If there has ever been a time in human civilization when people ought to be thankful to God with gratitude and appreciation, it is in these modern times of plenty and convenience.
20 Brutal Truths About How Pioneer Women Actually Smelled Like
I was indeed horrified after watching the preceding video. The average family in the 1800s lived in a 14' x 16' cabin for a home. Can you imagine? Today that is merely the size of an average large bedroom. We are so spoiled rotten compared to how humans lived centuries and millenniums ago. I understand that there are still many unfortunate people on the planet today, the poor, but the vast majority of us are living large in comparison to the 1800s and prior.
And in that 14' x 16' home they had no choice during those brutal winter months but to keep all their livestock animals inside the home. There was a makeshift wall of some sort that provided some separation but not from the foul odors. They kept pigs, chickens, goats and even a horse during extremely cold days, et cetera. The feces and urine from the animals saturated the ground beneath the straw, because there was no floor to the home. It was essentially a house and barn combined. Needless to say, they didn't place pee pads on the floor for their animals.
During frigid winter months, it was too cold for the family to use the outdoor toilet (a shed with a hole in the ground) in the wee hours of the morning. So, they kept a pot near or under their beds to defecate and urinate in, inside the house to use in the presence of family members, until the waste could be disposed of properly outside the next day. Can you imagine the smell?
The family wore the same uncleaned clothes for weeks at a time. There were no feminine products back then for women. Toilet paper was first marketed by Joseph C. Gayetty in the United States in 1857, and it was only available in certain areas, if you could afford it. And it wasn't double-ply comfortable toilet paper like we have today at Walmart. A pleasant smelling bar of soap was a rare commodity in the mid-1800s in the United States and Europe. Most people used lye mixed with animal fat, and that's how it stank. The lye would eat the skin off your hands if not used with caution. Bars of soap were given as gifts back then to your sweetheart, and she loved it!
The average American today uses about 80 gallons of water per day. Back then in the 1800s they had about 3 gallons per day, and that wasn't for bathing. There were no local hospitals. When you got sick you toughed it out at home and hoped you recovered. Pastor Jack Hyles' had two sisters who both died at age 7 at home like this. Times were harsh back then!
As I watched this shocking video about how women smelled back in the 1800s during primitive times in America, I thanked God repeatedly for putting my spirit into this body at this time in human civilization. Did you ever think about that? Why did God place my spirit into this particular family at this specific time in history? Perhaps I am thinking a bit too much, but the thought intrigues me as a human being. God could have placed my body into my uncle's (my father's older brother's) family, who was sadly killed during the Korean War (1950-1953).
Did you ever stop to realize that most of our freedoms were paid for with teenage blood? Most soldiers are just kids, barely 18 years of age. Millions of American teens shed their blood and sacrificed their lives so that we could enjoy freedom today. They never got married or became fathers, so that we could. THANK YOU to all of our nation's courageous veterans!
I frequently order things that I need from Amazon and Walmart. They bring it right to my front door, place the items on the outside table, ring my door bell, and leave. And wallah, whatever I want is delivered to me. Any order of at least $35 is free shipping from both Amazon and Walmart. I love it! I feel so blessed and spoiled rotten as an American today.
After watching this horrific video about poor hygrine conditions in the 1800s, and realizing that I can order over 12,000,000 products at the click of a mouse online from Amazon, I am bewildered and awestruck at God's goodness to Americans. Amazon sells over 600 million products across various categories. Most of these products are listed by third-party sellers, with only about 12 million sold directly by Amazon itself. I thank God to be an American, despite how messed up our country has become.
Most of the people on the planet don't have it so nice as we do in the United States, where we are free and blessed by God. Our economy is in bad shape, and inflation will continue to rise I assure you unless something drastic is done about it, but at least we have access to things that weren't even available to most people in the 1800s. We take so much for granted today. The following items simply weren't readily available in the 1800s: chocolate, toilet paper, soap, leather goods, feminine products, medications, et cetera.
Many items we take for granted today were not readily available in the 1800s, such as canned goods, which only became common after the Civil War. Other everyday items like processed foods and modern kitchen appliances were also not available during that time.
Ready-made clothing did not exist in the 1700s as we know it today; most garments were custom-made or homemade. The concept of mass-produced clothing began to emerge later in the 19th century after the Civil War. So, for thousands of years you couldn't just go down to the nearest local retail store (e.g., Target, Walmart, JC Penny) to buy socks, underwear, shoes, pants, a dress, skirt or a shirt. Those simple things that we all take for granted today simply didn't exist for millenniums. Think about that dear reader!
