Desperation and Devastation in 1811

Desperation opened the year in 1811 America, and devastation closed it.

On a bleak and stormy Louisiana night in 1811, a throng of angry slaves carried out their perfectly planned rebellion against the men who had cruelly subjected them to unmerited torture and servitude. The blood bath began in the upstairs bedroom of the plantation owned by Manuel and Gilbert Andry, the slaves' unsuspecting planter masters. America’s largest slave revolt is detailed in the book, American Uprising, by Daniel Rasmussen.

Perhaps, an even more memorable event closed out the year 1811 along the New Madrid fault line. It too, took place long after people had retired for the night. A little after two o’clock in the morning on December 16, peopled awakened to an earthquake so severe that citizens in Norfolk, Virginia, felt it. Two strong shocks followed on January 23, 1812 and February 7. According to the web site http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1811_overview.php the February 7 quake was the strongest of the three. "Intermittent strong shaking continued through March 1812 and aftershocks strong enough to be felt continued through the year 1817."

“In the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys the earthquakes did much more than merely awaken sleepers. The scene was one of devastation in an area, which is now the southeast part of Missouri, the northeast part of Arkansas, the southwest part of Kentucky, and the northwest part of Tennessee. Reelfoot Lake, in the northwest corner of Tennessee, stands today as evidence of the might of these great earthquakes.”

Did you know that the New Madrid fault line is six times the size of the San Andreas fault line in California? The New Madrid fault covers parts of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Most experts predict another devastating earthquake to happen in this same area in the near future.

Books and Magazines

Prevalent books in the nineteenth century were often compilations of short stories, essays, prose, and poems. These gift books were widely circulated and popular among women. In the span between 1825 and 1865, publishers released numerous well-illustrated literary works. Each intricate cover was as unique as the collection of writings it bound. According to the web site http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awgc1/gift.html over sixty gift book titles per year had appeared by 1850.

Here are a few of the most read titles:

Rose of Sharon

The Token

Odd Fellows Offering

The Iris: An Illuminated Souvenir

The Book of Pearls

I found an amazing collection of beautifully and uniquely bound books at http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/. What a treasure, especially if you’re a collector of early editions of Americana literature.

Many women's magazines were launched and attempted to fill the hunger the nineteenth century woman had to know more about American and European fashion. A magazine that remains highly popular as an historical resource for fiction authors is Godey’s Lady’s Book. Of course, Godey’s book was well known for touting the newest in women’s fashion, hats, and even new hairstyles. Lavish pictures and templates filled the pages. Nearly every issue of the magazine included a pattern for an article of clothing one could sew at home.

Editor of Godey's, Sarah Josepha Hale is “credited with having a great influence over the reading, learning, and even political consciousness of women across America” according to her biography on the web site: http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/hale1.html

Do you know the children’s poem Ms. Hale is famous for writing?

Disease and the Civil War

Today, there are shots and immunizations for nearly every communicable disease. That being said, many are beginning to wonder if these early childhood immunizations are causing more problems than they're worth. I'm amazed at the medicines available for various maladies that tout success at the price of your health. Many medicines have adverse side effects that outweigh any benefit. You almost feel that you're playing Russian Roulette by taking them.

Childhood diseases in our century are minimal. While there are some children and adults who suffer complications, for the most part, we survive.

I remember when I was a kid we had mass immunizations at the elementary school level for small pox and polio. Nevertheless, shots to prevent measles, mumps, and chicken pox were unheard of. Chicken soup, lots of water, and a dark room were the necessary ingredients to get over these diseases.

People of the nineteenth century had it worse, but may have had the best solution possible for enduring childhood ailments. Many diseases were treated with loving care and common sense. Fever from the diseases demanded little more than a lukewarm bath and herbal teas such as slippery elm unless the fever was extremely high. In that case, treatment involved giving lobelia, ipecac, and hive-syrup. These herbs were all used as emetics because it was thought that vomiting would alleviate the high fever and allow the rash of diseases such as measles and chicken pox to break out more easily.

