JIGSAW GENS
Gilded Architects — The Emancipatory Microgeneration
As the youngest Redeemers and the oldest Golden Renegades, this cusp spent their entire lives moving westward as America tore itself apart
Whether we’re amongst family, coworkers, friends, or complete strangers — age-based differences are sure to come to a head. In most cases, these will be misunderstandings or biases rooted in how American culture has changed across the decades of each century. When those who are younger or older than us insist that things must be done a certain way, it marginalizes our own life experiences.
As part of my effort to counteract such antagonism, I am laying the groundwork for a long-term endeavor which I’ve named “Jigsaw Gens” — an anthological venture that is in its third year. It gives Americans a different way of looking at our own history through the lenses of various generations.
By doing this, we can assign context to the changes in American life that occur — often creeping up on us before we realize it. In many cases, these shifts took place many decades (or centuries!) before any of us were born!
The first phase of this project involved mapping out 27 primary generational cohorts. They have spanned the 1560s through the present:
Parliamentarians | Concentrics | Inflectors
Kingdomites | Cavaliers | Magnas
Glory Warriors | Lumineers | Enlightening Rods
Septennials | Liberty Lords | Goodpublicans
Madisonians | Unimpressionists | Transcendentals
Redeemers | Golden Renegades | Stowegressives
Missionaries | Hemingrebels | GI-Gens
Traditionalists | Baby Boomers | GenXers
Millennials | Zoomers | Alphas
By design, we should define “generations” broadly…with parameters that are approximate rather than precise. A new generation doesn’t suddenly arise on New Year’s Day of a given year, by some stroke of calendar magic.
Nor should anyone be defined by their generation. These cohorts all have been subject to internal divisions — as do the generations who are alive today! When someone’s birthyear falls on a “cusp” between two larger generations, it’s important to acknowledge how amorphous some parts of their cultural identity might be.
These cusps are also known as “microgenerations.”
I’m hoping to tell the stories of “cuspers” with greater clarity…because I *am* one, myself. When you often feel trapped between two warring generations, it helps to understand how life has been everchanging as children become parents…and as parents become grandparents.
Regarding Americans who were born in the late-1820s and early-1830s, I’ve nicknamed their microgeneration as the Gilded Architects.
Who They Are
Gilded Architects were born approximately between 1828 to 1832 — give or take a couple of years on either end. They form a convergence of the youngest Redeemers (“Dredgers”) and the oldest Golden Renegades (“Gilded Experts”) — the Second and Third “Gold Rush Generations.” As children when the Trail of Tears began, Gilded Architects experienced childhood and adolescence while the Oregon Trail facilitated Westward Expansion.
By the time they were old enough to marry, homesteading west of the Mississippi River had already become an established option for them. Having been born right before Rodolphe Töpffer’s comic book revolution, they were the first microgeneration to raise children of their own when comic magazines arose during the 1850s. Gilded Architects were young adults during the Civil War showdowns between Fire-Eaters and Wide Awakes.
I refer to Gilded Architects as “the Emancipatory Microgeneration” because they were in their thirties when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Once the abolition of slavery had been achieved, this cusp dealt with fallout from Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and newfound calls for women’s suffrage. The Gilded Age commenced when they were fortysomethings.
Once the Gilded Age faded into the Edwardian and the Progressive Eras, they were taking their place as society’s elders. Situated mostly on the homefront during World War I, the last of the Gilded Architects perished throughout the Roaring Twenties.
Their Early Lives
Gilded Architects were born into the Second Party System, where Andrew Jackson’s presidency pitted Democrats against Whigs. The Transcendentalist Movement began during their childhoods (with The Dial being founded in 1840). Around the same time, formal cricket clubs became popular in America — even though cricket had been played at people’s leisure since the turn of the century.
That meant this microgeneration was the first group of “cuspers” significantly immersed in U.S. sports culture. 1833’s opening of Philadelphia’s Olympic Base Ball Club created a parallel athletic emphasis to rival cricket. Robert Fulton (their Madisonian elder) designed the Tom Thumb steamboat, and homesteaders made a beeline for the West Coast. Americans were pushed in this direction partially due to economic fallout from the Panic of 1837.
For this Gilded Architect microgeneration, racial injustices were on the radar of even its White members from their youngest days on Earth. The Second Creek War and the Second Seminole War culminated in the Trail of Tears, to which Indigenous Tribal Nations were subjected. News of Nat Turner’s rebellion drove more and more Black people to demand liberation from slavery. Myth-building that stemmed from the Battle of the Alamo fueled greater hatred against people of Chicano, Tejano, and/or Latine descent.
