
There are several other Gravestone generators online - see:
** John Chandler's Tombstone Generator ( http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/)
** Gravestone Caption Generator (http://www.getgreatcodes.com/generators/grave-generator.php/)
** Gravestone Generator (http://www.satisfaction.com/gravestone/)
Here is mine:
1) Create your own gravestone at http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/. And/or create one for a relative who doesn't have one, or one for an event or significant issue.
2) Share your creation with the genea-sphere in your own blog post, on Facebook or on Google+. Be sure to drop a link in a comment to this post.
There are several other Gravestone generators online - see:
** John Chandler's Tombstone Generator ( http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/)
** Gravestone Caption Generator (http://www.getgreatcodes.com/generators/grave-generator.php/)
** Gravestone Generator (http://www.satisfaction.com/gravestone/)
Here is mine:
Friday, 1 September 2017
Saturday, 26 August 2017
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Genealogy Database Statistics
View on Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your.html
1) If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database (hint: the Help button is your friend!)
2) Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status comment.
Here is mine:
I use Family Tree Maker 2014, the plan section, where it says About The Family Tree, I clicked on the More button which pulled up the File Statistics window. Then I hit Ctrl, Print Screen on the keyboard and open Paint and pasted the image and saved as a JPEG so I could upload the image.
The information in this window says my current database has:
People: 145
Marriages: 31
File Size: 6,448 KB
Surnames 31
Average Lifespan: 57.8
Faces: 609
Places: 41
Sources: 35 Templates Used: 10
Media: 126
Tasks: 464
1) If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database (hint: the Help button is your friend!)
2) Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status comment.
Here is mine:
I use Family Tree Maker 2014, the plan section, where it says About The Family Tree, I clicked on the More button which pulled up the File Statistics window. Then I hit Ctrl, Print Screen on the keyboard and open Paint and pasted the image and saved as a JPEG so I could upload the image.
The information in this window says my current database has:
People: 145
Marriages: 31
File Size: 6,448 KB
Surnames 31
Average Lifespan: 57.8
Faces: 609
Places: 41
Sources: 35 Templates Used: 10
Media: 126
Tasks: 464
Friday, 25 August 2017
Saturday, 19 August 2017
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - I Write Like....
View on Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/05/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-i-write.html
YOUR ASSIGNEMENT IS:
1) Find something that you have written that you are really proud of - the best of your work. Do an Edit > Copy of it.
2) Go to the website http://iwl.me/ and Paste your text into the waiting box.
3) Tell us which famous author you write like. Write it up in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog, or post it on Facebook. Insert the "badge of honor" in your blog if you can.
HERE IS MINE:
1) I choose to use the blog entry Found Louis Dagenais In The 1891 Census Of Canada posted on Aug 30, 2013
2)
YOUR ASSIGNEMENT IS:
1) Find something that you have written that you are really proud of - the best of your work. Do an Edit > Copy of it.
2) Go to the website http://iwl.me/ and Paste your text into the waiting box.
3) Tell us which famous author you write like. Write it up in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog, or post it on Facebook. Insert the "badge of honor" in your blog if you can.
HERE IS MINE:
1) I choose to use the blog entry Found Louis Dagenais In The 1891 Census Of Canada posted on Aug 30, 2013
2)
3) ABOUT JAMES JOYCE
 |
| James Joyce |
Read more on Wikipedia
Friday, 18 August 2017
Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Elizabeth Jean Dixon's Birth Announcement
Here is my sister Elizabeth Jean Dixon's Birth Announcement, she was born Nov 3, 1977. Was found on microfilm of old newspapers at the St. Catharines Public Library. It was published by the St. Catharines Standard, Nov 4, 1977, p. 2.
Transcription of text in the document: DIXON - John and Linda are proud to announce the arrival of their daughter, Elizabeth Jeanne, on Nov 3, 1977, 61bs, 4ozs. First grandchild for Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Dixon and second for Mrs. Elizabeth Dagenais. Thanks to staff of General Hospital and Dr. Epstein and Dr. Donevan.
Transcription of text in the document: DIXON - John and Linda are proud to announce the arrival of their daughter, Elizabeth Jeanne, on Nov 3, 1977, 61bs, 4ozs. First grandchild for Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Dixon and second for Mrs. Elizabeth Dagenais. Thanks to staff of General Hospital and Dr. Epstein and Dr. Donevan.
 |
| Published by St. Catharines Standard, Nov 4 1977, p. 2 |
Monday, 14 August 2017
John (Jay) Marshall Dixon Jr's Birth Annoucement
Here is my brother John (Jay) Marshall Dixon Jr's Birth Announcement, he was born on Mar 27, 1983. Was found on microfilm of old newspapers at the St. Catharines Public Library. It was published by the St. Catharines Standard, Mar 29, 1983, p. 2.
