Lorenzo Dow

As I researched my family, I would periodically come across a male cousin whose given name is Lorenzo Dow. I really did not see a reason to wonder why Lorenzo Dow was a given name until I found cousins named Lorenzo Dow all over the United States and now recently in Canada.

At this point, I began to wonder why Lorenzo and, in particular, why Lorenzo Dow? I looked at the information that I had about each of my Lorenzo Dow relatives. They were distant cousins, not only in relationship but in physical proximity. Some were related to me but not to each other. The only pattern that I could discern was that these relatives were born between 1810 and 1857.

Like many others whose ancestors lived in the United States in the early days of its existence, I have many relative with given names of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, etc. Most have no connection to the men after whom they were named. I suspected that Lorenzo Dow was man of some renown who apparently was a man of note at least by 1810.

So it seems that there was a man named Lorenzo Dow who was a circuit preacher. I found a book entitled The Eccentric Preacher or A Sketch of the Life of the Celebrated Lorenzo Dow. The book is an abridged version of Lorenzo Dow's journal and was published in 1841 in Lowell, Massachusetts by E. A. Rice & Co.

Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834) was born in Connecticut. He had developed an intense interest in preaching at the age of four. This interest grew as often he had dreams of himself in the role of an itinerant preacher. Limited by the lack of a horse, Dow preached primarily in Connecticut and Rhode Island. His parents attempted to dissuade him from becoming a preacher but by 1796, they gave in and provided him with money and clothes.

By this time, Lorenzo Dow had become a Methodist and hope to become a Methodist preacher. He was turned down by the Methodist Conference but was accepted in 1798 as a circuit preacher with his first circuit in Pittstown, New York. He did not stay on the New York circuit long before being transferred to a circuit in Pittsfield, Massachusetts followed by one in Essex, Vermont.

As I read the book, I found that Dow suffered with poor health from childhood and throughout his life. He had become ill while on his circuit in Vermont. He requested to be sent to Ireland. Instead the Methodist Conference assigned him to Canada. It was from Canada that he sailed in October, 1799 to Ireland, intent on converting the Catholics.

He returned to the United States in April, 1801 and began preaching in the South. He made another trip to Ireland and England in 1805. By the end of his life, Dow had traveled throughout the United States and in Canada

Lorenzo Dow did not practice personal hygiene and pictures of him on flyers, pamphlets and books show him with long hair and beard. His appearance reminds me of the pictures of Rasputin who managed to captivate the Czarina Alexandra.

Reading his journal, I found his sermons to be full of fire and brimstone. He often wrote about those who disagreed with him and many times placed curses upon his critics. Between his manner and his appearance, some called him "crazy Dow" or "crazy Lorenzo."

He had as many who reviled him as those who loved him. The US Census from 1790 through 1840, only identified the head of household. I searched the indices for each of these years and found the occurrence of Lorenzo as a given name to be extremely rare until 1830 when there were 246 people with the name Lorenzo. In 1840, the number grew to 970.

The 1850 US Census was the first census in which all the members of a household were identified. In that year, I found 8,595 people named Lorenzo in the index. Ten years later, 10,346 Lorenzos are in the index. It would seem that Lorenzo Dow's popularity and influence was waning. While the population in the United States was growing, the number of people named Lorenzo in the indices from 1860 through 1930 remained about the same from decade to decade.

General Lewis Cass, Michigan Territory Governor

I am a descendant of Elizabeth Case. Tracing her ancestors has proven to be somewhat troublesome for me. I was hitting walls until one day I discovered an article in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's Record, a quarterly publication. That article indicated that her grandfather was known as Nathan Case and Nathan Cass.

At this point, I began to search for information about Nathan Cass. I came across the Cass name in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island records. I am still trying to find the links among the names I discovered, but I am encouraged.

The name Lewis Cass cropped up frequently as I searched for information on the Cass family. I found several books written about this man, many written before 1900. I learned that he was appointed governor of the Michigan Territory from October 1813 to August 1931 when he resigned because President Andrew Jackson appointed him Secretary of War.

It did not surprise me to find a county in Michigan called Cass, named after Gov. Lewis Cass. Then I had an "ah ha" moment because my mother went to high school in Cass County, Minnesota. In addition, I recently found relatives who were living in Cass County, Iowa in the late 1800s. So I decided to see if these counties were named in General Cass' honor.

