Between the seventeenth century and the early twentieth century, homes throughout America gradually changed to reflect new concepts of privacy, family, children, and domesticity. New rooms, with new names and purposes, appeared. Even the houses of regular people contained more possessions – more factory produced furniture and house hold items. Beginning in the early 1800s in America, mass produced consumer goods slowly made life more comfortable and the work of maintaining the household less laborious for more people lower down the scale of wealth and status. The daily habits of the families changed as their houses grew larger and their belongings increased.
Image courtesy of Library of Congress.