22 Images Show What Life Was Like in Mid-19th Century US

Life seems to change in the blink of an eye. What was considered a great way of doing things today, may not be the most popular option even one month from now. Each decade brings change and ways to potentially make our lives better, easier, and more comfortable. But that wasn't always the case.

America today vastly differs from one year ago, 10 years ago, and most certainly centuries ago. This is evident everywhere you look - technology, utilities, infrastructure, and much, much more. We often wonder what life was like in the past, when such conveniences weren't available. We can easily see back to the 2oth and early 21st centuries, but we may often wonder what life was like even further back, in the 19th century.

Thanks to written accounts from both historians of the period, and various diaries and manuscripts that show firsthand accounts, we are made aware of the numerous harsh living conditions, and the struggles of extremely long work hours. Most people didn't have running water, heat, or electricity, and used candles well in the early 20th century. Fortunately, early photographers have documented this history, allowing us to see mid-19th century America for ourselves. (Several written accounts can be found at The Library of Congress.)

Even photography is significantly different from today's world. The earliest cameras were huge, cumbersome objects that required exposures lasting many minutes if not longer. The French artist Louis Daguerre introduced the world to the first (vaguely) viable photographic process in 1839, and some of the earlier images in this collection are so-called daguerreotypes.

The earliest techniques of photography reached our shores around 1840. The first film as such, in something approximating the form we know it in, appeared only in 1885. Whatever the technical challenges of taking photographs were, many men (and a few women) persisted, leaving us evocative imagery of the Civil War, homesteaders on the Great Plains, the beginnings of towns and cities, unspoiled landscapes, and more. (These are the most beautiful natural wonders in every state.)

Various archives, both public and private have ample collections of the results. Using photos from Getty Images, 24/7 Tempo has assembled a portfolio of photos documenting various aspects of the American scene between 1840 and 1869. It should be noted that many dates are approximate, but in many cases are estimated according to evidence revealed in the images themselves. (To see what our medical facilities were like, see what a hospital looked like 100 years ago).

Children's portraits were a popular medium in the mid-19th century. Photographers often used children and models for their creativity. This image dates back to about 1840 and shows two young children, a boy, and a girl, with a cart full of pumpkins and gourds "pulled" by a couple of turkeys. If the date is accurate, it would be a very early example of such portraits, as commercial photography was introduced to the world only in 1839.

Cincinnati was the first major American city established after the Revolutionary War. It grew out of a settlement founded in 1788, and during much of the 19th century, it was a boomtown, which thrived after the introduction of steamboats on the Ohio River in 1811. The shift from steamboats to railroads as the principal means of moving freight in the late 19th century slowed the city's economic growth.

Noted Victorian-era English photographer, William England took this image of cottages between the railroad tracks and the Hudson River, at West Point, New York. It was originally part of a stereoscopic image and the images England took on a tour of America and Canada in 1859 were among the first photographic views European audiences had of North America.

Drilled by New York businessman Colonel Edwin Drake at the confluence of Oil Creek and Pioneer Run, southeast of Erie, the Drake Well in Titusville, Pennsylvania was home to the first oil well in the U.S. By the mid-1860s, dozens of additional wells had appeared on the site. A local photographer, John Mather, documented the scene with this and other photographs.

Construction on the U.S. Capitol building began in 1793 and its dome, made of copper-covered wood, was completed in 1823. The building was expanded in the 1850s, and when it was deemed unpleasant to look at, a project to replace it began in 1855, continuing for 11 years.

The second dome, still in place today, was constructed with 8,909,200 pounds of ironwork bolted together, painted to resemble the stone façade of the building it surmounts. This photo was taken the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for his first term as president.

During the Civil War, around 25 hospitals opened in the nation's capital. One was Campbell General Hospital, a facility for Union soldiers that operated between 1862 and 1865. It was unique in having a theatre where plays were presented nightly for the patients, like those pictured here.

The unusual American flag hanging from the rafters, in use in some places from 1861 to 1863, has 34 stars. The significance of the four stars in the middle isn't certain, but they may represent Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, which remained in the Union even though they were slave states.

This image illustrates a group of former enslaved men, women, and children at Foller's House, Cumberland Landing (New Kent), Virginia, who sought refuge away from their masters' plantations behind Union lines. Federal law at the time dictated that escaped slaves be returned to their owners across the Mason-Dixon Line, however, these formerly enslaved people were labeled "contrabands" by Union forces and were enrolled to help aid the war effort

The only documented images celebrating the Ironclad and her crew were from Union photographer James F. Gibson, who boarded the boat in the summer of 1862. The USS Monitor, launched in January 1862, was the U.S. Navy's first ironclad ship, and a participant in the historic Battle of Hampton Roads when it fought its Confederate counterpart, the CSS Virginia.

This photo shows the crew of the Monitor relaxing on the James River on July 9. The ship had a short lifespan – it sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in December of that same year. Sixteen soldiers perished at sea (47 were rescued by the USS Rhode Island).

