It Happened Here-- Troy's Samuel Wilson/America's Uncle Sam


Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years are known as the "Holiday Season".  We are now deep in what could be described as the Patriotic Holiday Season, beginning with Armed Forces Day, proceeding to Memorial Day, Flag Day, Juneteenth, and 4th of July. In keeping with the season I  planned to write a couple posts on the development of a national consciousness. 

Uncle Sam Statue, 3d St and River St.

I have heretofore
hesitated to write an article on Troy's Samuel Wilson/ America's Uncle Sam because "everyone" knows the story of the Troy meat packer who during the war of 1812 packed his barrels of beef and pork destined for U.S. troops marking them with the initials U.S. which the troops who received them declared came from "Uncle Sam." But then I have come across a few interesting details that perhaps not everyone knows; I have collected pictures of some NYSHMs and other markers and monuments perhaps not everyone has seen; and (hell!) a good story always bears repeating.

Between on and off ramps of Congress St.Bridge, Troy

                   

                                                             



                        Uncle Sam 
                        Nickname of Samuel Wilson                                              of Troy which was given near
                       here to United States from
                       marking of US on military 
                        supplies in War of 1812 
                       State Education Department 1962


History brushed into Samuel Wilson early in his life, when on an April night in 1775 he and his family sleeping in their home in Menotomy  (later Arlington) Massachusetts were awakened by one Paul Revere thundering past warning that the British were coming.  Samuel's father, an active member of the Committee of Safety, and a minuteman and two of his older sons took up arms and fought in the battle of Lexington and the running battle that surged through Menotomy later that day. One source reports that Samuel (age 8!) with others participated in the capture of British supply wagons from the retreating Regulars. Two months later Samuel's father was wounded at the battle of Bunker Hill.  In 1780 the family moved to Mason, New Hampshire and the following year Samuel enlisted in the army.  With the war far away and drawing to a close, young Wilson was employed guarding and shepherding livestock and assisting butchers in slaughtering animals and preparing the meat for shipment to the troops. After his service, Wilson assisted his older brother Ebenezer and learned the trade of brick making. 

Site of Wilson Farm, Prospect Park

Ferry Street, Mt. Ida is in the background

In 1789 the two set off for Vanderheyden, N.Y., a growing town with new construction and an increasing demand for bricks.  When they arrived they discovered the citizens had changed the town's name to Troy! Finding an excellent source of fine clay on the outskirts of the town, on a large hill called Mount Ida, they bought the property and by later that year E and S Wilson, brick-makers was in business. In a few years many large houses and public building in Troy would be constructed with bricks from E and S Wilson.

  

82nd Third Street, Troy

Oxcarts and freight wagons might be adequate for delivery of bricks locally, but for customers in other towns, river transport was the only practicable mode of delivery.  Hudson River sloops, and flatboats propelled by oars or sail, plied the river regularly. In 1793 the Wilsons leased the river side of what would become 43 Ferry Street, and built a wharf.  This same year E. and S. Wilson took a new direction becoming meat processors and packers.  The wharf from which bricks could be shipped could also receive livestock from farms up and down the Hudson, and send off barrels of processed meat. By 1812 the Wilsons' packing business had eclipsed their brick making enterprise, employing 100 people and processing 1000 head of cattle weekly. Their large slaughterhouse operation occupied several blocks from Congress street to Jefferson, along the waterfront.

Despite the size of their workforce the brothers Ebenezer and Samuel apparently maintained a friendly paternalistic attitude to their workers, being called "Uncle Eben" and "Uncle Sam" by some of them.*

The war of 1812  brought new opportunities.  In October 1813 Elbert Anderson, of New York City won a contract to supply the federal troops of New York and New Jersey with provisions. To help him fill his contract, Anderson advertised in the newspapers for a slaughterhouse.  E and S Wilson answered the ad and were contracted to supply 2000 barrels of pork and 3000 barrels of beef.

Undoubtedly, the proximity of the Wilson's meat packing operation to Army headquarters at Greenbush (later Rensselaer) aided their selection.  Soon E and S Wilson were producing large numbers of barrels of meat stamped or  branded EA--US for Elbert Anderson--United States.

