Unless I'm quite mistaken, free range child rearing was very much the norm basically anywhere in America or Europe for at least several centuries (with the caveat that children were also commonly used as a labor force, especially with subsistence farming). Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, while admittedly idealized caricatures, spend prodigious amounts of time outdoors unsupervised, and this is seen as normal. Red Riding Hood walks to her grandmother's house alone. Rupert Bear spends his time wandering the local fields with his friends. Etc...

If you want a vivid picture of just how free-range life was in 19th century America, I recommend "Two Little Savages" by Ernest Thompson Seton, a fictionalized autobiography of the author's childhood published in 1903. While it's certainly a romanticized picture, and the events in the book represent an unusual amount of freedom for the protagonists, it still documents fantastically a variety of 19th century parenting styles and the nature of the society that has been lost.