Something new for history

Posted on March 21, 2011 | 2 comments

Since I began writing this thesis project on my German-American ancestry, new resources continue to arrive on the scene. I’ve already mentioned The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson, published in July of 2010. (To view my post about “The Third Renaissance,” click here.)

Another choice morsels. In March of 2010, the German-American Heritage Foundation opened a new History Museum at Hockemeyer Hall, 719 Sixth Street, NW, Washington, DC. I have not had a chance to visit it, but the exhibits about German Immigration, German Music, Germany Poetry and Prose, and German Families and Clubs are all relevant to my research. Wish I could go there tomorrow …

Compliments of Ohiogravestone.org

And, I found a photo online of Michael Harm’s gravestone in Cleveland’s Woodland Cemetery, published via Ohiogravestones.org.

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Posted in Genealogy tips

I swear

Posted on March 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to learn how to swear in German. Seriously. Yesterday I was stuck because I couldn’t remember where I had read a list of 19th century ethnic slurs against Germans (was it in Dickens’s American Notes? Still at a loss …), so I turned to Google. Some clicking led me to An Encyclopedia of Swearing: the social history of oaths, profanity, foul language, and ethnic slurs in the English-speaking world.

I tried to place a hold at the library, but it was a reference copy, so I hightailed it over there. It wasn’t on the shelf.

“Someone must have stolen it,” the librarian concluded. She’s calling around to other libraries to get me a copy. Meanwhile, I browsed about a yards-worth of reference books on slang and bawdy words, and if I didn’t have this deadline over my head, I could have spent many surreptitious hours.

As it was, I enjoyed a delicious moment with a book called Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present (Rawson).

I cannot resist sharing Rawson’s note found under the discussion of the word Twat (female pudendum). “The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in ‘Pippa Passes’ (1841) without knowing its true meaning: ‘The owls and bats, / Cowls and twats, / Monks and nuns, / In a cloister’s moods.” Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant ‘hat’ by its appearance in ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ a poem of 1660 containing the treacherous lines: ‘They talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat, / They’d send him as soon an old Nuns Twat.” (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.)”

Thank you, Rawson!

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Cleveland and the Isle of Man

Posted on March 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Fun facts to know and tell.” From time to time, to get a feel for the residents of the City of Cleveland in 1850 and 1860, I have been paging through the U.S. Federal Censuses for those years. Predictably, there are plenty of people from the eastern states, from Germany and Ireland. But another place of origin that pops up frequently is “Isle of Man.”

I decided to investigate, and I didn’t have to look far. At the Genealogy Pages of Isle of Man I found a 100-year anniversary report that states the following: “at this time (1926) Cleveland is quoted as having the largest number of Manx people, and those descended from the Manx, of any place in the United States.”

A “Mona’s Relief Society” was even set up to help immigrants get on their feet once they arrived in town. The write-up on the Genealogy Pages indicates the first arrivals bought farmland in Warrensville. But the census indicates plenty of Isle of Man immigrants also resided in the city.

For various documents and information about the Ohio Manx population, click here.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

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The Robbers

Posted on March 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

by Theodor Hildebrandt in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin

At last, I’ve read Schiller’s “Die Räuber” – “The Robbers” – (1780). I wonder if Theodor Hildebrandt was thinking of Schiller’s play when he painted this painting, “The Robber,” in 1829.)

“Die Räuber” was Friedrich Schiller’s first tragedy (and how!), performed in Mannheim in the late 18th century. When “Die Räuber” was first performed “the effect was said to have been so great that members of the audience embraced one another out of happiness, emotion, enthusiasm, incapable of resisting their rapture.” (Jacob Mueller, in Memories of a Forty-Eighter, p. 40)

Mueller claims “Die Räuber” was the first serious theater performed by German Americans in Cleveland, Ohio. The performance took place in 1852. Mueller states (somewhat superciliously):

“The American artistic taste of that day had not advanced much beyond minstrels and bare-back riding … In the social and political arena, in the courts and even on the pulpit, one could see splendid examples of dramatic and comic art, in all the simplicity of the manners then. It might have been the fear of competition which led many to see professional theater as something sinful which should not be allowed to establish itself.
“It hardly needs to be mentioned that there is no German tradition hostile to the theater, but if such had existed, it would have been silenced by a work as popular as “Die Räuber,” since young and old knew the play, or at least some of its interesting characters. … Those amateurs who were to play the roles of the robbers, including the Capuchin and pastor Moser, were like all disciples of drama in suffering both shortage of money and a chronic excess of thirst. This cost [the director] Stieger all the more because thirst raised its head at every rehearsal, demanding to be drowned by spirited means. When thirst was ignored during rehearsals, to save money, it was no good. Even by the second act the tongues of the actors seemed to stick to their gums …”

I had read this review before reading the play, so as I toured the theater exhibit at the Heimatsmuseum in Bad Dürkheim, I asked the curator about “Die Räuber.”