Transcription of text in the document: Births DIXON - John and Linda are thrilled to announce the birth of their son, John Marshall weighing 5lbs, 8oz on March 27. A new side-card buddy and prospective Blue Knight for Daddy to love. A new little brother for Elizabeth and Lisa. Third grandchild for Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Dixon and eighth grandchild for Mrs. E. Dagenais.
Transcription of text in the document: Births DIXON - John and Linda are thrilled to announce the birth of their son, John Marshall weighing 5lbs, 8oz on March 27. A new side-card buddy and prospective Blue Knight for Daddy to love. A new little brother for Elizabeth and Lisa. Third grandchild for Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Dixon and eighth grandchild for Mrs. E. Dagenais.
Sunday, 13 August 2017
Carter Jason Hemphill's Birth Annoucement
Here is my nephew Carter Jason Hemphill's Birth Announcement, he was born on May 14, 2002. Was found on microfilm of old newspapers at the St. Catharines Public Library. It was published by the St. Catharines Standard, May 15, 2002, p. B6.
Transcription of text in the document: Our Little Linebacker HEMPHILL - Corey and Elizabeth are thrilled to announce the birth of Carter Jason on Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 71bs 7.2 oz. First grandchild for Joanne and Mark Hemphill and Linda and John Dixon. Thanks to doctors and staff at the St. Catharines General Hospital.
Transcription of text in the document: Our Little Linebacker HEMPHILL - Corey and Elizabeth are thrilled to announce the birth of Carter Jason on Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 71bs 7.2 oz. First grandchild for Joanne and Mark Hemphill and Linda and John Dixon. Thanks to doctors and staff at the St. Catharines General Hospital.
 |
| Published by St. Catharines Standard, May 2002, p. B6 |
Saturday, 12 August 2017
Found News Clippings Using The Microfilm Machine At St. Catharines Public Library
Today I went to St. Catharines Public Library doing research using the microfilm machines at the library. I have been looking for birth, marriage and death announcements for relatives.
Once I find the news clipping I am printing a copy at the library it costs $0.50 to print a copy. I also write down the newspaper published in, the date and page.
If I already had a copy of the news clipping I just looking to find the newspaper it was published in, the date of publication and page.
The following I had already had a newspaper clipping: (click the title to see the article as previous posted on blog)
Once I find the news clipping I am printing a copy at the library it costs $0.50 to print a copy. I also write down the newspaper published in, the date and page.
If I already had a copy of the news clipping I just looking to find the newspaper it was published in, the date of publication and page.
The following I had already had a newspaper clipping: (click the title to see the article as previous posted on blog)
- Katelyn Helen Hemphill's Birth Announcement (Published by St. Catharines Standard, Aug 13 2005, p. C7)
- Lisa Marie Dixon's Birth Announcement (Published by St. Catharines Standard, Jan 2 1981, p. 2)
- Carter Jason Hemphill's Birth Announcement (Published by St. Catharines Standard, May 15 2002, p. B6)
- John Marshall Dixon Jr.'s Birth Announcement (Published by St. Catharines Standard, Mar 29 1983, p. 2)
- Elizabeth Jean Dixon's Birth Announcement (Published by St. Catharines Standard, Nov 4 1977, p. 2)
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Other You
View on Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/05/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-other-you.html
YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS:
* Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc. Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!
* Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post
HERE IS MINE:
My other hobbies & interest include:
YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS:
* Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc. Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!
* Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post
HERE IS MINE:
My other hobbies & interest include:
- Scrapbooking - I love scrapbooking family pictures, fan conventions, concerts and other events that I have gone to. My scrapbooking hobby is what actually got me into genealogy and family history thru scrapbooking old family photos.
- Attending Fan Conventions - I love going to fan conventions such as Fan Expo, Anime North, Niagara Falls Comic Con and others. I love meeting celebrities getting photo-ops, autographs, and attending Q&A's. You might say I am a CELB-A-OLIC!!!
- Going To Music Concerts - I love going to music concerts with friends.
- Entertainment - I love watching movies and TV shows with family and friends. I love all genres just depends on my mood as to what I feel like watching. My favorite director is Alfred Hitchcock, wish I was alive when Hitchcock was so I could have got a chance to meet him and talk him about his movies.