Racism proceeded to fuse with imperialism (as seen in the Mexican-American War) — and, by the time of James Knox Polk’s presidency, “Manifest Destiny” was being pushed, full force.
When They Came-of-Age
The average life expectancy of Gilded Architects remained stagnant in one’s thirties. After Texas was granted statehood, the Mexican-American War raged while an influx of Americans streamed into Oregon Territory. Meanwhile, Spiritualism had spawned newly-minted occultists across American soil.
In their adolescence, they saw the burgeoning movement for women’s suffrage compete with the rugged ambiance of the California Gold Rush and Zachary Taylor’s presidential candidacy (aka “Old Rough and Ready”). America’s “gold fever” presented a new dilemma, leading to the Compromise of 1850 — creating the Fugitive Slave Act in exchange for California being admitted to the Union as a free state.
All the while, cricket was making a recreational comeback.
As Gilded Architects transitioned into young adulthood, public figures such as Harriett Beecher Stowe and Charles Sumner rallied for the abolition of slavery. But the 1852 election of Franklin Pierce over Winfield Scott (aka “Old Fuss and Feathers”) reflected the pushback against racial equality that would soon give tailwinds to the Confederacy.
In short order, the Whig Party imploded — and the Kansas-Nebraska Act succeeded as Stephen A. Douglas advocated for a transcontinental railroad.
How They Shaped The World
Gilded Architects who served in the Civil War were in their early- to late-thirties. Prior to 1861, they were also young participants in previous armed conflicts: the Third Seminole Wars, the Pottawatomie Massacre, and Harpers Ferry. Even after the first cannons were fired at Fort Sumter, others of their cohort took up arms during the Dakota War of 1862 and the Sand Creek Massacre.
Some of the most famous Civil War veterans who were Gilded Architects: Oliver Otis Howard, Ely S. Parker, William Shipman, Frances Louisa Clayton, and John McAllister Schofield (who later became U.S. Secretary of War).
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, some of the leading abolitionists advocating for black liberation came from the Gilded Architect cohort: Edward Wilmot Blyden, Thomas Sims, Mary Edmonson, John Andrew Jackson, Peter “Gumpa” Lee, William Dominick Matthews, Edward G. Walker, Isaac Shadd, and William H. Gibson.
With the Civil War being the defining event of their thirties, Gilded Architects had significant events carved into their memories: the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Panic of 1857, the New York City Draft riots, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Alaska Purchase, and founding of the National Grange.
The Reconstruction Era and the “black codes” (boosting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan) were central as this microgeneration transitioned from their thirties into their forties. During this time, baseball culture also surged — opening the floodgates for broader sports cultures within American life (even as cricket underwent its permanent decline).
Gilded Architect entrepreneurs included Levi Strauss, Philip Danforth Armour, Henry Flagler, Ah Toy, George Francis Train, Lucy Pickens, and Clement Studebaker. Furthermore, others from their microgeneration introduced new daily innovations, both large and small…
John Pemberton’s recipe for Coca-Cola.
The printing telegraph and carbon microphone, courtesy of David Edward Hughes.
William Le Baron Jenney’s model for the skyscraper.
The sleeping car, as conceived by George Pullman.
John Batterson Stetson’s eponymous cowboy hat.
The water wheel as a brainchild of Lester Allan Pelton.
Blue jeans, brought to us by Jacob W. Davis.
As fortysomethings, they ushered in the Gilded Age. Upon completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, women gained the right to vote in Wyoming and Utah (followed by Victoria Woodhull’s historic presidential candidacy). The Fifteenth Amendment passed, which became a precedent for the voting rights of Black men.
During this time, other building blocks toward progress were laid. President Ulysses S. Grant pushed through civil service reform. Ferdinand Hayden (a Gilded Architect geologist) vocally urged Grant to create Yellowstone National Park. With the Panic of 1873, Collis Huntington led a coalition to reinstate the gold standard. Railroad workers forced a mass strike in 1877; within a decade, Chicago’s Haymarket Riot would embolden the will of organized labor.
Yet, President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment seemed to be a harbinger of widespread corruption across the 1870s: Boss Tweed’s incarceration, Joseph Fry and the Virginius crew being executed, Orville Babcock and John A. Joyce getting indicted in the Whiskey Ring Scandal, and President-elect Rutherford B. Hayes losing the popular vote but prevailing in the Electoral College due to the Compromise of 1877.
