Category Archives: Cleveland and Ohio history

Is 2012 the end of the line?

Posted on January 2, 2012 | 1 comment

2012 is here, and with it a host of dire prognostications about the end times, most recently in this Los Angeles Times article: Will the year 2012 be a game-changer?

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.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, General

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Illnesses of old

Posted on November 29, 2011 | 1 comment

Medical science has come a long way. So long in fact, that over the past 100 years formerly common medical terms for illnesses are no longer familiar to us.

Infant deaths, in particular, plagued 19th century Clevelanders. In an 1875 letter, excerpted below, my cousin Angela and I discovered the following:

This passage is about the infant death of Herman Harm, the fourth child of Michael and Elisabeth Harm, in August of 1874: “He was so healthy and happy, so well behaved. We rarely felt that we had a child. He woke up with laughing mouth and that’s also how he went to sleep. Until he went to the eternal rest after three days of being sick. He died of the childhood sickness Summer Complaint. His baptized name was Herman.” In that same time period, the letter goes on, a 2 year old girl of Uncle Jakob also died.

Summer Complaint? In the German, Michael uses the term der ruhr Krankheit (Sommer Complain). The modern term for it is “dysentery.” The term “Summer Complaint” came from the increase in frequency of dysentery in the summer due to poorer water quality in the warm months of the year.

A friend Bill Sherertz recently pointed me to a helpful site for sleuthing out antiquated medical terminology, which might appear on death certificates, in letters, or any number of genealogy documents. Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms. Best of all, in addition to the English, there is an index for German and French medical terms.

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

Thanksgiving Home Festival

Posted on November 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

As I wrote scenes set in Cleveland in 1857, I imagined my characters on the last weekend of November gathering to celebrate the Thanksgiving Home Festival. A quick bit of research informed me this holiday has been a time-honored American tradition since October 3, 1789, when George Washington proclaimed: “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Already, I felt led astray. Didn’t Thanksgiving begin in 1621, in the Plymouth Colony? Images flashed through my head — tall black Pilgrim hats, white collars, buckled shoes, Native Americans toting in a freshly killed deer for many days of community feasting.

My daydream came to a crashing halt as I pictured this Thanksgiving theme in the mid-19th century. In 1857, the Senecas and Wyandots had just been forcibly cleared out of the State of Ohio five years prior, in 1852. Among Ohioans of that day, would the Pilgrim Thanksgiving as we know it really be celebrated? Surely not.

On a search for the true story, I looked for 19th century newspaper articles about Thanksgiving. In the mid-nineteenth century, it seems, the Thanksgiving “Home Festival” was touted as a day of prayer and praise. Not one word about Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting at table. The States had still not agreed on the day.*

And so I asked myself: Is the First Pilgrim Thanksgiving a hoax? If so, it continues to be perpetuated. A quick glance at current classroom curriculum shows the First Pilgrim Thanksgiving still going strong in children’s classrooms.

What do the Native Americans say? At this web site, The Real Thanksgiving, Dr. Daniel N. Paul gives a First Nations account of the gathering. According to this version, the natives were seen by the Pilgrims as uninvited guests. Especially poignant is the apology by Clarence Standish IV that comes at the beginning of this history.

In addition to his status as a descendant of the original Myles Standish, Clarence Standish’s words (at The Real Thanksgiving) hold extra weight because, it would seem, the source of our fantasy Pilgrim Thanksgiving is found in the novel Standish of Standish (1889) by Jane G. Austin, a run-away bestseller in its day. The book Thanksgiving: the biography of an American holiday by James W. Baker states Standish of Standish went through twenty-eight reprintings between 1889 and 1912, thereby cementing this version in the American imagination. Baker notes:

In Standish of Standish, Austin presents a fictionalized, sentimental account of the “First Thanksgiving” centered on an “outdoor” feast … In the Nov. 1897 issue of Ladies Home Journal, Clifford Howard drew heavily on Austin’s fictional account.