- Reading - My favorite authors include Stephen King, Kathy Reichs among others. I also enjoy reading comics too.
Friday, 11 August 2017
Newspaper Clipping: Katelyn (Katie) Helen Hemphill's Birth Announcement
Here is the newspaper clipping of my niece Katelyn (Katie) Helen Hemphill's Birth Announcement. She was born on August 8, 2005. I found this in with old photos. I believe it was published in the St. Catharines Standard. I am not sure in of the date it was published.
Transcription of text in the document: Here She Is! HEMPHILL - Carter is happy to announce the arrival of his sister Katelyn Helen, born August 8, 2005 weighing 8lbs 2 1.2 oz. Proud parents are Elizabeth and Corey Hemphill. Granddaughter to Linda and John Dixon, Joanne and Mark Hemphill. Thanks to doctors and staff and the St. Catharines General Hospital.
Transcription of text in the document: Here She Is! HEMPHILL - Carter is happy to announce the arrival of his sister Katelyn Helen, born August 8, 2005 weighing 8lbs 2 1.2 oz. Proud parents are Elizabeth and Corey Hemphill. Granddaughter to Linda and John Dixon, Joanne and Mark Hemphill. Thanks to doctors and staff and the St. Catharines General Hospital.
Saturday, 5 August 2017
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Trees In Your Database?
View on Genea-Musings at http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how-many.html
YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS:
1) How many different "trees" do you have in your genealogy management program (i.e., RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, reunion, etc.) or online tree (e.g. Ancestry Member Tree, MyHeritage tree)?
2) How many trees do you have, and how big is your biggest tree? Do you have some smaller "bushes" or "twigs?"
3) Tell us in your own blog post (please leave a link in Comments here), in a comment to this post.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS:
1) How many different "trees" do you have in your genealogy management program (i.e., RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, reunion, etc.) or online tree (e.g. Ancestry Member Tree, MyHeritage tree)?
2) How many trees do you have, and how big is your biggest tree? Do you have some smaller "bushes" or "twigs?"
3) Tell us in your own blog post (please leave a link in Comments here), in a comment to this post.
HERE IS MINE:
1) I have 1 family tree in my genealogy management software, I use Family Tree Maker.
2) There is 145 people in my family tree so far.
 |
| Screenshot of Dixon Family Tree in Family Tree Maker which shows that there is 145 people. |
Friday, 4 August 2017
Tuesday, 1 August 2017
15 Ways The 1800’s Were Straight Up Horrifying
When we think of the 19th century, history can get a little idyllic. It was a simpler time, when people were more connected to the earth, when they knew how to sew and build houses and raise their own animals. Nobody was distracted and constantly glued to their screens, and everything moved more slowly. Sounds pretty nice, right?
Wrong.
In many ways, the 19th century was a straight up horror show. Here are 15 reasons why you should thank your lucky freaking stars that you didn’t have the misfortune to be born into this era of nightmarish awful.
15. Kids Died All The Time
These days, if you’re in the industrialized world, it’s pretty uncommon for kids to die. Your expectation when you have a kid, by in large, is that the kid will live into adulthood. Obviously tragic accidents and diseases happen, but it is generally considered a shock when a child dies. Not so in the 19th century. Around one third of kids born in that century died before they reached adolescence: most families had lots of children, and it would have been considered unusual for at least one of them not to die. Childhood is generally thought to be a time of peace and safety, but nobody told that to kids in the 19th century. If you’ve ever walked by an old timey graveyard and wondered why there are so many small headstones, that’s why. That’s truly scary stuff for us, all the way here in the 21st century. You can only imagine how terrifying it was for the people who had to live through it.
14. In Fact, People Died All The Time
Kids weren’t the only ones screwed over by a low life expectancy. If you managed to make it to adolescence, and, if you were *really* lucky, adulthood, a whole slew of dangers awaited around pretty much every corner. Life expectancy for the period of the 19th century as a whole was 40 years for men and 42 years for women, which is pretty terrifyingly low. Causes of death included diseases like cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis, as well as the general stressors of poor diet, ridiculously bad medical care (and don’t you worry, we’ll get more into that later), accidents, urban squalor, and just generally being super stressed out that you live in the total garbage century that is the 1800’s. The low mortality rate meant that, at 20, you were basically middle aged, so say goodbye to all that time to figure out what you’re doing with your life. Not optimal, to say the least.
