Category: History

Ask around wherever you live, and I'll bet you'll find more folks 'not from around here' than locals. And I'll also bet the reason they're Here rather than There is simple: Jobs.

Humans have been migrating to improve their prospects since Ice Age hunters crossed the Bering Strait. When I was researching my latest book, I studied immigration patterns of Norwegians to America. It's mind-boggling how many people risked everything for a chance to provide a better situation for themselves and their family. They may not have looked at it as moving for a job opportunity, but that's basically what they were doing.

Migration (as opposed to immigration) patterns are slightly different in that they occur within a country's borders. Just because you don't feel the need to change countries doesn't mean you won't be packing a bag to follow a job. Ask anyone in the armed services. Or at FedEx, which is how our family came to live in seven different cities (and six states) in eighteen years. These migration patterns are equally fascinating to me, perhaps because I have a personal connection.

One of my favorite family tales involves the World War II era. My dad and his brother were born in a small rural town east of Dallas, Texas. They came from a long line of farmers, since those first Norwegian ancestors came to Texas in the 1850s. But the times, they were a-changin'. During the war, manufacturing boomed. Strict immigration laws enacted in the 1920s shut off the supply of foreign labor. Factories couldn't find workers fast enough. When war came and stimulated the manufacturing sector, many jobs were available for workers already living in America, regardless of race or gender.  The American work force increased dramatically as rural workers and women joined the ranks.

My paternal grandfather was among the first group. He went to work at the 'bomber plant', aka North American, later known as Ling Tempco Vought or LTV, in the Dallas area. Housing was scarce in the city. At first, he went alone and came home on the weekends. Eventually a room in town became available. Not a house. A room. So my grandmother was able to join him. There was only one problem. They had two sons, and the landlord would only allow one more person to occupy the lease. The decision was made: my dad's younger brother was to go to the big city with his folks. My dad would be left behind with his grandparents on the family farm. (Cue the sad violin music here.) As my dad was telling me this story, I tried to be brave, but I fear I may have experienced some eye sweat. I told him I thought this was one of the saddest things I ever heard. He said, "Why? I loved the farm. It was my home. My granddad spoiled me rotten. I was sad when I eventually had to move to the city with my folks." Shows what I know.

I grew up vaguely aware that my paternal grandfather worked in the war effort. It was only recently as my mom was telling me some of her family lore that I learned her father also came from their farm in rural Texas to work at the bomber plant. The same plant. (You may be wondering: did everyone work at this plant? Actually, yes.) In both cases, the families ended up relocating to Dallas permanently, leaving farm life behind. And if not for this, my parents likely never would have met, and that would have been exceedingly bad luck for me.

My grandfathers didn't have far to migrate for their defense industry jobs, but many others did. Around four million people migrated to a war-related job in the World War II era and afterward. They often moved long distances, even cross-country. There wasn't a bomber plant or shipyard on every corner. They tended to be in northern cities or on the West Coast.

Migration was a societal force within the African American community in particular. They made up about a third of the migration figures quoted above. In 1940, an estimate 45% of African Americans worked on farms. By 1980, that number had shrunk to 1%. Many saw the war industry as an opportunity to escape lower status jobs as well as the Jim Crow segregation laws that dominated areas of the South at that time.

The tides turned again later in the 20th century when lower cost of living, fewer labor unions, and better weather enticed many companies to relocate their operations back into the South. I never met a Yankee or ate a bagel until some time in the 1980s. Now, they're everywhere (including in my house - my husband is from Philadelphia).

I'm very curious to see what the next job migration wave will be, if any. So many people work remotely these days. The next iteration may be greatly simplified. Instead of predicting which part of the country will see an influx of workers, it may just be a matter of determining which room in the house works best as a home office.

This originally appeared as part of the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge. 

