German Immigrant Culture in America

The History of the Hamburger:

The idea of eating soft, flat patties of ground beef on a bun originated with Genghis Khan and the Mongols in the 1200s. When the Mongols invaded the Russian city of Moscow in 1238, they brought this unique new food with them. The Russians then adopted this prototype hamburger, calling it “Steak Tartare”.

When the Russians started trading with the German port city of Hamburg in the 15 th century, they then brought their tartare steaks with them, and the Germans loved it. Over the course of three hundred years Germany became the McDonald’s of Europe. Now, tartare steaks weren’t much like hamburgers today. It was a simple slab of meat with spices and onions on it, and was often eaten raw. The focus wasn’t on it being a delicacy, but rather that it was durable.

It was because of that durability that tartare steaks became so popular among the working classes. So, naturally when Germans began to immigrant to the United States in the 1700s and 1800s, the Americans picked up the recipe for tartare steaks as well. Restaurants and food stands in New York City during this time offered “steak cooked in the Hamburg style” in order to try and get the business of German-born workers. Soon “Hamburg steak” was simply shorted to hamburger, and one of the most recognizable symbols of American culture was here to stay.

The Lehman Brothers and Their Financial Legacy:

Henry Lehman immigrated from Rimpar, Germany in 1844 to Montgomery, Alabama in order to open a small store that sold groceries and equipment to the cotton farmers living in the area. His two brothers, Emanuel and Mayer, joined him in the year 1850, and the three brothers started calling their now fairly well off firm Lehman Brothers. Henry would die five years later, leaving his two younger brothers to run the business together. Emanuel and Mayer Lehman started the tradition that only people from their family were permitted to be partners in the company.

Since cotton was critical to the South’s economy, Lehman Brothers soon grew from a simple grocery shop to a larger business that bought and sold cotton all throughout the south of the United

States. In 1858, the brothers opened an office in New York City. However, since most of their business was in the South, the brothers’ business was ravaged by the Civil War. However, the Lehman brothers rebuilt, and also began dealing in coffee and petroleum as well as cotton. Like other immigrants, the Lehmans benefitted immensely from the development of railroads, which would take their product across the country.

In 1887 the company became part of the New York Stock Exchange, and became more involved in financial advice than the buying and selling of goods. Even after Emanuel and Mayer died, their family and company would go on to help make the United States a world power on the economic stage. They would help finance some companies that are still around today such as Sears and Macy’s, and the company itself was around until 2008.

Adolf Cluss, “The Red Architect”:

Immigrants were important in every aspect of American city life, including the buildings themselves. Adolf Cluss was one of the many immigrants who chose to leave home because of a political revolution. He was a Communist and left Germany in 1848 during a failed revolution against the German government. He remained an active member of the Communist party until 1858, but in the years after the American Civil War, Cluss settled down in Washington, DC, and became one of the most well known architects in the area.

Between the beginning of his career in 1860 and his retirement thirty years later, Cluss designed eleven schools, markets, government buildings, museums and residences throughout the nation’s capital. Adolf Cluss would also build Washington DC’s first apartment building and several mansions in the area. His most famous work, however, was the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall.

Because of his famous use of red brick and his Communist sympathies, Cluss became known as the “Red Architect”. However, he would later in life become a Republican, the same political party that Abraham Lincoln belonged to. Unfortunately, only two of his famous red-brick school buildings stand today.

Walter Damrosch, the Master Conductor:

Walter Damrosch came from a prestigious family of talented musicians, and studied both conducting and piano before voyaging across the Atlantic with his family in 1871. Unlike other immigrants, Damrosch and his family were fairly well off, and moved to the United States in order to seek more opportunities to practice their music. In New York City, Damrosch served as his father’s assistant conductor and ended up conducting at the Metropolitan when his father was struck ill by pneumonia.

After his father’s death, Damrosch returned to Germany to study conducting under famous German musicians. While he was on the steamship across the ocean, he met Andrew Carnegie, whom

he convinced to build the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh. After his trip home, Damrosch seemed determined to meld American and European culture together. He brought a Russian Symphony to New York City and married the daughter of the Secretary of State.

Even though he was German-born, Damrosch is best known for promoting and spreading American music around the globe. He is one of three composers to ever premiere more than one opera at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York City, and even opened the Damrosch Opera Company, which was so successful that the Met considered it a rival. Finally, he became NBC’s musical consultant, and produced something called “The Music Appreciation Hour”, which was on the air from 1928 to 1942.

