Dorothea Dix
A New England teacher and author who spoke against the inhumane treatment of insane prisoners, ca. 1830's. People who suffered from insanity were treated worse than normal criminals. Dorothea Dix traveled over 60,000 miles in 8 years gathering information for her reports, reports that brought about changes in treatment, and also the concept that insanity was a disease of the mind, not a willfully perverse act by an individual.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a member of the women's right's movement in 1840. She was a mother of seven, and she shocked other feminists by advocating suffrage for women at the first Women's Right's Convention in Seneca, New York 1848. Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments" which declared "all men and women are created equal.
Emma Willard
in 1821 founded Troy Female Seminary in New York which was a model for girls' schools everywhere
Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster was a white Pennsylvanian that wrote, ironically, the most famous black songs. H lived from 1826 to 1864. His one excursion into the South occurred in 1852, after he had published "Old Folks at Home". Foster made a valuable contribution to American Folk music by capturing the plaintive spirit of the slaves.
Sylvester Graham
American clergyman whose advocacy of health regimen emphasizing temperance and vegetarianism found lasting expression in graham cracker
Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz was a professor at Harvard College. He was a student of biology who insisted on original research. He hated the overemphasis on memory work. Agassiz was one of the most influential American scientists in the nineteenth century.
James Russell Lowell
Lowell lived from 1819 to 1891. He was an American poet, essayist, diplomat, editor, and literary critic. He is remembered for his political satire, especially in the Billow Papers ( which condemned president Polk's policy for expanding slavery). He succeeded professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as teacher of modern languages at Harvard.
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe lived from 1809-1849 and was cursed with hunger, cold, poverty, and debt. He was orphaned as a child and when he married his fourteen year old wife, she died of tuberculosis. He wrote books that deal with the ghostly and ghastly, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher." (pg. 345)
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was a poet who lived in Brooklyn from 1819-1892. His most famous collection of poems entitled Leaves of Grass, gained him the title "Poet Laureate of Democracy.
William Miller
A self-educated farmer from New York. Convinced from his studies that Christ will return in 1843, from his studies of the Scriptures.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was a lecturer for women's rights. She was a Quaker. Many conventions were held for the rights of women in the 1840s. Susan B. Anthony was a strong woman who believed that men and women were equal. She fought for her rights even though people objected. Her followers were called Suzy B's.
John J. Audubon
Audubon lived from 1785 to 1851. He was of French descent, and an artist who specialized in painting wild fowl. He had such works as Birds of America and Passenger Pigeons. Ironically, he shot a lot of birds for sport when he was young. He is remembered as America's greatest ornithologist.
Washington Irving
Irving published Knickerbockers History of New York in 1809 which had interesting caricatures of the Dutch. Washington Irving's The Sketch Book, published in 1819-1820, was an immediate success. This book made Irving world renown. The Sketch Book was influenced by both American and English themes, and therefore popular in the Old and New World.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
United States writer and leading exponent of transcendentalism (1803-1882)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American poet and professor of modern languages at Harvard. Lived 1807-1882. During a period which was dominated in the literary field by Transcendentalists, Longfellow was an urbane poet who catered to the upper classes and the more educated of the citizens. He was also popular in Europe, and is the only American poet to have a bust in Westminster Abbey.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
An anatomy teacher at Harvard Medical school who was regarded as a prominent poet, essayist, novelist, lecturer and wit from 1809-1894. Poem " the Last Leaf" in honor of the last "white Indian" at the Boston Tea Party, which really applied to himself.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
He wrote the Scarlet Letter in 1850. This was his masterpiece. He also wrote The Marble Faun. Many of his works had early American themes. The Scarlet Letter is about a woman who commits adultery in a Puritan village. Hawthorn's upbringing was heavily influenced by his puritan ancestors.
Louisa May Alcott
Novelist whose tales of family life helped economically support her own struggling transcendentalist family
Lucretia Mott
A Quaker who attended an anti-slavery convention in 1840 and her party of women was not recognized. She and Stanton called the first women's right convention in New York in 1848
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a wealthy and idealistic Scottish textile manufacturer. He sought to better the human race and set up a communal society in 1825. There were about a thousand persons at New Harmony, Indiana. The enterprise was not a success.
Gilbert Stuart
A painter from Rhode Island who painted several portraits of Washington, creating a sort of idealized image of Washington. When Stuart was painting these portraits, the former president had grown old and lost some teeth. Stuart's paintings created an ideal image of him.
James Fenimore Cooper
Writer who lived in New York in 1789-1851. Historical Significance: first novelist to gain world fame and make New World themes respectable.
Henry David Thoreau
He was a poet, a mystic, a transcendentalist, a nonconformist, and a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson who lived from 1817-1862. He condemned government for supporting slavery and was jailed when he refused to pay his Mass. poll tax. He is well known for his novel about the two years of simple living he spent on the edge of Walden Pond called "Walden" , Or Life in the Woods. This novel furthered many idealistic thoughts. He was a great transcendentalist writer who not only wrote many great things, but who also encouraged, by his writings, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Margaret Fuller
Social reformer, leader in women's movement and a transcendentalist. Edited "The Dial" which was the publication of the transcendentalists. It appealed to people who wanted "perfect freedom" "progress in philosophy and theology and hope that the future will not always be as the past".
Elizabeth Blackwell
A woman who challenging the taboo of professional women. She graduated from medical college, thereby proving that women are able to do what men can.
