The year was 1858 and after four failed attempts North America and Britain were briefly connected via a transatlantic telegraph cable. Queen Victoria exchanged brief messages on August 16th, but the weak cable failed by early September. It would be another eight years before another cable linked the continents for good.

In British Columbia, when gold was found on the Fraser River, a flood of people poured into Victoria to obtain mining licenses and a tent town roared to life as businessmen swept in to serve the needs of the new residents of the area.

In the Rocky Mountains another gold rush was unfolding as a small group of gold seekers from Georgia set off for the Pike’s Peak area of what was then part of Kansas Territory–now in Colorado. A small amount of gold was discovered and that was all it took. Prospectors poured into the region and the cities of Denver and Boulder were formed.

Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd state in the Union in 1858 even as the country was headed towards Civil War. The slavery issue had brought the country to a boiling point and in Kansas violence was already breaking out over opposing views on slavery. Kansas was poised to attain statehood, but it would it enter as a slave or free state? With both sides eager to win Kansas, pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions had been sending supporters into the area to sway the vote in their favor. The two sides had been clashing in violence beginning in 1854, and in 1858 the massacre of eleven free state men by a gang of pro-slavery men outraged the nation.

The year was 1862 and the United States was engulfed in the Civil War. Forces on both sides were beginning to realize the human and financial cost of war. Five of the ten most costly battles were fought in 1862–at Antietam (Maryland), the Second Manassas (Virginia), Stone’s River (Tennessee), Shiloh (Tennessee), and Fort Donelson (Tennessee). At the Battle of Antietam alone, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or went missing–the most casualties in one day in American history.

With the war weighing heavily on President Lincoln, tragedy came to the White House in February. His son Willie died of a fever, which devastated the Lincoln family.

Willie Lincoln had charmed many in his ten short years and was thought to be most like his father. U.S. diplomat, Thomas H. Nelson of Indiana wrote the following in a letter of condolence to the Lincolns:

“His rare qualities of head and heart won for him the love and admiration of all who knew him, and gave high promise of future excellence, while his fine physical organization seemed to indicate long life and vigorous health.”

His son’s death would not keep him from his duties though. In 1862, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. This legislation allowed any U.S. citizen (or immigrant who intended to become a citizen), who had not borne arms against the United States, to claim 160 acres of public land. The applicant was required to live on the land for five years and improve it by building a dwelling and starting a farm. After fulfilling the requirements the applicant could then apply for the deed to the property at the local land office. The Homestead Act helped bring in a wave of immigration and the Railroad Act, also of 1862, provided for the construction of a transcontinental railroad that would accelerate westward expansion.

In September Lincoln issued a warning to Confederate states that unless they returned to the Union by 1 January of the following year, he would grant freedom to slaves in those states. It did not however, free slaves in loyal states. The irony of this was not lost on Secretary of State William Seward, who remarked, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

The effects of the American Civil War were also being felt overseas. The blockade of southern ports prevented the export of cotton upon which textile mills in Lancashire, England, depended. By late 1862, an estimated three-fifths of the workforce in Lancashire was out of work.

To the south of the border, the French Army occupied Mexico in an attempt to collect a debt. France was not happy with the growth of the United States, and Mexican occupation would allow the French Army to aid the Confederate Army. A Confederate victory would result in two smaller and less powerful countries. As the French marched toward Mexico City, they were met by Mexican forces and farmers armed with only the tools of their trade. The French were defeated on the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, and forced to retreat to the coast. Eventually they regrouped and made their way back to Mexico City, but Mexican forces under the leadership of Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz managed to stall the French long enough for the Civil War to end.

The year was 1836 and the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was hurriedly drawn up even as General Antonio López de Santa Anna and 4,000 Mexican troops surrounded the Alamo where less than 200 Texans were besieged for eleven days. At the end of the siege, more than 180 of the rebels were killed and “Remember the Alamo!” became a rallying cry in the fight for Texas independence.

Texans were even more enraged when nearly 400 more rebels who had surrendered were executed and burned at Goliad, Texas. 

The tide turned when 900 Texans under the leadership of General Sam Houston launched a surprise attack on Santa Anna’s 1,200 troops at San Jacinto on April 21st. In eighteen minutes, half of the Mexican troops were killed and Texans had taken control of the camp. General Santa Anna was captured the following day and his defeat gave birth to the Republic of Texas.

