Richard Wagner was active in the rebellion in Dresden
Robert Schumann and his wife Clara were witnesses to the Dresden violence, and Schumann fled the scene rather than be conscripted in the city’s civil guard
Karl Marx was especially active in France in 1848; the failure of the rebellion convinced him of the need for a more radical society
Frederick Engels wrote about his role in the Palatinate in 1849, in a document called “The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution“
Otto von Bismarck was a young landowner who rose to power and influence on the monarchist side
Carl Schurz was a leader in the rebellious provisional governments army, who escaped from the Prussian troops through a sewer from a village under siege, sailed to America, and later became an active advocate of the newly formed Republican party and an attorney and friend of Abraham Lincoln
Jacob Müller was a provisional government civil commissioner of Kirchheimbolanden who immigrated to Cleveland, eventually becoming the tenth Lieutenant Governor of Ohio from 1872-1874.

Perhaps you know of others? If so, do tell.

The map here was made in 1596, so it’s a far cry from 1857 when it comes to locations of cities and borders, but nonetheless, I provide it here with Freinsheim inked in, showing also the usual route through Paris to Le Havre, in order to demonstrate how the French port of departure made sense geographically. It also made sense politically. Many young men who left snuck out of the country, since they were liable for military duty in the Bavarian-controlled Palatinate of the day. It seems the French were willing to look the other way when it came to the paperwork. Hence, consider Le Havre, France another place to look for your ancestors emigrating from southwestern Germany.

Intended as an overview, the book begins with native religions and extends all the way into the Reagan and Bush eras of American conservativism.

Right now I’m buried in the chapter called “Reformers and Visionaries.” For example, William Miller’s numerology (mentioned in an earlier post: Is 2012 the end of the line?) led him to calculate the return of the Lord would occur in 1843. “[Miller's] views reached a broad audience in Horace Greeley’s New York Herald, complete with illustrations. Comets and meteor showers at the time added to the excitement. Some said that Miller attracted thirty thousand to one hundred thousand followers.”

Another end-times religion began in the mid-18th century, due to the visionary zeal of Mother Ann Lee. Her sect came to be known as the Shakers. One of nineteen Shaker communities, the North Union Shaker Community was organized in 1822 on land just outside Cleveland, on property along Doan Brook.

Better known as Shakers, members of the sect called themselves “Believers,” a shortened version of “the United Society of Believers in the Second Appearing of Christ.” Suffering persecution in England, a small band led by their founder, “Mother” Ann Lee, came to America in 1774. Ann Lee symbolized the second coming of Christ in female form, establishing the Shaker concept of sexual equality and of the deity as a father-mother God. Shaker colonies were founded in New York and the New England states, and later, on the frontier. (from The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)

Today, the North Union Shaker Community is the neighborhood of Cleveland called Shaker Heights.

At Alltop’s home page, the site appears to be another search engine, with top web sites and popular posts. That’s fine, there are some great choices there. But what I like best is the sort feature. Click on an alphabet letter in the top bar and choose your topic. For example, my blog falls under H, for History.

I debated about this — my blog might also fit well under G, for Genealogy. Seriously, check out both History and Genealogy for a grand list of blogs of interest — any included at Alltop have been vetted by the powers that be for content and activity.

So whether your topic is History or Genealogy or Germany or Cleveland, Ohio or something else entirely, go to Alltop to check it out.

In the novel, Kit Bakke writes to Alcott about life as a baby boomer, filling in the deceased Alcott (1832-1888) on the progress of the women’s rights movement into the 21st century. Alcott “replies” via material Bakke culled from Alcott’s journals and letters. The book is extensively researched and full of information about 19th-century life among the Transcendentalist crowd (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Peabody, Henry David Thoreau) in Concord, Massachusetts.

This past week, I had the privilege of hearing Kit Bakke speak at the Whidbey Island residency (Whidbey MFA) on interviewing people for oral histories, and the permutations of truth in fiction and nonfiction. Afterward, I went up to introduce myself.

“I’ve heard you speak about six times now,” I said. “You might say I’m a Kit Bakke groupie.”

“I wish,” she said, laughing.

But it’s true, I am. These days, Bakke advocates for literacy and helps support writers as a founding member of the Seattle 7 Writers, a group actively supporting literacy in the Northwest. She’s also working on collecting oral histories, and recommended a couple of great sites:

Oral History Association
H-Oralhist
The Washington State Heritage Center Legacy Project
StoryCorps

- July 4th riots in the Five-Points slum of New York City, a Democrats v. Republicans squabble over who controlled the city, including control over liquor laws.
- On August 24th, railroad stocks tumbled, kicking off the financial Panic of 1857, further exacerbated by the sinking of the “Central America,” a ship loaded with federal gold to back up the U.S. treasury.
- Transatlantic telegraph cables were laid from North America to the United Kingdom for the first time. The first signal was feeble at best, then failed altogether a short time later. The first successful instantaneous communication across the Atlantic would not occur until after the Civil War.
- The Atlantic Monthly was founded. I learned this the other day in the grocery story, when I plucked off the magazine shelf a special issue of articles published in the Atlantic on stories of the Civil War. It is an issue in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War about the mid-19th century discussion of slavery, and includes essays by Louisa May Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the first editor, James Russell Lowell. Here is an excerpt about the history of the magazine, given by Cullen Murphy at a 1994 presentation:

The year was 1857. Railroads did not yet cross the North American continent, but everyone knew that one day soon they would. The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species was two years away, but loud rumblings in the halls of science had already warned the keepers of religious faith that serious challenges lay ahead. The largest wave of immigration in the nation’s history was pouring through the cities of the eastern seaboard. Though he would become President in four years, Abraham Lincoln in 1857 was no more widely known nationally than any former one-term Congressman is today. But the clouds of secession had begun to gather, and few believed that North and South, still joined by weak bonds of vexing compromise, would not soon be torn asunder.

