THE PREHISTORY OF SLOVENE JOURNALISM IN THE UNITED STATES
Janez Stanonik
September 3rd, 1891, the day on which the first Slovene newspaper published in America, Amerikanski Slovenec, began to appear in press, is considered as the beginning of Slovene journalism in America and quite generally as the birthday of Slovene emigrant press. Amerikanski Slovenec is still being published and it is thus the newspaper with the longest continuous run in the whole history of Slovene journalism.1 It was soon followed by numerous other periodical publications that emerged among Slovenes living as emigrants in various parts of the world, especially in the United States - where Slovene journalism reached its peak in the period between the two world wars - as well as in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, France, Holland, and most recently in Australia. Their total number is impressing, yet they differ greatly as regards their quality, their real significance, their subject matter, their cultural and political orientation, and the duration of their publication.2
Yet the 3rd of September 1891 can be accepted as the initial date of Slovene emigrant journalism with a certain reserve only. No journalism in the world, including the great journalism of England, France or Germany, had started already fully developed, without a long period of various earlier endeavours to create a periodical press and to communicate with it important current news. This was also the case with the emergence of journalism in Slovenia3, and this was of course necessarily so with the beginning of Slovene journalism in America. For a fully developed journalism a certain cultural and economic level of the society must first be reached: it is not enough that there are persons who are able to write and edit a periodical publication and who have sufficient financial means at their disposal. Important is also the fact that there is a large enough number
of potential readers for whom such a journal could be published. A Slovene journal in America could have started only after the number of Slovene emigrants in America was large enough that it could support it. This condition was first fulfilled at the end of the XlXth century.
Still there were also before 1891 individuals among Slovenes living in America who wanted to be culturally active. They published books in America in various languages and they wrote shorter texts to be published in various periodicals both in America and in Slovenia. This literature written mostly in English and German is undoubtedly a part of Slovene cultural heritage. It is a generally accepted rule that literary works written in foreign languages by a member of a certain nation belong to the literary tradition of the nation whose member the author is. What would be the mediaeval English literature without the work of Beda Venerabilis or Geoffrey of Monmouth and what would be American colonial literature without the Latin work of Cotton Mather?
The early attempts of Slovenes living in America that can be considered as journalistic can be divided into three large groups: contribution of American Slovenes to journals published in Slovenia (in some cases in Austria); the contributions of American Slovenes to non-Slovene American newspapers; and their early attempts to found in America a German or an English journal.
The earliest known clearly journalistic text written by a Slovene living in America is a short report published in 1707 by Marcus Antonius Kappus in the journal Nova Litteraria Germa-niae Alliorumque Europae Regnorum. This was a little known literary almanach which as much as it can be established appeared in press from 1707 till 1709 in Francofort and Leipzig. Marcus Antonius Kappus, from Kamna Gorica near Bled (1657-1717), came to America in 1687 and worked as a Jesuitic missionary in Sonora, northwestern Mexico. In his article Kappus speaks of his contemporary and coworker, Eusebius Franciscus Kino, who is in American cultural history known as "pioneer of Arizona" because of his explorations of the lower courses of the rivers Gila and Colorado. Kappus informs that with his explorations Kino had discovered that Baja California is not an island, as it had been belived till then, but rather a peninsula, and that
there is a land passage around the northern end of the Gulf of California from Sonora to Baja California.
A typical publication of the XVIIIth century are enormous collections of letters, written by Jesuitic missionaries from various parts of the world and reporting on their work, that were published at irregular intervals through a long series of years, usually one number in a year. This tradition was started in 1702 by Charles Le Gobien, a French Jesuit, with Lettres edi-fiantes et curieuses, an edition which continued to appear till 1776 when it ended with volume 36. In Austria and in Germany this collection found its imitator in a similar work which was started in 1728 in Graz and in Augsburg under the title Der neue Welt-Bott mit Allerhand Nachrichten der Missionariorum Soc. Jesu and was continued till 1758.s Its first editor was Joseph Stocklein (1676-1733), a Jesuit who worked first as chaplain in Austrian army in Hungary and later as director of the Catechetical Library at Graz.6 Der neue Welt-Bott published several letters by authors connected with Slovenia, thus a letter by Joannes Ratkay, written in Mexico City on 16. November 1680 in which he describes his journey from Cadiz to Mexico City (in Cadiz he was involved in the same disaster with ship El Nazareno as was Eusebius Franciscus Kino)7 and a letter by Marcus Antonius Kappus, dated 20. June 1699 which he had written from Matape in Sonora to his brother in Slovenia and in which he describes his living conditions in Matape.8 Der neue Welt-Bott published at the same time also the famous map known under the title Paso por Tierra a la California y sus Confinantes Nuevas Missiones de la Compa de Jesus en la America Septentrional which Kino had made in 1701 and dedicated to Kappus. The map covers, besides Sonora, also the lower courses of the rivers Gila and Colorado. In this way these Jesuitic collections of letters from various parts of the world had an important role in the spreading of the geographical knowledge of the then mostly unexplored parts of the world.