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Be still, my historian heart! Ever since I learned the movie The Revenant was based on the life of Hugh Glass, I've been beside myself with glee. Colorful characters like Glass are the reason I converted to full-on history nerd. I can't argue with those who say history is boring. It can be very tedious if one is bombarded with nothing but names and dates and memorization. But people love a good story, and history is full of good stories.

When I was getting my Masters in history back in the day, I focused on American history prior to 1900. Exploration of both the New World and the American West were my favorite topics. There was just something about the bravery and drive of individuals who were willing to forge ahead into unknown lands that captivated me. So when I heard about this movie, I dug out my old handwritten notes (transcribed while spending endless afternoons at the university library, which, thanks to some lingering pack rat tendencies, were still carefully preserved in a few yellowing folders). This method of acquiring knowledge is now laughably quaint. I can now find ten times the amount of information in one tenth the time thanks to Google.

Thanks to The Revenant film, there are many articles online about Mr. Glass and his amazing life. I'll give you the broad details and if you're interested in learning more, that's wonderful, and that's what Google is for. Much of what we know about Hugh Glass is from word of mouth from himself and others; hearsay, tall tales bordering on mythology. Who knows how much of this really happened? Mountain men not only lived adventurous lives; they were known for their propensity for spinning yarns, especially when regaling greenhorns like newspaper reporters and dime novelists. Indeed, at the annual trapper 'rendevous' - think Sturgis without the motorcycles - a liar's contest was featured, along with games, gambling, and drinking.

Mr. Glass is most well known for surviving being left for dead after a grizzly bear attack while on a scouting expedition in South Dakota in 1823. His will to survive (plus IMO his thirst for revenge on the two comrades who abandoned him to his fate) drove him to drag himself 100 miles back to the nearest outpost, Fort Kiowa. I don't know if this story line will appear in the movie, but prior to his frontier days, Glass was rumored to have escaped impressment into the crew of pirate Jean Lafitte by jumping ship and swimming two miles to the Texas coast.

Amazingly, Glass is hardly the lone example of mountain men for whom cheating death was part of the job description. I've put together a chart to summarize a few other mountain men to demonstrate the similarities. And by no means is this list conclusive. These nuts were as plentiful as acorns on an oak.

The main character of my book The Dala Horse, is a 10-year-old girl growing up in a Norwegian immigrant settlement in post-Civil War Texas. Her parents were born in Norway, but she was born in Texas. The book is inspired by the early Norwegian immigrants to Texas, including my own ancestors.

People are usually surprised to learn there are Norwegians in Texas. While it’s true most Norwegian immigrants to America settled farther north, some intrepid souls did choose the Lone Star State.

Norwegian immigrants came to America in three major waves in the second half of the 19th century. But the earliest came during an economic downturn after the Napoleonic Wars 1807-1814.

Norway had outgrown its ability to provide enough food for its population. If you imagine Norway is a top hat, only the narrow brim is practical for farming due to the mountainous terrain. In the 1800s, only about 3% of its land was under cultivation, mainly due to Norway’s geography.

In addition, prosperous farmers who invested in commercial agriculture to take advantage of this imbalance lost out when domestic markets fell to cheap imports. Many went bankrupt.

Faced with a transition from an agricultural to a money economy, many found immigration more attractive than moving to cities. After all, exploration and adventure was in their Viking blood! Pair this with the generous land policies in Texas, and it's easy to see why so many were willing to risk the journey.

Immigration was also fueled by the 19th century version of social media: newspapers, magazines, and letters from friends who had already moved away and liked the result.

Early emigration proponents included

• Cleng Peerson of the sloop Restauration fame (the ‘father of Norwegian immigration’)
• Johan Reinert Reiersen, author of Norway’s first emigration-centric magazine, Norge og Amerika 
• Elise Waerenskjold, the ‘Lady With The Pen’

All three had tremendous influence on Norwegian immigration patterns. All spent their final years in Texas and are buried there.

