If I Lived in Lincoln's Time

Yesterday was Abraham Lincoln's Birthday. He's been dead how many years? And we're still celebrating it?

I hope people celebrate my birthday when I've been dead 100 years but that's most unlikely.
it would be intersting to see what life would be like 100 or even 200 years from now. With thie internet and digital photography and videography we keep better records of our lives.
I couldn't tell you who most of my great-grandparents were, let alone great-great and further back. There are few to no pictures, no videos, little evidence they were ever alive except for pieces here and there among anonymous family members and the memories that live in my grandparents' minds.

How will future generations see their lineage as people photograph nearly everything (I'm one of those people) and try to document as many moments of their time on Earth as they can? Will the pictures and vidoes be thrown away?

I marvel sometimes that the internet mat still be around and people could actually look me up and find me, my blog, my MySpace or whatever hundreds of years from now. Cool.

But what if I lived 150 years ago?????

As Valentine's day approaches tomorrow and for another year I remain single- in this year that I will cross 30 years of life, I think about how, had I lived in Lincoln's time I would be called a Spinster; a old maid. There would be little chance of my marrying anyone- ever. I would still live with my parents and tend to the housework.
Or my parents would actually have fixed me up with some guy and married me off. That seems more likely. Parents seemed more involved in their children's affairs back then. Now many are indifferent.

As I've mentioned before, I've been reading and watching a lot of Jane Austen's works. She lived at about Lincoln's time as well, only in England. Back then women couldn't inherit property. they had no political say- unless they had extreme influence with the men around them.

A woman's sole purpose in life back then was to be well mannered, educated, able to sing, play, draw and do anything she could to attract a man- moreover a weathier man so she could elevate her position in society. Love was often a happy coincidence if it ever happened in the marriage at all.

Most people -in America at least- today would rather marry for love.
Illegitimate children are the norm and no one likes to interfere or have their lives interfered with.
Everything's informal. I see people wearing jeans more and more to functions like weddings and funerals. In just about 100 years society pretty much turned itself upside down.

Will it turn again in the next 100 years?

I don't know that I have a point here.......just marveling at how very different life in general, and my life in particular would be if society is as it was back then.