This image shows the construction of the Re Don Luigi di Portogallo, an ironclad built for the Italian government in the William H. Webb shipyard, named afterWilliam Henry Webb, who has been called America's first true naval architect. Webb inherited the Webb & Allen shipyard from his father in 1840 and renamed it for himself.

Webb became the country's most successful shipbuilder, designing dozens of vessels ranging from warships, steamships, and steamboats to clippers and packets. His enterprise turned out some 133 ships between the time he took it over.

Established in February 1862, the US Military Rail Road (USMRR) was an organization created by the United States War Department to maintain and operate any Confederate rail lines seized by the Union Army during the Civil War. The USMRR would come to be responsible for over 400 locomotives and over 6,000 railway cars.

In this picture from a USMRR rail yard in Arlington, VA, one can see the supply of rails kept on hand to make sure that the lines could continue to operate to the Union's benefit.

Taken during the Union occupation of Atlanta, this photograph shows a store on Whitehall Street that was an auction site doubling as a slave market. The photographer was George Norman Barnard, who later became the official army photographer for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Military Division of the Mississippi.

Established in 1861, the United States Sanitary Commission was a volunteer relief organization whose aim was to provide moral and physical support to sick and wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War. One of its initiatives was sending canned and pickled produce to the front for the army's nourishment.

This image shows soldiers and volunteers at the Commission facility in City Point, Virginia which has since been renamed Hopewell.

Taken by the noted photographer George Norman Barnard, this picture shows slaves returning from the cotton fields on the Alexander Knox plantation in Mount Pleasant, near Charleston in South Carolina. The state had a larger number of slaves per capita than most other states at the time, though the majority of them worked harvesting rice.

The once-unfinished Washington Monument stood in a field that had several uses. During the Civil War, military drills were conducted here, and it was also used for the grazing and slaughter of cattle. The large building in the background on the right is the U.S. Treasury, and the top of the White House is just visible to the left, above the trees.

Except for the first few months of the Civil War, the capital of the Confederate States of America was Richmond, Virginia. It was also one of the South's most important cities economically, as a railroad hub and a center of iron-making and other industries.

Before it fell to the Union army in April 1865, much of the city was destroyed. Confederates set fire to buildings holding stores of tobacco and foodstuffs to keep supplies out of Union hands, and the flames spread through the entire downtown business district and destroyed the city's ironworks.

The area of Manhattan now known as TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) was a thriving business district in the mid-19th century because of its proximity to the piers along the Hudson River. No. 5 Hudson, seen at the right of this image, is now the site of Kings Pharmacy, a well-loved neighborhood business.

The military parade known as The Grand Review of the Armies was a two-day affair held in Washington D.C. to celebrate the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. On May 23, 1865, 80,000 soldiers in the Army of the Potomac marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from Capitol Hill to the White House.

General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the victorious Union forces, and the newly inaugurated President Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated a month earlier) were among the dignitaries on the reviewing stand. The next day, the 65,000 men of the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Georgia repeated the march.

Officially named Camp Sumter but commonly known as Andersonville Prison, this military prison center was a Confederate prisoner-of-war facility in Georgia. Throughout its short time of operation (it was open slightly over one year), as many as 45,000 captured Union soldiers were incarcerated there, about four times its capacity.

Due to less-than-poor conditions, almost 13,000 prisoners died from disease, exposure, overcrowding, starvation, and awful sanitation.After the war, the commandant of the camp, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried and convicted of war crimes for allowing the mistreatment. This photograph shows him being hanged in Washington D.C. on Nov. 10, 1865.

Considered one of the most significant mining discoveries in the history of America, the detection of gold and silver led to the creation of Virginia City in Nevada. The Comstock Lode was one of these discoveries, a lode of ore found under Mount Davidson.

In this image, wagons carrying supplies to the Comstock Lode approach Swift's Station, an inn on Carson and Lake Bigler Roads in the Sierra Nevadas near the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, a body of water that straddles the Nevada-California border.

Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, was founded in 1847 by Mormon pioneers from Illinois fleeing persecution for their religious beliefs, it was once Mexican territory, though it came under American control the following year. Utah wouldn't become a state until 1896, but Salt Lake City was beginning to thrive as a railroad hub and a base for the mining of precious metals and minerals at the time this photograph was taken.

Considered to be a pioneer of geophotography, the recording of geologically significant features of the landscape, prominent photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan is seen here traveling across Nevada's Carson Desert in his covered wagon that was used as a mobile darkroom.

O'Sullivan came to prominence working for famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady and from 1867 to 1869, became the official photographer for the U.S. Geological Exploration of the 40th parallel.

One of America's most famous bridges began construction in 1869 and took 14 years to complete. This wire rope suspension bridge was designed by a German-born civil engineer named John Augustus Roebling. In the early stages of the project, depicted here, a caisson (a sealed underwater foundation) was launched into the East River at Greenpoint in Brooklyn.