After the American Revolution, the new nation of the United States stood as one of the biggest countries, extending twelve hundred miles from north to south, from Maine to Georgia. The new nation took on many new ideas in both politics and economics due to Enlightenment thought. However, their social lives remained much the same as before for many decades to come. Although the decades following the American Revolution is often times associated as an era of change, both subtle and abrupt, many things remained the same in the American daily life. .
By the early 1800s, a nationwide tax assessment revealed that there were near six hundred thousand dwellings in the United States, and by the 1850s, there were well over three million. Other than the abundance of land available for homes, the early marriages encouraged more births which produced substantially higher birthrates in the states than in Europe. The American population grew from four million in 1790 to more than seventeen million in 1840. Despite the large population, only one American in twenty lived in a place with more than 2,500 people in 1790, (this did not change much by 1840). As spoken by Thomas Jefferson's secretary, Albert Gallatin, "We have no villages in America," instead American farmers' homes were "scattered all over the country." Most Americans lived in timber-framed houses, learnt from traditional English techniques. Brick and stone homes were a rare sight, and were only really used in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey for the richer families; this was in agreement with German tradition, an ethic group that settled there. Log houses were common among Western and Southern Americans being that these houses were quickest and least laborious to build. Log houses were a newer adaptation brought into America by the Swedes, who settled in the state of Delaware. The differences between the rich and poor American families were profoundly visible in size and value of the home.