Franz Sigel, the German Who Fought for the Union

Franz Sigel would go on to become one of the brigadier generals serving the Union in the American Civil War, but first he was a Lieutenant in the Baden Army in his home country of Germany. He would participate in the same failed 1848 revolution that forced Adolf Cluss out of Germany, and eventually moved to New York to escape persecution by the Prussians, different Germans who had defeated the Badens during the Revolution.

When the American Civil War broke out, Sigel used his military experience in Germany to become a colonel and served under General Nathaniel Lyon. He would lead troop skirmishes throughout the South, helping to secure that region for the Union. Sigel would eventually be promoted to brigadier general, partially to encourage the Old Immigrant Germans who had come to the United States to fight for the Union.

Sigel would later be promoted to Major General. The height of the German-American’s career was the Battle of Pea Ridge, where he would successfully command two divisions of Union troops to victory. Unfortunately, Sigel never won a battle afterwards, and would resign his commission on May 4, 1865.

Russian Immigrant Culture in America

Ivan Turchaninov aka John Turchin, the Heavy Handed Russian General*

Turchaninov was the only Russian-American general to serve in the Civil War. When he was 14 years old, Ivan’s mother sent him to learn at a St. Petersburg Artillery School, which gave him five years of instruction in math and engineering. After serving with an artillery unit, Turchaninov enrolled in the Imperial Military School when he was 30 years old, became chief of staff among the Russian guards, and fought in both the Crimean War and Hungary, during which he met George McClellan, who would later command the Union Army in the American Civil War.

After marrying the daughter of his commanding officer and leaving Russia for America, the man went by John Basil Turchin in order to be better accepted in his new home. The Russian soldier wanted to seek a new life where he would be able to freely display his liberal political views and hardy work ethic. The now American Turchins tried to start a farm on Long Island, New York, but an economic downturn ended up causing them to move to Philadelphia, and then to Chicago.

When the Civil War broke out, Turchin’s connections with General George McClellan and his experience as a soldier in Russia led to him being quickly elevated to the rank of colonel. During the war, Turchin proved to be an excellent, if heavy-handed, commander. He allowed his troops to pillage the town of Athens in Alabama, insisting that the Union had been “too soft” on the southerners, and was nearly court martialed for it. Suffering from heat stroke, Turchin resigned from the war early, but not before leading several critical charges to win the battle of Chattanooga.

Irving Berlin, Almost Replaced the National Anthem:

Irving Berlin, originally named Irving Baline, was a Russian Jew born in 1888 and he had seven brothers and sisters. Since his father was very involved in the Jewish community, his family moved to

New York City to escape the pogroms, giant mob attacks condoned by the Russian government against the Jews. Irving was only five years old when his family made the voyage across the Atlantic.

Irving would start off by as a singing waiter in restaurants and writing songs when he wasn’t working. After publishing his first big hit and gaining local fame, he would write inspirational songs throughout World War I, raising money for Army Emergency Reliefs and different causes that helped the American Jewish Community. It’s interesting to note that Irving Berlin only had two years of formal schooling, and that he never learned to read or write music.

However, that didn’t stop him. In 1938, Irving Berlin invented the song “God Bless America”, which was so patriotic and inspiring that it almost replaced “The Star Spangled Banner” as the United States’ National Anthem. Throughout his lifetime, Irving wrote more than 900 songs, 19 musicals, and the scores to 18 movies. He raised millions of money for great causes, and would live to be 101 years old.

David Burliuk, the Lady Gaga of the Gilded Age:

David Burliuk was born in 1882 in Ukraine to a well off family and moved to Russia soon afterwards. Burliuk wouldn’t move to the United States until 1922, but he still saw America as one of his many homelands and lived on Long Island for the majority of his life. Burliuk studied art in Russia, Germany, Japan, and the US, soaking in the scenery of these countries and the style of their most renowned artists. In this way, David Burliuk brought not only the artistic heritage of Russia to the United States, but also brought the heritage of several other countries as well.

He was known to have an eccentric personality, most photos of him show him with a large, dangling earing or a painting of a tree or symbol on his face. Burliuk painted in the “avant-garde” style, which meant he was very experimental with his paintings and writing, combining styles and using subjects that weren’t main-stream for the late 1800s and early 1900s. He was sort of like the Lady Gaga of the Gilded Age. Everyone agreed that he was very talented, but at the same time he made his living by being somewhat odd. America was the perfect place for Burliuk to create new and exciting artwork. America was already a melting pot for cultures, why not artistic expression as well?

