The "Gerry-mander" was born / Elsa Brändström born - March 26

On this day in 1812, a headline in the Boston Gazette read "The Gerry-mander", accompanied by a satirical illustration of the district that Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry lived in. / On this day in 1888, Swedish nurse Elsa Brändström was born in St. Petersburg.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history enthusiasts, you get not one, but two events
in history today. With that said, on with the show. Hi,
I'm Eves, and welcome to this Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers history one day at a time.

(00:22):
The day was March eighteen twelve. On page two of
the day's issue of the Boston Gazette, there was a
drawing by illustrator Elkina Tisdale with the headline the Gary Mander.
The drawing was a satirical picture of the district that
Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gary lived in. Gary was a Democratic

(00:43):
Republican and his party, which controlled the legislature, had recently
redrawn Massachusetts Senate districts in their favor to restrict the
Federalists vote to a few districts. After Gary signed the
redistricting bill to create the mis shaping districts in eighteen twelve,
Federalist viewed the new carved up map as an extension

(01:03):
of his partisanship. Federalists criticized the bill, calling the districts
carvings and manglings. Drawing congressional district boundaries for political gain
had been done before, and Gary did a lot of
other notable stuff in his lifetime like being vice president,
but his legacy lives on in his name's relation to

(01:24):
jerry mandering. Gary got his start in politics relatively early.
In seventeen seventy two, he was elected to the General
Court of Massachusetts. In seventeen seventy five, he was elected
to the Continental Congress, where he urged the other delegates
to declare independence from Britain, and the next year Gary

(01:44):
signed the Declaration of Independence and was elected to the
Second Continental Congress. From seventeen eighty three to seventeen eighty five,
he served in the Congress of the Confederation. He served
in the House of Representatives from seventeen eighty nine seventeen
ninety three. Gary was Governor of Massachusetts from eighteen ten

(02:05):
to eighteen twelve, and after he lost reelection to the governorship,
he became vice president to President James Madison. Over the years,
Gary had some bold opinions that he stood firmly by.
He believed the elite should lead the country. He opposed
British rule, and he called for an end to partisanship
among Democratic Republicans and federalists. He supported the Great Compromise

(02:29):
and Agreement that states reached on congressional representation, and he
believed that the Constitution the Constitutional Convention had drafted was
not sufficient and needed amendments in a Bill of rights,
and he fought for checks and balances in government. But
the part of Gary's career that he's most associated with
is not his role in the founding of the nation

(02:51):
or the creation of the Constitution, but for his role
in signing a redistricting bill in Massachusetts. During his short
stint as governor, Gary had come to think that the
Federalists wanted to restore the monarchy and that their opposition
to President Medicine's foreign policy was basically treasonists, and he
did start taking actions that aligned with those feelings, like

(03:13):
when he replaced Federalists in state government jobs with Democratic Republicans. Apportionment,
or the way legislative seats are distributed among districts, is
supposed to provide for equal representation across the board, So
when the Democratic Republicans read drew districts not to follow
county boundaries but to bring more power to their party,
Federalists cry partisanship and appointed to Gary's anti federalists dance.

(03:38):
Gary didn't really support the redistricting either, but it didn't
seem to violate the Constitution. This adherence to the Constitution
and his worry about the Federalist closeness to Britain likely
swayed him to approve the new Frankenstein's Monster districts on
February eleven, eighteen twelve. There's debate over where the term

(03:59):
Gary manner truly originated. Gary's district was long and slender,
and someone could have said it looked like a salamander,
while someone else retorted it was a Gary Mander rather.
Another version of the origin story says painter Gilbert Stewart
drew the wings and head on the district on a
visit to a newspaper office. Either way, the drawing that

(04:22):
showed up in the Boston Gazette on March was accompanied
by an article that began The horrid monster, of which
this drawing is a correct representation, appeared in the County
of Essex during the last session of the legislature. Somehow
or another, the Gary Mander was born, and the Democratic
Republicans got a larger state Senate majority in the eighteen

(04:43):
twelve election, though the Federalists got over a thousand more votes.
Gary died in eighteen fourteen, but the word Gary Mander
caught on, eventually morphing to Jerry Mander. Today, the word
gerry mandering has a negative connotation and the pract is
is typically viewed as a shady tactic in the US.

