Source: Wikimedia Commons
Towns used to pay somebody to water the streets, several times a day, all summer.
A horse-drawn tank wagon with a perforated spreader bar worked the business streets…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
A magic lantern is a real projector, not a toy. A bright light, a condenser, a glass slide and a lens, throwing an enlarged image onto a wall…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Before plumbing, an American town had one water supply and it stood in the street - a pump or a well in a square, a corner or a…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Towns used to form societies for the express purpose of arguing in public, and they met all winter.
Literary societies, lyceums and debating clubs gathered weekly or fortnightly…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The American chestnut was one of the dominant trees of the eastern forest, and within a few decades essentially every mature one was dead.
The wood was exceptional…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Go through census pages for American farm country before the middle of the twentieth century and you keep meeting her. A young woman, late teens or early twenties,…