Burliuk’s influences came from all over the world. Cuban, Japanese, German, Russian, and American styles all merged together in his surreal artwork. He painted fishermen, the tenements of New York City, peasants in Russia, and scenes that used symbolism to represent different parts of history, but David Burliuk’s favorite two things to paint were the face of his wife and the landscapes of the countries he had lived in, namely Russia and the United States.

Peter Demens, the Founder of St. Petersburg:

Originally born Piotr Alexewitch Dementief in 1850 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Peter Demens was from a very well educated and socially connected family who came to the United States in 1881 with his wife and four children because of his democratic political beliefs. He was a businessman that thrived in America’s free market. He enjoyed how laissez-faire, or hands off, the United States’ government was when it came to the economy, and the “winner-take-all” environment of capitalism.

Immigrating to Florida and working as a manager of railroad houses, Demens undertook the risky endeavor of building the Orange Belt Railway, which ran from Sanford, Florida, to the Pinellas Peninsula. The job did not go so well, his financial backers were always late with their payments, and his workers were ill paid and threatened to strike, costing Demens a lot of his money. However, the job was completed, and a town was built in the Pinellas Peninsula that was named St. Petersburg in honor of the city that Peter Demens was born in.

Not deterred by the setbacks he faced in Florida, Demens and his business partner moved to the city of Asheville in North Carolina and opened a woodworking mill. Demens’ new business would go on to build the US Courthouse and Post Office in Asheville and a nearby town called Statesville. The Statesville building was inspected by German immigrant Adolph Cluss, who determined that the lack of Southern skilled workers had caused several setbacks in the building’s development, but respected the Russian-ingenuity of Demens’ work all the same. Eventually, Demens gave up the woodworking mill and moved to Los Angeles to live out the rest of his days owning several steam-powered Laundromats.

Western Russian Cuisine:

The first thing to acknowledge about Russia when speaking about the food from there is that Russia is gigantic. So, this section is mostly going to focus on Western Russia, which is much closer to the rest of Europe, and where most immigrants who came to the US were born. The style of Russian food was very much a product of the geography in the area. Since there are many rivers, lakes, and forests in that area, fish, game, berries, and mushrooms were very important in many Russian dishes.

Also, Russia is a good deal colder than the rest of the world, so hardy grains and vegetables that could survive the bleak climate were very critical to the Russian diet. This includes turnips, cabbages, radishes, peas, and cucumbers. Grain porridge, or “kasha” was made out of rye, oat, wheat, barley, or buckwheat, and was a favorite among Russian children. There is an old saying in Russia, “Bread is our father and porridge is our mother.”

The Russian stove was another important part of how foods were prepared. This stove, used for baking breads and making stew, would heat the food from all sides, making it especially delicious. In time, powerful or rich Russians came in contact with other Europeans, adopting a diet with many French or English influences. However, much of that did not affect the common people, who brought their stews, porridge, and bread with them over to the United States while escaping rapid government changes or hostile farming weather.

Italian Immigrant Culture in the United States:

A Slice of History, The Origins of Pizza:

Flatbread with a variety of toppings was the favored food among the laboring poor in the city of Naples as far back as 600 BC. It was simple to make, delicious, and able to be consumed quickly. Pizza was a favorite dish of the Italian King and Queen after the country’s unification. There is a rumor that the red, white, and green on the Italian flag represent the three pizza favorite toppings of the royal family.

Although pizza wouldn’t become well known in Italy outside of Naples until the 1940s, immigrants from Naples to the United States had brought the dish with them, and it was starting to catch on in huge American cities such as New York and Chicago. Immigrants from Naples were called Neapolitans, which is why the Neapolitan is a popular style of pizza. Neapolitans came seeking factory jobs, not to make a cultural contribution, but Italian pizza came to be one of the most American dishes worldwide.

The first pizzeria in the United States was named Lombardi’s on Spring Street in Manhattan. It was opened by the Italian immigrant Gennaro Lombardi in 1905. Pizza would remain an Italian ethnic food until the end of World War II, but both non-Neapolitans and non-Italians loved the flavors and aromas of the food. Lombardi’s is still open, though it isn’t in its original location on Spring Street anymore.

Joseph Stella, the Italian Who Captured a City:

Joseph Stella’s original name was Giuseppe Michellee Stella when he was born in Italy in 1877. Joseph’s older brother Antonio had moved to New York City to become a doctor, and Joseph immigrated

to live with his brother when he was 18 years old. Antonio hoped that Joseph would follow in his footsteps and become a successful doctor. However, by the end of his second year of schooling, Joseph Stella found that his true passion was art.