“It’s a difficult play,” I said, “for an amateur company to put on, isn’t it?”

Dr. Preuss smiled. “It was very often performed, but many theater companies felt Schiller’s original was too long, so they staged an … abbreviated version.”

In this politically subversive oeuvre, one brother betrays another, and the betrayed leads a gang of robbers to attack lords of manors who are robbing their subjects. As the book jacket of my Penguin Classic sums it up, “The Robbers” is “concerned with freedom: with man’s attempt to spread his wings and fly, to be the arbiter of his own destiny, even to change the world in accordance with his own designs.”

One of my favorite lines from the play, spoken by Moor: “The law has cramped the flight of eagles to a snail’s pace. The law never yet made a great man, but freedom will breed a giant, a colossus.”

How did the Clevelanders end their play? By singing a chorus of a song of the robbers: “Ein Freies Leben Führen wir” (We Lead a Life of Liberty) – a rousing rendition in which the audience joined in.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, Freinsheim and Palatinate history, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

If your ancestors landed in New York

Posted on February 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

I am taking a Genealogy class through South Seattle Community College. Friday mornings, Sarah Thorson Little leads us through the growing on-line databases of documentation that might lead us to learn more about our ancestors. In a recent exercise, she was showing us what she had learned about a class member’s ancestors, how the wife and son had arrived ahead of the husband, and taken up residence on Baxter Street in New York City.

The mention of Baxter Street instantly brought to mind the infamous Five Points. I had just been reading Tyler Anbinder’s book, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. An eye-popping, thorough resource for anyone studying the era.

In ye olde Manhattan, the Five Points neighborhood was once Collect Pond, but by the mid-nineteenth century, the pond had been filled in and the tenements rose as high as seven stories. It featured boarding houses in basements consisting of human beings lying side by side on stacked shelves, rampant alcoholism and prostitution, street filth and overused outhouses that stunk to high heaven. Oddly, it was also a tourist stop for the wealthy and famous. Police men led well-to-do citizens in groups among the tattered, alcoholic, and downtrodden. And the Five Points was the home of riots: in the 1830s, when African Americans suffered at the hands of an angry mob, and in 1857, when Irish gangs fought in the streets.

Anbinder’s book provides maps that show the concentrations of racial and ethnic groups in the Five Points District. Here’s the breakdown, lifted from Anbinder’s map:
Mulberry Street – Irish
Baxter Street north of Park Street – predominantly Irish
Baxter street south of Park – Jewish
Baxter Street on the west side, closest to the Mission/Worth Triangle – African American
Mission Place (aka “Cow Bay”) – African American
Park Street, north side between Mott and Baxter – African American
Centre Street, east side between Leonard and Worth – Jewish and Christian Germans
Mott Street, west side – Irish
Mott Street, east side – Jewish and Christian Germans
Elizabeth Street – Christian Germans

The Five Points were in NYC’s 6th and 4th Wards. Just to the north and east, in Wards 10, 11, 13 and 17, was an area known as Kleindeutschland (little Germany). To the outsiders, the English-speaking yankees, it was known as “Dutchtown” (dutch being a bastardization of “deutsch.”) According to a 1981 thesis by Stanley Nadel, “German New York was the first of the great urban foreign language speaking communities in the United States, growing from thirty-three thousand people in 1845 to over three hundred-fifty thousand in 1880.” Further, “Between 1855 and 1880, Vienna and Berlin were the only cities with a larger German population than New York.”

So if your ancestors landed in New York, chances are their first impression of America was via the Five Points or Kleindeutschland.

