1820 - 1869 Expansions and Inequalities Supplemental Materials

Art Activities

Home Improvements

Some U.S. inventors of the Industrial Revolution focused on how to bring the wonders of mechanization into the home to relieve the burdens of daily live. One major advancement was the home washing machine. 

Washing laundry by hand was extremely labor and time intensive. It was such a hated chore that any woman who could afford it hired someone else to do it for them. The home washing machine cut down on physical labor needed to wash clothing. Instead of individually scrubbing and wringing each piece of clothing by hand, a woman could turn a crank and let the machine do it for her. The home washing machine of the mid-19th century was not perfect. It still required physical labor, and only wealthy women could afford to own one. But it was an important first step in using the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to relieve the heavy burdens of housekeeping.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

The Mansion of Happiness

The Industrial Revolution that took place in the 19th century transformed every aspect of life in the United States, including how people spent their free time. Jobs outside the traditional family farm provided workers with both expendable income and free time. At the same time, the rise of factory production meant that there were many new and inexpensive ways for people to entertain themselves. 

Early improvements in printing and papermaking made board games one of the first forms of popular entertainment of the industrial era. Simple card games could be purchased for as little as twenty five cents (equivalent to $10 today).

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

Source Notes

Westward Expansion

The Poetry of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

  • Parker, Robert Dale, ed. The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Skies. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Commandments to California Wives

  • Noy, Gary. Gold Rush Stories: 49 Tales of Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss, and Luck. (Berkley, California: Heyday, 2017).

Choosing Enslavement in Texas

  • Boswell, Angela. “Traveling the Wrong Way Down Freedom’s Trail: Black Women and the Texas Revolution.” In Women and the Texas Revolution, ed. by Mary L. Scheer. (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2012).
  • Winegarten, Ruthe. Black Texas Women: A Sourcebook. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996).

Claiming Freedom in Minnesota

Handcart Pioneers

  • Hafen, Mary Ann. Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

On the Wagon Train

  • Schlissel, Lillian.  Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. (New York: Schocken Books, 2004).

Western Indigenous Clothing

Navajo “Slave” Blanket

Sex Trafficking

Suffrage in Wyoming

Life Story: Elizabeth Shoeboots

  • Miles, Tiya. The Ties That Bind (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).
  • Krauthamer, Barbara. Black Slaves, Indian Masters. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
  • Purdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).

Life Story: Keziah Grier

  • Cox, Anna-Lisa. The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality. (New York: Public Affairs, 2018).

Life Story: Maria Gertrudis Barceló

  • Belohlavek, John M. Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican American War. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017).
  • Gonzalez, Deena J.  “Gertudis Barcelo: La Tules of Image and Reality.” In Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community, ed. by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol. (New York, Oxford University Press, 2005).
  • Shapland, Jen. “New Mexico Women: Maria Gertudis Barcelo.” Southwest Contemporary, July 30, 2018. https://southwestcontemporary.com/maria-gertrudis-barcel/.

Life Story: Molley Dorsey Sanford

Life Story: Sarah Winnemucca

Life Story: Ah Yuen

Industry and Immigration

The Mansion of Happiness

  • Hofer, Margaret. The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).
  • Lepore, Jill. The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death. (New York: Vintage Books, 2013).

Rules for Mill Workers

The Weeping Time

  • Baily, Anne C. The Weeping Time. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

In Their Own Words

  • Kessler-Harris, Alice. Women Have Always Worked Second Edition. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018).
  • Dublin, Thomas. “Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills.” In The Working Class and its Culture, ed. by Neil L. Shumsky. (New York: Routledge, 1995).

The Factory Floor

  • Brown, John. Memoir of Robert Blincoe, An Orphan Boy. (Manchester: J. Doherty, 1832).

Ice Cream Maker Patent

Urbanization

  • Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
  • Diner, Hasia R. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1983).
  • Unknown Artist. The Five Points. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/20891?sortBy=Relevance&what=Paintings&od=on&ft=*&offset=0&rpp=100&pos=58 
  • Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. (New York: Plume Books, 2002).

Home Improvements

Depicting Domestics

  • Diner, Hasia R. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1983).
  • Gallati, Barbara Dayer. “William Henry Burr, The Intelligence Office, 1849.” In Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy, ed. by Barbara Dayer Gallati. (London: D. Giles Limited, 2011).

