Typical Life of the Contadini in the 1800s

The following is an excerpt from the book Discovering your Italian Ancestors, by Lynn Nelson.

Since it provided the light needed to work, the sun was the alarm clock. Workdays were shorter in the winter and longer in the summer. Rising from a wooden plank bed, covered with a mattress stuffed with crunchy dried cornstalk, the typical peasant would get dressed and put on wooden shoes (only the wealthy wore leather shoes).

First the animals (if there were any) had to be tended. Chicken eggs were collected to be sold. The eggs were never eaten by the peasants because they were too valuable. All animal droppings (and human as well) were collected and stored in a wooden bin, awaiting the daily arrival of the man with the wooden cart who would purchase this fertilizer to use in the fields.

The water for drinking, cooking and washing had to be carried from the village's central well or fountain. These fountains became the meeting place for the exchange of news and gossip. In some rocky regions, a water vendor, hauling urns of water up the steep hills with a mule drawn wooden cart, sold this precious commodity from door to door.

Breakfast usually consisted of a chunk of bread. Frequently breakfast wasn't eaten upon arising but at a mid-morning break from work.

The men not fortunate enough to hold regular jobs would work as day laborers. Bosses would come to the town square with a wagon looking for men to spend a day hauling stone, picking rice or grapes, or clearing land. The day laborers never knew if they would be working from one day to the next.

The women would work in the fields or in a nearby factory. The silk industry was very big, and, without modern technology, required many hands to wind, spin and weave the silk threads. The women's hands were rough, raw and pained from the constant twisting of the threads.

Even the children worked, from as young as five years old. They would help pick rice or grapes at harvest time. The little girls would begin their silk factory "careers" by manually turning the wheel for the silk spinners.

At lunchtime, most peasants would consume a boiled potato, a chunk of bread or a weak soup made from onions and water, and then go back to work.

As the sun began to set and it became too dark to see, the workday was over. The evening meal would be a just a little more substantial than the day's other repasts. Cabbage soup, a boiled potato, pasta would be the main course, rounded out with some bread. Meat was rarely eaten by peasants except on Sundays or feast days (holidays), and even then their rice or pasta soup would have a weak meat broth with a few shreds of meat floating in it. Wine would also be consumed on these special days.

The evening finally allowed time for socializing. People walked through the streets, gathered and talked. Children ran around and played. In the winter, when it was too cold and dark to spend the evening in the streets, people would gather in a barn, warmed only by the bodies of the animals and lit by a single oil lamp. Wool and coal were too valuable to be burned just for warmth and were reserved solely for cooking. In the barn, the women would knit or spin while they talked in one corner. The men, in a different corner, would tell stories or play gambling games.

When it was time to retire, the peasants would return to their homes and go to bed, often with the whole family sharing sleeping quarters. The next day, the peasant's life was repeated. The peasant had no goals or long term accomplishments to meet. They lived a day-to-day existence, punctuated by church on Sundays, when they had the day off from work, and the anticipation of the next feast day.