Stella followed the idea that no subject was too mundane for art, and took to sketching and painting the masses of immigrants living in New York City. After a spout of homesickness, Stella returned to Italy, where he came to the conclusion that a modern artist should try to capture the civilization of his era. He returned to New York City and made several of his most famous paintings, finally becoming a legal citizen of the country in 1923.

Stella became the first of the great American futurists, an artist that focused on the elements of technology, progress, and industry. Because of this, his paintings are vibrant in color and have a very sleek and futuristic look to them. Like many other artists, Joseph Stella adopted a cause. Stella’s was the fair and equal treatment of immigrants, who were often feared or shunned by nativists in America. To accomplish this goal, Stella took commissions from weekly newspapers that were sympathetic to the immigrant cause, drawing political cartoons or paintings of the hardships immigrants would go through.

Amedeo Obici and Mr. Peanut

As soon as young Amedeo was able to read, his mother showed him letters written by his uncle, who had immigrated to America several years earlier. The letters inspired Amedeo so much that he decided to go live with his uncle in Scranton, PA when he was 11 years old. Obici learned to speak English at night classes, and took a job at a fruit stand. Just by working at this stand, Obici was able to save enough money to allow the rest of his family to come from Italy to live with him, a very impressive feat for someone so young.

It was during this time that Obici noticed something interesting about what he was selling: the peanuts did not decay as quickly as the rest of the produce in his stand. Obici taught himself a special

way to prepare peanuts without shells and called himself “the peanut specialist”. He sold peanuts from the back of a horse drawn cart with a whistle attached so he could advertise more efficiently. In time, Obici formed a business partnership with another Italian immigrant and would come to open a factory for the production of peanuts named “Planter’s Peanuts”.

When several knock off competitors started to tarnish his company’s name, Obici decided that his company needed a new advertising tool in order to stay in business. He held a contest to see who could invent the best new icon for Planter’s Peanuts, and the winner was an 11 year old schoolboy who drew the now familiar “Mr. Peanut”. Soon, Mr. Peanut was on Planter’s Peanut tins, billboards, on coloring books, and quickly drove the company back to success.

Giuseppina "Josephine" Morlacchi, “The Peerless Morlacchi”

Hailing from Milan, Italy, Giuseppina Morlacchi was enrolled in the prestigious La Scala dance school at the age of six, where she learned ballet, eventually premiering in her first Italian ballet in Genoa in 1856. Morlacchi travelled all over Europe, but eventually she was signed by a famous American producer to do a tour in America. She did her first tour in 1867 in the ballet The Devil’s Auction.

The company moved to Boston, a city that Morlacchi grew very fond of, and since the director of the company fell ill, Morlacchi was free to introduce her own choreography to the company as well as star in the ballets. She introduced the French can-can to American dance theatres, and the dance was soon featured in each of Morlacchi’s shows. Eventually, the dance became so popular because of Morlacchi’s fame that it spread to the west along the railway tracks, though it lost some of its class along the way. There was a rumor that Morlacchi was such a fantastic performer that she insured her legs for $100,000, which led newspapers to say that she was “more valuable than the state of Kentucky”.

Giuseppina, or Josephine as she was called in America, was given the title “The Peerless Morlacchi”, not only because she was famous, but because she often stuck up for the rights of younger, less talented members of her cast. Directors and producers during the late 1800s could be cutthroat

and unscrupulous, often cutting the profits of lesser known dancers. The Peerless Morlacchi used her fame in order to insure that the other members of her cast would be paid and treated with respect, forming a bit of a labor union for ballet dancers.

Domingo Ghirardelli, the Chocolate-King:

Originally named Domenico, Ghirardelli’s father was a trader in exotic foods, and became the apprentice of a local candy maker in his hometown of Rapallo, Italy. When he was 20 years old, Ghirardelli married his first wife and immigrated to the South American country of Uruguay to set up a business trading chocolate. He would move again to the country of Peru, where his American business partner would tell him fantastic stories about the opportunities that could be found in the United States.

Ghirardelli moved to San Francisco in 1847 to see if these stories were true, bringing six hundred pounds of chocolate with him. He would have been a rarity there, since most Italian immigrants went across the Atlantic to the Eastern shore of the United States. Hearing of a gold strike in Sutter’s Mill, Ghirardelli then relocated to Sutter’s Mill, where the tent that he sold chocolate out of became one of the first shops in the area.

