Describes Her Life BEFORE 1900! How Different Was The USA Back Then?
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Published 2020-01-11
Please remember when you are watching this that you are watching 16mm work print outtakes from my 1979 prime time television special, The Information Society. Unfortunately, the material that I selected as possible to be used, has been lost in my fire of 2008. This wonderful video presents what I was going to use, including a lot of irrelevant questions. I wish I had more of this. I wish I had been smart enough as a young filmmaker when I did this back in 1979 to realize the incredible history that she was so able to articulate. The time before the radio. Certainly before television. The time when she traveled by train and trolley and horse. The time when the telephone was a device where everyone in town could hear everyone else speaking. I found this old 16mm workprint in my basement and digitized it not knowing it would be as wonderful as it is. I recorded this for a television special I was making in 1979 called “The Information Society.” You can see the entire 1 hour film on my YouTube channel by searching it although I did not use this clip in the film.
All Comments (21)
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Here is another incredible storyteller – old lady – 100 years old! https://youtu.be/8zoTe8HJW9U
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I am a RN and worked in a rural hospital for a time about 20 years ago. I would always ask the older folk about how they lived their lives - most were farmers. They would talk about hand milking 30 cows twice a day and hand threshing, and horse teams for plowing. I was often picked on by the other nurses for these conversations - they’d hear me talking with them and laugh saying “Molly’s getting the farm report again.” I enjoyed hearing stories of the lives lead by some of the hardest working folk I have ever known.
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"Back in 81"... Hits a little different when talking about 1800s
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I use to take care of a 100 year old man and I will always remember what he said to me about today's technology, "people today have more accessibility with one and another but are more isolated than when he was young, people were more united".
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"I'm no happier now than I was in those days. Then I thought I had everything... maybe a little more." This speaks volumes.
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She was born 16 years after Lincoln was assassinated and interviewed 10 years after the Moon landing.
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In 1975, I was 19 years old, and helping feed a woman who was in her 90’s. She was telling me about when her family had moved to Texas in a covered wagon. All I could think of was, WOW!
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I sat with my 94 year old neighbor and watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon in 1969. I was 15. He came to California in a covered wagon and lived long enough to see a man on the moon. While he did tell me stories of his youth I didn't understand at the time, the treasure of knowledge and history I had sitting next to me. I wish I had a few minutes with him today. He was a good man and I'm glad I knew him.
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Watching her makes me realize how fast life goes by and then our time on this earth is gone.
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My grandmother, born in 1896, used to call underwear, "unmentionables."
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Wow, just 3 “automobiles when she moved there” then everyone had horses and couldn’t afford cars now everyone has cars but can’t afford horses
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My great grandmother ( 1887 - 1977 ) said she loved her lifetime because she witnessed from horse and buggy to the moon landing. So very much innovation. Plane travel, automobiles, TV, two world wars, the depression era, it was wonderful listening to so much history lived by one person.
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I still remember my great grandmother who was born in the 1880's. She lived in this really cool old house that was built in the 1800's and was on the side of a small mountain in Roanoke Virginia. She was the sweetest person ever. The first time I met her was when I was 8 years old in 1970. In her thick southern accent she said to me and my siblings "well, hello theyah' little dahlins'! So wundahful' to meet you. Would yawl like some fudge? I made it special, just for yawl".
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She's old enough to remember stage coaches, but hip enough to have Hollywood Squares on the TV. This is just fantastic stuff!
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She speaks of “the youth of today”. I graduated high school in 1979, the year this was recorded. It’s now 2020 and I’ll be 59 in the spring, nearing retirement. I always marvel at the passage of time.
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Up until the 70s my great grandma had her own garden, killed her own chickens and had no electricity through the 80s in Corbin Kentucky. She passed in 2018 at 103 I miss those times dearly
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A little perspective for those young ones. This woman was 31 when the Titanic sank!!! I was comparing this woman to my Gram, then I realized she was born 1 year after my great great gramma. It's so wonderful to see this video. I hope it made it to her family. This is pure gold!
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When she talks about how none of the technology made her any happier, that's a valuable lesson we could all learn from.
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I was born in 1981, yet I had a kindergarten teacher who was 93 years old. I knew people who, in turn, knew Civil War veterans and others who remembered that time. In my earliest years, an old man in my neighborhood was almost 100, the son of a former slave. And having known countless people who were born before 1920, they were contemporaries with people who were born in the last years of King George III's reign (he died in 1820). My point is, younger ones need to appreciate that these people and their stories aren't ancient. They're still very, very recent. We just don't live long enough. People will one day look at 2020 the way we look back on 1920 and 1820. It goes by fast, one second at a time.
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I’m a software developer, so I’ve embraced technology in that way, but there’s also no doubt in my mind that on the whole, people are far less happy than when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s. At this point the difference is actually dramatic. We’re evolving technologically but devolving culturally
