I'm new to all this so I might be asking a stupid question, but what did a typical sr user use to hone his razor 125 years ago or so? We have all these modern stones and such that the typical person didn't have back then.

I know of Arkansas stones and the like but I doubt the typical man, especially in a rural area, had a battery of hones. Perhaps that's why so many had beards, but some did shave. I inherited a Case that my grandfather used sometime around 1910 and forward till he started using a safety razor. I'm pretty sure he never had a beard. The razor was in decent shape but I wouldn't have tried to shave with it. The only thing I know for certain was that he had a leather strop.