Inside a Big Family Home in the 1800s | Sleep History

Before dawn on an October Saturday in 1858, an Ohio farm wife lies awake counting the sleepers in her house: two in the trundle bed, three girls overhead, two boys under the rafters, a baby in the cradle. Spend one whole day with a family of thirteen under one roof, from the first coal in the tongs to the last child asleep. Sources for this episode Harriet Connor Brown, Grandmother Brown's Hundred Years, 1827-1927 (1929) Martin Welker, Farm Life in Central Ohio Sixty Years Ago (1892) William Dean Howells, My Year in a Log Cabin (1893) William Cooper Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to 1840 (1895) Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) Lydia Maria Child, The Mother's Book (1831) Mrs. Cornelius, The Young Housekeeper's Friend (1859) The Ohio Cultivator, October 1858 Scientific American, 9 October 1858 Michael Haines, "Fertility and Mortality in the United States", EH.Net Encyclopedia About this episode The Harlan family is a composite, drawn from the records above; they are not one real household. Narration is a synthetic voice and the images are AI-generated illustrations. If these videos help you settle, subscribing means the next one will be waiting for you on a night you need it. Where are you listening from tonight, and what time is it there? Tell me in the comments. #1800s #sleephistory #sleepstories