In a farm house in 1910, I would say it would have been candle light, or kerosene. There would not have been gas or electric light in a farmhouse at that time, unless, maybe, they were a VERY prosperous farm.

Tami...my humble thoughts only

That's very helpful, Tami. I needed to know how the boy would have turned off the light at bedtime--turned it off or blew it out. Based on what you said, I guess I could do either.

Thanks!

I have a newpaper article dated 1-17-1910 in front of me
about my grandfathers farm.
He had a farm and had installed an acetylene gas plant on the property.
This ran lighting to the entire farm and house.
You might try googling 1910 and acetylene gas for electricity and see what comes up.
Trin

In the South, it would have been kerosene lamps or "coal oil" as it was called back then. My dad was born in 1895 and I remember many of the stories he told about his life on the farm in Mississippi. He would have had to blow out the kerosene lamp when he was finished with it. By the way, I have the corn sheller that my grandfather bought around 1910 so the boys didn't have to shell corn by hand in order to feed the animals.How excited those boys were!! Good luck with your story! Bettye/AZ

Do we get to read this story when your finished cause it sounds really interesting!!

My MIL was born in a tiny town in Montana in 1910. In 1921 they electrified the house and had indoor plumbling installed, much to the amazement of their neighbors and delight of MIL and her little sisters. Until then, they used kerosene lamps, chamber pots and an outhouse.

Sounds like a good story. Let us know when it's finished, if it gets published, etc.

I think the actual answer could be different in different parts of the country. In other words, I think you'll be fine, whichever of those options you decide, since that's around the time of transition to electricity. And not all decided to get it at once, either. some people couldn't afford to, some were afraid of it, some were anxious to jump on the bandwagon of the future.

Pick the option that works best for your story. If it's a piece of fiction, you're allowed artistic license anyway. I think you could easily justify any of those choices, really

Around here(the midwest) it would have been a kerosene lantern. Most farms didn't have electricity until the 30's or 40's.

Can we "see" the story when it's finished?

Ron

And..how afluent the farm family was

Well, the farm family in my story was definitely not affluent.

Thanks for the help, everyone. I'll be happy to share my story (it's very short), but first we have to see how it does in the contest I wrote it for. I won't find out until June . . . by then we'll all have forgotten about it (including me!). :-)

I'd venture a guess and say Lamp Oil. It is SIMILAR, but not exactly the same as kerosene. Kerosene was used more for heating, but kerosene burns with more soot and blackens the glass on a lamp. (In fact, oil lamps - or hurricane lamps as some call them - are still a nice alternative to flashlights, etc. in a power outage.)

My mom always called them "coal oil" lamps too - and this was in the mid 20's in the midwest.

As said, it would vary, and depend on a lot of things. It could also easily be that there would be NO lighting in there. You go to bed in the dark. Wake up with the sun. Less affluent would light often with kerosene lamps, in the barns and such are kerosene lanterns. There's also what was called an "Aladdin's lamp" (which we used at the cabin) and it gave very bright light, until it was stolen. Now this was not the type in the story, that looks like a teapot. It's been a long time since I saw one. As I recall it used a mantle but I could be mistaken.

Anyway, given the caution used with fire, many people just plain didn't light the way in the early 1900s. So you have quite a bit of poetic license with your story too. Just don't say they flipped the switch on the LED lights with the universal remote control... The younger child was usually the "remote control"!

Even today, gas lines usually run only in cities, where the smaller lots make it economical to run the lines (more houses per linear foot).

Electricity didn't come to rural Texas until, if I remember correctly, the 1940's, when Lyndon Johnson pushed it through;
it pretty much made his political career.

so even up to WWII, most farms had kerosene lamps, & a lot of places made do with kerosene even later than that.

My uncles & aunts bought a 60 acre parcel of land in the 1960's;
you took the access road from the freeway, turned onto a gravel road, went across a creek if the weather was dry or if you had a pick-up truck, drove on down what was by now a dirt lane, went through the cattle guard/gate...
& there you were!

They always used wood stoves for cooking & heat & kerosene lamps/lanterns for light.

& they walked up the road to Mr & Miss Butler's house to use the telephone;
the phone company wouldn't run the line to the "place".

Mr & Miss Butler, an elderly brother & sister, were history come to life.

Their grandparents had been born in slavery & liberated on Juneteenth, & they had bought acreage so far from town because it was cheap (you can get more land that way).

They raised cattle & it seems like cotton & had a whole bunch of kids (I forget how many, but 9 rings a bell-families, especially farm families, were bigger back then).

The children all grew up & moved on to more urban lives except for one son, the father of Mr & Miss Butler.

I had to look up Juneteenth, Sylvia. Interesting!

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President LincolnÂs Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General GrangerÂs regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

As my dad always said, you learn something new every day.

I'd say a candle or a "coal oil" (kerosene, as I understand) lamp with a wick. Which you put out by turning down the wick or can blow out - often by blowing down the top of the glass tube, or can lift it off (unusual - watch about burning fingers).

I don't know when hydro (Ontario word for electric service, generated from Niagara: it was "power" in Sask.) came into our area, about 1.25 mi. from a village, but it was several years before my entry into the world about 1930.

ole joyful

I am another from the midwest that would say a kerosene lamp for the house and a kerosene lantern for the barn. The children sometimes had a smaller size lamp or finger lamp to light their way to bed.
Someone correct me if I am wrong but I think I remember that in the 1940's in Iowa most farms did not have electricty. Driving through the countryside at night no yard lights,everything was dark.
Lois

A friend showed me a pit near his German grandparents' house that was used to store carbide, which when slightly wet with water forms a gas used for lighing. While his affluent family had this, my own grandparents and other neighbors relied on kerosens lamps. The house that I grew up in was electrified in 1940.

Of interest - those lights that you see on miners' heads
are sometimes fueled with carbide. Its a little container of carbide to which water is added and lit.