Of the three, Reiersen perhaps had the most impact bringing Norwegians to Texas. He visited the fledgling republic while touring America in the 1840s.  He traveled to Austin and met with Sam Houston.

Reiersen was favorably impressed by Houston’s offers of support for any immigrants choosing Texas as their new home. Reierson’s book, magazine, and newspaper articles influenced many to join him there.

He and a small group of settlers founded the first Norwegian community in Texas in 1845. Initially called Normandy, today it is known as Brownsboro.

(However, they were not the first Norwegian settlers in Texas. That would be Johannes Nordboe, who had settled near present day Dallas in 1838.)

Cheap land - and plenty of it! - undoubtedly was a major factor in convincing immigrants to move to Texas. After Texas became a state in 1845, a married couple could claim a 640 acre section (one square mile). At that time, the average farm in Norway was 2-20 acres.

Not 220.

Between TWO and TWENTY.

The process of staking a claim in Texas varied, but went something like this:

• claim the land
• establish a home and cultivate at least 10 acres
• occupy at least 3 years
• pay for survey

And the land was yours, for anywhere from free to $2/acre.

No wonder immigrating to Texas sounded like a pretty good deal! The land was plentiful and cheap, but that was only a small part of the cost to immigrate. Immigration was booming. The ship captains were no dummies, and fares were at a premium.

As an example, immigrant one immigrant's fare on the ship New England from France to New Orleans was about $950. The fare on the riverboat St. Helena was $75 from New Orleans to Shreveport.

And this does not include her voyage from Norway to France. Or traveling overland from New Orleans to her final destination in Texas. One inflation calculator estimates $100 in 1847 to be worth about $2,750 today. Using that formula, her relocation to America cost around $30,000. And this was certainly not for first class accommodations. She traveled below decks with all the other passengers, and cargo, and animals.

After all the trouble and expense of immigrating from Norway to Texas, the original settlement of Normandy did not live up to the settlers’ expectations. Illness and other factors precipitated a relocation in 1848 to nearby Four Mile Prairie/Prairieville. More settlers arrived in 1850, bringing the Norwegian contingent to 105. Still seeking better quality soil and water, many Norwegians pushed further west in 1854 when Bosque County was created. The communities of Clifton, Cranfills Gap, and Norse became the Norwegian stronghold in the state.

 

The Bosque County location proved most successful for the Norwegian immigrants. Today it is home to Norse heritage resources such as the Bosque Museum and the Cleng Peerson Institute.

Statewide population of Norwegians in TexasCensus records of the time reflect a slow but steady influx of Norwegians.

One estimate of the number of Texans of Norwegian descent today is around

129,000.

Several Norwegian societies have chapters in Texas, including

Fun facts about Texas Norwegians, or 'Texwegians'

• At one time, Norway was second only to Ireland in percentage of population immigrating to America
• Notable Texwegians include:
  • Ole Ringness, the inventor of the disc plow
  •  Athlete Babe Didrikson
• In Norway, people use the word ‘Texas’ as slang for ‘crazy’

The Melungeons are described by those who study such things as a 'tri-racial isolate'. They're a group of people of different ethnicities who have intensified their bloodline by not venturing far from where they were born and raised. Before I started my research, I tried to recall where they tend to be found. Part of me thought somewhere in America, but I had doubts because that unique moniker had me wondering if they were of a more exotic locale, like Bulgaria or Peru.

Part of what drew me to this topic is the word itself. It looks intriguing, all those letters jumbled together in a unique way. And when you say it and hear it, it had a woven quality, meshing together very much like the ethnic origins of the people themselves.

The Melungeons are described by those who study such things as a 'tri-racial isolate'. They're a group of people of different ethnicities who have intensified their bloodline by not venturing far from where they were born and raised. Before I started my research, I tried to recall where they tend to be found. Part of me thought somewhere in America, but I had doubts because that unique moniker had me wondering if they were of a more exotic locale, like Bulgaria or Peru.

