In GNU Emacs 19.29.1 (sparc-sun-sunos4.1.3) of Wed Jun 21 1995 on young
configured using  --with-gcc --with-x11 --prefix=/private1/local

my .emacs looks like:
;;
;; .emacs of HAu
;;

;;
;;
;; comply to oracle coding standard format
;;
(setq load-path (cons "/oa/oa/elisp" load-path))
(load "orastd" t t)  ; oracle standard editing
(load "fns" t t)
(load "keys" t t)

;;
;; use emacs version 19 highlight
;;
(cond (window-system
       (setq hilit-mode-enable-list  '(not text-mode)
             hilit-background-mode   'light
             hilit-inhibit-hooks     nil
             hilit-inhibit-rebinding nil)
       (require 'hilit19)
       ))

;;
;; always use auto-fill minor mode
;;
(setq-default auto-fill-hook 'do-auto-fill)

;;
;; that doesn't work
;;
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'c-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'c++-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'latex-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'tex-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'lisp-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'sql-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'nroff-mode 'turn-on-auto-fill)

;;
;;  turn on various editing modes based on file extension
;;
(setq auto-mode-alist
        '(("\\.text$" . text-mode)
          ("\\.text~$" . text-mode)
          ("\\.txt$" . text-mode) ("\\.txt~$" . text-mode)
          ("\\.texinfo$" . texinfo-mode)
          ("\\.texinfo~$" . texinfo-mode)
          ("\\.tex$" . latex-mode)
          ("\\.tex~$" . latex-mode)
          ("\\.bib$" . bibtex-mode)
          ("^/tmp/Re" . text-mode)
          ("/Message[0-9]*$" . text-mode)
          ("\\.c$" . c-mode) ("\\.c~$" . c-mode)
          ("\\.C$" . c++-mode) ("\\.c~$" . c++-mode)
          ("\\.h$" . c++-mode) ("\\.h~$" . c++-mode)
          ("\\.y$" . c++-mode) ("\\.y~$" . c++-mode)
          ("\\.cc$" . c++-mode) ("\\.y~$" . c++-mode)
          ("\\.scm$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.scm~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\..*emacs" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.el$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.el~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.ml$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.ml~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.lisp$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.lisp~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.lsp$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.lsp~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.l$" . lisp-mode) ("\\.l~$" . lisp-mode)
          ("\\.nroff$" . nroff-mode) ("\\.nroff~$" . nroff-mode)))

;;
;; display the date and time on status bar
;;
(setq display-time-day-and-date t)
(display-time)

;;
;; highlight selected region
;;
(transient-mark-mode t)

;;
;; highlight matching parenthesis
;;
(require 'paren)

;;
;; display line number
;;
(setq line-number-mode t)

but auto-fill-mode is not automatically turned on for any major mode.