Page 7

    New Books  BIG Booklist   Ephemera    History    Index    How to Order

This page is provided by The Personal Navigator. Antique and curious books, diaries, maps.        Author: Sam Coulbourn, 7 Mill Lane, Rockport, MA, 01966 USA. E-mail: persnav@shore.net.   Tel. (978) 546-7138.  Excuse this poor web publishing — nevertheless, we hope you’ll be able to find something exciting to buy! Picture at top of each page: During visit of U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet to Rockport, MA in 1908, personnel boats load well-dressed Rockporters for visit to anchored battleships.   ©2008. All rights reserved. Revised Sunday, November 30, 2008.

To search for an item on our website, simply go to www.Google.com and enter “Persnav” and the subject you’re looking for, like “religious” or “cooking” or “maps”...or “Tolstoy” or “Kickapoo” patent medicine.

To order an item, copy the information and paste it in an email to The Personal Navigator. Include your Visa or MasterCard information , or request PayPal®. You may also call us at 978-546-7138 and give us your order. We also take checks and money orders.
Search ABE books    

The Gleaner of Manchester, New Hampshire

[See Newspapers, p. 49.]

                 Old newspapers give you a wonderful view of life in another time, and they give it as it rolls along, without the wisdom of a historian, just as reporters see it at the moment. You see mention of things that the observer thinks are interesting at the time, but all these years later, mean nothing. And, you see the first mention of events that grew and grew in importance over the years.

                 I came upon a bundle of issues of The Gleaner of Manchester, New Hampshire, from 1844 and 1845, recently.

                 Manchester in 1844 was a brash young town, with a rapidly growing population, most of the people engaged in the growing wool and cotton mills that used the power of the Merrimack River to spin acres of fabric for customers all over the United States and Canada.

                 Farmers all over New England and New York, faced with tough times keeping their families clothed and fed, found that with more than one woman in the home, there wasn’t enough spinning, weaving, butter churning and such to justify another mouth to feed, and so they sent their daughters down to work in the mills of Manchester, for a dollar a week.

                 The Gleaner was an irreverent weekly paper of four pages per issue, loaded with snide remarks, insults, sneaky questions and innuendo.   With a town full of young, single mill girls, living in boarding houses many miles from their families for the first time, local men saw an opportunity for illicit affairs.

                 Many of these girls, all who worked perhaps six 12-hour days a week in the mills, came from God-fearing homes, but there were many stories of local Lotharios who succeeded in seducing some of them.

                 The Gleaner of Sept. 28, 1844 published a poem that captured the sense of the times:

                 "The Factory Girls Soliloquy-- Oh were my dwelling far remote, From men of evil minds; Away in some secluded spot, Or on some lonely mountain top, Where sol forever shines…."; 

                 There are numerous mentions of various males having questionable appointments with young mill girls.

                 The Gleaner of Oct. 26, 1844 contained a letter to the editor:

"Manchester would be pleased to know why and for what Plin White is so often seen going into the tenement occupied by E.H. Smith, as a boarding house? Are the girls that board there sick?  If they are not, they will be if they employ such a doctor as White is.  We know of some half dozen who are now suffering from the effects of his pills."

                 In 1844 the Temperance movement was up to full steam, and with it came letters to the Editor of The Gleaner, noting which members of a temperance society were consuming alcoholic beverages, or even selling them.

                 In The Gleaner of Nov. 2, 1844, a letter to the Editor from Hooksett, NH is a scathing complaint about  Rev. Mr. Drew, a Temperance speaker, who said his health was so poor that he should say but a few words, then addressed the congregation for two hours; “the language would have appeared much more appropriate in a war dance of the red man of the forest than in a congregation of christians.”  The writer notes that the speaker's wrath was directed at a rumseller, while several members of the Temperance society sell more rum.  “Why not clear them out first?” 

                 People took their religion seriously in 1844, and some of the most serious were the Millerites, followers of the Rev. William Miller of New York.  Miller had been studying parts of the Bible and had calculated that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would take place on October 22, 1844.  His followers were so thoroughly convinced that this would happen that some sold their houses and their businesses, and made no plans after October 22. 

                 It was a big disappointment to Millerites when nothing happened on Oct. 22, but writers to The Gleaner had a field day.  The October 26 issue had four letters ridiculing the gullible followers in four different towns around Manchester, reporting how the Millerites had been so surprised.  In the Nov. 2 issue, a letter to the editor from Haverhill, MA complains about Millerism  "gulling the weak and credulous out of their money"…

                 Northerners were very concerned about the injustice of slavery in 1844, and The Gleaner of Nov. 2 that year carried a poem:

"The Slave Holder's Parody: Come saints and sinners, hear me tell, How pious priests whipped Jack and Nell, And women buy, and children sell, and preach all sinners down to hell, And sing for heavenly union.   They'll bleat and bah like any goats, Gorge down black sheep, and stain at moats-- Array their backs in fine black coats, And seize their negroes by their throats, And choke for heavenly union...."

                 In the Nov. 9, 1844 issue of The Gleaner, an editorial notes that Manchester's only bookbinder is a "tyrant", a "jackass" and an "ignoramus".   In that issue election news reported the status of electors voting for Clay and Frelinghuysen or Polk and Dallas, and predicted that next week should reveal who will occupy the White House for the next four years.

THE GLEANER—A newspaper filled with insults, chiding temperance hypocrites, naming cheats and adulterers, spilling secrets….

The Gleaner was loaded with insults, snide remarks, quick to point out hypocrisy, fraud, adultery and much more…..  See Newspapers.