100 years earlier

[Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217]

I would have been born in 1849. As far as I know my female relatives were housewives until my grandmother on my father's side, who was a seamstress. As her husband died relatively young, she had to find employment. As I've always liked to sew, I suppose I would have been a seamstress like her.

 

Here she is at age 18 in 1905. She was born in 1887.

 

[Noah Gonnatellya SASS #46472]

Since 3/4 of my ancestors were Scots settled in Canada at that time (1854), I would most likely have been employed with HBC at a fur trading post (Moose Factory or Abitibi) as a carpenter, blacksmith or clerk.

 

 If in Kansas City, Mo where my dad’s mother’s family settled in the 1830’s, than I would say owner/investor of speakeasies and sporting houses, as her father was...

 

Given a choice, I would have preferred Kansas City.....

[Jailhouse Jim, SASS #13104]

By 1874 at 20 years old, I was probably pounding the walkways at the Yuma Territorial Prison or riding shotgun on a convict road crew.

[MizPete]

1848.  Allie, I'm not sure we would have had sewing machines.  Elias Howe didn't invent the interlocking stitch machine until 1846, and I figure you had to be pretty wealthy to own one.  I figure I wouldn't have been allowed a profession.  I'd have had a husband, a new baby every year or so, and a house to run.  I'd have boiled laundry in the yard (after carrying the water from the well or a nearby spring), cooked on a wood stove using cast iron cookware that as a young woman I needed two hands to pick up when it wasn't even hot.  I have Aunt Belle's spider (three-legged chicken fryer) so I know this from experience.  Milked a cow (if lucky enough to have one) for milk, and churned butter.  Grow my own fruit & vegetables & preserve them for winter.  I do not have a great deal of nostalgia for the life of a woman during this period.  Except - how good would my marriage prospects have been, with all the eligible batchelors off in the war?  Maybe I'd have married an old rich man.  At least I'd have household help.

[Abilene, SASS # 27489]

I would have been a tinkerer or engineer of some sort, working hard to invent air conditioning.

[Highwall]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217 said:

I would have been born in 1849. As far as I know my female relatives were housewives until my grandmother on my father's side, who was a seamstress. As her husband died relatively young, she had to find employment. As I've always liked to sew, I suppose I would have been a seamstress like her.

 

Here she is at age 18 in 1905. She was born in 1887.

 

Good looking gal considering there was no makeup involved like in today's pictures.

A seamstress was a  popular and respectable profession back in the day! 

 

 

[Captain Bill Burt]

1863. I would have probably been the grandson of Captain William Burt (instead of great-great-great-great grandson). He and my father would have been fighting for the Confederacy in Burt’s Rifles. I would have grown up in Crystal Springs MS surrounded by by 16 uncles and aunts and 100 or so cousins. I would have probably lived an affluent life by the standards of that time.

William Burt 1797-1900

 

 

 

[Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217]

Wow! Bill, if I calculated correctly, he was 103 when he died.

[Ozark Shark]

That would have been 1859.  I've always loved being at sea, so I probably would have followed my 4th great grandfather, Edward Moorehead Galligan, into the Navy.  He earned his way to the US from Ireland as a ship's boy through at least two circumnavigations.  He was a farmer in NE Iowa when the Civil War started.  He volunteered for the Brown Water Navy and served during first 3 years of the Civil War as a forward gun captain on the Ironclad USS Essex.  He was medically discharged after suffering eye and ear damage from a cannon misfire during a port salute.  The photo below was taken in January, 1862 while the Essex, then an "Oak-Clad," was in Cairo preparing for the Battle of Fort Henry.  By late February, they were back in St. Louis rebuilding the Essex as an Ironclad after the beating it took at Fort Henry.  I have a copy of his Civil War journal.  He lived out every Irish stereotype in those three years.

[Captain Bill Burt]

55 minutes ago, Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217 said:

Wow! Bill, if I calculated correctly, he was 103 when he died.

That’s correct, January 1797 to May 1900. He and his wife had 17 children. She lived to be 84. We’re a pretty long lived family, mostly. My grandmother is 98.

[Stoney Bottoms, SASS #52760]

Born 1852

Family had settled in Mid Missouri about 40 years earlier, farming and raising cattle.  Joined the home guard after Missouri was captured in the war of Northern Aggression.  Guess I would have been farming with the rest of the family--I'm still here and retired from raising cattle and the Railroad on the side.