The 18th century frontier family had much in common with the way Americans live and look at life in the twenty-first century. Getting by these days is challenging on many fronts, requiring more creativity and partnership in a family than often was the case just a generation ago. Between the rise in homeschooling, single-parenting, military obligations, or the need for both parents to be employed outside the home in order to survive, modern family life has begun to look a lot more like it did on the early frontier.
There was behind the pioneersโฆ no tradition of judging the importance of work by the sex of those who performed it, or even much of โmanโs work and womanโs work.โ
Such a mindset began at birth. On the frontier, daughters as well as sons were reared with a self-assurance and spirit that would enable them to grow into strong-minded individuals able to withstand poverty, war, and grief. It wasnโt unusual for a widow to take over and continue with her late husbandโs business affairs. Such a situation didnโt always wait for widowhood. Women, along with raising their children, worked at all manner of businessesโinn-keeping, dairying, tanneries, small shops, or the schooling of neighborsโ children alongside their own.
Women might have had less time for reading than their menfolk, but it would have been a short-sighted parent who neglected the education of daughters in favor of sons, for it was often left to a manโs wife to oversee the farm or plantation while her husband was awayโfor months or even years at a timeโas a Long Hunter, or because government or militia duties kept him from the home place for long stretches. And those absent husbands and fathers were well equipped to care for their own domestic needs:
Men liked independence, and menโฆ dependent on women to โcook and wash for themโโฆ could never have been Long Hunters, surveyors, or soldiers.
Or pioneer farmers. Often a husband, with or without a grown son or two, left his wife and younger children and journeyed ahead to more fertile western lands to build a cabin and put in a corn crop. Along the way he stitched deerskin moccasins and clothing for himself and his sons, kept them fed, and (reasonably) clean. Once the family was united boys still helped their fathers in the fields, but many spent time helping their mothers:
Dr. Daniel Drake, whose family settled in northern Kentucky in 1788โฆ churned, scrubbedโafter he had made the hickory brushes and brooms with which the work was doneโcarded wool and spun it, spent much time caring for the younger children, helped in the cooking, and โhad often to leave the field to help my mother.โ
Carding, spinning, and weaving are often thought of as womenโs work, but traditionally they were tasks carried out by men as well.
The sustaining of a marriage and the demands of child-rearing were seen as roles of equal importance to both genders on the 18th century frontier. Men were expected to take part not just in providing for their offspring, but in their nurturing and shaping as well.
There thus fell on the average man, not only the whole burden of his own life, but also that of the most important thing he hadโnot his jobโbut his wife and children.
Overall a picture of pioneer life develops that is strikingly modern in its practicality and sensibilityโmarriage was a coming together of equals, each trusting the other to do whatever the immediate circumstances demanded, or was in their strength and capacity to do, in order to create a stable, well-provisioned home for their offspring to thrive in. But even when that pattern was disrupted through absence or death, women on the frontier had been raised to carry on with an independence of spirit and courage that we can recognize and relate to generations later.
~ Quotes by Harriette Simpson Arnow, Flowering of the Cumberland
~ Photo by Jason Sturner, Flickr commons
Wonderful article. We do need to continue to be pioneers.- men and women. We do what needs to be done – and follow God's leading.
Blessings,
janis http://www.janiscox.com
I was thinking about this just the other day, that we don't all just have the one job anymore. I'm a homeschooling mom, but I also write and edit freelance. My husband's a pastor, but he's also a part-time police officer. And he often does his pastor work from home so I can head out to write. We all kind of pitch in as needed. Works well.
I was most interested in your comments about Dr Daniel Drake from Ky, amazing man wasn't he? In those days men and women did what needed doing..not just a job.
I enjoyed reading your post about the pioneers. we certainly could learn from them.
Paula O(kyflo130@yahoo.com)
Thanks for commenting Paula, Sally & Janis. I highly recommend the book those quotes came from, FLOWERING OF THE CUMBERLAND by Harriette Simpson Arnow. Lots of interesting historical detail. I learned a lot from her. She has another, SEEDTIME IN THE CUMBERLAND, that's on my TBR research stack.
Seedtime ON The Cumberland, to be correct. ๐
VERY interesting, Lori. It was a union of two strong, brave people, as opposed to a knuckle dragging male and a wimpy little female. Each had to know how to do everything, didn't they?
Or be willing to learn very quickly. ๐ So far I've written two frontier women characters. One was as self sufficient as a woman could be. The other is a total fish out of water. But when put to the test, we often find we're capable of far more than we imagined.