Thus, social disharmony preceded the end of Reconstruction. The Red River Indian War, the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the Nez Perce War inflamed anti-Indigenous racism. The Great Chicago Fire spurred Americans to install fire codes and innovate architecture. Both 1873’s Comstock Act and the dawn of the temperance movement shoved vice-related stigmas more directly into public discourse. Munn v. Illinois (and, later, 1887’s Interstate Commerce Act) triggered new debates over regulatory power.
The 1860s and 1870s had given rise to some of the most iconic American writers from this cusp: Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Horatio Alger, Charles Dudley Warner, Helen Hunt Jackson, George Aiken, and Mary Mapes Dodge.
Before and after the Civil War, Gilded Architects also produced some of the most instrumental voices for women’s suffrage: Belva Ann Lockwood, Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, Sarah J. Garnet, and Charlotte Woodward Pierce. Three of the first prominent female American doctors were Gilded Architects — Mary Edwards Walker, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, and Mary Harris Thompson.
Soon becoming fiftysomethings, Gilded Architects kept driving policy and cultural trends as this Gilded Age continued. Representing younger generations, Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb and joined with Alexander Graham Bell to form the Oriental Telephone Company. The Gilded Architect cohort itself mentored Golden Renegades and Stowegressives in developing some of America’s enduring symbols: the Tuskegee Institute, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, 1883’s Pendelton Civil Service Act, popularization of vaudeville, the Bland-Allison silver standard, Groundhog Day, the eight-hour workday, North America’s five continental time zones, and Pemberton inventing Coca-Cola.
President James A. Garfield’s assassination rocked the country only sixteen years after that of Lincoln. The surrenders of Sitting Bull and Geronimo (who, along with Standing Bear, were Gilded Architects themselves) furthered the federal government’s systemic racism against Tribal Nations, while the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Rock Springs Massacre previewed how white supremacy would also come for immigrants of Asian diasporas. Deaths of outlaw youngsters Jesse James, Billy Clanton, and Tom & Frank McLaury portended the decline of Wild West culture.
This cohort generated two U.S. Presidents (Garfield, as well as Chester Arthur), and three U.S. Supreme Court Justices (Howell Edmunds Jackson, George Shiras Jr., and Horace Gray).
Standout lawmakers from the Gilded Architect microgeneration included James G. Blaine, Zebulon Vance, John Aaron Rawlins, Carl Schurz, John Mercer Langston, Romualdo Pacheco, James F. Wilson, Henry Teller, and Julius Sterling Morton.
Gilded Architects continued building on the science from previous generations. They included Othniel Charles Marsh (paleontology), Asaph Hall (astronomy), Silas Weir Mitchell (neurology), and William Sooy Smith (engineering).
They produced historians (William Francis Allen, John George Nicolay, Andrew Dickson White), journalists (Jennie Carter, Henry Clay Pate, José Agustín Quintero), and musicians (Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Edward Ferrero, Charles Crozat Converse, Henry Clay Work).
Mary Gannon, Hermann Vezin, Joseph Jefferson III, Mary E. Webb, and William J. Le Moyne elevated the image of thespians. Gilded Architect artists boasted the likes of Francis Bicknell Carpenter, Augustus Hoppin, Dat So La Lee, Albert Bierstadt, Harriet Hosmer, and Frank Bellew.
In the Gilded Age’s final stretch, members of this cohort moved into their sixties. More iconic American emblems arose: the Washington Monument, the Dayton Tattler, Carnegie Hall, G.E. & Wrigley, 1893’s World’s Columbian Exposition, and youngster James Naismith shepherding basketball games.
Following the Willamette Falls power line arriving in Oregon, these senior citizens watched Edison introduce new creations: the kinetograph, long-distance radio, the kinetoscope, and his groundbreaking broadcast of the 1894 Corbett/Courtney boxing match. In Colorado, Lucien & Paul Nunn transmitted the first alternating current — while women won the right to vote in The Centennial State. Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison protected the prehistoric site of Arizona’s Casa Grande ruins. U.S. Senator John Sherman of Ohio went to bat for his eponymous antitrust bill.
The Wounded Knee Massacre went down in history as one of America’s deadliest mass shootings. 1889’s Johnstown Flood became the deadliest dam failure in U.S. history. Populists rose up in the aftermath of the Panic of 1893. Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown from the Kingdom of Hawai’i, resulting in the Pacific island chain’s annexation. Ellis Island opened, harkening copious decades of newfound immigration into America.
Gilded Architects saw their senior years intertwined with some of the spotlit headlines that would metastasize throughout the next two centuries. In 1888, Cleveland had lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote — which would reoccur in 2000 and 2016. Herman Hollerith’s tabulation machine efficiently counted the Census — an ideogram for changing demographics. The International Copyright Act of 1891 fostered international cooperation in copyright law. Jacob Coxey’s arrest fueled mass protests and resistance toward the federal government.
