ANATOMY OF GRAY

THE BASIS

• It was 24 feet x16 feet. Most frontier homes had dirt floors. Or, if they were lucky, a plank flooring
• many citizens didn't have their own homes. They lived in crowded tenements or boarding houses.

THE FAMILY

• Most families lived in tiny frontier cabin or a tiny tenement.
• Usually only the parents had their own bedroom, with infants or toddlers sharing the room
• Older children shared not only a room, but a bed. Sometimes as many as five youngsters slept together

HOUSE ROOMS

• Kitchens were used for both preparing and cooking food and for warming the house
• Until the invention of the cast-iron stove in the 1820's, the cooking was done in the open hearth
• was mostly the rich who could afford these items that were made to cover the fireplace and burned one-third less wood
• were also waist high, so a woman didn't have to stoop to check the food.

LIGHTS

• Candles were the most common throughout the country, especially during the first half of the century
• Lamps were used as well. Whale-oil lamps made of tin, brass or pewter were used through the 1880's
• Lard-oil lamps became popular in the 1840's
• Kerosene lamps were widely used after 1865 and replaced whale-oil lamps for the most par