I was right the first time. The Melungeons are typically found in Appalachia where eastern Tennessee and Kentucky border Western Virginia. The 'tri-racial' term comes into play because they are theorized to be a mix of African American, Native American, and European American. They tend to have dark hair (often straight), dark eyes, and swarthy skin.

Not everyone agrees it is the African American and Native American cultures that are responsible for the Melungeons' darker physical features. Some suggest Portuguese, Black Dutch, Turks, Sephardic Jews, even Phoenician bloodlines may be responsible. Basically, if you were ever a sailor and may have shipwrecked on the Mid-Atlantic Coast in the 1600s, there is probably a Melungeon theory about you.

The simplest explanation is often the correct one, and the simplest is that early settlers who came to America as indentured servants, and therefore free people (as opposed to slaves), intermarried. Over time, their offspring became a challenge to identify precisely as one race or another. As time passed and laws shifted, claiming African American as your ethnic group became less attractive. When slavery became more widespread in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere, it was powerful motivation for those of mixed race to self-identify as something other than African (such as Native American or Portuguese). Other laws and cultural conventions contributed to this confusion.

• In some cultures, children claim the ethnic group of their mother, regardless of what their father contributed to their DNA. So a child of a white mother and a non-white father would identify as white.
• Bureaucracy intervened in the 1700s for tax reasons, basically trying to close a loophole by insisting anyone of mixed race could no longer identify as Native American which left African American as the only other option. They got a higher tax rate on African Americans, you see.
• Flash forward one hundred years when slavery was going full blast, and they put the clamps on self-identifying by requiring you figure out some math to validate your ethnicity. Anyone who was less than 1/8 non-white was allowed to identify as white.
• In the 20th century, some states including Virginia espoused the 'one drop' rule, reversing the 1/8 standard by saying anyone with one drop of African American blood was considered African American.
• On top of all this, add laws that prevented marriage between different races. Mixed race peoples often intermarried to punitive measures. It was just easier.

The people now referred to as Melungeons did not come to be called so until around the 1800s. The word itself has some mixed etymology, which is only appropriate. The phrase mal engin appears in a 16th century poem, translating to 'ill intent'. But I like this other theory better: that it comes from the Angolan word malungu or malungo meaning companion, often used to refer to fellow shipmates and seen in Portuguese records. This theory meshes nicely with the colonization and melting pot image of early America and therefore is my favorite. Highly scientific.

The Melungeon culture is not something banished to a few posts online. They still exist in their corner of Appalachia. The surnames Gibson, Collins, Riddle, and others often can trace their lines to Melungeon origins. Family tree researchers generate many leads and interesting theories for your Googling pleasure. If you have relatives from that part of the country, you might have some Phoenician blood. Who knew?

This post first appeared during my participation in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.

The birth of the automobile industry reminds me of other business booms.

Somebody gets a great idea, or has some success, and suddenly everybody jumps on the bandwagon, hoping to cash in before another fad takes its place. History, and lots of barns you see on American Picker, is/are littered with the carcasses of the cars that didn't make it. The Pan Car falls into this category.

The Pan Car concept was conceived by a fellow named Samuel Connor Pandolfo. As a traveling salesman, Pandolfo felt his ideas for making a travel-friendly vehicle would be a success. The Mississippi-born Pandolfo planned to locate his manufacturing plant in St. Cloud, Minnesota, northwest of the Twin Cities. St. Cloud had easy access to two things a car factory needed: plenty of iron ore to build them with (they don't call that area the Iron Range for nothing); and a way to ship them to market (via rail to the shipping hub at Duluth).

