Poverty, Motherhood, and Childhood in 19th-Century SanFranciscoTeresa Dujnic Bulger, PhD, RPAWSA Archaeological ConsultantsPresented at the Society for American Archaeology Conferences80th Annual Conference, San Francisco, California. April 19, 2015

Introduction When we think of a seaport like San Francisco in the 1870s and1880s, we might not first think of family homes and childrenplaying in the street. Despite this, many families did live inmaritime and industrial centers and looking at the scale of thehousehold can help us understand experiences of motherhood andchildhood in the past.

A call for the critical analysis of motherhood and childhood inarchaeology has been heard over the last fifteen or so. Wilkie(2003) has shown the ways that mothering practices areintertwined with both cultural traditions and the development ofmedicinal movements. In the case of Lucrecia Perryman, theAfrican American midwife Wilkie studied, scientific mothering andthe rise of gynecology were enmeshed with traditional medicalknowledge to create the particular medicinal cabinet representedin her privy assemblage. Baxter (2005) has demonstrated the waysthat children in the past used spaces and objects in ways thatleft archaeological traces apart from the actions of others. BothWilkie (2000) and Baxter (2005) have called for a criticalanalysis of toys and other objects meant for children in order tounderstand the types of social and cultural behaviors that adultsattempt to instill in their children, and, perhaps, the ways thatchildren interpret these attempts at social control.

The lives of mothers and children are enmeshed.

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In this paper I will attempt to explore some of the ways thatthat women navigated the uneasy landscape of motherhood in late19th century San Francisco, both in the sense of women’centurySan Francisco, botude of actions attendant to child-rearing. Iwill also try to touch on some of the ways that children wereinvolved in this business of being reared.

The archaeological assemblages of the upper-middle-class Braggfamily and the combined assemblage of the working class Black andHolmes families form the basis of the comparison I will bepresenting today. Both assemblages were excavated in 2013 duringthe 201 Folsom Block Archaeology Project by WSA ArchaeologicalConsultants of Orinda, California.

Nineteenth century prescriptive literature is a powerful mediumfor gaining insight into the ideals advocated by white middleclass Americans in that time period. As such, it represents thestarting point for many of the interpretations made in thispaper. As has been demonstrated by a multitude of historians andarchaeologists, however, the ideals represented in these textsdid not represent the full scope of women's experience and werefar from of the experiences of women who were living in povertyor were not white, who did not have the same access to the socialand economic resources of middle-class whites. Because of theseproblems with prescriptive textsonomic resources of middle-classwhites. ed in these tkbooksuse of these problems with prerain ofsalt, so to speak.

Artifacts most clearly associated with mothers socializing andcaring for their children — specifically mass produced toys,gifts, and medicines —nd medicinesmass produced toys prerain ofsalBlack-Holmes and Bragg households, showing what may have beensimilar social and cultural values performed in contrasting ways.

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It is the artifacts associated with managing and preventingmotherhood, however —mmedicines, grooming supplies — whichsuggest that raising a family in 19th century San Francisco wasmore complex than the middle-class prescriptive literature wouldsuggest.

The HouseholdsThe Black-Holmes Household Feature 25 was a privy deposit associated with the working classmulti-family home at 327 Beale Street and had a TPQ of 1877. Themothers in both the Black and Holmes families were from Irelandand named Catherine. George Holmes was a cook that hailed fromMassachusetts and John Black was a stevedore originally fromEngland. All their children were born in California. Thechildren’s and women’s artifacts and medicines from Feature 25are interpreted here as the joint product of the Black and Holmeshouseholds.

Irish immigrant families were very common in late-19th centurySan Francisco, just as they were in other major cities, thoughthey had more opportunities and advantages in San Francisco thanon the east coast (Yentsch 2009: 186; see further in Campbell2002).