Great care was taken to prevent colds during the breakout of measles because of their tendency to inflame the lungs. Should the patient give in to bronchitis or pneumonia, a new regimen of herbs would begin.

The average person in that day had far more hope than those who fought the Civil War. According to This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust, twice as many Civil War soldiers succumbed to disease than to wounds from battle. Measles, mumps, and small pox were epidemic. Obviously, these men were not given the septic care of the average person, and that contributed to more death. Most Civil War soldiers had no hope of surviving even the simplest of diseases given the horrible conditions under which they lived.

For more on diseases of the 1800's consult Family Physician, Manual for the Sick Room, published by Beadle and Adams.

Returning in April 2013

I'll be posting more updates on the 1800's soon!

Ruined by Gold, January 1848

John A. Sutter worked hard for a living after he came to America. After his journey from Germany, to New York, to California, all he wanted was to build a mill to produce lumber to finish his flour mill. He sought out a piece of land near Sacramento. Even though many in the city made fun of him for it and called his choices“folly", he continued to build the mill, hotel, and other buildings in the city he called Coloma.

Another “crazy” man, James Marshall, was building the mill at Coloma for Sutter. One day, Marshall came to Sutter’s office, compelled him to secure his office and lock his doors for the information he was about to share.

“He told me then that he had some important and interesting news which he wished to communicate secretly to me, and wished me to go with him to a place where we should not be disturbed, and where no listeners could come and hear what we had to say. I went with him to my private rooms; he requested me to lock the door; I complied, but I told him at the same time that nobody was in the house except the clerk, who was in his office in a different part of the house; after requesting of me something which he wanted, which my servants brought and then left the room, I forgot to lock the doors, and it happened that the door was opened by the clerk just at the moment when Marshall took a rag from his pocket, showing me the yellow metal: he had about two ounces of it; but how quick Mr. M. put the yellow metal in his pocket again can hardly be described. The clerk came to see me on business, and excused himself for interrupting me, and as soon as he had left I was told, “now lock the doors; didn’t I tell you that we might have listeners?” I told him that he need fear nothing about that, as it was not the habit of this gentleman; but I could hardly convince him that he need not to be suspicious. Then Mr. M. began to show me this metal, which consisted of small pieces and specimens, some of them worth a few dollars; he told me that he had expressed his opinion to the laborers at the mill, that this might be gold; but some of them were laughing at him and called him a crazy man, and could not believe such a thing.”

Then, Gold Fever, sparked by the discovery at Sutter’s Mill, January 1848, started a downward spiral in Sutter’s life. “What a great misfortune was this gold discovery for me. It has just broken up and ruined my hard, restless, and industrious labors . . .”

Read Sutter’s entire article on his gold find at http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist2/gold.html. Above quotes taken from Sutter’s article in the Hutchings’ California Magazine, November 1857

What One Little Light Can Do

If you mention "The Waving Girl" in Savannah, everyone immediately knows you are speaking of Florence Martus. She had become a legend in her own time when, as a nineteen year old, she greeted every ship entering the Savannah seaport and bid farewell to every ship leaving. 

In 1887, Florence's father had become employed with the Lighthouse Service. The family moved into the lighthouse keeper’s house on Elba Island. Another account of the story states that Florence was the light keeper’s sister and actually moved to the island with her brother.

Florence took it upon herself to wave at each ship with a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night. She was quoted as saying, "I was never too sick to get up when one (ship) was coming in, and I could always hear them coming."

Obviously, the blue-eyed girl, who never married, stirred imaginations and romantic legends about who she was and why she spent so much time at her post. On the east end of River Street in Savannah, a seventeen-foot statue of a girl waving her handkerchief, collie at her side, was erected in her honor.

