Technology, Culture and Everyday Life 1840-1860

John Deere & the Steel PlowJohn Deere & the Steel Plow

Cyrus McCormick& the Mechanical Reaper

Cyrus McCormick& the Mechanical Reaper

Eli Whitney’s Gun FactoryEli Whitney’s Gun Factory

Interchangeable Parts RifleInterchangeable Parts Rifle

Samuel F. B. MorseSamuel F. B. Morse

1840 – Telegraph1840 – Telegraph

US Urban

Centers

Typical 18th Century row houses in Philadelphia. Because transportation was mostly limited to walking,

houses and other buildings were close together to minimize travel time

A more modern row house from the late 1800s. The styles haven’t changed much, nor have the distance between buildings. Pushing out the living rooms in the front, however, captures more light.

The front parlor featuring Rococo Revival seating furniture.

Phrenology is a hypothesis stating that the personality traits of a person can be derived from the shape of the skull.

In the Victorian age, phrenology as a psychology was taken seriously and permeated the literature and novels of the day

• The American brothers Lorenzo Niles Fowler and Orson Squire Fowler were leading phrenologists of their time.

• Thousands of people consulted phrenologists for advice in various matters, such as hiring personnel or finding suitable marriage partners.

• Beginning during the 1840s, phrenology in North America became part of a counter-culture movement evident in the appearance of new dress styles, communes, mesmerism, and a revival of herbal remedies.

• Phrenology was rejected by mainstream academia

The development of quicker, more efficient printing methods led to a rapid growth of newspapers in the U.S. during the 19th century. As the country expanded and new metropolitan centers sprang up, so did newspapers that served the interests of the region. A growing literacy rate

among the populace also helped make such printed matter more popular and profitable.

The New York Family Story Paper was established in 1870 and like other penny papers (such as the New York Detective Library, at right) ran adventure stories, sensational romances and racy detective stories. It did not have a good reputation; the Eagle called it "a loose publication."

Newsboys

• The newsboy occupation existed from the late 1800s, through the early twentieth century and even into the 1940s (the time period for The Printer). The job of hawking newspapers to passer-bys was not an easy job, and many poor, homeless children competed for the meager money that could be gained from the position.

• When the immigrants arrived, adults and children alike searched for jobs and living quarters. Around this time, the American newspaper industry began to boom, and newspapers required cheap workers to distribute daily editions. A New York paper, The New York Sun, was the first newspaper to hire newsboys to sells papers on the streets of the busy city. Soon, other papers followed suit and the newsboy career path bloomed.

• The life of a newsboy was tough: in many cases, these boys and girls (yes, girls sold papers too!) needed to sell papers in order to buy food and survive. Some newsboys were as young as six years old, while others were teenaged at fourteen or fifteen. Because many of them had to sell papers from the early morning until late evening in order to earn money for food, most newsboys did not attend school. Many were orphans, living on the street, and fellow newsboys formed their families.

Theaters• Like newspapers, theaters increasingly appealed to a mass audience.

Antebellum theaters were large and crowded by all classes. Prostitutes usually sat in the top gallery called the third tier. Theatrical audiences were rowdy. They showed their feeling by stamping feet, whistling and throwing garbage at the stage when they did not like the character.

• Actors developed huge followings. Melodramas in which virtue was rewarded were performed the most. The most popular dramatist was Shakespeare.

Minstrel Shows

• It originated in the 1820s, when white actors began creating black-faced comic types and darkened their skin with burnt cork. These characters, including one named Jim Crow, often replaced white rural types as popular comic subjects. And the minstrel style spread throughout Europe as well as the United States. By the 1830s, black-faced white performers were highly popular attractions on the American stage, especially in the North, where whites' contact with blacks was more limited than in the South. Portrayals were often freakish.

P. T. BarnumP.T. Barnum bought the American Museum in New York City in 1841 and turned it into an exhibition hall for the presentation of "freaks" such as ventriloquists, magicians, albinos and the ultra-small General Tom Thumb . A brilliant and shameless promoter, Barnum weathered accusations of fraud with the attitude that there was no such thing as bad press, and he became one of the richest men in America. In 1871 Barnum opened a circus, billed as "The Greatest Show On Earth." In 1881 he merged with competitor James Bailey, forming Barnum & Bailey's Circus (eventually it became today's Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus).

American Renaissance

• After 1820, the United States experienced a flowering of literature. The leading figures of this Renaissance included James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allen Poe.

• The transportation revolution created a national market for books.

• The American Renaissance reflected the rise of a philosophical movement known as romanticism (revealing the longings of an individual authors soul), which challenged classicism (that standards of beauty was universal).

American Landscape Painting• The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement

embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism. Their paintings depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and the White Mountains.

• While the elements of the paintings are rendered very realistically, many of the actual scenes are the synthesized compositions of multiple scenes or natural images observed by the artists. In gathering the visual data for their paintings, the artists would travel to rather extraordinary and extreme environments, the likes of which would not permit the act of painting. During these expeditions, sketches and memories would be recorded and the paintings would be rendered later, upon the artists' safe return home.

• The artist Thomas Cole is generally acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School.

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm

Mount Washington, by John Frederick Kensett

Thomas ColeAmerican, 1801-1848Distant View of Niagara Falls, 1830