Before the Civil War, Thanksgiving was not even considered a harvest festival, so much as a winter one. Again, I quote from James W. Baker’s Thanksgiving:

The old New England holiday … had also been the Puritan stand-in for Christmas (a holiday they rejected as noncanonical and pagan), an early winter time for feasting and pious hope before the long dreary months of cold and privation to follow.

Is there a bright side in any of this? I vote for education. At the National Museum of the American Indian web site, under education, curriculum is offered for, among other things “American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving.”

*See my earlier post on Thanksgiving here. In that post, I referred to Thanksgiving as an “innocuous” holiday. I was wrong.

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

German Singing Festivals

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 2 comments

This cover of the 27th Sängerfest German Singing Festival, held in 1893 in Cleveland, Ohio, is courtesy of The Western Reserve Historical Society Library. (Double-click on it to enlarge) The program alone is 101 pages. Seventy different songs were presented in afternoon and evening concerts, ranging from Schubert’s “The Wanderer” to Mendelssohn’s “Walpurgis-Night.”

Included in the program is a history of the North American Sängerbund, which began in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1849. At the first singing festival, five societies came together from nearby towns, for a total of 118 singers. By 1860, there were 25 societies and 450 singers. In 1868, after a hiatus during the Civil War, there were 58 societies and 1200 singers. For a complete history of the society, still in existence today, visit their web site at Nord-Amerikanischer Sängerbund.

About a month ago, a friend told me about a German music program put on by the Sacramento German Genealogical Society (SGGS): Liedermatinée: an Afternoon of Favorite German Songs with Michael Mayer-Kielmann. Their program offered songs by Brahms and Haydn and the 20th century Heino, as well as classic folk songs like Silcher’s Lorelei. I have since learned the SGGS is a very active organization, with over 900 members and an award-winning journal, Der Blumenbaum.

How I would have loved to hear the SGGS program, and the 1893 Cleveland concerts, too. In the German song tradition, musicians such as Schubert and Silcher and countless others set poetry (of Goethe, Heine, Schiller and so on) to music. Popular music is always a favorite, as evidenced in this quote from the 1893 Sängerfest program: “Of all numbers on the programme the “Volkslieder” (Folks’ Songs) invariably please the most. In the first place, the singers prefer them, (because they require less study), secondly, because the sound effects of a grand chorus in sustained, not polyphonic works, are brought out better, and thirdly, the audience recognizes dear old friends in them, and as it requires no exertion to follow the music, the enjoyment is the greater.”

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

Phaeton — a gentleman’s buggy, and ancient myth

Posted on August 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here is a photo of my great-great-grandfather’s Harm & Schuster Carriage Works on Champlain St. in Cleveland, Ohio. (Champlain Street was located downtown where the Terminal Tower now stands.) Lined up in front of the shop are signature carriages of the day, of the Phaeton class. Phaetons came in a variety of sizes and suspension systems, designed for pleasure riding and competitive racing. Had you lived in Cleveland in the 1870’s, you might have seen gentlemen the likes of John D. Rockefeller Sr. (of Standard Oil) or Jeptha Wade (of Western Union Telegraph) riding down Euclid Avenue in one of these contraptions.

Here is a fashion plate of the Diamond Phaeton, found in the Coach-Makers’ International Journal (circa 1867), courtesy of the Archives/Library of the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus.

Below is an interpretive sign photographed at the Northwest Carriage Museum in Raymond, Washington, where there is a Spider Phaeton on display.

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

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Old-time drinking and thinking

Posted on August 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

I am descended of “keepers,” people who held on to belongings long beyond their usefulness. Or so I used to think.

As I’ve spent the last couple of years researching my great-great grandfather, I’ve made discoveries of some of his belongings. In fact, these days I possess a small “Michael Harm museum”: mid-nineteenth letters and photographs, a gold heart necklace he purchased for my grandmother, and this beer stein, which I recently picked up from my brother’s house. (Thanks, Craig.) How do I know the latter once belonged to Michael Harm? Because of this bit of paper tucked inside.