Photo taken by Mike Stroud and is posted courtesy of The Historical Marker Database at http://www.hmdb.org/

City of Roses or The Un-Heavenly City?

The rat-infested dank catacombs under Portland, Oregon, concealed unthinkable illicit secrets for nearly a century beginning in 1850. If you were one of the lucky ones who fell through one of many trap doors, you didn’t wake up until after you had been drugged, kept with rats, and were hundreds of miles out to sea on your way to the Orient.

The practice called Shanghaiing thrived in Portland. Every building from China Town to the downtown area was connected and tied together in a series of basements, some separated by archways. The purpose of the underground originally lent itself to aid those delivering incoming shipments thereby expediting their arrival at each store by not having to travel through busy Portland streets.

However, ship captains loved the design of Portland’s underground because it enabled them to build their crews. Many waited in the Willamette River port at the opening of the tunnels, for hired middle-men (bar owners, Chinese, labor groups, opium den owners) to kidnap unsuspecting drunks. The drunks were usually given knockout drugs, shoved through trap doors, and placed in holding cells in the underground maze until ships came into ports. $50.00 a head became an attractive tradeoff for the risk of dealing in the trafficking.

Women were warned to stay away from saloons and dance halls, because they met similar fates. The only difference when they slipped through a trap door is no one ever saw them again. They became victims of white slave trade, changing their lives forever as they were delivered to one of the many brothels that operated under the streets or to one across the seas.

The tunnels have survived numerous floods over the years and serve as a backdrop for guided walking tours today – if you can tolerate the stigma of being stuck underground for 2 ½ hours with moldy walls and runaway rats. For more info on the tours contact: http://www.portlandwalkingtours.com/tours/underground_portland.php

Political Intrigue and the Census of 1890

I came face to face with a major brick wall when researching my ancestry. The population enumeration every ten years had met a serious blow when most of the 1890 census records were destroyed in a Washington DC fire in the basement of The Commerce Building, in 1921.

Whatever remained of the eleventh census of the United States was ordered by congress to be destroyed in 1933. Only a few fragments of the census escaped destruction and have been published in numerous genealogical websites. The resulting enumeration presents only about 6,000 of the 63,000,000 citizens polled at the time.

Nevertheless, according to the http://www.archives.gov website, “the 1890 census seemed mired in fraud and political intrigue.” In March 1896, a previous fire had destroyed the special census schedules for mortality, crime, pauperism and benevolence, special classes, and portions of the transportation and insurance schedules. In 1903, a census clerk noted that the general census schedules appeared to be in good condition. Despite numerous requests that the census records be stored in a safe place, they remained in the basement of The Commerce Building. The fire of 1921 destroyed 25% of the schedules and badly damaged half of the remainder. No effort was made to preserve the copies.

It was a heartbreaking nightmare for historians and genealogists. Even after a public outcry from historical organizations and genealogical societies, the government ordered the records destroyed. The entire story can be read at: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1890-census-1.html

And the Winner of Survivor Is . . .

The Prairie Traveler, written by Captain Randolph B. Marcy of the United States Army, was an essential companion for the westward traveler after 1859. At the request of the army, Captain Marcy put together a compendium of travel resources, food locations, routes to travel, dangers to watch out for, and good common sense, based on his own travels west. The original title, The Prairie Traveler: A Handbook for Overland Expeditions with Maps, Illustrations, and Itineraries of the Principal Routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific, was published in 1859, by Harper and Brothers Publishers.

The Fur Company’s men of the northwest, have to be labeled the best of the survivors in the Artic regions, because of their unique diet. Among other things, each man consumed approximately 1.25 pounds of Pemmican. Trust me. It is disgusting, but I guess you do what you have to, to survive.

