Life in Joseph Brown's time certainly wasn't easy. No matter where you were, you face many problems in life. From working on a farm, to city life, everything had its sacrifices, and everything had its advantages.

            On a farm, women and their daughters gave a literal meaning to the term "slaving over a hot stove." They were probably nearly as strong, if not stronger than most men were. The same went for their endurance. Between dragging pales of water to and from the well, and cooking by incredibly intense heat, usually in a huge open fireplace.

            The men and sons didn't have it easy either. All the other work of the farm was theirs to take care of. They would always be "up with the sun," normally around five o'clock AM. They would take care of the animals, do the harvesting, plowing, or whatever needed to be done.

            Schooling wasn't the best either. Children were usually pulled from school at a young age, especially boys, to help their parents on the farm. Those children who did go to school, usually went in a one-roomed schoolhouse. The teacher would often not have a home of her own, and would many times stay at the homes of her students' families, changing houses every week or so.

            Children rarely got a good education. Farm-life does little for a developing mind. Children mostly lived their lives doing the same basic chores over an over again. Besides the occasional shoeing of a horse, or other such activities, children got few breaks from their bland lifestyle.

        Also there was a big problem with pollution and disease. One main reason for this was that wells were usually built close to everything else. This makes good sense if you think about it. Only, think about the consequences of doing this. If you had a well right in the same area as the house, the barn, and the outhouse, sickness was practically inevitable.

 
sc.info.gov.hk/.../ dh/diseases/CD/TBc.htm

          Many people who moved to the cities ended up working in factories and sweatshops. Factory workers were usually treated nearly as bad as slaves. They were forced to work ridiculous hours for a very slim pay, even for back then.
         However, factory owners still had plenty of workers. Why? Because they knew, and the workers knew, that should the workers be fired or quit, they would most likely stave to death on the streets. So the horrid conditions of factory work were usually more appealing to most than going penniless.
       The working conditions weren't the worst things about factories. There were many dangers as well. From a child losing a finger in a sweatshop from getting too close to the spinning thread, to a miner being crushed by a collapsing tunnel. They were all just casualties. Of no importance. Workers were rarely paid for their injuries, and rarely recovered from them. But giving up the job, meant giving up practically any chance of survival.

www.arnw02593.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ strike.htm

        As with all times throughout history, there were those who were rich, and those who were poor. But during the 1800's, never had the wealthy had so much, and the poor had so little. A good example of this, is child labor. As I've already mentioned, poorer families were forced to work in factories to survive. The rich families would have owned the factories. There really was no middle class, basically there was only one way about it, either you had money, or you didn't.

www.southrock.co.uk/ ballywalter/index2.html

          Obviously, the lower class was without these luxuries. Again as I have already said, many lived in cities, in which case they would be working too much to have time for chores or brushing their hair, or other such things. Farm children didn't have much time either, and even if they did, they certainly didn't have maids and servants to help.

          As for what children did in their leisure time, the wealthy would do things such as riding bikes, lawn tennis, and roller blading. Poorer children rarely had much, if any leisure time. Children working in factories or other places (mines, sweat shops, etc.) wouldn't have much time for anything at all besides working. And farm children would do simpler things in their very limited leisure time, such as "Throwing It In" which was a game where the only things you needed to play, was a stick and a mud puddle.

          Also, wealthy children would usually be tutored at home or go to private academies to learn. Gender of course would effect what they learned. Boys for instance, studied history, reading and writing, and often learned Latin or maybe Greek, to prepare for a college. Girls were taught, in short, to be "proper" young ladies and taught skills to be good wives and mothers.

          Then of course there were working children who, you guessed it, had no time for school. They were often sent to work as soon as they were old enough to walk and do whatever tasks were necessary in that specific line of work. And I already discussed the education of farm children. They usually learned things such as reading and writing, maybe other things as well, but again, as I said earlier, many children never got to finish their education and most adults didn’t even have a good education.

          The 1800's were certainly not an easy time. As said in, The Good old Days, they were Terrible!, "Never were the rich so rich and the poor so poor...." Personally, I agree. It's hard to imagine all these terrible things happening so openly. It's especially hard to imagine that anything like that could have happened right here in New Hampshire, in Deerfield even. Well, I think I can honestly say that I've taken a good look at what it was like as a both a rich and poor child growing up around Joseph Brown's time.

Bibliography

Don Scott, "22. The Rich & the Poor", http://www.ak.lp.org/conseq/conseq22.htm,
February 20, 2005.