Among educated people throughout the United States the issue of slavery was obviously one of great moment. But so, too, was another matter, and in the baldest terms it might be said to have involved an attempt to define and create a distinctly American voice: to project an American stance, to promote something that might be called the American Idea.

It was this concern that brought a handful of men together, at about three in the afternoon on a bright April day, at Boston’s Parker House Hotel. At a moment in our history when New England was America’s literary Olympus, the men gathered that afternoon could be said to occupy the summit. They included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and several other gentlemen with three names and impeccable Brahmin breeding—men from the sort of families, as Holmes once noted wryly, that had not been perceptibly affected by the consequences of Adam’s fall. By the time these gentlemen had supped their fill, plans for a new magazine were well in hand. As one of the participants wrote to a friend the next day, “The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually that I have ever had.” Soon the new magazine acquired an editor, James Russell Lowell, and a name—The Atlantic Monthly.

I was lucky enough to learn about the Fiske Foundation by word of mouth. I visited the library one day early in my research, and Gary Zimmerman was a great help to me with WorldCat and other research. Since then, I have been receiving the quarterly newsletter, a fantastic resource.

Begun by Arthur Fiske in 1971 (as the Fiske Genealogical Center), today’s Foundation cites these major goals:
-to provide on-going education in genealogical research techniques.
-to build a library of genealogical materials not readily available, especially for those townships east of the Mississippi River.

In addition to an extensive library, Fiske offers a series of classes. Winter 2012 classes begin January 25, and cover many different topics, including (but not limited to): Advanced Search of WorldCat, American Catholic Records, Methodist Church Records, Homestead And Bounty Land Records and the National Archive, and an off-site visit to the University of Washington Library’s Seattle Campus Map Collection. Click here for a complete listing.

Interested in a little post-holiday shopping? They also have surplus genealogy books for sale!!

What startles me, in researching 19th century Cleveland, is the number of game-changing religions afoot in Ohio’s Western Reserve.

Everyone, then and now, loves to make fun of the Millerites. Here is a picture of a round (8-sided) church built by the good people who followed William Miller, a preacher who foretold the end of the world by March 21, 1843, no wait, April 22, 1844, no wait, October 18, 1844 …

In 1833, construction began on a Mormon Temple (still standing) in Kirtland, Ohio, a little northeast of Cleveland, where many new revelations occurred, and Joseph Smith was named President.

It was also an era when Mary Baker Eddy founded the first Church of Christ, Scientist (1866 in Boston). According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, General Erastus N. Bates “secured 2 rooms in a downtown building and formed a ministry based on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science church.” Eddy writes in the preface to Science and Health: “The time for thinkers has come.”

In these 21st century times, we the people continue to explore spiritual frontiers.

My relatives know me well. I sighed with happiness. At first glance, I worried about the cookbook. When Tante Inge tried to tell me how to make Käsekuchen many years ago, much suffered in the conversion from their measurements in grams to the American cups and tablespoons. Happily, however, the cookbook offers an English translation. Now I have everything in front of me, step-by-step instructions on making the traditional “Palatine stuffed pig’s stomach” and “Blood Sausage.” Phew!

The other book is a campy, cartoon-style guide to Pfälzisch variants (deviants?) on the art of German living. Dialect, sense of humor, and quirks brought to life by three characters: a pretzel roll, a wurst sausage, and a bottle of wine called Weck, Worscht & Woi. A perfect guide with which to ring in 2012. Danke vielmals, Familie!

For example, I have ancestors named Johan and ancestors named Johannes. Both male. What’s the difference?

In the mid-19th century, just about everyone had the name Jacob or Philipp. The preponderance of Elisabethas, and Katherinas, and Margarethas is also striking. How did they tell one another apart?

Furthermore, if a baby died in infancy, why was the next one given the exact same name? I would not be inclined to name a child after one who had died. Call it superstition, or a painful reminder of unutterable grief, but in my 21st century reality, it seems a bad idea.

And why did I find Philipp Heinrich Handrich in the 1850 census under Henry Handrich. Why didn’t he go by his first name of Philipp?

Recently I came across a family genealogy write-up that referenced German first name “patterns.”

“The first son is named after the paternal grandfather.
The second son is named after the maternal grandfather.
The first daughter is named after the maternal grandmother.
The second daughter is named after the paternal grandmother.”

But that’s not all. Check out this article by Charles F. Kerchner, Jr., at 18th Century PA German Naming Customs. Apparently, until about the 1870′s, often every male in a family was named after the same saint (for example St. John, St. George, St. Philipp). Hence, it was generally their second first name by which they were differentiated. Kerchner also enlightens us on the difference between Johan and Johannes (Johan coming first refers to St. John. Johannes is the name John, and normally is the second first name.)

With enough information, this system could even offer clues to names of ancestors not yet uncovered.