Could We Survive Colonial America?

Could we

survive

early America if we were transported back in time? Could we get here in the channel we focus on in the 18th century? We study what people eat and their lives and how they live. We live and that challenges us as we live here in modern times. And we say:

could

we live in those times? They had a very, very difficult life. Death surrounded them at all times. There were many different challenges faced here at the beginning. In America, you

could

die of hunger, you could die of thirst, you had problems with exposure, you could be too cold, of course, they also had violence, you could die in battle or in violent situations.

The medicine was so rudimentary that it was probably more dangerous than useful to you. For you, a simple infection could lead to death, things we take for granted here in the modern era and can easily deal with. Sudden death for us is something that is very out of the ordinary, it really takes us by surprise and yet, we see many references in that period of the 18th century and that will happen to them and they take it calmly because it happens very frequently, such Maybe someone like William Bird, who lived in the early 18th century in the Virginia area and talks about his neighbors he sees them one day the next day they are dead here is something we deal with or he every day says we are in the shoes of someone in Europe in the 18th century and they want to come to Today in North America we would get on a plane and fly to Europe and back, people do it all the time and no one is very worried about dying on a plane.

Yes, we have plane accidents, but in reality the number of deaths from plane accidents. It's very, very small compared to the number of people who travel, but if you are in Europe and you want to come to North America, you have to travel by sea in the 18th century, that trip could take two months, 3 months is difficult to say and many, many. ships are sinking in that time period, it's dangerous to travel back and forth from Europe to North America, in addition to traveling on this rather fragile ship, we also have to deal with eating foods that could kill us, you could get scurvy or something more and diseases. aboard the ship is very very dangerous and not only are you willing to risk traveling, it is very common for people who are new to the new world from Europe to die from illnesses within the first 6 months, why would anyone assume this kind of risks there?

There were so many great opportunities in North America compared to what was happening in Europe, there was no place to grow, there was no place to move up, there was no new career in Europe, but North America was ripe with new things that were happening, so people were willing. take these kinds of risks and some people made this trip because they were faced with it, they had absolutely no choice William Morley in his Memoirs of 1720 talks about being in Britain, he was out of luck, he was probably in his early 20s anyone sees him , he's basically homeless and his clothes are ragged and they say you know what to hire and go to the new world and that's exactly what he does, he quits seven years of his job so he can travel to the new world. to find something, any kind of new career before the seven years are up, he can return to England and try to recover his fortune there.

It's difficult to determine exactly what the death rate was in the 18th century because they didn't keep records the same way. We do it today, but the rate per thousand is probably about double what it is today, so death was common, but really in this period, dying before the age of 20 was the most dangerous. Infant mortality was something like 30. The percentage sometimes in certain places in Britain and North America during the 18th century period is not always that high, but sometimes it is very high compared to what it is today, if If you reach the age of 20 or 25, you will probably live a fairly normal life expectancy that today we assume will live to be 60, 70, and even 80 years old.

A great example of this is Joseph Plum Martin, he lives to be 89 years old and yet he endured the extremes of all these problems. He had to deal with severe problems from not having enough food when he was a soldier. Not having enough water. Many times he had to deal with sleeping outside in the winter without even a blanket, simply sleeping on the ground. He also had to endure. battle, he also had to endure illnesses while in the army and suffered different types of accidents that could have easily killed him and yet he lived to be 89 years old.

Another great example is Nicholas Crestwell, he comes from Great Britain to North America in 1774 and wants to seek his fortune, he wants to find a new life in North America, he endures the trip, he gets sick, he gets a doctor to see him, and the doctor poisons him, almost kills him. recover from that he decides that he is going to take On another sea voyage, he will go to the Caribbean, which of course was known for its emic diseases in that period, a very dangerous place to go. He

survive

s the trip back to North America and then goes out to the border, a very dangerous and violent place. place to go without medical care goes with very little food supplies goes into hostile territory gets injured when in the woods of Kentucky can't move for a couple of days comes back through more hostile territory and survives uh with no problem, He even returns to the frontier once again to sell his commercial products and survives without any problem even though he was going through very dangerous situations Nicholas Creswell writes in 1774 confined to my room fed up with the bloody discharge I find myself in an extremely miserable condition, so weak that I can barely cross the room and afflicted by the most unbearable pain in my gut.

I think my death is approaching very quickly. I am completely resigned to the will of heaven and submit to my destiny without regret. If we went back in time, could we survive all the diseases they had to deal with in the 18th century? There were endemic and epidemic disease problems in North America. In the XVIII century. There were places, especially in the southern colonies, that were just people, full of disease, just dying at certain seasons of the year because there were common things like malaria and then even in Philadelphia, they had problems with epidemic diseases that especially reached through the seaports and there were times when they were yellow. fever problems and large amounts of the population would die and one of the biggest killers, smallpox, in many of these cases the medical industry didn't really have much of an answer for this, they just had to grin and bear it, they saw this thing they wanted.

I wanted to know what was going on with this, but they didn't have any real cure. Fortunately, they came up with something like a little pux, they came up with ways to inoculate people, but even that was very dangerous. This seems like an impossible life with all these difficulties. food, thirst, Expos and yet we have the example of something like the Lewis and Clark expedition, 25 men, no matter how many men they were, it was a 2 year expedition into unexplored hostile territory, they had to travel by water and then they had to walk over mountains. and they were in terrible difficulties one person died on that expedition one man died of appendicitis basically almost right after they left left he would have died whether he was on the expedition or at home all these men all the other men we came home alive So could we survive in early North America?

Well, if we could get through that phase of infant mortality, and that was difficult, both the rich and the poor had that problem, if we could get to say 20 years, well, I think we had a lot of possibilities, especially if we were hardened like they were. Now, they lived in difficult times, it was a difficult world to survive in and that's why they were trained for it, they really had no choice. Another question to ask is: did they even know that they were living in dangerous times, compared to hundreds of years before, they probably thought they were living in the best of times.

I'm sure they thought they had it easy compared to, say, medieval peasants or people from even earlier times, so obviously none of us are. We will have to go back in time and endure the 18th century and try to survive. The question is how do we use that information today and there is a lot to learn from people in the 18th century, so many of those people did. traveling across those oceans and enduring those difficulties and so many families left the easy life on the coast and went to the front, they took on those challenges even though it was difficult, we must take on the challenges that today presents to us and we must cross.

Those oceans, metaphorically, we need to go to the border or whatever to build a better future for ourselves and for the people who will follow us.