Magazine
The Forenoon | Lexicon
At the end of October, Daylight Savings Time will add an hour of daylight to a portion of the day that most of us now call “morning.” But the current notion of morning, like Daylight Savings Time itself, is a fairly recent development. When most New Englanders either lived on a farm or came from […]
By Yankee Magazine|Oct 28 2014|
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At the end of October, Daylight Savings Time will add an hour of daylight to a portion of the day that most of us now call “morning.” But the current notion of morning, like Daylight Savings Time itself, is a fairly recent development. When most New Englanders either lived on a farm or came from a farm background, “morning” began at 4:00 A.M. and ended at 8:00 A.M. The eight-to-noon slot was known as the forenoon. But as people began moving off the farm and sleeping later, the morning moved with them and the forenoon disappeared.
Excerpt from “The New England Sampler,” Yankee Magazine, October 1995. 
I remember well that my dad, my aunt and my uncle, all Mainers born before 1910 all used. My grandmother, born in Connecticutt in 1879, used it as well.