13. And When They Died, People Took Pictures With Them
Okay, so lots of people are dying, pretty much all the time. So what do we do? Let’s take pictures with them! That makes perfect sense and is definitely not the stuff of nightmares! Those of you familiar with all things creepy may be acquainted with the concept of death photography, also called post-mortem photography. Back in the day, photos were a hard thing to come by: cameras were expensive, clunky, and only operated by professional photographers. Therefore, if someone died (especially if that someone was a child), you might not have any pictures to remember them by. Perfect solution: pose them like they’re still alive, often with their family members, and remember them always in that fashion–as a creepy, super dead ghost doll. Usually the dead people would be posed like they were sleeping, but sometimes they’d sit them up and paste fake open eyes over their closed dead ones. As if they needed one more way to make the whole endeavor creepy af.
12. Kids Also Worked In Factories
Okay, so you’re a kid in the 1800’s. You have a really terrifying likelihood of death before adulthood, but everything else is pretty okay, right? Wrong. If you were poor enough and lived in a city, your little kid self is going to work in a factory. These factories were dangerous, with big machines and pretty much nothing in the way of safety regulations around them. Kids would get paid next to nothing to risk their lives in grueling conditions, with abusive task masters and long, exhausting hours. And if you think they might get things like breaks, weekends, days off, or vacations, think again. It was all work all the time. Oh, and because they weren’t getting an education (because they were too busy, you know, doing back breaking labor), they had no real chance to move up in the world, so they pretty much could only continue working at the factories or doing other similarly unpleasant manual labor.
11. Horse Transport In Cities Was Horrifying
Horse transportation, you know, like carriages and stuff, is usually depicted in movies and in our general imagination as the most romantic form of transportation. It’s like those fancy horse and buggies in Central Park, only all the time, right? How cool would that be? The answer is very, very uncool. First of all, let’s talk poop: those little attachments to catch the poop on today’s wagons did not exist. That resulted in poop from horses littering the streets pretty much everywhere you went. Upper class women and men literally wore shoes with lifts on them because the streets were so coated in horse poop. Aside from the poop, another fun fact they don’t tend to discuss about horse travel is that they sometimes died. Like, just keeled over and died in the middle of the street. And because horses are so big, there was no quick or easy way to get them out of the street. This meant that people would often just leave the dead horse where it fell, where it would rot, bloat, and sometimes explode because of the build up of gasses in its abdomen. Lovely!
10. Everything’s Awful For Ladies
In general, looking back on history, if you’re a lady, things aren’t great for you. The 19th century is no exception to that rule. Women were basically the property of men, be it their fathers or their husbands. They had no real options except to have kids – and to keep having kids – and many had to maintain both a household and a job at a factory. Women were expected to be submissive, and the fashion of the day did a good job as being as constricting as possible, between huge hoop skirts and corsets so tight they would constrict breathing and warp the ribs. If you stepped out of line, your husband had every right to put you “in your place”. Women had very minimal access to education, and wouldn’t get the vote until the next century (good job, progress!), so weren’t even really considered full citizens. Oh, and if they thought you were too interested in sex, they could diagnose you as a hysteric and remove your uterus. Funsies!
9. Medicine Was Terrifying
If we’re talking medicine here, we’re going to want to apply some very serious air quotes, because what passed for medicine in the 19th century was pretty awful, including a number of painful procedures that usually didn’t even cure what they set out to cure. Most people had no idea where their organs were and figured there was something wrong with their “humours” instead of, like, the flu, or heart disease. People didn’t really get how disease was transmitted, and treatment largely consisted of forced puking, pooping, or blood letting to clear “impurities” from the body. Oh, and anesthesia wasn’t invented till the 1840’s, so if you had to have surgery, you were doing it wide awake. Added bonus: because dentistry wasn’t really a thing yet, your barber was also your dentist! Or, rather, the guy who pulled your teeth when they rotted. Same goes for small surgeries like adenoid and tonsil removal. Who doesn’t want a quick surgery with their haircut?
8. Wars All The Time
Something that might surprise you? The United States was involved in over 60 wars and major military battles between 1800 and 1900. This included, of course, the ridiculously bloody and horrifyingly violent Civil War, but also the Spanish American war, the Philippine American War, the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, and a whole lot of wars with Native Americans where they were like, “Hey, can you not murder us and steal our land? Thanks.” War conditions in the 19th century were basically hell, multiplied by a million. It was dirty, often hand-to-hand combat, with limited resources and primitive weapons. And, as aforementioned above, medicine was basically a joke, and so field medicine, already hard in even the best circumstances, was brutal. Non-anesthetic amputations, for instance, were quite common. And the fighting force sometimes included kids, giving us yet another reason to believe that life for a kid in the 19th century was pretty much a very, very bad time.
