Glimpses of Technological Change
Steamship Lexington disaster
The Awful Conflagration o f the Steamship Lexington, was one of the earliest lithographs from Currier and Ives. The dynamics of technological progress and these unprecedented disasters was a persistent theme in nineteenth-century newspapers, including the Abolitionist press. The Steamship Lexington disaster took the life of one of the most prestigious of the Abolitionists, the German poet and ex-patriate Charles Follen, who was a professor of German at Harvard and a Unitarian minister.
The vast technological changes of the long nineteenth-century affected the Burleigh family in a number of ways. The most urgent of these occurred in transportation, where the development of canal travel, then railroads, made the lives of anti-slavery agents considerably easier than relying on horses had been. Because the Burleigh brothers were professional writers, their descriptions of early train travel are noteworthy; examples are given below. The pages of their newspapers also featured news of horrific boat and railroad accidents; the Abolitionists lost a beloved colleague, Charles Follen (1796-1840) on a fire onboard the Steamship Lexington.
The increasing prominence and proliferation of train travel made time-keeping even more essential than it had been in previous eras. Historic Northampton holds a pocket watch belonging to Charles C. Burleigh Sr., that he likely obtained in the late 1830s during his first extended time in Pennsylvania, from silversmith Thomas Megear (1809-1878).
Pocket Watch of Charles Calistus Burleigh
This pocket-watch was owned and carried by Charles Calistus Burleigh senior for most of his active life as an anti-slavery agent. Made by Philadelphia silversmith Thomas Megear, it survived numerous mobbings, nearly ceaseless travel, all sorts of weather, and even the train accident that took Charles C. Burleigh's life. It is held by Historic Northampton.
The advent of the telephone near the end of the nineteenth century did not affect the core generation of Burleighs as much as it did their children. The telephone bill that the Burleigh Lithography Company received in the early twentieth-century is one evidence of how the telephone reshaped business, and became a necessary utility almost instantly.
The Telephone, by Alexander Graham Bell
Nineteenth-century German illustration of the Alexander Graham Bell telephone. Adobe Stock Images, Educational License
Telephone Company Bill for L.R. Burleigh Lithography
The lead compiler of this website, Jennifer Rycenga, was delighted to find this historic gem while surfing eBay! You just never know!
Even more intriguing, though, is George Shepard Burleigh's poem, Telephoning, which has to be amongst the earliest poems concerning this new technology.
The current Burleigh team does not feature an historian of technology; we welcome input from those who know this field. This page was built largely from our collective curiosity about what we were finding. It is subject to corrections, emendations, and additions of all kinds.