| |
Eli Whitney: A Top Ten Inventor?
It is possible that no name is more clearly associated with the Industrial Revolution in the United States than that of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. Ten years older than Anna Harrison, they nevertheless shared a lifetime characterized by the emergence of the United States from an almost totally agricultural society to one which, during the 19th century, was becoming increasing industrial.
|
The First Textbooks: The McGuffey Reader
Anna Harrison, although growing up before there were very many public schools, nevertheless had an excellent education, educated her own ten children at home because they lived most of the children's growing-up years on the frontier (in Indiana!), and at one time founded a school in North Bend, Indiana.
It would have been a great help in those years if Anna Harrison had been able to use one or more of the McGuffey Readers, which began to be published in 1836. Perhaps, at some point, she did. These readers became standard texts for children from 1836 well into the 20th century, and millions of children moving west in covered wagons probably took along at least one McGuffey reader.
|
Exploring the Northwest Territory
For a majority of her life Anna Harrison the wife of President William Henry Harrison lived in North Bend, Ohio which is located in Hamilton County near present day Cincinnati. She lived there while the area was nothing but frontier and part of a large United States territory called the Northwest Territory. Ohio was the first portion of the Northwest Territory to become a state in 1803. Eventually the Northwest Territory also gave us the states of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota.
|
Meauring the Growth of Slavery: 1790-1860
What was often called “the slavery question” had not been settled in the writing of either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. In fact, it continued to plague the country well before the Civil War. Beginning with the first national census (1790), free and slave black populations were categorized differently. This census, with its first “snapshot” of the American nation, occurred when Anna Harrison was 15 years old. Since the census was taken every ten years (as it is today), and since Anna Harrison lived to be 88 years old, she saw seven decades of the growth of slavery until the Civil War finally ended it.
|
Do Military Heroes Make Good Presidents?
Anna Harrison was the wife of William Henry Harrison. Her husband was a popular war hero both for his reputation as the victor at the Battle of Tippecanoe and also as the commander whose forces defeated and killed Tecumseh at the Battle of Thames during the War of 1812. The Whig Party, as their candidate for president, selected Harrison to run in the election of 1840. Based on his popularity as a war hero he was elected overwhelmingly with an electoral vote of 234 to 60. Unfortunately, though, Harrison died of pneumonia less than a month into his presidency. He never had a chance to prove whether or not he would be an effective president.
Other war heroes have been elected to the United States Presidency. Among them are George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower. These men served in the chief executive’s office with various levels of success. The purpose of this lesson is to determine whether military heroes make good presidents.
|
The Development of Morse Code
Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, the wife of President William Henry Harrison was born on July 5, 1775 just after the start of the American Revolution. She died on February 25, 1864, before the end of the Civil War. To say that she lived during the formative years of our nation’s existence would be an understatement. She lived during the writing of the U.S. Constitution, the War of 1812, and the westward expansion of our nation as well as it’s eventual division. She witnessed not only the good American policies but also the bad such as the Indian Removal Act, and The Fugitive Slave Act. She saw the migration from rural to urban life in the northern states as well as the growth of the cotton industry in the south that eventually provided 3/4 ‘s of the cotton produced in the world. In the field of communication, she saw the development of the first postal systems by Benjamin Franklin, the creation of the Pony Express, and the building of the Erie Canal as well it’s replacement as railways began to crisscross America. In 1837 three years before her husband was elected president Alfred Lewis Vail, Samuel Morse’s assistant, developed the “Morse Code” of dots and dashes that has been used ever since by telegraphers everywhere. It will be this code that will be investigated in this lesson.
|
Who Wants An Educated Woman? The Rise of Female Academies
Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison was the first First Lady to receive a formal education. She attended the Clinton Academy, and then the Boarding School of Isabella Marshall Graham for three years, from 1867 to 1991. Somewhat ahead of her time in this regard, Anna Harrison was fortunate to attend one of the many so-called "female academies" especially designed for the formal education of women. These schools were quite often founded by women who had clear ideas about why girls should go to school at a time when the education of women did not have much support among the general population. Many of them also prepared teachers, long before there were teachers colleges. In the case of Isabella Graham's school, students were taught not only academic subjects, but social responsibility and action as well.
|
Tecumseh Speaks on the Dreams of His People
Although the tenure of William Henry Harrison in the White House was brief, there is no shortage of stories about the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. He was a famed Indian fighter, frontier governor, and politician that eventually rode that fame into the White House. Anna Harrison and her husband William Henry Harrison lived during a time of massive Native American removal from the lands east of the Mississippi. In many ways Harrison can be considered the antagonist in this tale. If Harrison is the Antagonist, then surely the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh is the tragic protagonist.
|
What Makes a Really Great Teacher?
Anna Tuthill Harrison was one of the best educated of the early First Ladies, having grown up on Long Island and attended both The Clinton Academy in East Hampton and the Boarding School of Isabella Marshall Graham. Indeed, she was the first First Lady to receive a formal education. This education was helpful to her over all of her long life (she lived to be 88 years old), both because it prepared her to be aware of and interested in all kinds of people and events and because it enabled her to be a successful teacher for her own ten children. Spending much of her life in territorial “wilderness” posts with her husband, she was still able to give her own children the benefit of her own education.
|
Freedom of Speech: The Anti-Slavery Press
For a good
part of the first half of the 19th century, the practice of slavery
was the subject of fierce and bitter debate in the young United States. While Jefferson had eliminated it in his
original version of the Declaration of Independence, such elimination had to be
removed in order to get the southern colonies to vote for independence. While William and Anna Harrison were
concerned with native peoples in the Northwest Territory, much of the rest of
the country was arguing over whether or not slavery would continue. One of the important sources of information
and debate about all kinds of things in the 19th century were newspapers, and this was nowhere more true than in the debate about slavery in the anti-slavery press, which tested the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech…sometimes to its limits.
|