Indeed, they were. Not only did I learn that County in Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan were named in his honor, but I found counties in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Indiana and Texas named on his behalf. Bartow County, Georgia was called Cass County until the American Civil War at which time the name was changed. However, the county seat remained Cassville.

Cass County, North Dakota was not named for Lewis Cass but for his nephew, George Washington Cass. This revelation led me down another research expedition about which I will write at another time.

Curious to see what other places may have been named in Lewis Cass' honor, I came up with two lakes and one river: Cass Lake, Minnesota and Michigan and Cass River, Michigan. I found townships in Oklahoma, Illinois, 8 in Indiana, 10 in Iowa, 4 in Missouri, 3 in Ohio, and 2 in Pennsylvania. There is Cass, WV, Cass City, MI, Casstown, OH and the town of Cassville in Wisconsin. In addition to the city in Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio all have cities, Cassville, named after Lewis Cass.

Streets, schools and buildings have also been named for this man. However, I found the naming of a ship and a fort most interesting. The ship was a cargo ship built in World War II. These ships were called Liberty Ships and one was christened SS Lewis Cass. The fort near Charleston, Tennessee was established in 1835, during the time that Lewis Cass was Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson.

With so many places named for Lewis Cass, I was driven to know more about him.

Lewis Cass was born in 1782 in Exeter, New Hampshire. His father, a major in the American Revolution, moved his family to Ohio in 1800 when Lewis was eighteen. It seems that Lewis followed in his father's footsteps and was a brigadier general during the War of 1812. In October of 1813, President James Madison appointed Cass governor of the Michigan Territory.

The territory was established in 1805 and existed until 1837 when Michigan became a state and the Wisconsin Territory was created. Prior to 1833, Michigan Territory encompassed an eastern portion of Minnesota and all of Wisconsin and Michigan. In that year the territory was expanded to include all of Minnesota and Iowa and the eastern portions of North and South Dakota. Of the three territorial governors of Michigan Territory, Lewis Cass was governor the longest, a few months shy of 18 years.

He resigned his governorship August 1, 1831 when he became Secretary of War, a position that he held until October 5, 1836. From that date to November 2, 1842, he was the ambassador to France. Lewis Cass retained this position under four presidents: Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

He ran for US Senator from the State of Michigan and was seated March 4, 1845. He resigned May 29, 1848 to run as the Democratic candidate for US President. After losing to Zachary Taylor, he ran again for the US Senate. Lewis Cass won the election and served as US Senator from March 4, 1847 through March 3, 1857.

President James Buchanan appointed Cass Secretary of State effective March 6, 1857. He disagreed with the way in which Buchanan was handling the Federal interests in the south and left office December 14, 1860. Political historians have generally classified James Buchanan as one of America's worst presidents.

General Lewis Cass retired to Detroit, Michigan where he died in 1866 at the age of 83. I found an account of his funeral that showed how much this man was beloved in Michigan.

Sources:

Life and Times of Lewis Cass by William L. G. Smith. New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856.

Lewis Cass by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1891 and 1919.

Cuba Revolt of 1917

I was looking through old copies of the Poughkeepsie Journal and its predecessors for articles on Pedro Albarto Hurtado and his family. Pedro was a teacher at the Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie.

According to the 1870 and 1880 US Census, Pedro was born in Cuba. He died in Cuba in 1906 based on the passport application of his son Leon. Leon moved to Cuba where two of his three children were born. About 1917, the Leon and his family were back in the United States.

Some of the Poughkeepsie newspaper articles that I found implied the Hurtado family had a plantation in Cuba. In addition, I found a passport application for Leon in which it said that he had a plantation in Cuba. I found it curious that the family had returned to the United States. So what was going on in Cuba by 1917?

The answer is a revolution! There was a dispute over the presidential election of 1916 and who won. Since the revolution was short-lived, I wondered why the Leon Hurtado and his family returned to New York. As luck would have it, I found a newspaper article in the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune (January 5, 1975) about Leon's son Lee Hurtado.

In the article, Lee (Leon) Hurtado says that his grandfather retired from teaching (at the Eastman Business College) to settle on a land grant in Cuba. He said that his grandfather expected to get rich raising cattle. Pedro Hurtado died in 1906 in Cuba and his son Leon took control of the property in Cuba. I suspect that the cattle ranch was not faring well in 1917 when the revolution started.

Delayed Births - What a Concept!

Occasionally I come across terms that on the surface do not make sense to me. I ask myself, "What does that mean?" In most cases I find these words in old documents, but in a few cases I come across some them in fairly contemporary documents.

