One of my favorite spaces in Athenian Hall, home to many of the collections at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village, is the toy room at the end of the long corridor on the second story.
Filled with rocking horses, board games, building blocks, roller and ice skates, a miniature ironing board and furniture, tea sets, ball and cup games, dolls, stuffed animals, cast-iron toy trains, and other childhood treasures, it serves as a reminder of how child’s play and the concept of childhood itself has changed over the years.
Indeed, according to historian Steven Mintz in his book Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, the idea of childhood as a time of freedom from adult-like responsibilities and a period devoted to education is a recent invention that didn’t become a reality for most children until after World War II. While the lives of children during the 19th and early 20th centuries were much more unstructured and unsupervised when it came to playing, leisure time was a rare luxury. Like Alexander Lucius Twilight, who built the Old Stone House in Brownington in 1836 as a dormitory and classroom space for children from neighboring farm communities, many children in the region worked as indentured servants from a young age.
Though Vermont was the first state among the fledging colonies to abolish slavery in 1777, treating children as property and selling them for labor as indentured servants were commonplace. Beginning in early childhood, girls were often contracted out to families to do work in the home as cooks, maids, and caregivers for younger children until the age of 18, and boys were sent to do farm work until they were 21. In exchange, the children were provided with food and clothing, and their parents may have received a small sum of money. By the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution brought an expanded wave of child labor to the state, with children as young as eight working as many as 14 hours a day under harsh and dangerous conditions in factories. It wasn’t until 1867 that Vermont became the last state in New England to regulate child labor.
Nationally, the 1870 census reported that one out of every eight children was employed, and by the turn of the century, 2.5 million children worked in factories six days a week, 10 hours a day. Another third of all children worked on farms, usually beginning by the age of 5. As a result, half of the children who began first grade in 1900 had dropped out by the sixth grade. These working-class children, whether in urban or rural settings, tended to play outdoors with improvised or homemade toys, or gathered for pick-up games of baseball or Annie, Annie Over, a mix of Red Rover, dodge ball, and catch. Unlike today, there was no separation between childhood and adulthood, and play was free, unmonitored, and directed by the children themselves.
The holiday presents opened by children during this latest season of Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanzaa reflect a shift over the decades toward indoor and commercial play that is increasingly organized, supervised, sedentary, isolated, and electronically mediated by televisions, computers, and cell phones. In part, this is a consequence of parents wanting to prepare their children for a technological world by providing them with educational toys that will give them an advantage in a competitive economy. These toys can develop fantasy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and motor skills. Yet, at a time when children, on average, lose interest in their toys within 36 days, many psychologists fear that the commercialization of childhood no longer facilitates socialization or inspires the imagination and independence necessary for children to navigate an increasingly complex world. Studies show that the unstructured, free play of the past contributes to the exploration and experimentation necessary for children to engage in advanced decision-making and identify and work toward long-term goals.
Museum exhibits focusing on toys and childhood culture teach us about history by helping us reflect on how child’s play is a sign of the economic, geographic, and social conditions of places like the Northeast Kingdom across time. Engaging with these objects can also encourage us to combine the best of toys from the past and the present in developing the playthings of the future that will meet children’s evolving needs in an ever-changing society.