During the early XlXth century national associations were founded in various parts of Europe with the intention to organize the support for the work of Catholic missionaries in the world. The first such Association for the Propagation was created in 1822 at Lyone in France which in 1827 began to publish its serial Annales de 1’Association de la Pmpagation de la FoL.Collec-
tion faisant suite a toutes les editions des Lettres edifiantes. A similar association was founded also in Bavaria (Bayerischer Mi-ssionsverein) and in 1828 (on December 8th) in Austria, the Leo-poldinen-Stiftung (Leopoldine Endowment), answering an appeal of Frederic Rese, at that time Vicar-General and later Bishop of Cincinnati. The Stiftung was named after Leopoldine, the daughter of Kaiser Franz and the wife of the Brazilian emperor Pedro I. It continued with its work till 1921.® In 1831 it began to publish in Vienna its own periodical, Bereichte der Leopoldinen-Stiftung im Kaiserthume Oesterreich zur Unterstiitzung der katho-lischen Missionen in Amerika, which appeared yearly usually in two small volumes and was continued till 1913.10
As indicated by the title of the Berichte, Leopoldinen-Stif-tung was founded with the aim to support the work of Catholic missionaries in America especially in the United States. To this area a total of 700.000 $US was sent during the whole period of the activity of the Stiftung, in that time a very large sum indeed. When, however, we wish to understand the activity of the Stiftung, we must not disregard the contemporary political situation. At the time of the foundation of the Leopoldinen-Stiftung, the political relations between America and Europe were basically unfriendly. There was little understanding between the United States with its republican constitution based on the ideas of the philosophy of French Enlightenment, and the conservative monarchial political system in Europe which was consolidated with the aid of the Holy Alliance in which Austria and Prince Metternich had had a leading role. In 1823 the conflict between America and Europe resulted in the formulation of the Monroe doctrine. Because of the unpopularity of Metternich and of Austria in America, the US took a long time before they opened, in 1837, their diplomatic relations with Vienna when the first American ambassador was sent to Austria, and even later the US were represented over a longer series of years by charges d’affaires only. When the revolution of 1848 broke out, America openly sympathized with the Hungarians, and when Lajos Kossuth came to America he was warmly welcomed, also because he was a Protestant. As a consequence of all this, an anticatholic movement lead by the Protestants, the so-called "Nati-vists”, was growing in intensity since the early 1820’s which accused also the Leopoldinen-Stiftung that it was created by the Austrian government with the only intention to undermine the
United States.11 This created additional difficulties for the work of Catholic missionaries in America.