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an author born in New York in 1819. He was uneducated and an orphan. Melville served eighteen months as a whaler. These adventuresome years served as a major part in his writing. Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1851 which was much less popular than his tales of the South seas. Herman Melville died in 1891.
Francis Parkman
historian with defective eyes that forced him to write in darkness with the aid of a guiding machine; chronicled the struggle between France and England in colonial times for mastery of North America
Horace Mann
He was an idealistic graduate of Brown University, secretary of the Massachusetts board of education. He was involved in the reformation of public education (1825-1850). He campaigned for better school houses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum. He caused a reformation of the public schools, many of the teachers were untrained for that position. Led to educational advances in text books by Noah Webster and Ohioan William H. McGuffey.
Charles G. Finney
urged people to abandon sin and lead good lives in dramatic sermons at religious revivals
Brigham Young
A Mormon leader that led his oppressed followers to Utah in 1846. Under Young's management, his Mormon community became a prosperous frontier theocracy and a cooperative commonwealth. He became the territorial governor in 1850. Unable to control the hierarchy of Young, Washington sent a federal army in 1857 against the harassing Mormons.
Peter Cartwright
Born in 1785, he was the best known of Methodist "Circuit riders". He was a traveling frontier preacher. Ill-educated but still powerful, he reigned for 50 years going from Tennessee to Illinois. He converted thousands of people doing this. He also liked to pick a fight if someone spoke against his religion.
William H. McGuffey
created the nations first and most widely used series of textbooks
Phineas T. Barnum
Phineas T. Barnum was the most famous showman of his era (1810-1891). He was a Connecticut Yankee who earned the title, "the Prince of Humbug." Beginning in New York City, he "humbugged" the American public with bearded ladies and other freaks. Under his golden assumption that a "sucker" was born every minute, Barnum made several prize hoaxes, including the 161-year-old (actually 80) wizened black "nurse" of George Washington.
Noah Webster
Born in Connecticut. Educated at Yale. Lived 1758-1843. Called "Schoolmaster of the Republic." Wrote reading primers and texts for school use. He was most famous for his dictionary, first published in 1828, which standardized the English language in America.
Joseph Smith
reported to being visited by an angel and given golden plates in 1840; the plates, when deciphered, brought about the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Book of Mormon; he ran into opposition from Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri when he attempted to spread the Mormon beliefs; he was killed by those who opposed him.
Stephen Foster
United States songwriter whose songs embody the sentiment of the South before the American Civil War (1826-1864)
American Temperance Society
An organization group in which reformers are trying to help the ever present drink problem. This group was formed in Boston in 1826, and it was the first well-organized group created to deal with the problems drunkards had on societies well being, and the possible well-being of the individuals that are heavily influenced by alcohol.
Women's Rights Convention
Meeting in Seneca Falls, New York of feminists; 1848; First meeting for women's rights, helped in long struggle for women to be equal to men
Oneida Community
A group of socio-religious perfectionists who lived in New York. Practiced polygamy, communal property, and communal raising of children.
Shakers
American religious sect devoted to the teachings of Ann Lee Stanley, prohibited marriage and sexual relationships
Knickerbocker group
group in New York that wrote literature and enabled America to boast for the first time of a literature that matched its magnificent landscapes
Mormons
church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah
Maine Law
passed in 1851 in Maine, was one of the first statutory implementations of the developing temperance movement in the United States.
Burned-Over District
This is a term that refers to western New York. The term came at a time when revivals were rampant. Puritan sermonizers were preaching "hell-fire and damnation." Mormons. A religion, newly established by Joseph Smith, who claimed to have had a revelation from angel. The Mormons faced much persecution from the people and were eventually forced to move west. (Salt Lake City) After the difficult journey they greatly improved their land through wise forms of irrigation.
Deists
Influenced by the spirit of rationalism, Desists believed that God, like a celestial clockmaker, had created a perfect universe and then had stepped back to let it operate according to natural laws.
Unitarianism
a "spin-off" faith from the severe Puritanism of the past. Unitarians believed that God existed in only one person and not in the orthodox trinity. They also denied the divinity of Jesus, stressed the essential goodness of human nature, proclaimed their belief in free will and the possibility of salvation through good works, and pictured God as a loving father rather than a stern creator. The Unitarian movement began in New England at the end of the eighteenth century and was embraced by many of the leading "thinkers" or intellectuals of the day.
Declaration of Sentiments
declared that all "people are created equal"; used the Declaration of Independence to argue for women's rights
Prohibition movement
18th ammendment banned alcohol; reduced national consumption of alcohol but was poorly enforced and easily evaded in cities. repealed by the 21st amendment
Second Great Awakening
A series of religious revivals starting in 1801, based on Methodism and Baptism. Stressed a religious philosophy of salvation through good deeds and tolerance for all Protestant sects. The revivals attracted women, Blacks, and Native Americans.
Transcendentalism
The Transcendentalist movement of the 1830's consisted of mainly modernizing the old puritan beliefs. This system of beliefs owed a lot to foreign influences, and usually resembled the philosophies of John Locke. Transcendentalists believe that truth transcends the body through the senses, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were two of the more famous transcendentalists.
Utopian societies
Socialists created an image of a perfect world with model communities.
Hudson River School
A type of painting with a romantic, heroic, mythic style that flourished in the 19th century. It tended to paint American landscapes as beautiful and brooding.
Millerites
Followers of a Calvanist Baptist minister who taught that the second coming of Christ would occur in 1944