(05:04):
I'm Eve step Coote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd
like to learn more about Gary and gerrymandering, listen to
the stuff you missed in history class episode called Albert
Gary's Monstrous Salamander. If there are any upcoming days in
history that you'd really like me to cover on the show,

(05:25):
give us a shout on social media at t d
I h C podcast. Thanks for joining me on this
trip through time. See you here in the exact same
spot tomorrow. Hey everyone, I'm Eaves and welcome to another

(05:55):
episode of this day History Class. The day was March
eight Swedish nurse and philanthropists Elsa Branstrom was born. Branstrom

(06:16):
became known as the Angel of Siberia for her work
with prisoners of war. Branstrom was born in St. Petersburg
to Edward Branstrom and Anna velamina Eskilson. Her father was
a Swedish military attache to Russia, and her family went
back to Sweden for a while when she was a child.

(06:37):
Her father went back to St. Petersburg as an envoy
in nineteen o six, but she stayed in Sweden, where
she was training to become a teacher. She went back
to St. Petersburg in nineteen o eight. Elsa's mother died
in nineteen thirteen, just before the outbreak of World War One.
In nineteen fourteen, when the war began, Elsa and her
friend Ethel von Haydenstam were trained as nurses. Elsa began

(07:02):
serving at a military hospital. There she cared for wounded
Russian soldiers, but she found that Russia was not providing
the necessary support to prisoners of war, so she and
von haydens Dam worked to find private donations to help
care for the POWs. In nineteen fifteen, the Swedish Red
Cross asked her to go to Siberia to do relief

(07:24):
work in the prisoner camps. Conditions were poor in the camps.
They lacked winter clothes, blankets, medical supplies, and other basic necessities.
Many people got sick because of these conditions, and diseases
like typhus killed a lot of prisoners of war. During
these trips, she gave out food, clothing, and medical supplies

(07:46):
to POWs at a Siberian camp calls three Tents. Branstrom's
inspections led to changes that helped slow the typhoid epidemic.
When she was in Europe, she met with families of
Russian POWs. Though the Central Powers in Russia signed a
peace treaty in nineteen eighteen, ending Russia's participation in World

(08:06):
War One, the Red Cross continued its relief work. Elsa
was accused of being a spy and arrested. At one point,
she was even threatened with execution, but her sentence was revoked.
Also got typhoid in nineteen nineteen. The next year, she
was imprisoned, but soon released. She went back to Sweden
in July of nineteen twenty. In Sweden, she continued to

(08:29):
support POWs in Siberia. She collected donations and sent winter
clothing to them. In ninete, she even published a memoir
called Among Prisoners of War and Russia and Siberia. With
the money from her book, from a lecture tour in
the US, and from her work at a relief association,
she was able to fund a health resort, a home

(08:52):
for the children of POWs, and a labor sanatorium to
train POWs to work jobs like farming or fishing. In
the children's home, she only accepted kids who would become
quote first class people, and refused those with disabilities and
character traits deemed unacceptable. Elsa married Robert Ulick in n

(09:15):
and they moved to Dresden. They had a daughter together
in nineteen thirty two. Because she worked with prisoners of war,
she was recognized by Hitler, but she and her husband
disapproved of the rise of the Nazis. The family moved
to the US, where Ulick had gotten a job at Harvard.
Elsa helped refugees from Nazi Germany and occupied Scandinavian countries

(09:37):
get residency permits. She died in nineteen forty eight and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I'm Eaves Jeffcote, and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. And if you
want to leave us a message on social media, you
can do so on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter at t
d I h C podcast. You can also send us

(10:01):
a note via email at this Day at I heeartmedia
dot com. Thanks again for listening. To the podcast and
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