Several months later, once the gold strike had simmered down, Ghirardelli built a permanent chocolate shop in San Francisco that burnt down in a fire two years later. Ghirardelli went on to rebuild, and accidentally discovered a technique that would change his industry forever. In 1865, someone in the Ghirardelli Company discovered that if you hang a bag of chocolate in a warm room, the cocoa butter drips off, leaving a residue that can be ground down into a more pure chocolate. This technique, now called the Broma process, is still the main way chocolate is produced today.

Irish Immigrant Culture in the United States

Culinary:Industrial: John Phillip Holland-Inventor of the SubmarineMusical: O’NeillArt: HarnettOther: Corcoran

Francis O’Neill, Savior of Irish Music:

Francis originally came from Ireland in 1864 when he was 16 years old. Seeking adventure, he worked as a cabin boy on an English vessel until marrying and moving to Chicago right after the Great Chicago Fire. O’Neill found work as a policeman in the city as it was being rebuilt. O’Neill was a fantastic policeman who distinguished himself from the start. In his first month on the job, he tackled an armed burglar and was shot in the process. He would carry the bullet near his spine for the rest of his life. He became General Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department in 1901,helping to reform what had been a very corrupt police department, eventually becoming the Chief of Police in Chicago.

However, O’Neill’s real legacy lies in his preservation of Irish music. O’Neill had adored the music of his home country, even though Irish musicians had been persecuted against by the English and in some respects, the Catholic Church. O’Neill went through great lengths to uncover the music, and artists that could play it. O’Neill did his best to make Chicago a welcome home for Irish immigrants and Irish musicians, inviting them to the city as soon as he heard of a new musician or group coming to the United States. Even more impressive, he would travel around the city, listening to Irish immigrants sing and hum, interviewing them and learning more about Irish music.

O’Neill wrote all of these almost 3,500 tunes that he collected in a series of eight books that he wrote after he retired from the police force in 1905. Francis himself was especially talented with the flute, but he also dabbled in the fiddle, pipes, and other instruments that were common in Irish music. Not only did O’Neill provide a vital service to the city of Chicago by keeping it safe, but he also did a

service to every Irish immigrant to come to the United States by keeping track of their musical history and documenting it so thoroughly.

William Harnett, Master of Optical Illusion:

Born in Ireland during a potato famine, Harnett and his family moved to Philadelphia, where he became an American citizen in 1868. Harnett earned a living engraving silver during the day, but saved enough to afford night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Eventually, after he had saved enough, Harnett moved to New York, where he continued to study art at Cooper Union. In 1880 he travelled back to Europe, spending most of his time studying in Munich, Germany.

Harnett utilized a style called trompe l’oeil, which means “to deceive the eye” in French. These were the first optical illusions to be appreciated on a global scale and Harnett was an undisputed master at it. His paintings were so realistic that people viewing them in museums would reach out and try to grab them. Because of his focus on extreme realism, Harnett’s subjects were usually still life, such as bookshelves or tobacco pipes.

Harnett had come a long way from engraving silver. During the Gilded Age, only the rich could afford to display pieces of art on their walls, and thus Harnett was employed by several wealthy families to paint parts of their homes. One could learn a lot from what the time period was like because of the extraordinary amount of detail that went into his work. In a country where most Irishmen were seen as nothing more than mill workers and untrustworthy Catholics, Harnett’s good will with the elite of America went a long way to helping improve the reputation that the Irish had in America.

Michael Corcoran, a Union General of Extremely Controversial Luck:

Originally, Michael Corcoran was a police officer in Ireland up until his resignation in 1849 when he went to the United States seeking new work. After serving a variety of clerical jobs working in the office buildings of New York City, he enlisted in the 69th New York Militia and quickly rose to the rank of colonel in 1859. When the Prince of Wales visited the United States a year later, Corcoran refused to parade his troops as a welcome, since the Irish did not see eye to eye with the Welsh and English.

Corcoran was stripped of his position for this disrespect, faced national criticism, and court martial. He seemed doomed to an obscure life, until the Civil War broke out. Since the Union wanted the Old Immigrant Irish who lived in the North to enlist in the Army, they made Corcoran a colonel again and restored his good standing. During the first battle of the war, First Bull Run, Corcoran was captured and held by the Confederates for some time. When the Union captured several Confederate sailors and threatened to execute them, the Confederates used the colonel as a bargaining chip.

A trade was made, and Michael Corcoran was set free. This was the second time that Corcoran’s incredible luck saved him. Upon his release, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and became personal friends with President Abraham Lincoln. Corcoran continued to raise support for the Union among Irish immigrants, and formed the Corcoran Legion or “Irish Legion”. He commanded for a little over a year, until he was unfortunately crushed to death by his falling horse in Virginia.