In the Midwestern United States, larger territories were being carved into smaller territories that eventually became states. As a part of this process, in 1836, Crawford, Brown, and Michilimackinac Counties split off of Michigan Territory to become Wisconsin Territory.

The formation of Wisconsin Territory was a step toward Michigan Territory becoming a state, which would happen the following year. But another step needed to be taken to maintain the fragile balance between slave and free states. To keep the number of states equal, southern leaders wanted Arkansas to be granted statehood and on 15 June 1836 it became the 25th state.

After the South Australian Colonisation Act of 1834 became law in February 1836, the first ships bound for the new colony left England with 600 immigrants.

1836 was an important year for family historians in the UK as legislation passed an act requiring the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The law would go into effect in July of the following year. 

The year was 1861 and in addition to Kansas joining the United States as a free state, the territories of Dakota, Nevada and Arizona were all formed, even as the Confederate States of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky followed South Carolina in seceding from the Union.

The Confederacy was taking shape, and before Abraham Lincoln even took the oath of office, Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as the president of the Confederacy.

As the president-elect made his way to Washington on the now-famous train trip, conspirators in Baltimore were planning to assassinate him as he passed through that city. Fortunately, the famous detective Allan Pinkerton had several agents who had infiltrated some of the more inflammatory elements of Baltimore society and were able to relay the details of the plot to President Lincoln and convince him to alter his plans. After fulfilling his engagement in Harrisburg, Lincoln was secretly conveyed to an earlier train that would pass through Baltimore safely the night before his scheduled arrival. As an added precaution, before he left Harrisburg, at Pinkerton’s insistence, telegraph communications from Harrisburg were cut off until Lincoln’s safe arrival in the capital to preclude the possibility that the change in plans be passed on to the assassins. For more information on the “Baltimore Plot,” see this article from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1868.

A little more than a month after President Lincoln took office, the first shots of the Civil War were fired when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter, where federal troops were stationed in Charleston Harbor.

As the war got underway, it became clear that money would be needed to fund the war and so legislation was passed creating the first income tax–3% on incomes more than $800. This tax was never put to use, but the following year, Congress passed follow-up legislation that placed a 3% tax on incomes be $600 and $10,000 and 5% on incomes greater than $10,000. It was increased in 1864 to 5% on incomes between $600 and $5,000, 7.5% for those earning between $5,000 and $10,000, and 10% for those making more than $10,000. The income tax was declared unconstitutional in 1872, but many of the Tax Assessments created by this brief income tax are now available online at Ancestry.com for members with a U.S. Deluxe membership. Click here to search and view images of the IRS Tax Assessment Lists at Ancestry.

While the United States was being torn apart by the Civil War, the Kingdom of Italy was unified under the rule of Victor Emanuel II in 1861. However, Rome remained under French protection and Venetia was under Austrian control.

In Edinburgh, Scotland, a tenement building suddenly collapsed trapping fifty people in the rubble. Thirty-five of the victims died, and just as rescuers were giving up hope a voice from the rubble cried out “Heave awa’ lads, I’m no dead yet!” The site is memorialized with a plaque that includes those words.

The year was 1881 and the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II and rumors of Jewish involvement set off waves of violence against Russian Jews that went on for four years. In addition the the pogroms, the “May Laws” restricted Jewish employment and education, and prohibiting them from living in towns with populations less than 10,000.  It’s estimated that more than 2 million Jews fled Russia as a result of the violence and the May Laws.

More than six hundred people were killed in a fire at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Austria. The fire started when a stagehand accidentally set some hanging stage props on fire. The fire quickly caught the curtains and spread. To make matters worse, management cut off the gas to the theatre, which extinguished the lights and crowds quickly filled the stairwells. Those caught in the upper decks were trapped and many began jumping from the balconies, killing not only themselves, but those below.

Fire also claimed more than two hundred lives in the “Thumb” of Michigan. (The Thumb refers to the part of Michigan just above Detroit that resembles the thumb of the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula.)

The Thumb wildfires were the result of a drought that affected much of the United States in 1881. Extending from New England through the Midwest and into Western states, it severely impacted the corn growing states and drove up prices on many types of produce.