During the XlXth century several Slovenes went to the United States with the aid of the Leopoldinen-Stiftung to work as missionaries among American Indians. With their selfless and devoted work for the well-being of American Indians they won respect of their contemporaries. In Berichte der Leopoldinen-Stiftung their work was made known with the publication of their letters and reports they wrote home. First and foremost among them is Frederic Baraga whose letters from Northern Michigan to his sister Amalia, to the presidency of the Leopoldinen-Stiftung, and to the Prince Archbishop of Vienna Vinzenz Eduard Milde - some 65 letters altogether - can be found in Berichte in the period from 1831 (vol. II) till 1867 (vol. XXXVIII).12 Also the work of Franc Pirc in Michigan and Minnesota can be found well documented in his letters which appeared in Berichte from 1837 (vol. X) till 1864 (vol. XXXIV).13 Among later contributors to Berichte we can find Ignacij Mrak and Ignacij Tomazin.14
In Slovenia itself there was during the whole of the XlXth century a great interest for the work of Slovene missionaries in various parts of the world, especially in the United States. There was practically no major journal published in Slovenia which did not bring reports on their work. Several of these journals were published in German, because the authorities were slow to give political permission for the publication of journals written in Slovene. During the first half of the XlXth century it was especially Illyrisches Blatt (1819-1894) - a paper published twice weekly as annex to Laibacher Zeitung and a focal point for Slovene cultural elite of the time (France Prešeren, Matija Čop, Mihael Kastelic, and others) - which brought contributions from Slovene missionaries in America.15 Franc Pirc alone can be found here represented with more than 10 texts. For the second half of the XlXth century, however, the journal which systematically followed the activities of Slovene missionaries in the world by publishing their letters was Zgodnja Danica. This was a Catholic weekly, published from 1841-1912 (from 1913-1915 it was continued under the title Danica). Here we find among its contributors, besides the already mentioned representatives of the older generation of missionaries (Baraga, Pirc, etc.) also new names of missionaries who followed them to Michigan and Minnesota to help them in their work, such as Oton Skola, Lovrenc
Lavtižar, Ivan Čebul(j), Jakob Trobec, Jožef Buh, and Simon Lampe.10 Zgodnja Danica can therefore be considered a significant source for the study of the history of Michigan and Minnesota in the XlXth century.
Little is known of the contributions of Slovene missionaries to the periodical press printed in the United States. Inasmuch as such texts were written, they were certainly limited almost completely to German-American periodicals. At least during a part of the XlXth century the main organ Slovene missionaries in America was Wahrheits-Freund, a Catholic weekly which appeared in Cincinnati from 1837 till 1908 with a circulation of more than 10.000 copies. For it Franc Pirc wrote articles with which he invited German immigrants to come to Minnesota and settle there. Wahrheits-Freund published also texts written by Ivo Svetiz, a little known Slovene priest, originally from Mengeš, who worked in 1830’s in Rochester, N.Y.
As regards the lay (non-clerical) journalism of American Slovenes, we may conjecture that the first texts of this kind could probably be found by the middle of the XlXth century. Even our knowledge of the lives of lay Slovenes who came so early to America is very limited. Or, rather, we may say that we are aware of a number of open problems which will probably lead to positive eventually interesting results if closely investigated. So far, in this connection the concrete, reliable, and detailed information is still missing.
There is the problem of Slovene and Croatian protestants who - according to Louis Adamic17 - came to Georgia around 1715. They settled at the spot where the Ebenezer creek flows into the Savannah river. This community was fatally hit by the Civil War so that it does no longer exist. - Again, according to Adamic, several soldiers who served in the army of George Washington had distinctly Slovene family names (Gorshe, Vavtar, Vertnar, Cherne, Vidmar). - Also the family of two famous American artists of the XlXth century, that of the sculptor Leonard Volk and of his son the portrait painter Douglas Volk, if Slavic, can hardly be anything but Slovene.
Before 1850 we can reckon in the United States with a very limited number of scattered individual Slovenes, persons most probably with unusual life stories. In Slovenia feudalism was still the ruling system in a country with a predominantly
underdeveloped rural economy. The external circumstances which primarily could have brought particular persons to America were the turmoils of the Napoleonic wars18, the unbearable misery in which lower classes lived, the political oppression under Metter-nich’s police regime, and finally the Austrian Revolution of 1848. It was as a consequence of the revolution of 1848 that several Slovene intellectuals are known to have gone to America. Only the life of one of them has been examined so far in sufficient detail. This was Anton Fister (Fiister).10
He was born in Radovljica in 1808. Since 1847 he worked as Profesor of Theology at Vienna University. He played a leading role during the March Revolution in Vienna. After the suppression of the revolution he was forced to flee. He went to America by way of London. In the United States he lived first in Boston, and after 1853 in New York. In 1876 he returned to Europe. After a shorter stay in Graz he went to Vienna where he died in 1881. Fister was a philosophically trained mind, widely read in the philosophy of French Enlightement and Romanticism, and admirer of the French Revolution, well acquainted with the classical German philosophy, and as such a convinced advocate of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. In America he took the side of the abolitionists and supported Abraham Lincoln. In the United States he moved mostly in German society. He supported himself with teaching and public orations. In Boston he was befriended with Theodore Parker, yet he was not acquainted with members of the Concord group. It is a pity that his exceptional intellectual abilities could not find a better employment in America. In the United States he wrote several works in the field of history and philology, yet he could find no publisher for them. It was only after his return home he published, soon after his arrival in Graz in 1876, Skizzen iiber Amerika, which appeared in the Grazer Tagepost, and in 1878 in Penzing near Vienna a pamphlet on 19 pages: Vortrag des Herrn Prof. Dr. Anton Fister iiber die Bildung in den Vereinigten Sta-aten Nordamerikas. These are his only known journalistic contributions.
