The Artificial Intelligence tools (like ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, Grok, Meta, Grok, and Perplexity) can provide much useful and nearly instant information about subjects in a concise format, especially when they have been pre-trained on a large volume of information about the subjects.
I wondered if the FREE AI tools could provide me with information about a young Connecticut girl's life in Putnam, Connecticut. My paternal grandmother, Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver (1882-1962) was age 10 in 1892. I attached my genealogical sketch for Bessie (see https://www.geneamusings.com/2024/06/my-paternal-grandmother-alma-bessie.html).
(Thomas Richmond family in about 1888, from family sources)
1) I chose to use the response from free Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 (as of 8 October 2025) today.
My prompt was: "What was Bessie's life like in Putnam, Connecticut as a young girl of 10 in 1892? What did she learn at school, what duties did she have at home, and what fun did she have with family and friends?"
2) The Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 response was:
Bessie Richmond at Age 10: Life in Putnam, Connecticut (1892)
The Mill Town Setting
In 1892, ten-year-old Alma Bessie Richmond—known to everyone as
Bessie—lived in Putnam, Connecticut, a thriving textile mill town
along the Quinebaug River. Putnam had incorporated in 1855 and grown
rapidly with the establishment of large cotton mills that transformed
the rural landscape into an industrial center. The rhythmic clatter
of looms and the shriek of factory whistles marked the daily rhythm
of life for everyone in town.
Bessie's father, Thomas Richmond, was an immigrant with his family
from Wiltshire in 1856, and had worked his way up from the mill floor
to become an overseer—a position of responsibility and respect.
This meant the Richmond family lived more comfortably than many mill
workers' families, though they were far from wealthy. They had a
proper house with enough space for their large family, and most
importantly, Thomas earned enough that his wife Julia and their
children didn't have to work in the mills.
Bessie’s maternal grandparents had died by 1890, but her
paternal grandparents, James and Hannah (Rich) Richmond, were living
on their dairy farm in Putnam with Bessie’s aunts and uncles
nearby.
A House Full of Music and Children
The Richmond household at this time included seven children,
making it a bustling, noisy home. Bessie was the fourth daughter and
seventh child overall. Her older siblings included Annie (age 22,
already married and away from home), Everett (17), Grace (16), Emily
(13), and Charles (12), while younger brothers Edwin (9) and James
(6) completed the family at that time.
What truly distinguished the Richmond home from other mill
families was the constant presence of music. While exhausted mill
workers in neighboring houses might collapse in silence after their
long shifts, the Richmond home rang with scales, hymns, and practice
pieces. Thomas Richmond, despite his demanding work as a mill
overseer, was the choir director at the local Episcopal Church and
possessed a beautiful tenor voice. Julia Richmond was an accomplished
organist, piano player, and alto singer who brought both technical
skill and deep musicality to the household.
For young Bessie, this musical environment was as natural as
breathing. By age ten, she was already showing exceptional talent at
the piano, practicing daily under her mother's expert guidance.
School Days in 1890s New England
Bessie attended the local public school with children from various
mill families. Schools in 1890s New England mill towns typically had
one or two rooms with students of different ages learning together,
though larger towns like Putnam might have had more organized grade
divisions.
The Curriculum -- The educational focus was intensely practical, designed to prepare children for useful citizenship and work:
- Reading and Literature: Students progressed
through graded readers, starting with simple primers and advancing to
more complex texts. They read moralistic tales, patriotic stories,
Bible passages, and poetry. Much emphasis was placed on oral
reading—standing before the class and reading aloud with proper
expression and enunciation.
- Writing and Penmanship: Penmanship was considered
a crucial skill. Students practiced elaborate cursive scripts using
steel-nib pens dipped in inkwells. Bessie would have spent
considerable time copying passages into her copybook, striving for
perfectly formed letters and avoiding the dreaded ink blots that
could ruin a page.
- Arithmetic: Mathematics instruction covered the
"three R's" essentials—addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division, along with fractions, decimals, and
practical problem-solving related to money, measurements, and
commerce. Students often worked problems on slates before
transferring final answers to paper.
- Geography: Students learned about Connecticut,
New England, the United States, and the wider world through
textbooks, maps, and memorization. They could likely recite state
capitals, major rivers, and important geographical features.