John Phillip Holland, Inventor of the Submarine:

Holland was one of four brothers born to his family in Ireland in 1841. He was fortunate enough to have an education, and went to a National School where he studied up until he was 18 years old. At that phase of his education, Holland started studying with the Christian Brothers in Limerick, and was lucky to have an especially gifted science professor.

Holland was obsessed with studying the topics of sea and air travel, which would prove useful to him later in life. His teachers encouraged this, and in 1859 Holland had already drawn up plans for his first prototype submarine. Holland was convinced that these underwater vessels would be critical if navies wanted to stand a chance against the iron-clad warships that were developing. The novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” convinced Holland to follow his dreams. After his health deteriorated and forced him out of his studies in 1873, Holland joined his mother and brothers, who had immigrated to Boston while John had been at school.

When Holland showed his first idea for a submarine to the United States Navy, they laughed him off. However, Holland found another backer in the Fenian Movement, a group of Irishmen who sought to make Ireland independent from England by any means possible. Using the money supplied to him by this group, Holland built and tested his first submarine, which only held one person and could only travel at under ten miles per hour. However, because of the Fenians Holland was able to quit his job as a teacher and developed many more efficient and weaponized submarines. Ironically, the Holland cut ties with the Fenians, and he was quick to sell his designs to the British in 1901. Submarines would in fact be of the utmost importance in the First and Second World Wars.

The Cultural Impact of Irish, Welsh, and British Immigrants to the United States:

Culinary:Industrial: CarnegieMusical: FinlaysonArt: DonaldsonOther: Corcoran

Andrew Carnegie, Captain of Industry:

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835, and though he received very little formal education due to his family’s poor financial status, he was fortunate that his family thought it was critical that he learn to read and write. When Carnegie was 13 years old, he and his family left Scotland behind to seek new opportunities in the United States. Starting off working in a factory for a little over a dollar a week, Carnegie would take jobs in the telegraph and then railroad businesses, working his way up the ladder and learning about business along the way.

Eventually, Carnegie had learned all he could from the railroad business, and branched out into the steel business to try and make a name for himself. The Carnegie Steel Company completely revolutionized the steel industry, building steel mills all around the country and using advanced techniques to produce steel faster and stronger. Even though Carnegie’s larger than life goals for the company were sometimes at odds with the welfare of his workers, his company was part of the reason America developed into the industrial and economic superpower that it is today.

Carnegie was also a philanthropist, meaning he believed that it was the duty of the rich to give something back to society. This was especially true later in life, when he made a fortune selling Carnegie Steel to the US Steel Corporation. Thanks to Carnegie’s donations, over 2,000 libraries were able to open, and he also funded the foundation of a school that would later become known as Carnegie Mellon

University. The man made friends with other historical figures, such as Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, and Walter Damrosch, all of whom would contribute significantly to American culture.

William Mayo, Life-Saving Doctor:

William Mayo was born in the English village of Salford near Manchester in 1819, and had a very fortunate life in England before immigrating to the United States. His father was a carpenter, and passed away when James was only 7 years old. Despite this, his single mother made sure that William had a good education. William’s most esteemed teacher was John Dalton, inventor of the atomic theory, who ignited William’s passion for science and medicine. On top of that, tens of thousands of England’s weavers and spinners were out of work, and Manchester was a hot-spot for labor meetings, instilling Mayo with a sense of social justice. When he was 27 years old, he boarded a ship for America, hoping to earn his medical degree and start a new life as a prestigious doctor.

Mayo found work in the United States as a pharmacist, and would continue to work in the medical field and further his education until 1850 when he received his medical degree and decided to move west with his new wife and family. However, due to his poor health and bad luck at finding a stable position as a doctor, Mayo took up odd jobs working as a farmer, on a ferry, as a judge, and as a steamboat operator as he travelled across the country. However, he eventually found a steady job in the city of Rochester, Minnesota, and settled down there.

In 1892, Mayo started a medical partnership that his sons would eventually turn into the Mayo Clinic after his death in 1911. The Mayo Clinic has become known as one of the United States’ best hospitals. It is a non-profit institution that specializes in researching and using new medical techniques. The Mayo Clinic has expanded from Rochester to cities all over the United States, helping patients from all around the country to this very day.

Henry Morton Stanley, the Great Explorer:

Henry Morton Stanley’s original name was John Rowlands. He was born on the 28 th of January, 1841 in Denbigh, Wales. His parents were not married, and he was brought up in a workhouse. In 1859, when Rowlands was 18 years old, he left for New Orleans seeking a new life that had more to offer than the cramped workhouse. There he was befriended by a merchant, Henry Stanley, who became his adopted father. Stanley went on to serve on both sides in the American Civil War and then worked as a sailor and journalist.