For my German side of the family, Michael Harm was our “point of entry” to America. Perhaps this is why there appears to have been a cult of reverence around the man. When I was child, my grandmother and my father were still telling stories about Michael Harm’s Atlantic voyage and Cleveland carriageworks, more than one hundred years after he made the journey, and sixty years after the Harm & Schuster Wagons and Carriages had closed its doors for good. His daughter Lucy drew this painstakingly detailed portrait of him (left), poster-sized and framed, based on this photograph, an honor not bestowed on any other member of the family.

Michael Harm may have been attached to his beer stein, but he hailed from the Palatinate, the southern Rhineland region. Wine country, that is. When my relatives visited from that region of Germany last spring, they brought me this gift, a replica of an old “Freinsheimer Krug,” or wine-drinking jug.

An old object for the shelf, no longer of use? Think again. Before disposable plates and cups, how did we manage? Apparently, people used to carry around their own crockery. Some cultures still do this today. In the 1990s, I had the privilege of being a guest at a Makah Native American Potlatch at Neah Bay. In addition to the generous custom of gift-giving, the respect for tribal elders, and the moving dances and songs, what struck me about the gathering was how all the Makah families brought baskets containing their own tableware–plates, cups, silverware. When the potlatch was over, they packed up their dishes to bring home and wash. It seemed a laudable, sustainable way of living, a way to keep trashbarrels (and landfills) from brimming over with paper plates and cups and plastic eating utensils.

At the time, I wondered why my own culture did not do this. Now I realize, in the not-so-distant past, it was how things were done. It may be an old-time way of thinking but it’s good enough for me.

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, Freinsheim and Palatinate history, General

I don’t believe it

Posted on July 22, 2011 | 2 comments

“While I’m in Cleveland, I want to drive up Woodland Avenue to see if the Harm & Schuster Carriageworks is still there,” I said to my brother last week on a visit to our hometown.

“No way,” Craig said. “I don’t believe it. It can’t still be there.”

But you never can tell about Cleveland. All those battered, coal-smoked buildings, overlooked by modern-day standards, trace back to a vibrant era of history. When my great-great-grandfather’s carriageworks moved from Champlain Street around 1880, Harm & Schuster was relocated to 811 & 813 Woodland Avenue. The address today would be 50th & Woodland. Since the street names have long since been converted to numbers, I used an 1887 Sanborn Fire Insurance map to determine that 50th was once Beech Street. In addition, I compared satellite images to the Sanborn maps.

And so, hoping against hope, I dragged my family to where I believe Harm & Schuster Carriages and Wagon Manufacturers once stood, and lookee here. Designed by Theo. Rosenberg, architect, historic records indicate the manufactory was one of the most fire-safe buildings of its time. This furniture store stands at the exact same location, and, quite possibly, is the exact same building.

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Posted in Cleveland and Ohio history, The Last of the Blacksmiths: A Novel, Travels in Cleveland, Ohio

Paved over pasts

Posted on July 13, 2011 | 5 comments

“Are you looking at Cleveland with different eyes?” asked Michele via email. “Are you seeing the history hiding behind the modern?”

My writing friend has hit on the refrain of the writer of historical fiction. We can go looking for the past, but it might just be paved over.

Around 1844, Johann Rapparlie founded Rapparlie Smith and Wagons in downtown Cleveland, Ohio at the corner of Michigan and Seneca Streets. He situated his business just a block away from an elbow of the crooked Cuyahoga River and the mouth of the Ohio Canal. Today, the Canal is long since filled in, and the area consists of parking lots for Tower City. I took this photo this morning from the end of W. 3rd Street in downtown Cleveland. (In 1900, the Cleveland maps were changed from the street names to road numbers. Hence, Seneca St. is now W. 3rd.)

My great-great-grandfather Michael Harm apprenticed as a blacksmith in Rapparlie Smith and Wagons. In 1865 he founded a carriageworks of his own on Champlain Street. It took me a while to find where it used to be, since Champlain Street no longer exists. In studying old maps of Cleveland at the Public Library, I found it was where the Terminal Tower now stands. As I roamed the streets of Cleveland this morning, I felt that much prouder of my thesis, as if I’ve performed a resurrection of a long-buried past.