The Bragg Household Feature 5 was a barrel associated with the upper middle classBragg family at 322 Main Street and had a TPQ of 1863. RobertBragg was a ship carpenter, opened his own ship joining andsteering wheel business in 1857, which became highly successful.Robert and Mary J. Bragg had ten children, eight of whom survivedto adulthood. Their children, especially their female children,were also highly successful.

Mothering and the Objects of Childhood

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Mothering involves a variety of nurturing activities which couldinclude food preparation, care for the sick, informal and formaleducation, and everyday instruction and discipline. One couldeven consider the choice to leave a child to his or her owndevices as a style of mothering. As Collins (1994) has argued,“motherwork” includes a wide variety of practices which do notoften fit into our commonplace preconceptions of women’s sphere.Her discussion, focusing specifically on women of color, assertsthat “motherwork recognizes that individual survival,empowerment, and identity require group survival empowerment andidentity” (1994: 47 in Wilkie 2003: 4). As artifacts are stillbeing processed for this Project, in this paper I will only beconsidering those artifacts most clearly associated with acts ofsocialization and play to explore mothering choices. Theseinclude mass-produced objects such as medicines intended to treatchildhood ailments, gifts such as nursery cups, and toys. Severalof these objects were found in both contexts, but may have heldsomewhat different meanings for their owners.

Medicines to Cure the Ailing ChildBoth households had childrenseholds s. J. This was a popularcathartic, marketed ashigh-alcohol cure-alls marketed towardchildren. Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a popular and commonremedy for colic and teething babies, was found in the Black-Holmes Privy. Mrs. Winslow’s syrup contained morphine andalcohol and probably sedated children quite a bit. Likewise, abottle of Hunnewell’s Universal Cough Remedy was recovered fromthe Bragg household. This high-alcohol medicine was marketedtoward children, even including games on their advertisementcards seen here. The presence of J. Walker’s Vinegar Bitters atboth households points to the broad appeal of this “temperance-friendly” medicine, even as it was likely not enjoyed much by thechildren receiving doses of it.

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Each household appears to have had similar access to, and desireto consume, children’childrenehold appears to have hadtheireffectiveness while also consuming products which aligned withconservative ideals of temperance.

Children’s PlayThe toys recovered from the Bragg and Black-Holmes Householdsincluded dolls, tea set components, and marbles. Mid-19th-centuryprescriptive literature pointed to these types of toys as a meansto both nurture children and mold them into model citizens,through moral training, religious example, and education. Toyssuch as marbles, dolls, and tea sets as well as other things usedto play active games like balls and hoops, were part of thesocial and educational training of children in the ways ofadulthood (Crawford 2009; Baxter 2005; Wilkie 2000).

Eleven dolls and multiple tea set parts were recovered from theBragg Household. Some of the dolls were of the frozen charlottetype, of various sizes, and others were jointed dolls.

While dolls are often interpreted as a means of reproducingwomen’s gender roles, teaching female children to fulfill theideals of domesticity embodied by their mothers, we don’t knowwho was actually playing with these toys. Further, if the intentwas for the five Bragg daughters to mirror the domestic womanhoodof their mother and grandmother, they did not quite do that. Thefemale Bragg children seemed to have eschewed the limitations ofdomestic femininity to some degree. Each graduated high school, 3went to college, with Elizabeth earning a degree in civilengineering and Adah a degree in chemistry. Mary Jr. andRebecca both became highly respected educators in San Francisco.

On the other hand, several of the daughters had children andtended their own domestic spheres. It was precisely the

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Braggelytended their own domestic sphereallowed the femalechildren to both achieve intellectual success and embodynormative feminine roles. Quite simply, they had options.

At the Black-Holmes Households, a doll leg, arm, and head,apparently from 3 different dolls, and a fragment of a toy dishwere recovered.