A hurricane struck Georgia and the Carolinas in 1881 left more than seven hundred people dead and completely submerged several of the barrier islands.

On July 2, the President James A. Garfield was shot by a lawyer who had worked on his campaign and had been rebuffed in his attempts to land an ambassadorship to Paris. Although Garfield survived the initial shooting, doctors probing the wound with unwashed hands trying to locate the bullet brought on an infection that killed him two and a half months later.

The “Wild West” of America was living up to its name in 1881. A gunfight in an El Paso saloon, sometimes called the “Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight” was brought on over the investigation of cattle rustlers and the murders of two Mexican farmhands.

Cattle rustling along the U.S./Mexican border had become a growing problem in recent years and the Mexican government was fighting back. As it became harder for rustlers to steal cattle from across the border, crimes on the northern side increased. In Tombstone, Arizona, tensions over recent crimes between the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, and the Clantons and McLaurys erupted in one of the most famous gun battles–the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
 

The year was 1926 and in Europe, it was a soggy one. In January, an early thaw and storms caused floods from England to the Rhineland. The warm weather and rains began Christmas night of 1925 and by early January, rivers were overflowing with melted snows. In the British Isles, communications via telegraph and telephone were interrupted because of flooding and cyclones and London suburbs were hit hard with flooding from the Thames. The flooding extended to the European continent including rivers and lowlands in France, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. For more information read this Time magazine article from 11 January 1926 covering the floods.

In the Soviet Union an estimated 10,000 cases of ergotism were reported in 1926. Ergot is a fungus that infects rye and when ingested, can cause convulsions, trembling, delusions, and hallucinations. In gangrenous ergotism, the poison can constrict blood vessels, causing infection and burning pain, eventually leading to gangrene. Although the cause of ergotism wasn’t identified until the mid-nineteenth century, it has since been linked to the spread of the bubonic plague and the Salem witch trials.

In northern England, Scotland, and Wales, coal miners went on strike in protest of a pay-cut. The miners fight led to a general strike when the Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.) joined them in an effort to shut down London and force the government to intervene on behalf of the miners. The government didn’t agree and brought in forces to keep the city running. The strike was over quickly in London, although the miners held out for four months, but they too eventually returned to work with their demands unmet. 
 
In 1926, Henry Ford created the eight-hour workday and five-day workweek for his employees and it soon became the norm. His motives weren’t altogether altruistic though. He wrote in the company newsletter,

“Just as the 8-hour day opened our way to prosperity in America, so the 5-day workweek will open our way to still greater prosperity . . . It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege . . . People who have more leisure must have more clothes. They eat a greater variety of food. They require more transportation in vehicles.”

In Florida, a land boom was turning to bust. As the Florida population was growing land speculators were buying land in the hopes of turning a quick profit when they sold it. Some were buying the land without having the money to pay for it and hoped to have the land sold before they paid for the property, using the profits to make the final purchase payment. When the land boom finally turned to bust, many speculators were stuck with overpriced land and no buyers.

While over-speculation nudged Florida into a tailspin, Mother Nature gave it an even bigger push–in the form of a hurricane that struck Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Dania, Hollywood, and Hallandale. Most of the residents were new to Florida and despite dire weather predictions from the U.S. Weather Bureau, they had no idea how severe the impending storm would be and most did nothing to prepare. When the eye of the hurricane came ashore, the now terrified residents left their homes, not realizing that the storm was not yet over. Most of the 100 people who died in Miami were those caught outside after the eye of the storm had passed.
 

The year was 1812 and Napoleon’s Grande Armée was moving towards Russia, but things were about to go terribly wrong. On the twelfth of June, Napoleon’s troops crossed into Russia. They anticipated quick victories over the Russian army at the Russian frontier, but instead the Russian army retreated deeper into the country. As the Grande Armée pushed on into Russia, supplies became scarce and troop losses increased.

By September, Napoleon had arrived at Moscow, but by the time he entered the city, it had been evacuated and a fire broke out in several locations, destroying food, weapons and 70 percent of the city. Napoleon proposed peace talks with Alexander I, but received no response. Unable to remain in the destroyed city through the winter, he was forced to leave. The retreating army was met with counterattacks by the Russians, frigid conditions, disease, and hunger.

