Jennie F. Clausen, photo by Marty Hogan

View Marty’s photo background big and see more in his Michigan Burying Grounds slideshow.

The December 7th anniversary of Pearl Harbor is one of the sign posts in American history. Marty writes that in nearly a century, Jennie F. Clauson from Grand Rapids, Michigan saw a world change. Here’s the entirety of his post:

1850 Grand Rapids population: 2686

1856 Jennie F. Clauson is born

1857 The Dred Scott ruling–slaves are not citizens

1859 Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is published

1859 The French take over Saigon

1859 British scientist John Tyndall describes carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor trapping heat in the atmosphere; and he suggests that change in the concentration of gases could bring climate change

1859 The first successful oil well in the United States is drilled, in northern Pennsylvania.

1860 Grand Rapids population: 8085

1861 The Union Army reacts to the CSA; the Civil War begins

1862 The Homestead Act encourages naturalization by granting citizens title to 160 acres

1865 General Lee surrenders to the Union Army; the Civil War is over

1865 President Lincoln is assassinated

1865 The Calumet Company is formed, soon to become Calumet & Hecla Mining Company. The copper mining industry is in full swing in Michigan’s Keweenaw.

1866 Jennie F. Clauson is 10 years old

1866 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded

1866 Congressional Reconstruction begins in the South

1867 The Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad began passenger service; the first in Grand Rapids

1867 Dating trees by their annual rings begins

1868 The Sweets Hotel was built in Grand Rapids; the Amway Grand Hotel sits at this location today

1869 The Central Pacific RR meets the Union Pacific RR in Promontary, Utah

1869 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association

1870 The 15th Amendment passes–black men can vote

1871 The Chicago fire kills 300 and leaves 90,000 homeless; but not the largest fire of 1871. On the same day the Peshtigo Fire fanned its flames; taking between 1,200 and 2,400 lives in WI and MI. 1,875 square miles (1.2 million acres) burned.

1876 The Battle of Little Bighorn; a final aggressive push to eliminate indigenous people (1830 Indian Removal Act policy)

1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

1876 Grand Rapids was nicknamed “Furniture City” after a very successful exposition in Philadelphia

1877 The Republican Party ends Reconstruction

1877 The first nationwide strike stops trains across the country

1877 Winfield Scott Gerrish opens the 7.1-mile-long Lake George and Muskegon River Railroad in Clare County; Gerrish moves 20 million board feet of logs to the Muskegon River (Michigan’s first logging railroad). Michigan will be cleared of its virgin white pine within the next 20 years.

1878 Louis Pasteur publishes his paper on “pasteurization”

1878 Fred Harvey enters the restaurant business in Florence, Kansas — America’s appetite is forever changed.

1879 Thomas Alva Edison invents the electric light

1881 Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee in Alabama

1886 The Statue of Liberty is dedicated

1886 Aquinas College begins in Grand Rapids

1895 Lumiére Brothers introduce motion pictures

1895 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first radio signals

1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson–Supreme Court rules segregation is legal; Jim Crow laws are born

1896 Jennie F. Clauson is 40 years old

1890 The slaughter at Wounded Knee, South Dakota; the end to Native resistance

1890 Jacob Riis publishes “How the Other Half Lives” about the Five Points neighborhood. Ushers in the primacy of “urban renewal”

1893 Engine 999 of the New York Central RR was the fastest machine on earth at 112mph

1898 The Spanish-American War

1900 Grand Rapids population: 87,565

1900 The Galveston Flood — the hurricane kills 8,000

1903 The Wright Brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

1903 President Roosevelt sets aside land for future use; the beginning of the National Park system

1905 The first Braille dictionary is compiled in Grand Rapids by Roberta Griffith

1906 San Francisco earthquake

1906 Upton Sinclair publishes “The Jungle” about the corruption and uncleanliness of the meat packing industry. Americans begin to think about how and where their food comes from.

1907 Picasso introduces cubism with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

1912 Peter M. Wege develops cost effective ways to bend sheet metal; his business becomes Steelcase

1913 Henry Ford develops the first moving assembly line

1913 Italian Hall Massacre. Seventy-three men, women, and children, mostly striking mine workers and their families, were crushed to death when someone falsely yelled “fire” at a crowded Christmas party.

1913 The U.S. organizes the Department of Labor to protect workers

1913 The Federal Reserve System is created

1914 The Great War begins in Europe

1916 Jennie F. Clauson is 60 years old

1917 The U.S. enters The Great War

1917 Vladmir Lenin leads The Bolshevik Revolution

1918 The Great War ends

1918 Global Spanish Flu epidemic

1920 19th Amendment to the Constitution granted the right for women to vote

1925 Grand Rapids population: 163,500

1926 Route 66 “The Mother Road” is officially opened on November 11

1927 The Great Mississippi River flood — killing 246 and displacing 600,000 persons

1927 Philo Farnsworth demonstrates a working model of the television

1927 Charles Lindbergh from New York to Paris

1928 Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin

1928 Walt Disney introduces Mickey Mouse

1929 The Great Depression begins

1933 FDR launches The New Deal

1935 The Nuremburg Laws are passed in NSDAP Germany

1935 UAW organized

1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act establishes minimum wage

1938 Orson Welles reads War of the Worlds over the air

1939 NSDAP Germany thrusts Europe into the Second World War

1939 The Wizard of Oz thrills theater patrons

1941 Japan strikes Pearl Harbor, the U.S. enters World War II

1942 The “Final Solution” officially sanctioned at the Wannsee Conference

1943 Detroit Race Riot

1945 The U.S. uses the first atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II is over

1946 The United Nations begin; Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech launches the Cold War

1947 Jackie Robinson is signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers

1950 The Korean War begins

1950 Charles Schulz introduces Peanuts

1950 Jennie F. Clauson dies at 94 years old