In fact, Chicago’s 1894 Pullman Palace Strike piggybacked off of the prior Haymarket Affair; these events, compounded, signaled a turning point for the strength and impact of American organized labor.
Two years earlier, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited for the first time in U.S. schools. In the meantime, a massive land rush into Oklahoma Territory intensified. This was clinched as the Cherokee Outlet (aka the “Cherokee Strip”) was opened to settlers.
Despite the higher population of the Eastern United States, Gilded Architects molded a world in which the American West served as the cradle for so many watershed events.
Their Golden Years
Toward the ends of their lives, Gilded Architects witnessed a whirlwind of professional sports growing more and more prominent: the USGA Open, the World Olympics, the Boston Marathon, the Rose Bowl, the World Series, the Indianapolis 500, and the National Football League (NFL).
There must have been a sense of melancholy and envy amongst these old folks — as their cohort hadn’t been young enough to offer up many professional athletes (John “Old Smoke” Morrissey and Deerfoot were pretty much it!).
President William McKinley’s assassination had been another turning point. This was when muckrakers and progressives began to take greater quantities of power. At the turn of the century, the Gilded Age was in its waning days.
Women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) communities were rightfully demanding equality. In the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson, efforts such as the 1905 Niagara Falls Conference and the NAACP went a long way toward giving Black citizens organizational power. People of African descent increasingly migrated northward throughout the 1910s as Jim Crow worsened. The 1915 film Birth of a Nation and 1921’s Tulsa Race Massacre foreshadowed the need for a mid-century Civil Rights Movement that would congeal long after the Gilded Architects were extinct.
The United States emerged as a global power following the Spanish-American War. However, the status of Brown people in America remained precarious. Anyone with Latine heritage was faced with deciding between assimilating into Anglo society (assuming they could “pass” as White) or aligning with Indigenous tribes into whose families many had married (thus becoming marginalized, especially when individuals had darker skin tones). As Salvador Herrera documented for the Synapsis medical journal, Spanish-speaking Americans were associated with the stigma of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. This came three decades after widespread outrage due to the Maine’s explosion in Havana Harbor.
People of Asian descent, due to their phenotypical similarities and overseas origins, were also considered Brown (in contrast to White and Black communities). The status of immigrants from Japan and China fluctuated based on foreign relations — whether it was the “Open Door” policy with China, or the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” and Root-Takahira & Lansing-Ishii Agreements with Japan. Likewise, the end of the Philippine-American War created a wave of Filipino immigration.
Shortly after the Girl Scouts was founded, Alice Paul organized a Women’s Suffrage Procession. Three years later, Montana’s Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives — followed by the Silent Sentinels’ demonstrations. Mother’s Day became a national holiday. First Lady Edith Wilson picked up the slack in the Oval Office after her husband suffered a stroke. And, finally the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote, nationally.
But, just like with BIPOC communities, girls and women still continued to face misogyny on systemic, cultural, and social fronts.
More inventions and transformations thrived: the first underground subway (in Boston), the Wright Brothers’ flying machine, voting machines, the Ford Model T, the assembly line, the first transcontinental telephone call, and airmail service.
As they moved through their old age, Gilded Architects saw additional disasters: the Galveston Hurricane, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the sinking of both the Titanic and the Lusitania. The U.S. gained massive trade power by acquiring the Panama Canal, but the Zimmermann Telegram pulled Americans into World War I. Even once “the Great War” ended in 1918, the temperance movement surged and led to Prohibition via the Eighteenth Amendment.
In their final years, the First Red Scare had gripped America — creating de facto witch hunts against socialists, communists, and anarchists. This frenzy would continue as Hollywood became a huge capitalistic force across the 1920s.
Not only would Gilded Architects die out before the Great Depression began…most of them wouldn’t live to see motion pictures with sound, the rise of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, or controversies such as the Teapot Dome Scandal or the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Still, this microgeneration had left behind an extraordinary blueprint for what equality should look like. They merged religious devotion with human dignity. And, while overlooked by many, they showed how reverence for outlaws could morph into a new brand of forward-thinking leadership.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Golden Architect cohort:
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
Colonial Zygotes | Turnip Squeezers | Starving Timers
Long Climbers | Rumpus Rebels | Emerald Knights
Royal Raiders | Pre-Continentals | Bottled Beacons
Primordial Founders | Aucto-Septennials | Public Liberators
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