I was pleased to see an effort is underway to preserve an 1850s relic. This building, near the Terminal Tower, was apparently around when Michael Harm first came to Cleveland, and is in the process of being renovated. Hurray!

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Posted in Cleveland and Ohio history, General

On the road

Posted on July 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

My thesis is done, sent to the binder for the hallowed MFA shelf. Even so, as I’m in Ohio for a family trip, I could not resist spending two days at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

The building (doesn’t it look like it’s floating?) includes a museum on the lower level, the Ohio Preservation Office, and a wonderful library and archive. In the library, on the Cuyahoga County shelves, I found a carefully typed list of marriages between 1840-1855, which included marriages of three of my ancestors. (Scheuermann was misspelled Schnuruman, and Handrich was Hendrick, but I am sure it was them.)

In the museum portion, I enjoyed a replica of a 19th century carriage shop, and several examples of horse-drawn carriages.

Truth be told, I found a few minor glitches in my now-bound and printed thesis (male turkeys only gobble in the spring, not the fall), but I’m not losing sleep over it. A place to visit via the Internet is this Ohio History web site.

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Posted in Cleveland and Ohio history, General

We now pause for Cleveland German immigrant data interpretation

Posted on June 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

I have been listing the immigrants to Cleveland, Ohio, who lived long enough, or stuck around Cleveland long enough, to be listed in an anniversary edition of the Cleveland German newspaper “Wächter und Anzeiger.” The list goes through the start of the 1860s, and I will continue to type up the remaining years in future posts. In the meantime, there are several things I’ve figured out in my research that I want to share.

First, the immigrants listed in these posts are part of what is considered the “first wave” of immigration. (The “second wave” of over a million German immigrants in the U.S. occurred from 1865-1879, the “third wave” nearer the turn of the century, and so on.) In 1848, the immigrants to Cleveland listed total nine names. In 1849, they number twenty, over twice as many. It could be argued this is an example of chain migration, where first one family member arrives, and others follow, but only Müller of Alsenz seems to fit in this category. Other influential factors:
–In 1848, the California Gold Rush began. Perhaps some of these immigrants are part of this rising tide (by 1854, four times as many German immigrants to Cleveland are listed as in 1848).
–In 1848, starting in France in March, democratic revolutions swept across Europe, and many in the German-speaking areas (and Hungary, Austria, France, etc.) were forced to flee.
–By the early 1850s, transatlantic steamship crossings were more common, shortening the westward journey to around two weeks. However, in reality, most immigrants still traveled on sailing ships called “packets,” a crossing lasting around 40-50 days.
–Manufacturing: due to the steam engine, factories were driving many out of age-old trades like shoemaking and blacksmithing
–Farming: there had been almost a decade of lean years of bad harvests and crop failure (potato rot).
–Religious persecution: the faith of the prince of a duchy dictated the religion of its citizens. The U.S.’s constitution, declaring freedom of religion, was irresistible, to Catholics in some regions, Protestants in others, and across the board, to Jews.
–In most of these German-speaking regions, a man was not permitted to marry if he did not have property, a living, or craft guild membership.
–In the south and west, rising population increased economic pressure.
–Shipping companies bringing tobacco and sugar and other goods from the Americas conducted marketing campaigns to fill their cargo holds with paying European passengers for the return voyage.
–In Europe, the citizens paid taxes to the princes, dukes and kings. In the U.S., there were no taxes.

Second, note that these immigrants listed are mainly from a certain area of the German-speaking regions. This data follows national trends. In Stanley Nadel’s Ph.D. thesis on New York City’s Kleindeutschland, he notes: “Despite the slight lull during the revolutionary years of 1848-1850, the rising wave of emigration after 1843 carried nearly one-and-a-half million Germans to the United States before it broke over the rocks of depression and civil war in America. … The U.S. Census report for 1850 gives us a good idea of the origins of this wave of immigrants. Two-thirds of the German born residents of the United States were from the states of south and west Germany. Another 15% can be assigned to the Prussian Rhineland, making for a majority of over 80%.” (p. 35)

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Posted in 19th century history, Cleveland and Ohio history, Freinsheim and Palatinate history, Genealogy tips