This exhibition illustrates a middle-class man’s home everyday items consists of during the early 1800s along with the era of innovations. For example, it shows the use of the cash crop – cotton to produce clothes, shoes that were beginning to be produced with a machine for the first time introduced in 1845. Furthermore, seeing the items of a household can often help determine the economic status one holds. Some examples are by looking at the quality of items such as bowls, quilts and ammunition (gun flints). These items were often found in a middle-class man’s home, but of course the better the quality the more wealthy the family was.  Often, religious scriptures were found at home to support their religious beliefs they followed. Literate citizens also kept newspapers, pamphlets and etc. in their homes. Other things such as coffee mills give us an insight on how they lived during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Pre-revolutionary era).

Throughout this collection, you get a glimpse of how a middle-class family lived, what was used on daily bases, religious beliefs, the use of cotton uprising, and more. This is crucial because it is displays how much change was taking place across America and how different people of middle class chose to spend their wealth. This is also important to the pre-revolutionary era itself because it portrays ones beliefs, values and way of life and the way various items were evolving in a way to become more efficient for overall economic changes throughout the century for citizens of the U.S.

(source used for research: https://people.seas.harvard.ed...)