Population of America: 50 Million people

A decade of invention, innovation and sweeping industrialization. This era was pivotal, fueled by booming economic expansion, and cultural revolution as people began shifting away from rural, largely agriculturally-driven life, and towards urban life.

ELECTRICITY, OIL, AND STEEL

Electricity and its adoption across every industry, transformed the United States of America. Before 1880, people relied on candle light and torches after nightfall. In the new age of electricity, entire towns were ablaze with light. In September 1882, the first central electrical power generation invented by Thomas Edison in Menlo Park, New Jersey turned on in New York City. Carnegie’s steel enabled buildings as tall as 10 stories beginning 1885, which reshaped America’s cities. Vanderbilt’s railroad empire expanded to every corner of the country with J.P. Morgan’s financial engineering. The modern invention of asphalt pavement credited to immigrant Belgian chemist Edward J. DeSmedt, expanded beyond its first application in New Jersey to the rest of the country. The Brooklyn Bridge, a monument to innovation, supported by steel, opened as the longest suspension bridge in 1883. In Journeys that once took weeks, now happened in a few days.

There were sweeping social changes. New social classes sprang up, redefining success across the country. A Middle Class emerged from the middle managers, office managers, shop owners created by the 2nd Industrial Revolution. They created ‘the suburbs’ which really hadn’t existed before. Before the 1880s, it was simply Town & Country. urban city life and away from the largely rural life that had defined America. The migration of several Conley branches to cities in the North and West created new chapters in the family’s book of adventure.