Just as with the Bragg household, it is hard to say that thesetoys represents an attempt to mirror female domesticity. RebeccaYamin (2002), in her analysis of working class play in 19th

century New York and Paterson New Jersey, saw a similar paucityof dolls in those contexts. Her interpretation of this patternwas that the daughters of working class mothers were perhapsengaged in enough real-life learning of nurturing, in taking careof their siblings, to make the appeal of porcelain dolls thatalso needed care rather limited.

While this may have been the case, the poverty of the Black-Holmes households may simply have limited the number and varietyof toys they had. The fathers in these households worked at jobsincluding stevedore, cook, or boilermaker. We do not know if theBlack or Holmes girls graduated high school, as their parents didnot put announcements in the newspapers. We do know that atleast one of the female children, Kate Holmes, grew up to marrythe captain of a sailing vessel, and took care of her mother inher later years (US Census Bureau 1910). The dolls may haverepresented the hopes Catherine Holmes and Catherine Black hadfor their children, but it is difficult to say that these wereembraced by their children, no less fulfilled by them.

Eleven marbles were recovered from the Braggs barrel, while thisseemingly ubiquitous artifact was completely absent from theBlack-Holmes privy.

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This contrast again seems to reflect the material abundance ofthe Bragg household in comparison with the Black-Holmeshouseholds, but this absence may have more to do with the natureof working class play than with the relative poverty of theinhabitants. Yamin (2002) notes that in middle-class families,games like marbles may have been played within the home, while inmore crowded working-class settings, they would have been movedoutside the living space, into the street (Yamin 2002). Themissing marbles may also represent the choice of the children toavoid playing in the busy and crowded backlot of the house,preferring places where they were not likely to be seen by theirmother or put to work at some household chore or errand.

Gifts for ChildrenAmong the artifacts recovered from both the Black-Holmeshouseholds and the Bragg Household were ceramic children’s mugs.These types of mugs were popular in the mid-late 19th century asgifts to children on special occasions, as a reward for excellingin academics, or some other suitable pursuit (Riley 1991). Themessages on the mugs were wide-ranging, from simple personalizedrewards, to educational, to religious and moral.

The children’s mugs from the Bragg Household include a camel-themed mug and one which may have once showed a girl dancing.Exotic animals and children playing were popular icons (Riley1991: 190). The general themes of these mugs may gesture towardlessons about nature or a favorite playtime activity, but thesemessages are not clear and it is difficult to say what may havebeen Mary Bragg’s intention in gifting these cups beyondreinforcing good behavior.

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The ceramic mugs given to the children at the Black-Holmes houseappear to have been concerned more overtly with the values ofdiligence and industriousness.

One of the cups was a brown Transfer Print from a series calledBenjamin Franklin's Maxims. On one side it read h the values ofdiligence and industriousness. to say what may have been MaryBraggbeen played within the home, w

The second cup represents a commemorative plate from the 1851British Exhibition, the first World’s Fair type celebration. Thecup shows a woman representing Britain, greeting people from allcountries of the world to the Crystal Palace, an enormousgreenhouse-like cast iron and plate glass structure that wasbuilt for the exhibition. The text read “Brittania encouragesthe industry of the globe.” As this was a commemorative mug, itmay not have been meant as a gift for a child, but could havebeen an adults’s memento from the event. In either circumstance,it could have represented the worldliness to which the familystrove, for themselves and their children.

Fertility Control & MotheringWhile many of the artifacts from the Bragg and Black-Holmesassemblages speak to the care of children, some may have haddifferent meanings when viewed from a perspective of a mother,trying to control her household size, and ultimately her dailyworkload in caring for a family.

Artifacts including a glass syringe and the popular J. Walker’spurgative may have been part of the medicine cabinet used forfertility management.