By December 25th Alexander I announced that the Patriotic War was over and the French had been expelled. The campaign had cost Napoleon the vast majority of the Grande Armée, as well as many Russian lives, but he wasn’t finished. He would go on to raise more troops the following year and fight yet another even larger campaign before being defeated in the “Battle of Nations,” the largest of the Napoleonic wars, which led him to finally retreat to France.

With its Navy stretched from the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was exercising its right to remove British sailors that it found on American ships, but often the removals also included Americans. The practice, known as impressment, became one of the central causes for America to declare war on Britain in 1812. The War of 1812 was fought primarily at sea, along the Canadian border, in the Chesapeake region, and along Gulf Coast. The war was ended with the Treaty of Ghent on 24 December 1814, although word didn’t reach the United States until after the Battle of New Orleans, in which Gen. Andrew Jackson and his troops won a decisive victory over the British.

Another war of sorts was taking place within England, as a movement known as Luddism fought advances made through the Industrial Revolution. With the introduction of labor-saving machinery, skilled textile workers feared the loss of their livelihood. Unskilled workers could be brought in to operate the machinery at a lower wage. The artisans banded together and broke into factories destroying the offending machinery. In 1812, Parliament passed legislation that allowed the death penalty in cases where Luddites were caught breaking machines. 

In the U.S., Louisiana was added as the eighteenth state.  The remainder of the Louisiana Territory became known as Missouri Territory.  

In January 1812, the last of three devastating earthquakes rocked a large portion of Missouri Territory along the New Madrid fault and for many miles around it. The quake, which would now be measured at above 8.0, damaged most structures within a two-hundred and fifty mile radius of New Madrid, Missouri where the quakes were centered. The quakes were felt over much of central and eastern United States, and even rang church bells in Boston, some 1,000 miles away.

The year was 1867 and on July 1st, the Province of Canada, which consisted of Ontario and Quebec, united with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to form the Dominion of Canada, with Ottawa as its capital.

In 1867, hospitals were dirty, dangerous places. Those who survived excruciating surgeries would most likely die from subsequent infections. The general perception at the time was that exposing flesh to air was the cause of the infection, but when Louis Pasteur theorized that the infection was actually a form of decomposition, a British surgeon, Joseph Lister, took note. After noticing that surgical patients seemed to fare better in a cleaner environment (and following the work of Pasteur), he experimented with carbolic acid, applying it to bandages and then covering the wound. He discovered that the practice improved survival rates. In 1867, he made his finding public in the British medical journal “Lancet.” Unfortunately it would be decades before the medical community fully accepted the use of antiseptics in surgery.

In the U.S., yellow fever was a widely feared epidemic–and with good reason. In 1867, the disease claimed roughly 30 percent of the 1,000 or so residents of Corpus Christi, Texas. A New York Times article in 1870 reported a loss of 1,776 lives in New Orleans from the disease in 1867.When epidemics like yellow fever hit cities, often an exodus of citizens seeking to escape the scourge followed.

At the start of the year 1867, what is now the state of Alaska was in Russian hands. However, Russia had found that it was tough terrain to defend, and the hostile environment didn’t seem to offer much so it had been “shopping around.” U.S. Secretary of State, William Seward, worked out an agreement where the U.S. would pay Russia $7.2 million dollars (about two cents an acre) to acquire the territory. The deal met with a great deal of ridicule and Alaska was referred to as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox.” Most folks changed their tune in the 1890s when gold was discovered in the Klondike area of Canada’s Yukon Territory. Miners flocked to Alaska and mining towns sprung up, many turning into major cities like Nome and Fairbanks. The discovery of oil, a thriving fishing industry, and income from tourism continue to prove the naysayers wrong.

The U.S. also admitted Nebraska as the thirty-seventh state in 1867. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had taken the lands that had once been reserved for Native Americans and opened them up for settlement. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres to settlers, with the requirement that they make improvements and live on the land for five years prior to taking ownership. Railroads were granted huge tracts of land, and they in turn built railroad lines and encouraged settlement by selling surrounding land at low costs to immigrants. Between the opening of the lands in 1854 and 1870, the population of Nebraska grew from 2,732 to 122,993 in 1870.