Delayed births was one such term that I encountered as I researched my relatives born around 1900. Taking the phrase literally, it made no sense to me. No woman in the midst of labor would want to delay the birth of a child unless there was a very compelling reason to do so. I wasn't even certain that doctors had the means to delay a birth at the beginning of the 20th century.

So what was a delayed birth? Birth certificates are a 20th century creation. Prior to about 1905 and in the United States, most births were recorded in church records and in some cases a county registry. In some instances, the only record of the birth was in a family Bible.

It wasn't really important to actually know when one was born until the advent of the Social Security Administration in 1935. In order to qualify for Social Security benefits at age 65, you had to have proof of age. So for those people who were born before the time that births were officially recorded, there was a mechanism put in place that permitted the county in which you were born to create a birth certificate for you - a delayed birth (certificate).

The applicant for a delayed birth certificate had to obtain affidavits from family and friends that attested to the date of birth and the place of birth. If all was in order, then the county clerk or county registrar issued a birth certificate.

Prior to the creation of birth certificates, there were towns and counties that maintained a birth registry. The physician who delivered the baby was responsible for filing the birth with the town clerk. Physicians occasionally did not file the birth for months and sometimes a year or more later.

One woman who I met at my first full-time job wanted to retire. She believed that she was born in 1907 but the physician when he registered her birth recorded the year as 1908. She was perfectly happy to claim her age based on the doctor who delivered her until she wanted to retire.

Anne and I remained friends until she died at age 93.

Carnegie Hill Neighbors - On Waldron Farm Update

On January 31, 2010, I posted a blog about the misinformation that this website had posted. I sent an email message via the contact me link at the website.

The message I sent read:

On the page accessed from http://www.carnegiehillneighbors.org/history/index.htm you refer to a Baron Resolved Waldron. This person is the grandson of Barent Nagel after whom he was named. Your Baron Resolved Waldron is actually named Barent Resolveert Waldron. It is not a title but a common given name. His father was Resolved (Resolveert) Waldron. Typical of the time in which Barent Waldron was born people were identified with a patronym. In this case, Resolved (Resolveert).

I couple of weeks ago, I received the following message:

Dear Ms. Kline,

Thank you for the corrections you sent to Carnegie Hill Neighbors regarding the names of two early residents of our neighborhood.

I compiled the history section on our website using a number of sources. The references you mention are taken from an article in our Carnegie Hill News in 1990, written by an elderly gentleman who was somewhat of a historian. He lived in a wooden house built in 1871 and had a treasure of old maps and historical information, much handwritten. Twenty years ago, we accepted what he wrote without reservation. With your incentive, I have checked the names on Internet sources and see that you are quite right.

Quite incidentally, the president of our organization now is of Dutch origin, and he said independently that your corrections make sense. We will have them made this week.

Can you tell us how you came to our website?

Thank you for your interest and corrections.

Barbara Coffey

I replied to the her message. The site was updated. However, a few errors still exist.

Part 5: American Medical Training before the 20th Century

In an earlier blog entry, I suggested that I would try to determine if there was some number of physicians who were in private practice, not associated with a medical school and had earned an LLD. This task is proving to be huge. However, as I was looking at how one became a physician in the United States prior to 1900, I have pretty much concluded that very few private practice physicians prior to 1900 took the time to study for an LLD degree.

Upon learning how one became a physician before 1900, I realized that many of the medical practitioners had no formal training at universities and colleges. The physicians included in Walter Graeme Eliot’s book were associated with schools like Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. Thus, the opportunity to pursue an LLD degree was readily available.

In Part 4 of this series, I mentioned that during the American Revolution of the nearly 3500 medical practitioners about 400 had medical degrees. The approximately 3100 had become medical practitioners through an apprenticeship. The quotation that I included in Part 4 from William Smith’s book, The History of New York, from First Discovery to the Year MDCCXXXII (1732), complains about the lack of regulation and licensing of doctors. This complaint was repeatedly expressed throughout the 19^th century as well.

Prior to 1765, if you wanted to become a doctor, you either went to Europe to study or you studied under a local practicing physician. Typically you apprenticed for two years and then your preceptor would create a certificate or affidavit stating that you had completed your study and were qualified to practice medicine. The course of training at the Medical College of Philadelphia and at King’s College Medical School did not do much to improve the quality of doctors.

