Home Sweet Home
Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio
Temperance | Parlor Music | Minstrel Songs
Family Life
Family life in nineteenth-century Cincinnati was fundamentally different from traditional family life in the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century families assumed a natural hierarchy and continuity between generations. A typical family would depend on the labor of sons and daughters to contribute sufficiently to the family's economy to provide a beginning stake for each of them. These economic links across generations eroded significantly between 1750 and 1800, as parents were less able to provide their young adult children with economic resources superior to those they could obtain on their own. Increasingly, young adults assumed responsibility for establishing their own economic base and choosing their own marriage partners. Parenting focused on training the children for economic independence and self-sufficiency.
Recordings and Sheet Music
You Never Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry, by Rowland Howard (W. H. Cundy, Boston, 187-)
Where Home Is, by George Frederick Root (from The Day School Ideal, Cincinnati, 1885)
The Old Canoe, by George Frederick Root; words by S. M. Grannis (from The Day School Ideal, Cincinnati, 1885)
Information on playing the recordings
Learn More About It
Hall, J. H., Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1914.
"Root, George Frederick." Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
"Root, George Frederick." Grove's New Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Oxford, 2001.