- History: American history dominated, with
emphasis on the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the
Constitution, and great patriotic moments. History lessons reinforced
moral lessons about citizenship, duty, and American exceptionalism.
- Spelling and Grammar: Weekly spelling bees were
common, and students memorized grammar rules and diagrammed
sentences.
- Music and Singing: Most schools included group
singing, which would have been Bessie's favorite part of the school
day. Students learned patriotic songs, hymns, and folk melodies.
The school day typically ran from early morning until
mid-afternoon, with a break for lunch (which students either brought
from home or walked home to eat). Discipline was strict, and corporal
punishment was still common, though children from respectable
families like the Richmonds were often treated with more leniency.
Home Duties and Daily Work
When Bessie returned home from school each afternoon, her
education in domestic skills continued. In a household of nine people
(seven children plus two parents), everyone had assigned duties, and
ten-year-old Bessie was expected to contribute significantly to the
household work.
- Kitchen Work -- Bessie helped her mother with meal preparation—peeling vegetables, stirring pots, kneading bread dough, setting the table, and cleaning up afterward. Cooking for ten people required planning and substantial effort. She learned to make stews, roast meat, bake bread and biscuits, and prepare the simple but hearty fare that sustained working families. Her older sister Grace, at sixteen, would have had even more responsibility, but Bessie was learning all the skills she'd need to eventually run her own household.
- Laundry -- Laundry day (typically Monday) was an exhausting all-day affair. Water had to be heated on the stove, clothes scrubbed on washboards, wrung out by hand, and hung to dry. In winter, frozen laundry would be brought in stiff as boards to thaw near the fire. This was backbreaking work that left hands raw and red.
- Cleaning and Maintenance -- Bessie swept floors, dusted furniture, made beds, and helped maintain order in a house full of active children. Keeping a home clean without modern conveniences required constant effort.
- Childcare -- As an older sister, Bessie helped watch her younger brothers, particularly six-year-old James. This might include helping with homework, breaking up fights, and keeping the younger children out of trouble and away from danger.
- The Exception: Music Practice -- Here's what made the Richmond household different: no matter how much work needed doing, music practice was non-negotiable. Every day, after supper, Bessie would go to the piano for an hour or more of serious practice. Her father would listen, offering corrections and encouragement. Her mother would demonstrate difficult passages, showing her how to achieve the right touch and expression.
This daily discipline was building not just skill but also
identity. Bessie was learning that she was more than just a mill
overseer's daughter -- she was a musician with a gift that deserved
cultivation.
Fun, Friends, and Childhood Joys
Despite the work and responsibilities, Bessie's childhood included
play and pleasure:
- Outdoor Play -- When freed from duties, children played in the streets and open spaces of Putnam. Common games included tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch, and jump rope accompanied by singing rhymes. In summer, children might venture to the river to wade, catch tadpoles, or throw stones, though mothers constantly warned about the dangers of the water and the mill machinery.
- Dolls and Imaginative Play -- Girls played with homemade rag dolls, creating elaborate family scenarios and stories. They might also play house, mimicking the domestic world they were being trained to enter.
- Sibling Companionship -- With six siblings, Bessie always had playmates at home. She was particularly close to Emily, just three years older, who shared her bed and became her confidante. They would whisper together in the dark, sharing secrets, dreams, and the particular observations that children make about their world.
- Music as Play and Passion -- For Bessie, the piano was both duty and joy. While she had assigned practice time, she also stole moments to experiment at the keyboard, picking out melodies she'd heard, trying to figure out how harmonies worked, and simply enjoying the magic of creating sound from silence
- Social Life at Church -- Sunday wasn't just worship -- it was the social event of the week. After services at the Episcopal Church, families would linger, children would play together, and adults would exchange news and gossip. Bessie would see school friends, hear her father's choir performances, and absorb the beauty of the liturgy and hymns that would shape her spiritual and artistic life.
- Special Occasions -- Holidays, church socials, family birthdays, and occasional town events provided breaks from routine. These might include ice cream socials, church bazaars, Fourth of July celebrations, and Christmas festivities that brought the community together.
