Unit 1 Enrichment Project, Advanced 10th Grade US Studies

IMAGINE... You are a child at the turn-of-the-century..Your assignment: Create a turn-of-the-century child's scrapbookPut yourself in the place of a child born in 1900 and assemble a scrapbook of your life between 1900 and 1912. Where were you born? Whom would you live with? Would you go to school? Or would you work? What would you do for fun?

Each page of your scrapbook will focus on a different aspect of your life. You will use the resources and links online at http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/projects/20c/turn2.html to guide you through putting it together.

Most pages should also have some writing to explain the pictures and answer the questions listed in the scrapbook page details below. Follow the specific instructions for each scrapbook page.

Each page should contain at least two images related to your life story. You can find your images through this website or through a Google Images search at: http://www.google.com/images It may also be possible to make your own drawings for some of the scrapbook pages, but you must get this approved by me first.

HAVE FUN and BE CREATIVE!!!

CHOOSE AT LEAST 4 OF THE FOLLOWING PAGES FOR YOUR SCRAPBOOK: You are born in 1900 : Name, record of birth, where you’re from, etc. Your month of birth : Create a newspaper page of things really going on around the time of your birth

You can read! : Or can you? If so, how did you learn? What do you read? What is school like. If you can’t read, is it because you work instead of going to school? If so, where do you work and what do you do? If you go to school but can’t read, is it because you speak a different language at home (immigrant parents)?

Thanksgiving Day : Do you celebrate Thanksgiving or holidays? If so, how? If you come from an immigrant family, what traditions from their home country are they passing on to you? Do you eat any special foods?

Traveling near and far : You’ve gone on a trip. Where did you go and how did you get there? Was it fun, like a vacation? If so, what did you do? Or was it to move to a new place? If so, what was that like? What happened along the way? Who was with you? What did you see?

Technology and Medicine, Hopes and Dreams: If you’re a child laborer in the city, what is life like for you? Where do you live and what problems do you face living and working where you do? Someone you know is sick. What do they have? How did they get it? What will happen to them? There’s a lot of change going on in the world. When you think about your hopes and dreams, what do you want for yourself? If you are poor, how will you live better than your parents do? If you are rich, how will you try to hang on to the family fortune and what business opportunities seem most promising?

SCRAPBOOK PAGE DETAILS (Choose 4 pages)

Page 1: You are Born in 1900

On this scrapbook page...

What is your name? Did you have a nickname? What were your parents'

names and who were they?

Create the record of your birth. Is it on a page in a Bible? A birth certificate? A

diary entry? A letter to a relative? Another cherished family memento?

Where were you born? Find pictures and maps of your birthplace.

Did you live in a city or small town? What did Main Street look like? Were

there buildings, parks, gardens, farms or stores that you knew?

Make a calendar of the month you were born with your birth date indicated.

Think about...

In 1900 the total population was 74,600,225 of which 60% lived in rural areas.

The average life expectancy for whites was 47.6 years, for non-whites 33.0

years.

The death rate per 1,000 for children under a year old was 162.4.

Browse the Historical Census Data for breakdowns by variables such as

agriculture, literacy, manufacturing and labor, place of birth, and population

characteristics.

"Listing of Family Births in

Bible"

Buckaroos in Paradise:

Ranching Culture in Northern

Nevada, 1945-1982

Page 2: Your Month of Birth in 1900On this scrapbook page...Your family collected many items from those first few weeks. Among them is a newspaper or magazine from the month you were born.

Create the newspaper or magazine with news, editorial commentary, photos, drawings or maps from your birth month.

Get detailed information about events in your month of birth from this PBS timeline.

Add other events using timeline and overviews resources. You may also create ads about clothing or items in the home,

reviews of books or other entertainment.Think about... In January the American Association of Baseball Clubs, later

known as the American League, is formed. In July Democrats in North Carolina attempt to take the right to

vote from African Americans. Between September and October John Mitchell led a strike which

closed 90% of Pennsylvania's coal mines.

A characteristic sidewalk newstand [sic],New York City c. 1903from Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

Farm Journal, 1906 from Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982 

Page 3: You Can Read!

Before he was married Pa had fought to help free the colored people. He never believed that slavery was right and it taint. Pa never had much of a chance himself and he never learned to write his name. For generations we've been poor people and before me there was none in the family could read.

Take Pa though; he'd been glad of a little schoolin' if there'd been any way for him to get it. I'll tell you why I know in a minute. Pa sent me to a four month's school that cost him a dollar a month. They wasn't free schools in them days and only a few got learning. But it was in me to

learn more then I could get in them four months.     - from Ida Allen in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

On this scrapbook page... Was it a struggle to learn to read, perhaps because you worked

more often than you went to school? Did you read to escape your everyday life?

Read one or more books published before or during your childhood.

Learn a recitation (from a book, poem, or essay) for your teacher or a family visitor. In character, explain why you chose to memorize this particular piece and how you found it. What does this reading reveal about you?

Talk about yourself as a reader. Tell the story of how you learned to read.  What else do you like to read and why? What do these books reveal about your times?