Medicines and Fertility Management

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While J. Walker’s Vinegar Bitters, found in both assemblages,could have been used to treat childhood ailments, they could alsohave been used to try to induce an abortion, in the early weeksof pregnancy, or to help induce labor, near the end of pregnancy.In the 19th-century cathartics e an abortion, in the early tivesin folklore through the primitive but obvious logic that abortioncould be induced by reflex action of severe intestinalcontractions. The single most common cathartic used as anabortive, aloe, could induce severe intestinal cramps” (Brodie1994: 44). J. Walker’s, found at both sites, was an aloe basedcathartic. The effectiveness of these treatments are dubious, butsome doctors claim they were effective in inducing abortion,whilst also severely harming the mother.

Similarly, the glass douche syringe found in the Bragghe glassdouchmay have been associated with feminine hygiene, but may alsohave been associated with preventing pregnancy. In the secondhalf of the 19th century, douching with cold water or“carbolized” water was promoted as a means of reproductivecontrol, both for the prevention and termination of pregnancy(Brodie 1994: 67). This was a particularly common birth controlpractice for th for the prevention and termination of pregnancy(Brodie 1994: 67). hater (opinions varied) was recommended, butalso carbolized water, borax, and soap suds were also recommendedas spermicides.

Conclusions The artifacts related to childhood, mothering, and fertilitymanagement from the Black-Holmes and Bragg households ask us toreconsider some of our assumptions about class, motherhood, andchildhood.

While the specific toys, medicines and gifts represented at theBragg household contrast somewhat with those found at the Black-

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Holmes household, their similarities are more striking and speakto the universal struggle of mothers working to bring upsuccessful, safe, and healthy children. In both households, thevirtues and ideals espoused by white middle-class prescriptiveliterature represent only a small part of the experiences ofmotherhood and childhood represented by the artifacts.

The women’s health objects from the households, while few,suggest the dangers and struggles these mothers may have sharedin controlling their fertility. The choice to limit onefertility. ences could have been an act of mothering toward one’sliving children. Similarly, the loss of babies and children tomiscarriage or common childhood illnesses would have been anadditional experience that created a commonality between thesefamilies, even if they may not have recognized this similaritypassing each other on the street.

ReferencesBaxter, Jane

2005 The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender and Material Culture.Altamira Press, Walnut Creek.

Brodie, Janet Farrell 1994 Contraception and Abortion in the 19th-Century America. Cornell

University Press, Ithaca.

Campbell, Malcolm2002 Ireland’s Furthest Shores: Irish Immigrant Settlement

in Nineteenth-Century California and Eastern Australia.Pacific Historical Review 71(1): 59-90.

Collins, Patricia Hill1994 Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist

Theorizing about Motherhood. N E.N. Glenn, G. Chang,

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R. Forcey (eds.). Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency.Routledge, New York.

Crawford, Sally 2009. The Archaeology of Play Things: Theorising a Toy Stage

in the Biography of Objects. Children in the Past (2): 56-71.

Yentsch, Anne E.2009 Tracing Immigrant Women and Their Household

Possessions in 19th-Century San Francisco. InPraetzellis, Mary and Adrian Praetzellis (eds.), pp.137-187. South of Market: Historical Archaeology of 3 San FranciscoNeighborhoods. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge West ApproachProject. Two Volumes. Anthropological Studies Center,Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California.Prepared for California Department of Transportation,District 4, Oakland.

Riley, Noël 1991 Gifts for Good Children: The History of Children’s China, Part 1: 1790en: Th

Richard Dennis Publications, Somerset, England.

United States Census Bureau1910 Census of the United States, Schedule 1, San Francisco

County. Bureau of the Census. Available atAncestry.com. Accessed January 2015.

Wilkie, Laurie 2000 Not Merely Child’s Play: creating a historical

archaeology of children and childhood, pp. 100-114, inJ. Sofaer Derevenski (ed.), Children and Material Culture.Routledge, London.

2003 The Archaeology of Mothering: An African American Midwife’s Tale.Routledge, London.

Yamin, Rebecca

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2002 Children’s Strikes, Parent’s Rights: Paterson and FivePoints. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6 (2): 113-126.

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