Ancestry.com: 11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t

 Here's another entry from Ancestry.com with some interesting items:

11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t

Our parents and grandparents may shake their heads every time we grab our smart phones to get turn-by-turn directions or calculate the tip. But when it comes to life skills, our great-grandparents have us all beat. Here are some skills our great-grandparents had 90 years ago that most of us don’t.

This entry does say that "most of us don't" have these skills, which would acknowledge that some of us do.  It's interesting to take a look at these to see how accurate this assessment is.  The last one of these we posted from Ancestry.com was, in fact, pretty accurate.  So much so that we'll be following up some of the items listed there.

Okay, here's their list:

1. Courting

This is an interesting item, and one we haven't covered very much, although I think we have slightly, perhaps in one of the older threads on marriage.  Here's what Ancestry.com noted:

While your parents and grandparents didn’t have the option to ask someone out on a date via text message, it’s highly likely that your great-grandparents didn’t have the option of dating at all. Until well into the 1920s, modern dating didn’t really exist. A gentleman would court a young lady by asking her or her parents for permission to call on the family. The potential couple would have a formal visit — with at least one parent chaperone present — and the man would leave a calling card. If the parents and young lady were impressed, he’d be invited back again and that would be the start of their romance.

I don't know if I'd regard this as a "skill", and I think Ancestry.com grossly oversimplified this. This is, however, something worth picking up and posting on, as its' a major change in how people meet, and form their lives.  It's correct that "dating" didn't exist prior to the 1920s, as we'd define it.


2. Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging

I have posted on this quite a bit.

 

The way that Ancestry.com stated it is a bit different than I expected, however.  They stated:

Even city dwellers in your great-grandparents’ generation had experience hunting, fishing, and foraging for food. If your great-grandparents never lived in a rural area or lived off the land, their parents probably did. Being able to kill, catch, or find your own food was considered an essential life skill no matter where one lived, especially during the Great Depression.

Ancestry.com may have pushed their point a bit, but perhaps not.  I may have to follow up on this.  Having said that, hunting and fishing remain very popular, and in fact increasingly popular, activities in the United States today.

And this is one skill that I do indeed have, and probably at least to the same extent my grandparents did.

3. Butchering

This is one that surprised me as well.  Here's what Ancestry.com

In this age of the boneless, skinless chicken breast, it’s unusual to have to chop up a whole chicken at home, let alone a whole cow. Despite the availability of professionally butchered and packaged meats, knowing how to cut up a side of beef or butcher a rabbit from her husband’s hunting trip was an ordinary part of a housewife’s skill set in the early 20th century. This didn’t leave the men off the hook, though. After all, they were most likely the ones who would field dress any animals they killed.

I think that Ancestry.com may have pushed their point here, quite frankly.  But there is something to the point that there used to be more cutting of mean even from the grocery store than there is now.  My father was very good at this, and at butchering game as well, which is in fact a skill he learned from his father, who had owned a packing house.

But this is also one that I have done and can do.

4. Bartering

Hmmm. . . I'm not sure how much bartering has gone on in North America in the period we're discussing.  Some I'm sure.  Some isn't really bartering so much as a gift on the part of people who've received one, which is worth noting.

5. Haggling

This one I doubt as well.  At one time perhaps this was common, but it would be further back than our grandparents generation.

6. Darning and mending

This one I accept.  As a kid, my mother often repaired my clothes and her own clothes as well.  People seemingly do little of that now.

7. Corresponding by mail

We've addressed this, including just the other day, and this is certainly true.

My mother kept up a vigorous correspondence with her siblings. And one of my cousins has posted some of my grandparents', on my mother's side, correspondence and it is clear that they wrote to each other a great deal.

8. Making Lace

This is no doubt true.  Probably hardly any younger woman knows how to do this now, and my guess is that the living women who do are quite elderly.

9. Lighting a Fire Without Matches

No doubt true.

10. Diapering With Cloth

And also no doubt true.

Some environmentally conscious people today do use cloth diapers, but they are few and far between. Frankly, this would be a huge chore, due to the laundry it entails.

When I was a baby, cloth diapers were the only kind that existed.  I don't even know where a person would get them now.

11. Writing With a Fountain Pen

Very true, and one I've posted on here before:

Pens and Pencils

I just learned the other day that ballpoint pens came about in the 1940s. Apparently, in the WWII time frame, they remained largely unreliable.

 Waterman fountain pen advertisement, claiming the pen to be the "the arm of peace" in French.

I don't know why that surprised me, but it did.  Pens, in the 40s, and the 50s, largely remained fountain pens.

Frankly, even the Bic ballpoint pens I used through most of junior high and high school were less than reliable. The ink dried up, or it separated in the plastic tube holding it.   Sometimes they leaked and the ink came out everywhere.  But they were easier to use than fountain pens.  With fountain pens I was always like Charlie Brown in the cartoons, with ink going absolutely everywhere, or at least all over my hands.