In 1867, Stanley became special correspondent for the New York Herald. Two years later he was commissioned by the paper to go to Africa and search for Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who had not been heard from in a year. Stanley reached Zanzibar in January 1871 and proceeded to Lake Tanganyika, Livingstone's last known location. There in November 1871 he found the sick explorer, greeting him with the famous words: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley's reports on his expedition made him famous worldwide.

When Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley resolved to continue his exploration of the region, funded by the Herald and a British newspaper. He explored vast areas of central Africa, and travelled down the length of the Lualaba and Congo Rivers, eventually reaching the Atlantic after an epic journey that he later described in “Through the Dark Continent” Stanley would then go on to help develop the Congo and spread European colonization throughout Africa, and was knighted for his efforts.

James Finlayson, Scottish Silent Screen Slapstick Comedian:

Originally born in Stirlingshire, Scotland, Finlayson originally worked as an apprentice in his father’s iron foundry. He then enrolled in, and dropped out of, the University of Edinburgh to try and pursue his acting career. He soon found his way into a local company, and primarily worked in comedy. After the death of his parents, he and his brother decided to leave Scotland behind for America in 1911. More than anything, Finlayson wanted to appear on Broadway.

Finlayson hit a streak of luck, and appeared in several Broadway shows. Due to his success, he decided to stay in America, and travelled as part of a vaudeville show, a sort of travelling circus with a mix of many different performers and acts. Eventually, he settled down in Hollywood and began to work

in silent films. After several failed attempts to become a starring actor, James Finlayson accepted that his best role was that of comedic support, and his ability to play these roles earned him fame in both silent and voiced films.

Finlayson was shorter than average, and going bald. To enhance his image as a short, easily angered stick-in-the-mud, he wore several fake walrus-like mustaches throughout his career. Some of his trademarks were the double-take and squinting while going crosseyed at other characters or frustrating situations. However, one of his most lasting legacies might be his trademark “d’ohhhhh” noise he would make when his characters were upset. The voice-actor who plays Homer Simpson adopted a similar grunt of frustration, which would be shortened to Homer’s signature “D’oh!” in later seasons.

John M. Donaldson, Architect of Detroit:

In 1856 John and Isabella (McNaughten) Donaldson immigrated to Detroit, Michigan with their two year old son John from Stirling, Scotland. He graduated from the Detroit Public Schools and later from the Polytechnic Collage. Following that he returned to Europe where he studied prestigious schools in Munich, Paris, and Venice.

He returned to Detroit and in 1874 was invited to produce architectural sculpture for the Detroit City Hall then being built. For this building Donaldson made a model of a statue of Pere Marquette, a French missionary that founded the first settlement in Michigan, that was carved in stone by Julius Melchers, an immigrant from Germany. When the building was demolished in the 1950s, the statue was salvaged and now stands on the campus of Wayne State University.

Donaldson had a deep understanding of how different architectural styles affected the cityscape of Detroit. He was especially interested in churches, and held that most churches in Detroit were inspired by French techniques, but they all had their own unique style from the melting pot of American innovations. In 1880 he formed a partnership with Henry J. Meier, Donaldson and Meier. Though Meier died in 1917, the firm continued as Donaldson and Meier until the 1970s.

Austrian-Hungarian Immigrant Culture in the United States

Culinary: Streudel/dessertsIndustrial: John D. HertzPerforming Arts: William FoxVisual Arts: Max FleischerOther:

Max Fleischer, Walt Disney’s Only Rival:

Max Fleischer was the son of a Jewish tailor from the Austria-Hungarian Empire born in the late 1883. His family left their homeland when Max was only 4 years old in order to find a better life for Max and his five brothers and sisters. Fleischer was lucky enough to be able to attend public school. Even though he hadn’t received much training in art, he was a naturally talented cartoonist, and found work for the “Brooklyn Daily Eagle” before he was 20 years old. After working as an illustrator in Boston for a time, Fleischer returned to New York to work as Art Editor for Popular Mechanics magazine. Eventually, Max Fleischer and two of his brothers went on to found Fleischer Studios in 1921.

However, one of Max Fleischer’s greatest contributions to the world of animation came before he founded the studios. Max Fleischer is the inventor of the rotoscoping, a process of making cartoons that was only recently replaced by computers. Animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope. Fleisher himself was only 5 foot tall, but in the field of cartoons he was a giant.