Climate Warning

Nativism

Life Story: Elizabeth Cogley

Life Story: Margaret Haughery

Life Story: Afong Moy

Life Story: Ernestine Rose

  • Anderson, Bonnie S. The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Politics and Society

Campaign Against Indian Removal

  • Purdue, Theda. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, rev. ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016).
  • Portnoy, Alisse. Their Right to Speak: Women’s Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
  • Miles, Tiya. “‘Circular Reasoning’: Recentering Cherokee Women in the Antiremoval Campaigns.” American Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2009): 221–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27734988.
  • Mathes, Valerie Sherer. “New York Women and Indian Reform.” New York History 94, no. 1–2 (2013): 84–110. https://doi.org/10.2307/newyorkhist.94.1-2.84.

A Singular Case

  • Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • Cleves, Rachel Hope. “‘What, Another Female Husband?’: The Prehistory of Same-Sex Marriage in America.” The Journal of American History 101, no. 4 (2015): 1055–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44285272.

Evolving Fashion

  • Cook, Sylvia Jenkins. “‘Oh Dear! How the Factory Girls Do Rig Up!’: Lowell’s Self-Fashioning Workingwomen.” The New England Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2010): 219–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20752692.
  • Klassen, Pamela E.  “The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 14, no. 1 (2004): 39–82. https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2004.14.1.39.
  • Prescott, Cynthia Culver. Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier. (University of Arizona Press, 2007). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2jhjwnr.
  • “Amelia Bloomer – Publisher and Advocate for Woman’s Rights.” Copied from the Historical Files maintained by the National Park Service. The Social Welfare History Project, http:// socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/biography/bloomer-amelia/ (accessed by M. Waters, 11-1-2016)
  • Ginzberg, Lori D. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009). 
  • Wellman, Judith. The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004).

Why Sit Ye Here and Die?

Declaration of Rights and Sentiments

  • Davis, Sue. The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Women’s Rights and the American Political Traditions. (New York: NYU Press, 2008). http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qgdzp.
  • Field, Corine T. The Struggle for Equal Adulthood. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
  • Tetrault, Lisa. The Myth of Seneca Falls (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Indigenous Land Ownership

  • Pawling, Micah A. “A ‘Labyrinth of Uncertainties’: Penobscot River Islands, Land Assignments, and Indigenous Women Proprietors in Nineteenth-Century Maine.” American Indian Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2018): 454–87. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.42.4.0454.

“The Two Sexes”

  • McCall, Laura. “‘The Reign of Brute Force Is Now Over’: A Content Analysis of ‘Godey’s Lady’s Book’, 1830-1860.” Journal of the Early Republic 9, no. 2 (1989): 217–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/3123204 
  • Pilditch, Jan. “‘Fashionable Female Studies’: The Popular Dissemination of Science in ‘Godey’s Lady’s Book’, 1830-60.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 24, no. 1 (2005): 20–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41416023 

No Place for Black Women

  • Jones, Martha S. All Bound Up Together: The Women Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

Theatrical Scandal

Abortion Debate

Testimonio

  • Roybal, Karen R. Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas 1848-1960. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2017).

Married Women’s Property Act

The First Lady of American Astronomy

Life Story: Mary Ann Shadd Cary

  • Jones, Martha S. All Bound Up Together: The Women Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
  • Rhodes, Jane. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1998).
  • Yee, Shirley J. “Finding A Place: Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850-1870.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18, No. 3 (1997): 1-16.
  • “Mary Ann Shadd Cary,” National Women’s Hall of Fame. https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/mary-ann-shadd-cary
  • Specia, Megan. “Overlooked No More: How Mary Ann Shadd Cary Shook Up the Abolitionist Movement.” The New York Times, June 6, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/obituaries/mary-ann-shadd-cary-abolitionist-overlooked.html

Life Story: Dorothea Dix

Life Story: Caroline Gahano Parker

Life Story: Susan Clark

Life Story: Madame Restell

Suggested Reading

Books and Articles

  • Brooks, James F. Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • Cox, Anna-Lisa. The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality. (New York: Public Affairs, 2018).
  • Diner, Hasia R. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1983).
  • Jones, Martha S. All Bound Up Together: The Women Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
  • Kessler-Harris, Alice. Women Have Always Worked Second Edition. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018).
  • Krauthamer, Barbara. Black Slaves, Indian Masters. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
  • Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • Miles, Tiya. The Ties That Bind (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).
  • Portnoy, Alisse. Their Right to Speak: Women’s Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
  • Purdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
  • Schlissel, Lillian.  Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. (New York: Schocken Books, 2004).
  • Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
  • Tetrault, Lisa. The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).