Supplementing coins with history books: Recommendations for 1860's-1870's books?

[Prethen]

One very good book I've read that covers this era is "The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876". I've taken a few other books from the library that have memoirs of the 1860's to 1880's.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for good resources that cover life in the 1850's-1880's? Memoirs, letters, diaries, history books, and websites are all good resources.

 

I'm most interested in day-to-day living, especially the costs of daily life. For instance, one book I checked out had a memoir of the 1860's where a girl helped her mother sell pies to to miners at 40-50 pies (plus a quart of milk each) for 30-40 dollars. They rented a 4-bedroom house in Denver in 1860 for $85 per month.

[MunkyMan95]

I love researching this kind of thing also! However, I do not know by heart any books that give accounts of life during the aforementioned period.

[DaveG]

See my reply across the street.

[Prethen]

This site is an amazing resource of archived Colorado newspapers of the mid to late 1800's!

[IGWT]

The Making of America ("MOA") project -- available online -- is a cooperative effort of a few major universities and the National Archives to create a digital library of primary sources published during the Civil War era. It's probably easiest to access the resources through Cornell University LINK . You'll see several various digital collections listed on that page, including MOA (you have to scroll pretty far down the page). Clicking on the MOA icon will take you to the MOA page. The documents are searchable.

[michael]

superlative thread as this makes the coins even more ezxciting to collect and see how life was like when this coinage circulated and made economic america work due to this early federal coinage

 

can you imagine i can get a steak and vegs and potatoes and a cold frosty one with a couple shots of rye and also a sexy plump lady of the bed chamber for the night including the room and a full cattlemans breakfast back in the 1870's for a ten dollar gold coin