Some of Fleischer’s most popular creations included Betty Boop and Popeye. He also was responsible for making the first Superman cartoon, though of course he had not invented the superhero himself. During the 1930s he had an intense but friendly rivalry with Walt Disney, since they were the two cartoon superpowers at the time. Disney had such respect for Fleischer that he would end up hiring his son to direct the film version of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Unfortunately, Fleischer Studios was absolutely crushed by Paramount Studios, and Fleischer himself died soon afterwards.

William Fox, the Founder of Fox Films:

Originally named Wilhelm Fuchs, William Fox was born on the first day of 1879 in a small town in Austria Hungary. His parents were Jews who left for America when Fox was only nine months old. It

is not clear whether Wilhelm became Wilhelm of his own choice, or if immigration officials decided that it was better off if his name was Americanized. Fox stopped attending school at the age of 11 to begin working, a common thing for children to do in the late 1800s. He was successful, and managed to start the Greater New York Film Rental Company in 1904.

Early theatres for moving pictures called nickelodeons were just starting to catch on in the early 1900s, and Fox meant to make a fortune off of their popularity. Soon, Fox owned a chain of nickelodeons, and after winning a lawsuit against a rival film company owned by Thomas Edison started Fox Films, which produced four films a year on average. The film studio would become wildly successful, going on to make the first “manufactured movie star”, Thesa Bara.

Fox once boasted “No second of every 24 hours passes but that the name of William Fox is on the screen in some part of the world!” The man worked obsessively, keeping his blinds closed and not wearing a watch so that he could block out the concept of time and focus entirely on his work. His work paid off. Fox Films was constantly on the edge of the technological advantage, being the first film mogul to incorporate sound into his films. The Great Depression would obliterate Fox’s wealth, forcing the company to merge with Twentieth Century Films in the 1930s. However, his name is still up in lights at the beginning of many popular movies today.

John D. Hertz, the Pioneer of Public Transportation:

John Daniel Hertz was born in 1879. When he was five years old, Hertz's family immigrated to this country from the little village of Vrutsky, in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After his family settled in Chicago, he attended public school for only a short time before leaving home at age eleven to start working. He worked as a newsboy and then as a copyboy in a newspaper office until he found work on horse-drawn delivery trucks and, in his spare time, joined a gymnasium frequented by professional boxers. Hertz began to take boxing lessons and was encouraged, while only sixteen years of age, to engage in public boxing matches. The small sums paid to him for these activities were sorely needed.

Through his connections with the world of boxing and journalism, Hertz became a successful sports column writer, and also began to work at a local horse racing tracks around Chicago. After he was forced to quit his career as a sports writer, Hertz became an automobile salesman and was quite

successful at it. He was persuasive and innovative, coming up with the idea of letting people trade in their first car in order to get a reduced price on their second vehicle.

This career path would cause him to form the Yellow Cab Company in 1915. In order to build a vehicle rugged enough to put up with the constant driving taxi cabs, he opened the corresponding Yellow Taxi Cab Manufacturing Company. Also, Hertz was the first person to have the radical idea of renting and leasing cars to the public. The Hertz Drive-Yourself Corporation was founded in 1924, and all three of these profitable automobile businesses would be bought by General Motors. Hertz was also a longtime friend and business partner of the Lehman Brothers, who were also immigrants with a “rags-to-riches” story of their own.

Felix Frankfurter, United States Supreme Justice:

Frankfurter was born in 1882 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish family renowned for its long line of rabbis. His parents immigrated to the United States when Felix was twelve years old to secure a better education and future for their six children. Attending a public city school, Frankfurter developed a knack for his studies, chess, and crap shooting in the crowded alleys created by mashed together tenement buildings. The Austrian immigrant fought his way out of the slums by attending the City College of New York and then working for the Tenement House Department of NYC in order to successfully attend Harvard Law School.

Upon graduation, he took a position with a New York law firm, but within the year he was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1910, Frankfurter began four years of service in the War Department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs as a legal officer. In 1914, he accepted an appointment to the faculty of Harvard Law School. He returned to Washington in 1917 to become assistant to the Secretary of War. After World War I he rejoined the Harvard Law School faculty.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1939. While he was a Justice, Frankfurter was a huge proponent of judicial restraint, the idea that the Judicial Branch of government should not put extreme limits on the Executive and Judicial Branches. He also disliked applying the federal Constitution to matters that concerned states. After twenty-three years of service, Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court on August 28, 1962. He died on February 22, 1965, at the age of eighty-two.