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Posted in 19th century history, Genealogy tips, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel

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Jailhouse blues

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 2 comments

I was browsing Cleveland’s 1850 Federal Census Record on Ancestry.com, and figured out the jailhouse business in those days was a Root family enterprise:

Elies Root, 64, male, born in Massachusetts (jailor)
Nancy Root, 58, female, born in Ohio
E.S. Root, 32, born in NY, Sheriff, Real Estate value $6,000, born in NY
Ralph R. Root, 26, male, Merchant, NY
Charles Root, 19, Clerk, NY
Bridget Lowe, 24, Ireland
John Smith, Deputy Sheriff, Ireland

Cuyahoga County Jail residents:
Mary Munson
Jacob Herrince, farmer, murder? money counterfeiting? illegible …
Horace Fleming, farmer, g. larceny
James Brown, farmer, g. larceny
John Appel, farmer, p. larceny
Alex Maddock, tailor (sailor?), stabbing
Philip Lehr, g. larceny
Wm Donnelly, arson
Patrick Flynn, p. larceny
Orrin Cobb, boatman, p. larceny


Amos Rike, farmer, larceny
Thomas Burns, saddler, assault and battery
Conrad Phalin, butcher, horse stealing
George King, farmer, larceny
John Lynch, farmer, larceny
James Knapp, farmer, horse stealing

Places of birth for all convicts? “Unknown.” I’ll bet these folks had no idea how long their crimes would stick with them.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history

Take every opportunity

Posted on February 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve been living and breathing this thesis 24/7, but yesterday I found myself in the UW Law Library waiting for Dave to do some research. The Gallagher Library is brand new, not smacking of history at all in its hi-tech computer stations and movable stacks.

On the way to the drinking fountain, I pass some ancient books, the leather bindings crumbling, and it occurs to me: I’m sitting on a history gold mine. What better way to learn how things were in a different century than to explore what their arguments were?

“Do you have any books of published cases that occurred in Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century?”

My question staggers the front desk guy (the ask-for-help desk doesn’t open for fifteen minutes) but we quickly find the Western Law Journal. Western? Well, yeah, in the mid-nineteenth century Ohio was west, the Great West, the Western Reserve.

Right away I get all kinds of good stuff. For example, from a self-defense murder plea in Cincinnati in 1843:
“The English doctrine, that a party assailed must flee as he can, before resisting, is not the law in this country.”

It seems two guys wanted the same turkey at a market stall. The 45-year-old drunk McCann got incensed when the vendor said the 20-year-old bar-keep Noble had first dibs on the turkey (McCann had seen it first, then left it to look at other stalls). McCann threw the turkey in the dirt, and then threw Noble in the gutter and pounded and kicked on him until Noble cried “Enough!” several times. McCann finally desisted, but as he was leaving, Noble picked up himself, and a rock, from the gutter, which rock Noble threw at the retreating McCann. McCann was hit in the head, his skull was fractured, and he was dead within minutes.

The cases read like stories, with authentic dialogue and turns of phrase. So if you’re writing historical fiction, don’t forget the law library.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history

I think I found them

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 2 comments

It is not easy, sometimes, to find the paper trail of our ancestors.

Case in point — John Rapparlie and his brood appear on the 1850s Federal Census in neat, legible handwriting. But his brother-in-law Jakob Handrich? His wife’s parents, Heinrich and Catherine Handrich? They’re just not there. But we have letters that state that they were there, in fact, living in Cleveland nearby the Rapparlies, at “House Place”.

After innumerable searches under every misspelling of Handrich I could think of, I resorted to a time-consuming exercise, leafing through the U.S. Federal Census page by page, starting with Ward 1 of Cleveland. I think I found them.

Maybe it’s not so legible, but here’s what we’ve got — check out the entry 757/840, where it says Philip Henry, 68 years old of Germany. Beneath his name is Catherine Henry, 68, and beneath them, Ja”. Henry, 25, Male, Furnace man(?).

Here’s what I think. None of them could speak English — so the census taker wrote down Henry for Handrich, because that’s what it sounded like to him. Heinrich Handrich’s name was Philipp Heinrich Handrich, so it makes sense to me that if the Americans were calling him Henry Henry, he’d be inclined to switch to Philip. Wouldn’t you? And Jakob was working at a factory where they built steam engines for ships, so it fits that he’d be a “furnace man.”

According to the letters, my great-great-great Uncle Jakob lived with the “old people” and “spoiled them” until they died, around 1854 or 1855, then lit out for California to try his luck in the Gold Rush. What a guy.