"Schoolhouse, South Pass City, Wyoming" (1910) from Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER)

Think about...At the turn of the century, children had very different reading experiences and access to books. For some, the McGuffey's Readers from school were their only books. These contained selections from great novelists, poets, historians and orators. Students worked individually to complete lessons in seven books after which they graduated. Other children had many books at home or lived near a public library.

Andrew Carnegie founded 1679 new libraries in the United States. Search on Carnegie in Detroit Publishing Company: Touring Turn of the Century America to see images of both the libraries he funded and the steel mills he owned, where workers did a 12-hour shift 7 days a week.

Page 4: Thanksgiving Day

On this scrapbook page... Families view Thanksgiving through the lenses of cultures and

backgrounds, economic status, local customs and family traditions. For example, readBooker T. Washington's address (1898) at the Jubilee Thanksgiving services or examine information about a group with which your child is affiliated.

Celebrate or deplore the day in photographs and drawings, memoirs and letters, speeches and protests.

Information can be found in Thanksgiving in American Memory and Thanksgiving Pathfinder

Think about...

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the

"Jewish market on the East Side, New York, N.Y." [between 1890 and 1901] fromPhotographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 

previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual

compliments.

   - quoted from Mark Twain's Autobiography, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924). 

Thanksgiving Week is Pershing Tribute Week by H. H. Green World War I poster, circa 1917 - 1918 lithograph poster. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ArtImagebase

"American Sketches: A Negro Congregation in Washington." Artist unknown. Wood Engraving, Illustrated London News, November 18, 1876. LC-USZ62-50584 Thanksgiving in American Memory 

On this scrapbook page...You are going somewhere. For some of you this is a delightful excursion to see one of the great events of the century. For others the trip is born of necessity, hunger or a tragedy.

See Entertainment, People and Holidays, Excursions and Trips for ideas about your trip and its purpose.

Read the fictional journal of Jenny Brown about her family's journey in a Model-T from Waterford, Michigan to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Find pictures and maps to record how you get there and what you see along the way and at your journey's end.

Where do you travel and with whom? Tell the story of your trip in journal entries.

Think about... During the "Great Migration" (1910-1920) between 300,000 and

1,000,000 African Americans moved north to take unskilled factory jobs at manufacturing plants boosting production for World War I.

The third wave of immigration (1890-1914) now brought 15 million Austro-Hungarians, Turks, Lithuanians, Russians, Greeks, Italians and Romanians, as well as more English, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians and others from northwestern Europe to settle mainly in cities.

Between 1900 and 1910 automobile registrations rose from 8,000

Passengers hang on to the crowded Baker Line trolley in 1910. Reprinted with permission from the Detroit News' Rearview Mirror "Clang, clang, clang went the Trolley" 

to 469,000. The Golden Age of streetcars (1890-1920) was marked by an

increase of ridership from 2 to 15.5 million passengers a year.

USA, NY, New York, Ellis Island, "Immigrants who have been passed," X105605  from New York, NY, Ellis Island -- Immigration: 1900-1920 (Keystone-Mast Collection). Courtesy of the UCR/ California Museum of Photography. 

Page 6: Technology and Medicine “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come about totally by accident; they came by hard work.... If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves... Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.... Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”    - from Thomas Edison's Home PageOn this scrapbook page...The year is 1912.It is the year the Titanic sinks. It is the year Woodrow Wilson defeats William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eugene V. Debs to become the 28th President of the

Milk bottling assembly line (c. 1910-1930)from Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 

Panama Pacific International Exposition: Special ticket for admission to "San Francisco Day" Tuesday, November 2, 1915. http://www.meow.com 

United States. It is the year New Mexico and Arizona enter the Union as the 47th and 48th states.

It is the year you are twelve.Along with the waves of immigrants, thousands have moved from farms to take factory jobs. If you are a child laborer, you face the urban realities of disease-ridden housing, poverty and dangerous working conditions.

There is a death in the family.You realize that you have been going to school, reading about far-away, romantic places, but feeling like nothing will ever change. Now someone close to you has been struck down by consumption, coryza or an epidemic like smallpox, yellow fever, polio or influenza. Describe or document this illness using the terminology of the times and information from "Health and Medicine, Funerals and Death."

You realize that now is the time to think about your own future.What will you do? Where will you go? How will you make a living?

There are great things happening in the world.Motorcars and radios make distant places seem close. The Wright brothers ingenuity, Marie Curie's perseverance and Margaret Sanger's courage can serve as models. Using the overview, timeline and people resources, find your inspirations. Then write about your own hopes and dreams for the future.

Gardner Association for the Prevention and Relief of Tuberculosis. How to Prevent Consumption, poster, USA, c. 1900 fromHere Today, Here Tomorrow Tuberculosis.Reprinted with the permission of The William H. Helfand Collection, New York

Ford factory, first moving assembly line, 1913, Highland Avenue, Detroit, MI fromAmerican Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920 

Gardner Association for the Prevention and Relief of Tuberculosis. How to Prevent Consumption, poster, USA, c. 1900 from Here Today, Here Tomorrow Tuberculosis.Reprinted with the permission of The William H. Helfand Collection, New York