The year was 1901 and it marked the end of the Victorian Era. On 22 January, Queen Victoria died at the age of eighty-one after ruling the United Kingdom for sixty-four years–the longest reign in British history. Her reign is largely remembered as a period of economic and imperial expansion, although her popularity wavered at times.

The 1901 Census for England was taken on the night of 31 March 1901. Enumeration forms were distributed to all households a couple of days before census night and were to reflect the individual’s status as of 31 March 1901 for all individuals who had spent the night in the house. The following information was requested: name of street, avenue road, etc.; house number or name; whether or not the house was inhabited; number of rooms occupied if less than five; name of each person that had spent the night; relationship of person enumerated to the head of the family; each person’s marital status; age at last birthday (sex is indicated by which column the age is recorded in); each person’s occupation; whether they are employer or employee or neither; person’s place of birth; whether deaf, dumb, blind, or lunatic. (This census is available to Ancestry members with a UK or World Deluxe membership.)

The year had begun with the birth of the Commonwealth of Australia as the British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia were united. The occasion was celebrated widely throughout the continent with parades and pageantry.

In the U.S., William McKinley began his second term as president of the United States. His term ended tragically and abruptly when he was shot in September 1901 by anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, at the Pan-American Exposition.

He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, who became the youngest president in U.S. history. During his terms as president, Roosevelt earned a reputation as a “trust buster,” who used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve a large railroad monopoly. He also began work on the Panama Canal, fought for conservation of our natural resources, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

Roosevelt’s invitation to Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to dine at the White House angered many in 1901. The Atlanta Constitution reported on 18 October 1901 that, “There is a feeling of indignation among Southern men, generally, that the president should, in the face of his declaration of friendliness toward the people of the south, take this early opportunity to show such a marked courtesy and distinction to a negro.” 

The year was 1844 and in the United States, it was an election year. Former president Martin Van Buren went in to the Democratic convention hoping to win the nomination, but when it became clear that he would not, he threw his support behind the first “dark horse” candidate–James K. Polk. Henry Clay was on the ballot for the Whig Party, and a new anti-slavery party on the political scene, nominated James G. Birney.

At the heart of the election were the issues of the annexation of Texas and slavery. Slavery opponents opposed the annexation of Texas because it would upset the fragile balance of slave vs. free states. Polk supported the annexation, solving the balance issue by also committing to secure the Northwest areas that now include Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and part of British Columbia. His slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight,” referred to the northernmost latitude of that territory.

In the closest election in American History, Polk won by a mere 38,367 votes, and didn’t even carry 50 percent of the popular vote. The third party candidate had played a huge role. He won votes that Clay needed to carry the state of New York. Had Clay won that state, he would have won the election.

1844 was also a year that would transform communications. On 24 May Samuel F.B. Morse sent the words “What hath God wrought?” electronically through wires from the capitol in Washington, D.C., to a train station in Baltimore, some forty miles away. Soon, his telegraph machines were tapping out messages throughout the country and in 1866, communication by telegraph connected Europe with America, dramatically reducing the time in which news reached foreign shores.

A New York farmer named William Miller had been spreading the word that based on calculations he drew from Scripture, there was to be a second coming of Christ on 22 October 1844. As the date approached many of the Millerites left their jobs, sold all that they owned, donned white robes, and prepared to meet their Maker. When the day came and went without event, many became disillusioned with the movement, while some remained faithful and formed the Adventist Church.

In 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his brother were murdered by a mob in a jail in Carthage, Illinois. Continued violence following their deaths would lead to the Mormon exodus to the West under the leadership of Brigham Young in 1846.

Already wagon trains had begun making the 2,000 mile trek across the U.S. along the Oregon Trail to settle in the Pacific Northwest. In April of 1844, seventy-two wagons, carrying 300 people (called the Independent Colony), began their journey along that famous route. Among these pioneers was the Sager family. Both parents died along the trail leaving seven children to be cared for by other families in the wagon train. When they arrived in Oregon country, they were adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries who had traveled to the area in one of the first wagon trains in 1836. The Sagers were orphaned a second time when the Whitmans were massacred by Cayuse Indians in 1847, along with the two Sager boys. The daughters were captured and held for ransom. One of the girls died in captivity and the rest were freed a month later. The oldest daughter of the Sagers, Catherine, later wrote an account of their journey that is among the few first-hand accounts of the westward migration.