7. Everyone Was Smelly
One thing consistently forgotten or ignored by those period movies set way back when, in which beautiful people dance in ball gowns and court each other and fall in love, is that hygiene was not really so much of a thing back in the day. People took baths MAYBE once a week, and some people relied only on “hip baths” (basically washing from a bucket). When they did bathe, soap wasn’t really used on a widespread basis, so it was just water and a sponge for the vast majority of the stinky populace. Also, there was no shampoo or deodorant, so body odor was just an assumed thing. Though some people tried to hide their stank with perfumes and flower petals under the arms, it wasn’t all too effective. Oh, and let us also remember that tooth brushing (let alone toothpaste and mouthwash) was not a thing, so stink breath was basically the norm as well.
6. If You Lived In A City, Life Sucked
The average city dweller has a whole bunch of complaints when it comes to urban living. It’s hot in the summer, and smelly, too, and everything is super crowded. Us lucky folks in the 21st century, however, forgot how bad it used to be living in the city for most people. It’s pretty much any and all of our problems, multiplied by a million (which, one starts to see, is sort of a trend when it comes to comparing that nightmare century to ours.) Life in the tenements, for instance, where people would go when they first got to this country and where 2.3 million people – or, ⅔ of all New Yorkers – lived by the end of the century, was absolutely squalid. They were cramped, like multiple families to a single room apartment cramped, had no indoor plumbing or heat, and were poorly lit (if lit at all.) Plus, there was often no ventilation, which meant that when one person got sick, everybody got sick.
5. If You Lived In The Country, Life Sucked
Okay, so tenement life was rough and hard. It must have been a lot better out on the frontier, where there was space and fresh air and less horse-corpse-and-poop-clogged streets, right? Wrong again. Remember that living in the country meant subsistence farming, which meant you grow what you eat. Fair enough, but what happens when the rain decides to peace or some weird crop disease comes out of nowhere and wipes out your corn? Guess what, bud? No more food! This is not to mention the fact that rural outposts were by nature very isolated, meaning that if people got sick and you needed medicine, there was every chance that you wouldn’t get it in time. Then there’s the general suckery of no heat, running water, or electricity, but that’s sort of common fare. Oh, and in all likelihood, you’d know only the same few people all your life–including the person you eventually married. It’s nice to come from a close knit place and stuff, but incest really isn’t a cute look.
4. Sometimes Diseases Would Just Show Up And Kill Everybody
As we’ve said before a number of times, medicine was really quite a horror show all throughout this century. This included the understanding of infectious disease, which, as you may have guessed, wasn’t all too great back then. Nobody knew what germs were, never mind how they spread, and basically just had to kinda throw their hands up when they got sick, like, “Welp! You got us stumped!” And even if they did find out that diseases were caused by germs, there were no antibiotics to treat them with – those only came around later on. That meant that the entirety of the 19th century was plagued by infectious disease epidemics, which would ravage entire populations and sometimes entire continents. We’re talking cholera (a disease where you basically poop yourself to death), smallpox (think chicken pox but terrifyingly deadly/disfiguring), yellow fever (a disease you get via mosquito bite where you literally bleed out of your eyes and mouth), syphilis (which LITERALLY EATS YOUR FACE OFF AND BORES HOLES IN YOUR BRAIN) – you name it.
3. Sometimes Fires Would Come and Burn Down Your Entire City
Like medical professionals, the geniuses in the 19th century in charge of architecture and urban planning weren’t exactly up to par when it came to human safety. During the Industrial Revolution, cities went up crazy quick, and, because there was no precedent, people did not realize that there are certain precautions you can take to make sure fires don’t completely destroy entire neighborhoods and cities when they happen. Therefore, when fires did happen (and they always will happen), they were massive. Think of literally any even remotely sizable city in the United States, and there was at least one “great fire” there during the 19th century. Fires meant huge death tolls, not to mention entire neighborhoods and sometimes cities completely displaced, with their homes and all of the things they owned gone. This wasn’t helped by the lack of fire fighting technology: pretty much all people could do when a fire started doing it’s fire-y thing was kinda attempt to throw buckets of water on it, but mainly just stand back and be like, “All right, fire, I guess you got this one. Good luck.”
