Meet the Real Uncle Sam

The model was a lanky meat packer from Troy, New York. But he became a symbol for the ages during his own lifetime

Few persons know that Uncle Sam was a real person and that he became the symbol of the U.S in his own lifetime.

Samuel Wilson (widely known as "Uncle Sam") was a meat packer in Troy, New York, who was awarded a subcontractor by Elbert Anderson, of New York City, to supply the War Department during the War of 1812. Each barrel of salted meat was stamped with a small "E.A." for Elbert Anderson and a big "U.S." six inches high for United States.

"Being asked by some of his fellow workmen" an eyewitness wrote, "the meaning of the mark (for the letters U.S., for United States, were almost entirely new to them) [somebody] said that he did not know unless it mean Elbert Anderson and Uncle Sam-alluding exclusively, then, to the said 'Uncle Sam' Wilson."

Everybody around Troy knew Uncle Sam-hence the speed with which the joke caught on. Soon the "U.S." stamped on wagons, muskets and uniform buttons came to mean that those articles belonged to Uncle Sam. Our witness says that the story spread through the army, then the whole country.

William Henry Jackson, the noted photographer, wrote: "Uncle Sam was to pay quite a price for his distinction: for 40 years, simple people, as well as many not so simple, pestered him to set them up in business or, in the very least, to supply them with farms..."

What did Uncle Sam look like?
Lucius Wilson, a great-nephew of Sam Wilson, said that "in form and carriage he greatly resembled Abraham Lincoln. He was tall, well-preserved... had high cheek bones, was clean-shaven and wore his grey hair rather long." He has a good sense of humor. When Lucius Wilson was a small boy he often visited his Uncle Sam. "Sent to take a pail of soup to Grandma, I stopped first to see him and when I delivered the pail... it contained nothing but water which he had substituted. Uncle Sam enjoyed the joke but Grandma called him 'an old trickster'."

The first printed mention of Uncle Sam was in broadside in the spring of 1813. Reference to Uncle Sam came more and more often until he finally displaced Brother Jonathan as the human symbol of the U.S. Brother Jonathan, a lanky, rural New Englander has stood for the common man, while Sam represented the U.S. Government.

The "Uncle Sam" character remained beardless until the Civil War. During this period the bearded Lincoln was often pictured in stars and stripes. Hence when Thomas Nast, the great cartoonist began to draw his Uncle Sams in the '7s, he chose a bearded version. Uncle Sam has had a beard ever since.

Sam Wilson was born September 13, 1766, in Menotomy, Massachusetts, the seventh in a family of 13 children. Sam was going on nine when Paul Revere rode out from Boston right past the Wilson place, warning of the British.

In 1780, when Sam was 14, his father, Edward Wilson, transported the family by ox cart to Mason, New Hampshire. Sam grew up in Mason, and there he fell in love with, and later married pretty Betsy Mann.

Soon after arriving in Troy, in 1789, Sam and his brother Ebenezer, established a brickyard, the first in the area. In 1793, the Wilsons entered the meat-packing business. At various times Sam Wilson also sold barrels, salt, flour, fruit, whisky and dry goods. His long life (he lived to be 88), he often declared, was traceable to getting plenty of sleep and rising at the crack of dawn.

He had a reputation for being scrupulouly fair, and was known for his readiness to help others with loans or gifts. In 1833, when a freshet swept away part of his brickyard, those he had helped through the years subscribed an amount sufficient to cover his loss.

Uncle Sam, the symbol, filled the voud left by the overthrow of the British crown. And he has been filling it ever since. Some say Uncle Sam is archaic. Maybe so. But he represents the sturdy individualism so much prized by Americans. One suspects that he will be around for quite a while.

Source: Coronet, November 1960
The Man Who was Uncle Sam by Alton Ketchum

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Stories Behind Words

Is it correct to speak of a receipt in cooking?

Yes, this is the oldest meaning of the word. What we now call prescriptions were once called receipts. A much later meaning, that of a bill or statement, has now generally supplanted the older one, but it is still heard, especially in the South. Elsewhere the related recipe is more common. Recipe is simply the same verb as that upon which receipt is based. but it is in the imperative, it's an order: "Take!" Indeed the mysterious Rx at the head of prescriptions in only recipe abbreviated.

Why us someone who is deceived said to be "hoodwinked"?

Hoodwink meant literally to blindfold, to cover the face so that the one covered could not see (and sometimes so that he could not be identified). Criminals were hoodwinked at their execution to spare them; witnesses were hoodwinked in dangerous trials, to save them. It is now used solely in its metaphorical sense: to blindfold mentally, to prevent one from seeing the truth, so that he might be the more easily deceived.

Why is a hypocrite said to weep "crocodile tears"?

Human beings in the aggregate must eat at least 10,000,000 animals everyday. This is known as "a nourishing diet." Once in a great while an animal will eat a human being. This is known as a "shocking occurrence." Among the few animals that have thus meagerly enriched their diets is the crocodile. It has been asserted, from antiquity, that he not only dined off passers-by but cunningly selected the most tender by weeping and moaning and then perfidiously seizing those that turned aside to comfort him. The term was particularly applied by our embittered fathers to ladies who imposed on masculine big-heartedness with their tears and then ruined the poor dupes that were moved by them.

Source: Coronet, November 1960
How Word Works by Dr Bergen Evans

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All Contents - Trivias, etc

1.Stories Behind Words
2.Meet the Real Uncle Sam


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