Making the Frontier Home: Stories from the Steamboat Bertrand

Children of the Pioneers

Care of children was perhaps the most important duty ascribed to the Victorian mother.  Declining child mortality rates coupled with a decline in birth rates enabled parents to form closer bonds with a fewer number of children during this period. As a result, childhood and motherhood became sacred aspects of the Victorian middle-class home. While fatherhood also was an important aspect of domesticity, as primary earners, Victorian men concentrated their efforts in the public sphere, leaving the domestic space under the control of women. The ultimate goal of this feminine responsibility was to cultivate healthy, moral citizens. Emigration to the frontier was perceived as an opportunity, not just financially, but for the growth of children. Rural areas offered mothers the chance to remove their children from the germs, grime, and corrupting influences of more industrial areas. Although artifacts associated with young ages are sparse in the cargo of the Bertrand, the personal artifacts associated with some of the passengers affirms that middle-class parents were moving their children West. Despite transitioning to a hard lifestyle that required work from all family members, the presence of toys suggests the intent of preserving some aspects of childhood and play.



Leather bottom portion of a child's shoe.  This shoe is one of a pair found in association with the personal effects of the Atchison family and belonged either to a four-year-old girl or a five-year-old boy.

Other leisure activities including reading and drawing, which stayed with children as they matured into adulthood. Artifacts used for these activities, as well as accounts of their use, illustrate that despite the hardships faced by pioneers, individuals still took time for personal enjoyment and cultivation of the self. These were fundamental aspects of middle-class values and Victorian ideals.



 

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