Category Archives: 19th century history

I said such things !
O horrible, to be in chains !
That is true !
(–excerpted from George Eliot’s The Spanish Gypsy)
In studying nineteenth century literature, I continually encounter the exclamation mark! Authors from that era use it as if it’s never been used before! Which made me wonder about the history of the exclamation mark! (Enough, I’m already exhausted.)

The exclamation point seemed like an afterthought as late as the mid-twentieth century. I remember my mother teaching me to type on her old Royal typewriter when I was a child. To make an exclamation mark, we would first type a period . , then backspace and type an apostrophe ‘ in the same spot — a tedious process.

It turns out, the exclamation mark came into existence in England in the 15th century, under a different name. It was called the “note of admiration.” In Germany, it made its appearance with the 1797 printing of the Luther Bible. (I’m getting all of this from Wikipedia.)

In the German language, the use of the punctuation is special. It not only makes a sentence “exclaim” (My goodness, you use a lot of exclamation marks!), it also is used for salutations (Dear Sister-in-law !), for warnings (No Trespassing!), and at the end of a sentence when giving a command (Stop here!).

And just as I suspected, it made its advent into common use at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so writers used it then with reckless abandon. Astonishing!

There are some great novels out there, historical fiction about immigrants — I’ll add to this list as I go along. Here are just a few I’ve come across:

Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx

Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore

Away by Amy Bloom

Can you recommend others?

Another research read: The Last of the Mohicans.

Why? First, let me say Mark Twain’s derision and mockery of James Fenimore Cooper’s writing style has some merit. (See Twain’s The American Claimant.) Cooper does a terrible job with women, not to mention secondary characters in general, who drop out and reappear at the author’s convenience. Nevertheless, the book Pfälzer in Amerika notes that Cooper’s Hawk-eye was modeled after Johann Adam Hartmann, an immigrant from the Palatinate (same area as my greatgreatgrandfather) who fought on the colonists’ side in the Mohawk Valley Indian uprising of 1777. “[Hartmann’s] sure aim and his vigilance saved the lives of many of his fellow countrymen. With poetic licence James Fenimore Cooper, Hartmann’s neighbour, incorporated much of the life story of this Indian fighter in his The Last of the Mohicans.” (p.60)

Mohicans was a quick read, and impressed me again how 80 years later, in 1857, when my greatgreatgrandfather arrived in Ohio, that style of life was already ancient history.

I have to return What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 – 1848 (Daniel Walker Howe) to the library–I’ve renewed it twice.

It’s a great book. Here are some revelations I’ve stumbled across:

• The Star-Spangled Banner didn’t become our national anthem until 1931. Until then, our anthem was “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” However, it seems Americans were dissatisfied with a national anthem set to the same tune as England’s national anthem, “God Save Our King.”
• In the 1840’s, there was a woman named Dorothea Dix who traveled all over the colonized U.S. advocating for state-provided services for the mentally ill. In 1854, after years of Dix’s lobbying, Congress put through a bill to fund insane asylums–via 10,000,000 acres of preserved public lands. Why have you never heard of these lands and this bill? The power of veto, by Franklin Pierce.
• In the nineteenth century, with no international copyright laws in existence, U.S. publishers reprinted free (pirated) the works of British authors, like Dickens, Scott, and the Bronte Sisters. Howe remarks: “Ironically, the United States today strongly protects intellectual property and insists that other countries observe international copyright rules.” p. 635
• Lastly, it seems in the early nineteenth century women writers began to enjoy a season of commercial success. Nathaniel Hawthorne, disgruntled by the competition, referred to them as “a damned mob of scribbling women.” (p. 633)

Now I’m getting somewhere. Today at NARA, I found the name Michel Harm listed on a passenger list from the good ship Helvetia, captained by Lewis Higgins. The ship arrived in New York on June 30, 1857 from Havre, France. There were 327 passengers, one of whom, #262, is listed as Michel Harm, age 16, of Bavaria. The ship is described as having 971 burthen and weighing 67 / 95 tons. Michael is one of the many Germans, Swiss, Belgians, French and Sardinian emigrants residing “between decks” for the voyage. (The ship had predominantly German passengers, from Wurttemberg, Baden, Bavaria, Hessia, and Prussia.)

This information corroborates with Michael Harm’s obituary, which reads in part:

Born on May 26, 1841 in Freinsheim in the Rhine-Palatinate … Michael Harm’s maternal grandparents, the couple Philipp Heinrich Handrich, had already come to Cleveland in the year of 1840 and had settled there. … At scarcely sixteen, the boy started the journey. After a short rest in the port city [New York] Harm continued to Cleveland and started an apprenticeship with his Uncle John Rapparly who was established as a wagon building and blacksmith on the corner of Michigan and Seneca streets.

It also corroborates with my father’s account Michael’s voyage across the Atlantic took 46 days.

So now I’ve gone looking for the good ship Helvetia, and what I’ve turned up is a description of a ship built in 1864. Hmm. The date is off. I must keep digging.