So my working title is “Wrought Iron.” I’m told it might be best if I come up with another one. Maybe so, maybe so.
I’m currently reading the book What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States) by Daniel Walker Howe. Here’s an applicable quote (p. 530):
In Europe, people had fled to the cities for generations; the German aphorism Stadtluft macht frei (“city air makes one free”) referred to more than freedom from feudal dues. Young American and their immigrant counterparts voted with their feet against staying on their fathers’ farms. … Together, urban places and the western areas opened up to markets by waterways received adventuresome souls fleeing the backbreaking toil, the patriarchal authority, and the stultifying isolation of semi-subsistence farming.
“Markets by waterways” — one such key location was Lake Erie at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, aka Cleveland, Ohio. I’m amazed how perfectly my greatgreatgrandfather fits this description of adventuresome souls fleeing backbreaking toil. Howe’s book even has a black-and-white plate of a blacksmith of the time period wearing a rawhide apron. From farmer to blacksmith — hmm not exactly an escape from backbreaking toil — perhaps the city air didn’t quite live up to that old German aphorism?