The Episcopal Church: Center of Family Life
The Richmond family's involvement in St. Philip’s Episcopal
Church in Putnam was central to their identity. Bessie attended
services twice on Sunday -- morning and evening—dressed in her best
clothes. She watched her father direct the choir with his expressive
conducting and heard his beautiful tenor voice soaring above the
congregation. She observed her mother at the organ, fingers dancing
across the keys, pulling stops to make the pipes speak in different
voices.
This weekly immersion in sacred music and liturgy was shaping
Bessie's artistic sensibility. The Episcopal service, with its formal
beauty, poetic language, and emphasis on music, appealed to something
deep in her nature. She was learning that music wasn't just
entertainment or even just art -- it was a form of prayer, a way of
connecting with the divine.
Social Class and Mill Town Realities
Living in Putnam meant living with stark social divisions. The
mill owners occupied fine houses on the hill, enjoying wealth created
by the labor of hundreds of workers. Skilled workers, foremen, and
overseers like Thomas Richmond occupied a middle position -- better
off than ordinary mill hands but still dependent on factory wages. At
the bottom were the mill workers themselves, often living in crowded
tenement housing, with entire families -- including young
children—working long hours for low wages.
Bessie would have been aware of children not much older than her
sister Grace already working full shifts in the mills, their
educations ended and their childhoods abbreviated by economic
necessity. Thomas Richmond's position as overseer and his
determination to give his children—including his daughters—proper
education was somewhat unusual and spoke to his ambitions for his
family.
At school and church, these different classes mixed, but everyone
understood the hierarchies. Bessie was learning her place in this
world—neither at the top nor the bottom, but in that respectable
middle ground of skilled workers and middle managers who formed the
backbone of industrial society.
The World Beyond Putnam
In 1892, the wider world was changing rapidly. The United States
was industrializing at a breakneck pace. Immigration was transforming
American cities. New technologies -- electric lights, telephones, new
transportation systems—were emerging. But in Putnam, much of this
felt distant. Life revolved around the mills, the church, the school,
and the rhythms of work and family.
For ten-year-old Bessie, the future was unimaginable. She didn't
know that within a few years, the family would move to Leominster,
Massachusetts, following mill work opportunities. She didn't know
that she would become a church organist as a teenager, that she would
marry Fred Seaver at eighteen, or that she would have seven children
and live to be eighty years old.
She was simply a girl in a mill town, blessed with musical talent,
living in a family that valued both hard work and artistic beauty,
preparing for an adulthood that would blend domestic duty with the
pursuit of music that fed her soul.
The Seeds of Future Life
Looking back from 1962, the elderly Bessie Seaver could trace the
threads that connected that ten-year-old in Putnam to the woman she
became:
The daily piano practice that
built the discipline and skill that would sustain her through
decades as a church organist
The example of parents who
insisted that art and beauty had a place alongside work and duty
The Episcopal liturgy that would
be the framework of her spiritual life
The experience of being part of a
large family that prepared her for motherhood
The lessons in household
management that would serve her when she had her own home
The understanding that music wasn't frivolous but essential—a
way of making sense of life, of offering something beautiful to God
and neighbor
That little girl practicing scales in Putnam in 1892 was already
becoming the woman who would play Chopin after dinner while her own
children listened from upstairs, who would find solace at the piano
during the hardest years of motherhood, who would return to the
church organ after her husband's death and find that music still
sustained her.
The seeds planted in that mill town childhood—discipline, faith,
artistic passion, and family devotion—would flower throughout a
long life marked by both joy and sorrow, but always, always
accompanied by music.
3) The Google NotebookLM Audio Overview about Bessie Richmond's life at age 10 is here.
The Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this post is below.
4) I have no easy way to double check on these responses from Claude. I don't have many book resources for the subjects and the locality, but there are published books available for this time period and general location. The AI tools have been pre-trained on historical events, social history, geography, education, occupations, literature and other disciplines so they can provide information for questions like this one, and now have the ability to search the Internet for website articles.
5) As genealogists, we can often find the 19th century town and church records, and the later census and vital records, for Connecticut families, and we may find occupation, immigration, land and probate records. The family mentioned is my ancestral family and I have significant information about their lives from the available records, but I know nothing about their daily lives other than what the records tell me.
6) After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit the Richmond family in Connecticut and witness their daily lives. I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.
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Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver
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