2. If They Thought You Were Crazy, You Were Screwed
Things have progressed pretty far when it comes to how we deal with mental illness, but you don’t truly understand how far until you look at how it was treated in the 19th century. First off, pretty much anything could make people think you were crazy. Have you decided you don’t believe in God? Crazy. Are you a woman who isn’t super jazzed about your place in the world? Crazy. Are you an immigrant? Crazy. Are you poor? Crazy. Did you sneeze wrong? Crazy! But even if you legitimately had mental issues, they weren’t going to get any better with the so-called “treatments” offered back then. You would be restrained, starved, put in insulin comas, told you were morally inferior, get electro-shocked, you name it. And there was really no end in sight, because mental illness was largely seen as a basic defect that was incurable. So you’re in this for life!
1. Slavery Was Still A Thing
Lest we forget, during a majority of the 19th century, people were still held as actual slaves. This is shocking even now, and the horrors of slavery are some of the worst things any human being could endure. There was the indignity of being someone else’s property, which meant you could be bought or sold at their leisure, and which also meant that they could buy or sell your wife, your husband, and/or your children at any time, with no regard for what that separation would mean to you. Then there’s obviously the forced labor, and the abuses that would happen up to and including death. If there’s anything that truly makes the 19th century horrifying, it’s that people were legally allowed to own people – a notion that is truly nightmarish. Oh, and the kicker? Once the emancipation proclamation made slavery illegal, former slaves would still have to endure horrific racism and disenfranchisement, as would their descendents for generations to come. Up yours, 19th century, you garbage fire.
Source: http://www.thethings.com/15-ways-the-1800s-were-straight-up-horrifying/
Wrong.
In many ways, the 19th century was a straight up horror show. Here are 15 reasons why you should thank your lucky freaking stars that you didn’t have the misfortune to be born into this era of nightmarish awful.
15. Kids Died All The Time
These days, if you’re in the industrialized world, it’s pretty uncommon for kids to die. Your expectation when you have a kid, by in large, is that the kid will live into adulthood. Obviously tragic accidents and diseases happen, but it is generally considered a shock when a child dies. Not so in the 19th century. Around one third of kids born in that century died before they reached adolescence: most families had lots of children, and it would have been considered unusual for at least one of them not to die. Childhood is generally thought to be a time of peace and safety, but nobody told that to kids in the 19th century. If you’ve ever walked by an old timey graveyard and wondered why there are so many small headstones, that’s why. That’s truly scary stuff for us, all the way here in the 21st century. You can only imagine how terrifying it was for the people who had to live through it.
14. In Fact, People Died All The Time
Kids weren’t the only ones screwed over by a low life expectancy. If you managed to make it to adolescence, and, if you were *really* lucky, adulthood, a whole slew of dangers awaited around pretty much every corner. Life expectancy for the period of the 19th century as a whole was 40 years for men and 42 years for women, which is pretty terrifyingly low. Causes of death included diseases like cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis, as well as the general stressors of poor diet, ridiculously bad medical care (and don’t you worry, we’ll get more into that later), accidents, urban squalor, and just generally being super stressed out that you live in the total garbage century that is the 1800’s. The low mortality rate meant that, at 20, you were basically middle aged, so say goodbye to all that time to figure out what you’re doing with your life. Not optimal, to say the least.
13. And When They Died, People Took Pictures With Them
Okay, so lots of people are dying, pretty much all the time. So what do we do? Let’s take pictures with them! That makes perfect sense and is definitely not the stuff of nightmares! Those of you familiar with all things creepy may be acquainted with the concept of death photography, also called post-mortem photography. Back in the day, photos were a hard thing to come by: cameras were expensive, clunky, and only operated by professional photographers. Therefore, if someone died (especially if that someone was a child), you might not have any pictures to remember them by. Perfect solution: pose them like they’re still alive, often with their family members, and remember them always in that fashion–as a creepy, super dead ghost doll. Usually the dead people would be posed like they were sleeping, but sometimes they’d sit them up and paste fake open eyes over their closed dead ones. As if they needed one more way to make the whole endeavor creepy af.
12. Kids Also Worked In Factories
Okay, so you’re a kid in the 1800’s. You have a really terrifying likelihood of death before adulthood, but everything else is pretty okay, right? Wrong. If you were poor enough and lived in a city, your little kid self is going to work in a factory. These factories were dangerous, with big machines and pretty much nothing in the way of safety regulations around them. Kids would get paid next to nothing to risk their lives in grueling conditions, with abusive task masters and long, exhausting hours. And if you think they might get things like breaks, weekends, days off, or vacations, think again. It was all work all the time. Oh, and because they weren’t getting an education (because they were too busy, you know, doing back breaking labor), they had no real chance to move up in the world, so they pretty much could only continue working at the factories or doing other similarly unpleasant manual labor.
