The day-to-day survival for most 19th century Kentucky mountain families required dawn to dusk hard work by every member of the family from the oldest adults down to little children barely more than babies. Not only was child labor an accepted fact, but it was generally believed that a child should be taught all manner of work from its earlier years. Beginning at the youngest possible age with the simplest tasks, children began learning the many varied skills necessary to raise their own families in the future.

The more children a family had, the greater their opportunity at prosperity as there were more hands to improve the family's standard of living and a greater chance to have an excess of products to trade with neighbors or at the general store for manufactured goods or to sell for cash that could purchase more and better land. Young boys had to learn all the chores necessary to grow crops from clearing and tilling the land to plowing, sowing, weeding and harvesting.

Toddlers, who nowadays have little more to do than play all their waking hours, would join the older children in the fields and learn to know the crop from the weed. By the ages of seven or eight, many children were already proficient at sowing and hoeing. In his journal, Thomas Parsons writes of working for a neighbor sowing a cornfield when Thomas was only nine. His family could spare him as his brother Solomon was 13 and able to handle their own fields with the help of their six-year-old brother John during their preacher and physician father's absences.

Parsons also mentions in his journal that he crossed the river daily to work for their neighbor unless "kept at home to assist my mother as she had no girl help then, my two sisters, Mary and Versallia were small and my youngest sister was born at that place on the 5th of December, 1835, the winter following my installation as a farmer." Mary Parsons turned four years old that year and Versallia was only one year old. Even at these tender ages, it is certain that unless the family was quite unusual for its day and time, they would already be doing small tasks around the house.

Thomas would have been required for some of the heavy work they were simply not yet big enough to help with yet such as keeping a supply of wood available for the kitchen fire that must not be allowed to go out even in the hottest days of August. Rekindling a fire was a serious undertaking, usually requiring going to a neighbor and "borrowing" a few coals. Few foods in the mountain family diet could be eater raw and a cook fire was a year round necessity as well.

The girls would also be taught to cook at the fireplace, tend the kitchen garden, preserve the winter's vegetables and the meat slaughtered by the men and boys and assist in producing the family's clothing. Furnishing clothing was a time consuming task improved only by the fact that most phases of it could be accomplished while sitting down and often with the company of family or neighbors, visiting over their work.

Linen was made from flax and took 16 months or more from planting to cloth requiring careful weeding while it grew. Then the flaw would be picked and dried. After it was dry, the seeds had to be picked out and the plants washed repeatedly. Finally the fibers had to be separated from the waste by picking and combing. Only then could the spinning of the flax into thread be done.

After the sheep were sheared the fleece had to be picked through to remove twigs and brambles and then it would be washed and dried and carded before the fibers could be spun into threads. In all these tasks, the young girls of the family would be required to help out, often performing them with great skill at an age when few children nowadays even know how to hold a needle.

These are only a very few of the tasks children had to do in the last century. Although the greater availability of many store-bought products eased some areas of labor as the century turned, many of our older citizens themselves worked long hours in the fields and homes of Harlan County at very young ages.