Pandolfo did a 1917 version of Kickstarter and hit the road selling inexpensive shares of stock to fund his dream. He threw the mother of all barbecues to celebrate the prototype - and sell stock. He tried marketing by mail - to sell stock. He sold a lot of stock (around $10 million by some estimates), but car factories cost a bundle to build and run. Between car sales and stock sales, he just wasn't able to cover his expenses. Some considered his business plan something of a swindle. (I feel the pain. Ask me about my shares of Excelsior Henderson motorcycle stock.) Some say Pandolfo was a victim of auto and other big business conspiracies to block his success. He was convicted of mail fraud and did some time.

Fewer than 1000 Pan Cars were sold before the factory was forced to shut down. Today there are only about seven Pan Cars known to exist. A dedicated group of Pan Car enthusiasts scours the nearby countryside in search of overlooked Pan Cars, but usually must be satisfied with bits and pieces which they have painstakingly rebuilt over the years. The Pan Car price started at $1,000. Today, if you could find one, depending on the condition it could be worth five figures. How much, I don't know. I'm in the process of reaching out to some folks who can give me a number. In the meantime, I'll continue to ponder on this flash in the Pan.

This post originally appeared in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge

This post originally appeared during my participation in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge. 

Here's where all my time wasted spent playing Words With Friends pays off. Stumped for a topic for a troublesome letter like Q and what do I do - gnash my teeth and grub around in the closet for my hair shirt? Nope! I hit up the cheater Scrabble page and find a Q word to riff on. And this one is a dandy.

Scams via infomercials and email are just the latest iteration of snake oil salesmen/women. They have a fine tradition in print media long before the Internet came along. Preying on an unsuspecting and uninformed public is their stock in trade. Take for example:

I don't know about you, but I'm totally not wearing anything on my face that has the word 'toilet' in its name.

---

And where was this little beauty when I was looking for a topic for P??

Know someone who drinks too much booze? Get them addicted to cocaine instead!

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'hat hair'

So let me get this straight: it's advertised for a male condition; and, you 'buy it for your husband'? Genius! Probably comes in a brown paper wrapper to boot.

I vote we bring back both the condition known as 'hysteria', as well as this cure for it. Are you with me?

I see quackery advertised every day online. It's a dead giveaway if they promise something in X number of easy steps, or magical results if you share with everyone you know. But none of them come close to being this artful, or this funny (even though they didn't intend to be).  Thanks, quacks, for the best laugh of the day.

Fun page dividers from clipart.co

My home town of Dallas, Texas often ranks high in those contests judging the beauty of the downtown skyline. I may be biased, but I agree. One of my favorite features is the Bank of America building with its stylish bright green outline. At the time it debuted in 1985 it was a bold choice, outlining the largest building in town in what one could describe, literally and accurately, as screaming neon. Many more buildings have sprung up over the last thirty-odd years, but it still easily holds its own with its distinctive signature color.

Technically speaking, the green glow resulted from argon gas, not neon. It was updated to LED technology in 2013, which gives the option of changing colors for special occasions.

The Bank of America building outline and others like it are the descendants of the original neon lighting. Neon gas was discovered in 1898. It was available in limited amounts until a Frenchman called Georges Claude figured out how to produce it in quantity. There are unverified reports that it was one of the wonders displayed at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, which I discussed in a recent blog post. One of Claude's employees saw the potential for neon in the sign business. Red neon advertisements became all the rage in Paris and elsewhere.

I won't pretend I have the mental chops to fully understand how neon signs work, but it appears to be a function of applying electricity to a glass tube that has been filled with gas. Originally, neon created a red glow. It is still used for red, orange, and some pink tones. Cooler colors like blues and greens are created using argon, mercury, and sometimes a special paint coating in the glass tubing.

America's first neon sign was initially thought to be commissioned by Earle C. Anthony for his Packard auto dealership at 10th and Hope streets in Los Angeles in 1923. Researchers have cast doubt on this claim, however. Regardless of its birth year, the Los Angeles sign definitely caused a stir, resulting in traffic jams as people marveled at the 'liquid fire'. Soon businesses nationwide were clamoring to install their own glowing letters.