I would hazard the claim that people generally recall their childhood as "natural"–the way the world should work if all were normal. I, like D., find it useful to think about history as a series of lives: Say a baby was born when Illinois became a state, in 1818. She would have been counted among the 56,500 people listed in the 1820 census, and undoubtedly would have lived in the southern third of the state. Most of the region was forest or prairie, used as hunting territories and a few settlements for the remaining Indians.
If that child lived no longer than the proverbial "three score years and 10 (plus 2)," in her lifetime virtually all the lands were claimed and settled, railroads built, Chicago grew into a great city, wave after wave of immigrants settled town and countryside; steam engines, electricity, telephones, photography became part of daily life… At her death in 1890 she would have been among nearly 4 million Illinois residents; her family’s farm would be counted among the more than quarter million in the state.
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If that child lived no longer than the proverbial "three score years and 10 (plus 2)," in her lifetime virtually all the lands were claimed and settled, railroads built, Chicago grew into a great city, wave after wave of immigrants settled town and countryside; steam engines, electricity, telephones, photography became part of daily life… At her death in 1890 she would have been among nearly 4 million Illinois residents; her family’s farm would be counted among the more than quarter million in the state.
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