Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

James Fenimore Cooper was only 13 months old when his family moved from New Jersey to Otsego Lake in 1790. Located in central New York, the lake is the source of the Susquehanna River, one of the largest rivers in the northeastern United States. The Coopers’ new home was surrounded by a wilderness that had formerly been controlled by the powerful Iroquois Nation. The head of the Cooper family, William, cleared a tract of land. He became prosperous and served as a local judge. A town developed on the spot and took the name Cooperstown. William often entertained influential men at home. James, the second youngest of 12 children, listened to their conversations. The visitors discussed land claims and business and trade issues with cities to the east. They talked…

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey lived the first two decades of his life as an enslaved person, but he dreamed of being free. After he was born around 1818, he was separated from his mother and sent to live with his grandmother on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He rarely saw his mother, and he never knew his father. When he was about eight years old, Frederick was sent to live and work in Baltimore. The city was a major U.S. port for shipping and trade in the early 1800s. Frederick labored for a ship builder, Hugh Auld. Auld’s wife, Sophia, taught Frederick how to read until her husband put a stop to it because it was against the law to educate enslaved people. Frederick understood that learning to read provided him with…

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, the second daughter in a family of four girls. Her family moved a lot, and Louisa worried about their constant poverty. For most of Louisa’s life, her philosopher father did not hold a steady job or earn a regular income. Determined to help, Louisa found jobs in the few roles available to women in the mid-1800s: as a teacher, seamstress, governess, and servant. She shared what she earned with her family. Growing up, Louisa had made up plays and stories for herself and her sisters—Anna Bronson, Elizabeth Sewall, and Abigail May (called May)—to act out. Then, in 1854, she published her first book of poetry, Flower Fables. Most of her early works, however, were romance, adventure, and “blood-and-thunder” novels. She disguised…

All the 19th-century authors in this issue handwrote their material with pen and ink. Although the typewriter was invented in 1867, it wasn’t popular until the early 1900s. Mark Twain was the first author known to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher in the late 1800s. To 21st-century computer writers, both handwriting and typewriting seem labor intensive. But perhaps it allows for greater appreciation for the creative process of earlier novelists as they labored over their famous works. Don’t you wonder how they did it without a spell check option?…

The Mystery Writers of America have a major award named after this month’s mystery hero, so you know he must have left a lasting impact. Indeed, none other than Stephen King—among the most famous living American suspense/mystery authors—stated, “He wasn’t just a mystery/suspense writer. He was the first.” Our hero had a difficult life. Born January 19, 1809, he was orphaned at age two when his mother died. His alcoholic father had already deserted the family. A wealthy Virginia tobacco merchant took in our hero but never adopted him. Fortunately, the merchant’s wife cared about the boy. Because his foster parents were rich, our hero received a good education. When the family traveled to Scotland and England, our six-year-old hero attended schools there. He was a good student and enjoyed…

A little mystery, a pinch of insanity, a dash of murder, and a bit of romance. Do those elements sound like the perfect ingredients for a best-selling novel? Americans at the turn of the 19th century thought so. Recognized as the first significant American novel, Wieland, or, The Transformation was a danger-filled, romantic suspense story. It was written in 1798 by Charles Brockden Brown. Brown was born in Philadelphia in 1771. His parents were Quakers, and they made sure that their son had a good education. At age 16, Brown began studying law, but he found it dull. He wanted to be a writer instead. A Philadelphia magazine first published a series of Brown’s articles in 1789. By the 1790s, he decided to try supporting himself by only his writing.…

Children often enjoy listening to tales of their ancestors’ brave adventures or principled actions. That was not the case for Nathaniel Hawthorne. He had no images of glorious war heroes or trailblazing explorers in his family history. His most famous relative was his Puritan great-great-grandfather, Justice John Hathorne. That man had left a legacy of injustice and death for his role in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Hawthorne’s Puritan ancestors haunted him and shaped his view of the human experience. He confronted the theme of puritanical judgments from an earlier time by writing about them. He even may have added a “w” to his last name to distance himself from his Hathorne relative. Born on July 4, 1804, Hawthorne grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. His sea captain father died…

The Beecher family shared deep religious convictions and strong activist beliefs. Some of the most prominent ministers, educators, and abolitionists of the 19th century came from the family. Among them, Harriet Beecher Stowe stands out as a writer on a mission. Harriet was born in 1811 in the town of Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the sixth of eight children born to Lyman and Roxana Beecher. In 1816, when Harriet was five years old, her mother died. A deep sorrow fell over the home. But a year later, Lyman remarried, and a warmhearted stepmother took charge of the household. Lyman believed that girls should receive a formal education and be encouraged to use their talents. That was unusual for the time, when most girls were only taught the skills to help…

In the 1800s, the future of slavery in the expanding nation divided Americans and led to the four-year Civil War (1861–1865). Frederick Douglass was the most famous former enslaved person to share his experiences, but other escaped enslaved people also wrote down their stories. A few of those publications became famous at that time. Others have only recently been discovered. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown (c. 1814–1884) became the first known novel written by an African American. It was published in 1853, while Brown was living in England. It is the fictional story of an enslaved family related to President Thomas Jefferson. It focuses on the hardships faced by Jefferson’s two mixed-race children after he dies. Brown, who had escaped from slavery in 1834, also published…

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In the 19th century, a life at sea was full of perils and adventure. Nations depended on navigating the oceans for trade, travel, and military might. The lure of the sea was strong. It pulled young Herman Melville to try his hand as a sailor and a whaleman. It turned out that he was better at spinning tales than sailing ships. He used the sea as the setting in seven of the 10 novels he wrote: Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), White-Jacket (1850), Moby-Dick (1851), and Billy Budd (posthumously published in 1924). Melville was born in 1819 in New York City, where he was one of eight children. The family was well-off, but they lived beyond what Melville’s father could support with his imported dry-goods business. Debts…

“Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie” (1847), “The Song of Hiawatha” (1850), and “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1863) are among the most famous 19th-century American poems. And the man who composed them, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), was among the most famous 19th-century American poets. His work was so popular that he stopped teaching at Harvard College to write full time. His first collection of poems appeared in 1841. His poetry often was based on historical events that appealed to the citizens of the young and growing nation. Largely self-educated, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) was a Quaker and an abolitionist. His first poem, “The Exile’s Departure,” was printed in 1826 by leading abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison encouraged young Whittier to continue writing. Before the Civil War (1861-1865), most of Whittier’s poems included…

When Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803, the United States was a young nation searching for a distinct voice and identity. Emerson grew with the country. Instead of looking to Europe, he introduced a new way of thinking and writing for America. By the 1830s, Emerson had come to the conclusion that people were basically good and that each person should rely on themselves to decide right from wrong. He emerged as a leader of a new movement called transcendentalism. It was a belief that true spiritual understanding came through personal intuition. It was a radical concept at a time when formal, organized religion had an important role in people’s lives. Emerson settled in the rural village of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1835. His neighbors included Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel…

The most famous fictional creature in 19th-century American literature is Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick is a white sperm whale that attacks and sinks a whaling ship in Herman Melville’s novel by the same name. But what about real sperm whales? They have wrinkled gray skin, and they almost never attack ships. A sperm whale’s large, boxy head holds the largest animal brain at more than 15 pounds and a fully toothed lower jaw. The creature also is identified by its small flippers and a small hump instead of a dorsal fin on its back. An average male sperm whale grows to about 60 feet and weighs 63 tons. That’s a third bigger than a school bus! Sperm whales will dive to great depths to find and eat squid, but they eat fish…