The stage was set for the creation of a legend.  In one version a traveler arriving by boat at the Ferry street dock saw large numbers of barrels stamped EA--US on them and inquired about them.  An army guard,  guarding the shipment, or dockworker employees of Wilson responded that the initials stood for the contractor and "Uncle Sam," who has the best beef, owns everything around here, and is feeding the whole army.  Another version has it that a sizeable number of Army trainees at the Greenbush Cantonment had enlisted from Troy, and some had been former Wilson employees.  Knowing about Wilson and where the meat had come from, they referred to it as "Uncle Sam's." From there, the notion that government provisions and supplies were "Uncle Sam's" spread rapidly.  By 1815 several newspapers (mostly critical of the Federal government) had referred to provisions, property or regulations as "Uncle Sam's." The meme had been established.

In 1817 Samuel Wilson moved to Catskill, with his family, to help his younger brother Nathaniel and his family set up a brick-making and meat processing operation there. The two families moved into a large attractive house that ten years before had been the scene of the wedding of Martin Van Buren, an Albany politician who would become president in 1837. With the clay from the Catskill creek and the wharf they built along it they hoped to replicate the success E and S Wilson had in Troy. 

West Main St., Catskill

Bridge over the Catskill Creek named for Samuel Wilson

With brother Nathaniel's business launched, Samuel Wilson bought a house in Troy in 1821 and returned there in 1822. He lived there the rest of his life, dying in 1854.  He was buried in the nearby Mt. Ida cemetery. His remains were removed to a family plot at the Oakwood Cemetery a few years later

              

Oakwood Ave., Rte. 40, Troy

Monument at S.Wilson's grave site

Original stones

There are few truly original ideas, verbal associations, memes, etc. Most  have antecedents. The association that {"Uncle Sam" = the U.S. government} may have begun to enter the American political vernacular before Samuel Wilson's meat packing contract with Anderson and the Army. An article in the December 23, 1812 Bennington Newsletter has been cited; as was a March 23, 1810 journal entry of a young midshipman, Issac Mayo bemoaning his first experience with sea sickness.  He writes, that could he have gotten ashore " I swear that Uncle Sam, as they call him, would certainly forever lost the services of at least one sailor." Over the years, there were enough challenges that the citizens of Troy went to the trouble of waging a successful campaign before Congress in 1961 to get Samuel Wilson declared "the progenitor of America's national symbol of Uncle Sam." Whatever the first genesis of "Uncle Sam" before many years the Uncle Sam metaphor was being widely used in the press and appearing in political cartoons, sometimes merging with, sometimes differentiating himself from "Brother Jonathan" a Yankee figure that came to represent the American people.  By the end of the Civil War, Uncle Sam had eclipsed Brother Jonathan. After the War, Uncle Sam began to appear in cartoons more as he is represented today. Cartoonist Thomas Nast (who shaped our modern image of Santa Claus, and created the elephant and jack-ass symbols of the two major parties,) began to draw Uncle Sam with a lean, bearded Lincoln-like visage, and dress him in red and white striped pants, blue coat with tails and top hat with stars around the brim.  A last major reworking of Sam would be done by James  Montgomery Flagg.  Flagg would take a powerful British recruiting poster featuring Lord Kitchener pointing at the reader declaring "(Lord Kitchener) wants You" (to join the Army).  Using his own image, he would rework it with Uncle Sam: "I WANT YOU FOR THE U.S. ARMY, Nearest Recruiting Station. With nearly 4 million posters produced for World War I and almost as many for World War II his image of Uncle Sam was firmly established in American culture.

From the Gazebo display at Prospect Park, Mt. Ida, Troy

*Skeptics have pointed to the fact that in the several newspaper obituaries of Samuel Wilson none of them mention that Wilson was ever referred to  as "Uncle" by his workers or that he was the origin of the Uncle Sam meme. It is equally possible that newspapers were reluctant to relate undignified facts and stories about a man who had become such a wealthy, and respected pillar of the community.

Marker of the Week--a question from last time--

What New York town/city gets its name from the Algonquin phrase--
"Uppuqui-ipis-ing" "Reed covered lodge by the watering place"?

Rte 9, near Sharon Drive/Holiday Inn Express, Poughkeepsie