11. Horse Transport In Cities Was Horrifying
Horse transportation, you know, like carriages and stuff, is usually depicted in movies and in our general imagination as the most romantic form of transportation. It’s like those fancy horse and buggies in Central Park, only all the time, right? How cool would that be? The answer is very, very uncool. First of all, let’s talk poop: those little attachments to catch the poop on today’s wagons did not exist. That resulted in poop from horses littering the streets pretty much everywhere you went. Upper class women and men literally wore shoes with lifts on them because the streets were so coated in horse poop. Aside from the poop, another fun fact they don’t tend to discuss about horse travel is that they sometimes died. Like, just keeled over and died in the middle of the street. And because horses are so big, there was no quick or easy way to get them out of the street. This meant that people would often just leave the dead horse where it fell, where it would rot, bloat, and sometimes explode because of the build up of gasses in its abdomen. Lovely!
10. Everything’s Awful For Ladies
In general, looking back on history, if you’re a lady, things aren’t great for you. The 19th century is no exception to that rule. Women were basically the property of men, be it their fathers or their husbands. They had no real options except to have kids – and to keep having kids – and many had to maintain both a household and a job at a factory. Women were expected to be submissive, and the fashion of the day did a good job as being as constricting as possible, between huge hoop skirts and corsets so tight they would constrict breathing and warp the ribs. If you stepped out of line, your husband had every right to put you “in your place”. Women had very minimal access to education, and wouldn’t get the vote until the next century (good job, progress!), so weren’t even really considered full citizens. Oh, and if they thought you were too interested in sex, they could diagnose you as a hysteric and remove your uterus. Funsies!
9. Medicine Was Terrifying
If we’re talking medicine here, we’re going to want to apply some very serious air quotes, because what passed for medicine in the 19th century was pretty awful, including a number of painful procedures that usually didn’t even cure what they set out to cure. Most people had no idea where their organs were and figured there was something wrong with their “humours” instead of, like, the flu, or heart disease. People didn’t really get how disease was transmitted, and treatment largely consisted of forced puking, pooping, or blood letting to clear “impurities” from the body. Oh, and anesthesia wasn’t invented till the 1840’s, so if you had to have surgery, you were doing it wide awake. Added bonus: because dentistry wasn’t really a thing yet, your barber was also your dentist! Or, rather, the guy who pulled your teeth when they rotted. Same goes for small surgeries like adenoid and tonsil removal. Who doesn’t want a quick surgery with their haircut?
8. Wars All The Time
Something that might surprise you? The United States was involved in over 60 wars and major military battles between 1800 and 1900. This included, of course, the ridiculously bloody and horrifyingly violent Civil War, but also the Spanish American war, the Philippine American War, the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, and a whole lot of wars with Native Americans where they were like, “Hey, can you not murder us and steal our land? Thanks.” War conditions in the 19th century were basically hell, multiplied by a million. It was dirty, often hand-to-hand combat, with limited resources and primitive weapons. And, as aforementioned above, medicine was basically a joke, and so field medicine, already hard in even the best circumstances, was brutal. Non-anesthetic amputations, for instance, were quite common. And the fighting force sometimes included kids, giving us yet another reason to believe that life for a kid in the 19th century was pretty much a very, very bad time.
7. Everyone Was Smelly
One thing consistently forgotten or ignored by those period movies set way back when, in which beautiful people dance in ball gowns and court each other and fall in love, is that hygiene was not really so much of a thing back in the day. People took baths MAYBE once a week, and some people relied only on “hip baths” (basically washing from a bucket). When they did bathe, soap wasn’t really used on a widespread basis, so it was just water and a sponge for the vast majority of the stinky populace. Also, there was no shampoo or deodorant, so body odor was just an assumed thing. Though some people tried to hide their stank with perfumes and flower petals under the arms, it wasn’t all too effective. Oh, and let us also remember that tooth brushing (let alone toothpaste and mouthwash) was not a thing, so stink breath was basically the norm as well.
6. If You Lived In A City, Life Sucked
The average city dweller has a whole bunch of complaints when it comes to urban living. It’s hot in the summer, and smelly, too, and everything is super crowded. Us lucky folks in the 21st century, however, forgot how bad it used to be living in the city for most people. It’s pretty much any and all of our problems, multiplied by a million (which, one starts to see, is sort of a trend when it comes to comparing that nightmare century to ours.) Life in the tenements, for instance, where people would go when they first got to this country and where 2.3 million people – or, ⅔ of all New Yorkers – lived by the end of the century, was absolutely squalid. They were cramped, like multiple families to a single room apartment cramped, had no indoor plumbing or heat, and were poorly lit (if lit at all.) Plus, there was often no ventilation, which meant that when one person got sick, everybody got sick.
