1851

We enjoyed a leisurely bike ride along the White Clay Creek State Park today. We parked next to an old meeting house, its yard filled with graves.

Margarete Alexander

Born March 7th 1851
Died September 4th 1852

In the year 1851, an observation study of 700 homes in a working-class London area revealed that the average housewife worked 75 hours per week-15 hours per day-cooking, cleaning, and looking after the children. She spent one-quarter of her day in the kitchen.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, at age 40, wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and had record sales by 1852. Cincinnati papers reported January 29 that a Kentucky slave woman had crossed the frozen Ohio River, been apprehended, and cut the throat of one of her two children rather than have the girl returned to slavery. She was stopped before she could kill the other child and local authorities sent the distraught woman back to her owner instead of indicting her for murder.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick was published, but only had 50 copies sold in his lifetime and would not be recognized as a masterwork for another 70 years.

This is the marker for Margaret's grave. Each marker beyond are those of her three siblings, who also died in infancy. I try to imagine the heartbreak of losing these four children one after another. How hard life was in 1851.