Take a look at this photograph, which we think was taken in West Tennessee in the 1890s. If you look closely, you will see many things that tell you what life was like for many people at that time. First of all, the family consists of several generations and branches of the family -- aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.  Everyone is dressed conservatively, as was the custom of that era. Horse and buggy is the method of transportation. The musical instrument that the woman is holding appears to be very important to her, and it appears to be homemade. The baby stroller is also made at home.

During this period, many people were leaving family farms such as this one and moving to new factories. They were turning away from the extended family (grandparents, aunts and uncles) and moving toward the core family (usually consisting of two parents, children, and no one else). They were turning toward the promise of a regular paycheck and turning away from the dependence on the family farm.

One of the many Tennesseans who went through this transition was Josie Coleman, a young girl who left her family farm in Maury County in 1914 to work for Nashville's Hartsford Hosiery Mill. Click here to read about what she said about the experience.

Let’s say that you live on a farm in Tennessee in 1890. As soon as you are old enough to help, you are helping out every day – doing things like milking cows, feeding animals, plowing. School is something you do when you can, but working on the farm comes first. You see a lot of your uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents, because most of them live nearby. But you don’t live in a town or in a neighborhood, so you spend a lot of time alone and with your brothers and sisters. And you spend a lot of time wandering around, fishing, hunting, this sort of thing. So you can't play a video game, and you don't watch television, but you can catch and skin a catfish faster than you could imagine today.

Now imagine it is 1892 and your family has left the farm because your dad took a job at a factory in a city. You live in a small house in an area where there are many other small houses and a lot of kids to play with. You don’t see nearly as much of your dad, though, because he leaves early in the morning and comes home at around dinnertime. Meanwhile there is no farm to work on, and no big piece of land to wander around and fish and hunt on. You used to get in trouble for hunting on your neighbor’s farm. Now you get in trouble for hanging out with kids your parents don’t want you to hang out with. And you now have to go to school more than you used to.