5. If You Lived In The Country, Life Sucked
Okay, so tenement life was rough and hard. It must have been a lot better out on the frontier, where there was space and fresh air and less horse-corpse-and-poop-clogged streets, right? Wrong again. Remember that living in the country meant subsistence farming, which meant you grow what you eat. Fair enough, but what happens when the rain decides to peace or some weird crop disease comes out of nowhere and wipes out your corn? Guess what, bud? No more food! This is not to mention the fact that rural outposts were by nature very isolated, meaning that if people got sick and you needed medicine, there was every chance that you wouldn’t get it in time. Then there’s the general suckery of no heat, running water, or electricity, but that’s sort of common fare. Oh, and in all likelihood, you’d know only the same few people all your life–including the person you eventually married. It’s nice to come from a close knit place and stuff, but incest really isn’t a cute look.
4. Sometimes Diseases Would Just Show Up And Kill Everybody
As we’ve said before a number of times, medicine was really quite a horror show all throughout this century. This included the understanding of infectious disease, which, as you may have guessed, wasn’t all too great back then. Nobody knew what germs were, never mind how they spread, and basically just had to kinda throw their hands up when they got sick, like, “Welp! You got us stumped!” And even if they did find out that diseases were caused by germs, there were no antibiotics to treat them with – those only came around later on. That meant that the entirety of the 19th century was plagued by infectious disease epidemics, which would ravage entire populations and sometimes entire continents. We’re talking cholera (a disease where you basically poop yourself to death), smallpox (think chicken pox but terrifyingly deadly/disfiguring), yellow fever (a disease you get via mosquito bite where you literally bleed out of your eyes and mouth), syphilis (which LITERALLY EATS YOUR FACE OFF AND BORES HOLES IN YOUR BRAIN) – you name it.
3. Sometimes Fires Would Come and Burn Down Your Entire City
Like medical professionals, the geniuses in the 19th century in charge of architecture and urban planning weren’t exactly up to par when it came to human safety. During the Industrial Revolution, cities went up crazy quick, and, because there was no precedent, people did not realize that there are certain precautions you can take to make sure fires don’t completely destroy entire neighborhoods and cities when they happen. Therefore, when fires did happen (and they always will happen), they were massive. Think of literally any even remotely sizable city in the United States, and there was at least one “great fire” there during the 19th century. Fires meant huge death tolls, not to mention entire neighborhoods and sometimes cities completely displaced, with their homes and all of the things they owned gone. This wasn’t helped by the lack of fire fighting technology: pretty much all people could do when a fire started doing it’s fire-y thing was kinda attempt to throw buckets of water on it, but mainly just stand back and be like, “All right, fire, I guess you got this one. Good luck.”
2. If They Thought You Were Crazy, You Were Screwed
Things have progressed pretty far when it comes to how we deal with mental illness, but you don’t truly understand how far until you look at how it was treated in the 19th century. First off, pretty much anything could make people think you were crazy. Have you decided you don’t believe in God? Crazy. Are you a woman who isn’t super jazzed about your place in the world? Crazy. Are you an immigrant? Crazy. Are you poor? Crazy. Did you sneeze wrong? Crazy! But even if you legitimately had mental issues, they weren’t going to get any better with the so-called “treatments” offered back then. You would be restrained, starved, put in insulin comas, told you were morally inferior, get electro-shocked, you name it. And there was really no end in sight, because mental illness was largely seen as a basic defect that was incurable. So you’re in this for life!
1. Slavery Was Still A Thing
Lest we forget, during a majority of the 19th century, people were still held as actual slaves. This is shocking even now, and the horrors of slavery are some of the worst things any human being could endure. There was the indignity of being someone else’s property, which meant you could be bought or sold at their leisure, and which also meant that they could buy or sell your wife, your husband, and/or your children at any time, with no regard for what that separation would mean to you. Then there’s obviously the forced labor, and the abuses that would happen up to and including death. If there’s anything that truly makes the 19th century horrifying, it’s that people were legally allowed to own people – a notion that is truly nightmarish. Oh, and the kicker? Once the emancipation proclamation made slavery illegal, former slaves would still have to endure horrific racism and disenfranchisement, as would their descendents for generations to come. Up yours, 19th century, you garbage fire.
Source: http://www.thethings.com/15-ways-the-1800s-were-straight-up-horrifying/
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