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Posted in 19th century history, Genealogy tips

Thanksgiving cockfights

Posted on February 6, 2011 | 1 comment

I’m writing about the year 1857, in the month of November, and I suddenly wonder — was Thanksgiving celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month?

A brief sojourn brought me to Infoplease, how Thanksgiving all began in 1621 in the Plymouth Colony. George Washington made it a state holiday in 1789, but each State set their own date for the Home Festival.

I browsed Cleveland 19th century newspapers, and discovered pre-Civil War journalists could scare up quite the cockfight, even over something as innocuous as Thanksgiving.
November 7, 1856, Issue 236, Col. B of The Daily Cleveland Herald (Cleveland, OH)
“Southern View of Thanksgiving in the Northern States”
“The Baltimore Sun, alluding to the fact that Thursday, November 20th, has been fixed upon by most of the Governors of the Northern States for the annual Thanksgiving, asks– “Where are the Governors of the States south of Maryland?” The inquiry provoked the following rather snappish reply from the Carolina Times:
“We are impressed that the Governors of the States south of Maryland are all at home and competent to decide for themselves when it will be proper to fix upon a day to offer up thanks to the Almighty for past blessings. The movement on the part of Northern Executives is no criterion for Southern men. We are subject to law, common and divine, and need

‘No bleeding bird nor bleeding beast,
Nor hysop branch, nor sprinkling priest,
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea,
To wash a dismal stain away.’

“It is meet and proper that the miserable sin-stricken, polluted, and ungodly population of the North should beg pardon for their black sins recorded, committed against God, their country and fellow-men. As a generation of vipers they ought to be warned to flee the wrath to come; yet we believe that the waters of Jordan, Abana, and Pharper, would fail to wash them and heal their leprosy, even though they were to dip seventy times seven. They have much to be forgiven for, and we would advise them to pray often–pray long and pray loud. Baltimore, especially, ought to be covered with sackcloth and ashes.”
Yikes!
-In 1857, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire and Maryland all celebrated the “Home Festival of Thanksgiving” on the 26th of November. Maine celebrated it on the 19th of November (and I’m not sure what the southern States did).
– In 1863 in a Thanksgiving Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln named the fourth Thursday of November as the official national day.
Perhaps the writers of the Carolina Times had more to say on the subject, but I’ve got to stop researching trivia and get back to writing …

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history

The third renaissance

Posted on February 1, 2011 | 1 comment

When I started writing my thesis, I had no idea how many “heavyweights” lived in the early nineteenth century.

When I first looked for thinkers, writers, artists, and musicians of the times, Goethe and Schiller emerged from the get-go. But the big names just kept piling up.

The Cleveland German Cultural Garden honors only a few of these 19th century German VIPs: Father Jahn, Humboldt (Alexander, and there was also his brother, Prussian education system brainiac Wilhelm), Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Lessing, Beethoven, Bach … “Oh wow!” I thought, standing there among the statues.

Before long, I had also added Mendelssohn, Schubert, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Nietzsche to the list. (“How do you keep it from becoming … ponderous?” a friend asked. Ha! My concern is whether great-great-grandfather, rural farm boy turned Cleveland blacksmith, even knew these scholars and artists shared space with him on the planet.)

I can’t help but explore this stuff, like a pilot flying over the Nazca Lines and trying to make out vague shapes in the desert tundra.

What a treat it was to come across Peter Watson’s book The German Genius. Published in 2010, the early chapters are a compendium of the kind of thing that keeps drawing me to the nineteenth century mindset. The stuff about Pietism in particular was a real forehead smacker.

The idea of doubt, that humans are self-directed, not God directed, emerged as a movement in the late 18th century. The “Third Renaissance, between Doubt and Darwin,” Watson claims, occurred around the years 1697 (Essay Concerning Human Understanding – Locke) and 1859 (Origin of Species – Darwin), when all of the above Germans, and many more, greatly influenced the progress of civilization.

“Oh wow!” I’m thinking (again). Watson examines scientific and social discoveries, advances in education and exploration, the Prussian-dominated world and “separatist” position of Germany in Europe in those years, yet it feels to me like he left something out. Nowhere (so far) have I come across mention of the great “Auswanderung,” the emigration of millions upon millions of Germans from the fatherland in the nineteenth century. A disconnect that has me wondering …

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Posted in 19th century history, Freinsheim and Palatinate history