[srmanuel]

That’s true for some but not others, 100 years ago, or longer it was a struggle to survive day to day.

There was no electricity, no one had a car, no one had a telephone, no one had quality medical care, every day it was hard to find enough food for everyone to eat.

Basically there was no Government to speak of, my Grandmother was lucky she got to go to school and learned how to read and write.

A lot of people did keep correspondence, but many did not so keeping track of things like births, deaths, etc were not kept or recorded.

[Hiddigeigei]

"100 years ago ... There was no electricity, no one had a car, no one had a telephone ..."
100 years ago was 1922. Henry Ford's Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. Brush Electric Company’s arc light contracts to illuminate major streets and Madison Square Park in 1881. In 1889 Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company introduced alternating current (ac) lighting to lower Manhattan through its acquisition of the United Electric Light & Power Company. Newspaper reports of telephones in New York City in August, 1877. My maternal family home had electric light during WWI and a telephone in 1922.