The 1800s lacked many conveniences that we now consider essential. Canned foods became common only after the Civil War. The first commercially successful canned product was beans in tomato sauce, introduced by Van Camp in 1861. Baking powder was not available until the late 1860s. Prior to this, leavening was achieved using sour milk, molasses or other natural ingredients. Many processed foods we enjoy today did not exist. Items like hot dogs weren't introduced until the 1880s, and ketchup was first bottled by Heinz in 1876. Can you even imagine a world without ketchup? Modern kitchen appliances, such as electric mixers and refrigerators, were not invented yet. Cooking methods were much more labor-intensive, relying on basic tools and manual labor, which took several hours each day to prepare.
The 1800s lacked many conveniences that we now consider essential. Canned foods became common only after the Civil War. The first commercially successful canned product was beans in tomato sauce, introduced by Van Camp in 1861. Baking powder was not available until the late 1860s. Prior to this, leavening was achieved using sour milk, molasses or other natural ingredients. Many processed foods we enjoy today did not exist. Items like hot dogs weren't introduced until the 1880s, and ketchup was first bottled by Heinz in 1876. Can you even imagine a world without ketchup? Modern kitchen appliances, such as electric mixers and refrigerators, were not invented yet. Cooking methods were much more labor-intensive, relying on basic tools and manual labor, which took several hours each day to prepare.
And yet, with all of our modern advancements in technology, we still cannot make an automated phone system that works properly. Go figure.
Modern man cannot build an affordable home security camera that can actually read a license plate number 40 feet away. I spent $2,200 for a GW Security camera system. My neighbour next door was robbed last year. My camera captured the thief's vehicle's license plate in their yard, but even at the highest quality settings, the video quality is so blurry that the license plate cannot even begin to be read. A decent security system starts at $15,000 and up.
It is tragic how corporate greed has ruined American society. I could write for hours about the inferior quality of so many things today—from the way that businesses and government agencies are poorly run, to the disgusting lack of quality in store bought bread today. Europeans make the best bread!
There is something very wrong with today's bread, that can sit for months in a bag and not mold. Today's bread can sit for months without molding due to the use of preservatives and emulsifiers that inhibit mold growth and staling. Yuk! Those additives make the bread hard. When I was a kid in the 1970s bread still began to mold after a few days, and that bread tasted great. I dread buying white bread anymore, because I cannot find even one loaf that is truly soft. I remember as a kid in Chicago eating Butternut brand of bread, which was super soft to touch. Those days are long gone!
Hey, but I am not complaining! In the 1800s, Victorian bakers added plaster of Paris to bread to whiten it and increase weight. They literally marched with their bare feet in the batch of dough to kneed it. Gross! Fresh Plaster of Paris foot-kneeded bread anyone?
The first public radio broadcast took place on January 13, 1910, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, featuring a performance by tenor Enrico Caruso. Although the broadcast quality was poor, it marked the beginning of public radio broadcasting.
The first public demonstration of television occurred on January 27, 1926, in London by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird using a mechanical scanning system. The first commercially made electronic television was produced by Telefunken in Germany in 1934, but the first widely recognized television service began in the UK with the BBC in 1936. Early TVs were expensive luxury items, making them accessible primarily to the wealthy at that time. In 1946 only 6,000 wealthy American households owned a television, but by 1952 that number skyrocketed to 22 million households. Sadly, television has emptied the churches.
There were no radios or televisions in 1800s! These clever devices hadn't been invented yet, if you can imagine that. 2026 marks the centennial anniversary of the first television broadcast. We are living in amazing times of technology and information. Just yesterday on August 30th, 2026, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST) was launched from NASA. This innovative new telescope will take large photos so big that one image would require 3,000 digital television screens to display. As a fan of astronomy, I eagerly await the photos and data.
I hope I have given you a small glimpse into the not too distant past dear reader, so that you can even more appreciate how blessed we are today in the United States. God has been so good to us. And, remarkably, if you could go back in a Time Machine and talk with those people who struggled to survive throughout the 1800s and before, they would praise God and testify to the Lord's goodness to them.
“The expectation of nothing is the foundation of gratitude.” —Pastor Jack Hyles
And if those early pioneers could take a trip to our future in the same Time Machine, to see just how marvellous we live today, with exceptions, they would be absolutely astounded with disbelief. When I was growing up, it wasn't uncommon to see people surviving in cardboard boxes in utter poverty in some alley in Chicago. Today the homeless use tents right out in the open, in parks and on public sidewalks, et cetera. But the problem of homeless is not one of living in a bad time; but rather, the wickedness of a society who doesn't care about them. Proverb:30:14, “There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.”
If you take some time to think about the literally thousands of modern inventions, material items, conveniences and helps that we have available today, it is astounding to say the least. Psalms 145:9, “The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.”
