ABSTRACT
Nineteenth century American childhood varied greatly by social class, ethnicity, and geographic region. There were children growing up on farms, in cities, on the Western frontier, and in mining towns; some children were born into great wealth, while others were born into slavery. Many historians have documented the nineteenth century emergence of the modern idea of childhood, one that sees children as innately good, innocent people in need of special nurturing and sheltering from the harsh realities of adult life. The nineteenth century was a time of extraordinary change in the American media environment. As the century opened, information and ideas were shared via printed materials that had been created on printing presses that required typesetters to set each letter of text individually, print a page at a time by manually pressing paper to type, and hang each page to dry.