To graduate with a bachelor degree in medicine, the student served 2 years under a preceptor and attended one course of lectures for the duration of four months. The lectures were from 7 to 8 hours in length each day and covered material medica, physic, anatomy and chemistry. To graduate with an MD, the student served 3 years under a preceptor and attended 2 courses of lectures for the duration of four months each one year apart. The second course of lectures was a duplicate of the first course.

Admission to American medical schools from 1765 into the 19^th century was based on who could afford to pay. Students purchased tickets to the various lectures. At the Medical College of Philadelphia, these were called Matriculation Tickets. There were no tests, no labs and little to no clinical experience as most medical schools were not associated with a teaching hospital let alone a hospital.

By 1850, there were 37 medical schools in the United States. None were regulated. Without the need of laboratories and clinics and the lack of regulation, medical schools were easy to set up. If marketed well, a medical school was a cash cow for the physician who owned one. So it is no wonder that by 1876 another 33 medical schools were established. In the succeeding 25 years the number of medical schools more than doubled by the addition of 86 facilities. Of the 156 medical schools in existence in 1900, only 74 were departments of colleges or universities.

During the first half of the 19^th century, several states attempted to regulate medical practices but by the 1830s the statutes were amended to the point of being ineffectual or abolished entirely. In 1850, only three states had laws concerning the licensing of physicians.

To be continued: Part 6: Regulation of Medical Schools in the United States.

Sources:
Harvard Medical School History: Looking Back and Looking Forward.
The History of Medicine in the United States by Francis Randolph Packard, MD. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1901.
The Standard Medical Directory of North American 1902. Chicago: G. P. Englehard & Company, 1902.

History Repeats Itself Again

I was listening to a Bruce Springsteen CD Saturday afternoon as I was doing things around the house. One of the songs was "My Hometown." As I listened to the words, I thought to myself, "this seems familiar."

The song tells of tensions running high in 1965 in his high school between blacks and whites. At the same time there are vacant stores in his hometown. The textile mill closed and the foreman says, "These jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown." It is 2010 and I am hearing the same things; tension between blacks, whites and Hispanics and jobs going somewhere else.

Jobs were going overseas in 1965 but those jobs were mostly jobs held by textile workers. Most garments that we wear today are made elsewhere. As I recall, in the early 1970s, many of the garments we purchased  had a label that said, "Hecho en Mexico." Soon our garments were being manufactured in other Latin Americans countries like Honduras. Then, at some point, I noted that clothing was being made in Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Viet Nam, and China. As time passed, other jobs went overseas, such as automobile, computer and electronics manufacturing. Today, China is the largest producer of many of the goods that we purchase including toys.

Forty-five years later, jobs are still going overseas and tensions are running high. This time the tension is mostly between Hispanic immigrants and whites in the states that border Mexico. As I watch the reactions of the people on both sides of the issue unfold, I am reminded of the period in American history in which a large number of Irish came to the United States.

It was 1847 when the Irish came to America in the first big wave of Irish immigrants. Between 1845 and 1847, a million people died in Ireland as result of the potato famine. Fleeing the specter of starvation, Ireland lost another million to the United States. In 1850, the Irish represented the largest foreign-born population at 43% and were concentrated in Boston and New York. Of these about a quarter settled in Boston, a decidedly Protestant city.

The Irish were not treated well in either New York or in Boston. They were highly exploited and preyed upon. They faced discrimination in both cities but more so in Boston. I find it interesting that people whose ancestors fled Europe to escape religious persecution in the 17th century, themselves became persecutors of the Irish primarily because they were Catholic.

An anti-Catholic sentiment brewed and resulted in the burning of Catholic convents and churches and the homes of Irish immigrants. Some Irish immigrants were killed by mobs. Violence against Catholics was not exclusive to Boston, but occurred in Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans and Louisville. A militant anti-Catholic political party was formed and called the Know-Nothings.

The goal of this party was to end Irish immigration to the US and keep those who were already here from becoming naturalized citizens. The party was the strongest in Massachusetts when in 1854, every one of its candidates won political office including the candidate for governor. It was the outbreak of the Civil War that turned the nation's attention away from the Irish immigrants.

As I write this, I feel a sense of deja vu and frustration that we don't seem to learn from the past. I don't understand the violence and hatred since every person in North America is an immigrant, even the "native" Americans. We all sprang from someone who came from elsewhere.

Source: Irish Potato Famine, The History Place, 2000. Accessed May 26, 2010.