Quoting from page thirty-three of The Prairie Traveler: “The buffalo meat is cut into thin flakes, and hung up to dry in the sun or before a slow fire; it is then pounded between two stones and reduced to a powder; this powder is placed in a bag of the animal’s hide with the hair on the outside; melted grease is then poured into it and the bag sewn up. It can be eaten raw, and many prefer it so. Mixed with a little flour and boiled, it is a very wholesome and exceedingly nutritious food and will keep fresh for a long time.” You've got to be kidding me. Wholesome?

The Prairie Traveler can be purchased from Dover Books.

Would You Go As Far As Nellie Bly?

Six-year-old Elizabeth Jane Cochran lost her father in 1870. He failed to leave a will which forced the auction of his estate. Not too long afterward, Elizabeth’s mother remarried as a way to support her children. Elizabeth’s abuse at the hand of her step-father is thought to be the springboard that led her to champion the cause of women’s rights.

As a lonely teenager, she changed the spelling of her name by adding an “e” on the end – supposedly to sound more sophisticated. Her break into journalism came in the form of a rebuttal she sent to the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper regarding a sexist column in their newspaper. She went by the name, Lonely Orphan Girl. The paper loved her straightforward writing style and hired her to work for them.

Since most women of the day chose pen names when they wrote, Elizabeth’s editor, George Madden, chose the name, Nellie Bly, taken from the song written by Stephen Foster. Thus began Nellie’s investigative undercover work. After she posed as a sweat shop worker and exposed the deplorable conditions inside, she was reduced to being a fashion reporter.

At that point, she left the paper and headed for New York where she was hired as reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.One of her most noted undercover reports came when she feigned insanity in order to expose shocking conditions at a women’s lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island. Her resulting book, Ten Days in a Madhouse, prompted a grand jury to look into conditions at the asylum.

“In spite of the knowledge of my sanity and the assurance that I would be released in a few days, my heart gave a sharp twinge. Pronounced insane by four expert doctors and shut up behind the unmerciful bolts and bars of a madhouse! Not to be confined alone, but to be a companion, day and night, of senseless, chattering lunatics; to sleep with them, to eat with them, to be considered one of them, was an uncomfortable position. Timidly we followed the nurse up the long uncarpeted hall to a room filled by so-called crazy women. We were told to sit down, and some of the patients kindly made room for us.”

Quoted from: Ten Days in a Madhouse. See the complete book at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html

How Cold Was It? Ice Flows Into Gulf, 1899

In January 1899, a flow of arctic air moved through the United States all the way to southern Florida. Some parts of northern Florida got two inches of snow. In Southern Florida, West Palm Beach reported that snow was falling on Wednesday, January 19.

Even more surprising than that was the event that occurred in February of the same year. A great blizzard with frigid temperatures hit the Mid Atlantic area of the country. Then in the middle of February, an ice storm hit the east coast. The winter was so bad and temperatures were so cold during that time period that weather records sindicate ice flowed down the Mississippi River and spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The only other time ice had been recorded in New Orleans was in 1784 when ice flows blocked the Mississippi River at New Orleans.

Debilitating Kansas Snow

"The winter was perhaps the most debilitating of all the seasons. At times it seemed interminable. For days and weeks on end, the temperature hovered at zero, and often it plummeted to twenty degrees below. Compounding these freezing temperatures was an almost ceaseless wind that whipped across the plains, often reaching over fifty miles per hour. To the settler unaccustomed to such climatic extremes, this numbing weather became almost unbearable.

A winter blizzard was an awesome spectacle. Without warning, dark billowing clouds roared across the skies and unleashed blinding bursts of snow. 'They came with a might blast,' recalled one witness. 'sweeping with almost the strength of a cyclone, raking the life of stock and sometimes human beings.'

Isolated in its cabin, the frontier family braced itself against the onslaught of ice and snow. Wrapped in heavy overcoats and thick woolen blankets, they huddled around the fireplace for warmth. Yet, the searing gusts of wind outdoors seemed to penetrate every crack and crevice of the prairie house."

Quoted from Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier, written by Joanna L. Stratton