Can you upload pictures that are larger? You seem to have "thumbnails instead of real pictures. And it's the details that are important for deciding origin and age. Take good, well-lit, (not flash, bring in The style is a "Savonarola chair", and they have been popular for centuries.

In your situation, especially if the workflow of the kitchen is decent and the current appliances don't look bad, I'd put in beautiation rather than a new kitchen. Was the room originally the kitchen? If so, is there a hearth? If you put some period-look accessories there, cast iron andirons, old ash bucket, etc., and paint the walls an appropriate color, that will go a long way. If there's any open wall space, that's also a good opportunity to take down your personal things and hang some old impedimenta. A bit of harness. Some cooking implements. Put in an accent light fixture that looks period appropriate. These "antiques" can be reproductions, and can be anything that looks like it predates WWI. Give the old cabinets a fresh coat of milk paint, with some distressing, so that the underlayers of paint show where they would be worn, giving an instant hit of "history" to to the room. Change the Formica to one of the new slate look ones. Use an unexpected, period possible textile. Cushions or a valence or something. Something colorful, bright and fun. If you're feeling more energetic, you can also take the doors off the upper cabinets for an open shelving look, or even take down the cabinets, fix up the walls and put in chunky board shelves. You can go a step farther and replace some lower cabinets with an old sideboard. If there's room, put a beat up old farm table in the middle. I really think you can get a feel that works with the house with an investment of $1-2K in set dressing and some creativity, rather than going into debt over a new kitchen, which, inevitably, the new owners will tear out because it doesn't have a beer tap, baking station, or kimchi fridge, or because they really want a Pedini kitchen and all the magazines say it's okay to put a sleek, Modern Italian kitchen in a very old house. The point is to make the kitchen feel like it belongs to the house rather than being a jarring let down. You can sell a house with, "Obviously, the kitchen will need to be redone," as you know, if you can keep it from looking like it doesn't belong in the house at all. And when it comes time to sell, bake some kind of antique recipe instead of chocolate chip cookies. :) (Or buy blueberry tarts and reheat them...)

That would certainly explain the difference between your experience carding cotton and plllog's. Seeding cotton has to be one of the worst jobs there is. Also, I was a small child. I was at my great-great-great aunt's house ... and she moved in with us when I was in 1st grade (no kindergarten, so I assume I was 6-7 years old). I have this image of them stuck in the house and taking the seed corn out of the walls where it was stored (if that part is even right). What I remember about the books was that, how excited the little girls were to get one tin cup to share between the two of them, Yes, I remember that too -- but I'm not clear on whether I remember it from the books or the TV series. I remember that they had a narrow "compartment" in the back wall of their house -- a false wall -- and the corn was stored in that. Thinking about it now, I don't know why anyone would have gone to so much trouble for seed corn. I mean, farmers didn't have the technology to build anything except small houses, so why would you use any of your precious living space for seed corn? My family has been on the same property since the 1700s, and we have more sheds "than you can shake a stick at" ... some of them open, some of them quite secure. Seems to me that seed corn would've been kept in one of the secure sheds. that she rode around with her fiance for years Now that part I remember clearly: Laura had been hired to teach school in a neighboring town, and she "boarded" with a family who didn't like her much /she didn't like them much. The mother of the family didn't like living in the West and threatened suicide, saying she'd go home one way or another. I remember being genuinely afraid for Laura staying in that house. At the end of her first week with them, Laura was dreading the weekend /no escape to school ... and suddenly Almonzo appeared (unannounced) at the door with his light sleigh, saying he'd arranged with her father that he'd provide her with transportation home for the weekends. She literally ran to get her things. It was clear from the first ride that Almonzo was interested in Laura, but she didn't catch on for a while. Re scullery maids, that's why I said at the same economic level. Most of us here at middle class. Granted there was hardly any middle class in the 18th Yeah, the hardly-any-middle-class-existed and few people were rich ... that is why I said most of us would've been the scullery girls. Has anyone here watched those videos that were popular a decade or so ago in which a modern family posed as an 1800 (?) family ... and another in which a small group of people posed as American pioneers and lived for a time using those skills? I just read on Wikipedia that Eli Whitney was commissioned to make the gin, and was inspired to the method by watching a cat trying to pull a chicken through a fence. I've no idea if it's true, but it's a great story. Some people say he didn't invent it at all; rather, it was a slave on the plantation who invented it, and since neither the slave nor his female owner (was the husband dead?) had any way to market the creation, they claimed that Whitney -- the children's live-in tutor -- had invented it. I'm not purporting this as truth. Obviously, I have no personal knowledge, though it does seem that a slave would've been closer to the cotton-work and would've had time /motivation to think on how to do it better. It's just something I read or heard somewhere. Well, it was the boy--he didn't want people eating up his seed wheat so he made a hidden bin in a wall. In the book Pa Ingalls notices the inside of the room is too small for the outside and finds the wheat that way. Yes, that's what I remember too ... but he not a boy; Almonzo and his adult brother were sharing a cabin and were essentially "hoarding" the seed corn, and when Pa Ingalls confronted them, they said, "We didn't realize people were starving," and they gladly shared it. I'm thinking I remember this from the TV movie. They really did "play up" Pa as hero-of-all-things, and he did solve all sorts of problems about town. In real life, Pa didn't make such good choices for his family; I remember studying these books as a part of a Children's Literature class in college, and I really "saw" Pa for the first time through adult eyes -- he was a bit of a disappointment. I think Almonzo was a better husband; he and Laura floundered a bit /were beset by serious troubles in their younger years, but then they found "their place" and stuck to it through thick and thin. Pa Ingalls always had his eyes set somewhere else. It's not that I'm obsessed with these books I was obsessed with them as a child. Now I'm a literature teacher, and I have a very good memory for books -- even things I haven't read in years.

Terrilynn: I found it on Amazon then, and just found it again for you. It’s called “The best college dorm safe V5.0” for $249.99. There were many less expensive ones, but those could realistically be picked up and carried off by some thief. I wanted a small personal safe that she could physically attach to the underside of her bed, etc. The added expense, in my mind, was worth it to safely hold her passport, drivers license (freshman year =no car), good jewelry, etc. And, when her sorority house caught fire during her sophomore year, that safe kept everything in it from being destroyed. Just then, it earned every cent we payed for it!