Very unusual, and yet crucial, is the role of Andreas Ber-nardus Smolnikar in the prehistory of Slovene journalism in America.20
Andreas Smolnikar was born on 29. November 1795 at Kamnik. After the secondary school and the study of theology
in Ljubljana he worked as priest from 1819 till 1825 in several Slovene parishes. In 1825 he entered the benedictine monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia where he took the monastic name Bernard. From 1827-1837 he was professor of New Testament at the Theological School in Klagenfurt. He gradually changed his religious views and	became obsessed with the idea that	God had
chosen him to unite all Christians into one	church. He	began	to
feel the political control over his pedagogical work unbearable and he grew afraid of police prosecution. In 1837 he emigrated to the United States, maintaining that he intended to work as a missionary among American Indians.
In America he	worked the first year	as Catholic	priest	in
Boston. In 1838 he	abandoned the Catholic	church and	began	to
propagate his own religious views. He was untiredly wandering through the whole region of the northeastern United States, from Boston to Washington and as far west as Chicago. He won a number of supporters and with their financial aid he published a series of books in German and in English of autobiographical character mixed with argumentation of his own religious convictions (.Denkwiirdige Ereignisse im Leben des Andreas Bernard us Smolnikar), vol. I., Cambridge bei Boston 1838, 461 pp.; vol. II., Philadelphia 1839, 606 pp.; vol. III., New York, 1840, 856 pp.; Ein-es ist Noth, Philadelphia 1841, 633 pp.). With his learning mixed with excentricity he attracted the attention of his contemporaries: Longfellow described a fictional meeting with Brother Ber-nardus in his novel Hyperion. He became acquainted with some of the leading socialist reformers in the United States (Albert Brisbane, John Humphrey Noyes, John Etzler, Rappits). In 1843 he established his own Utopian settlement in Limestone, Warren County, NW Pennsylvania. Although this colony did not last a whole year it attracted the attention of The Phalanx, the organ of American Fourierists. Before the outbreak of the Civil War he propagated against Lincoln, believing that the election of Lincoln would lead America into war. During the Civil War he went south, and finally for a time he visited Canada. Towards the end of his life he owned a large estate, with some seven buildings, including a church, at Donnaly Mills in the Racoon Valley, west of Millers town (on the Juniata River), in SE Pennsylvania. Traces of these buildings are still visible and a local tradition concerning Smolnikar still survives in the valley. Smolnikar is be-leived to have died towards the end of 1869 in Philadelphia.
Soon after his arrival in America Smolnikar started an exceptionally vivid journalistic activity.21 His articles in which he propagated his own religious convictions to appear in German, and later also in English newspapers, among which we can find also some of the leading papers of that time, such as Die Alte und Neue Welt (Philadelphia), New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung (New York), Der Demokrat (Philadelphia), Der Wahrheitsverbreiter (Baltimore), Republikanischer Herald (York, Pa.), Der Wahre Demokrat (Easton, Pa.), Regenerator. Occasionally his contributions were also accepted by organs of various sects, like The Signs of the Times (Boston), the paper of American Adventists. He was, however, attacked by the German Catholic press, by Wahrheits--Freund (Cincinnati) and Die Geschaftige Martha (Baltimore). The German Catholic paper Hosianna (Philadelphia) was discontinued because it had published an article by Smolnikar. In this Way Smolnikar’s name can be traced in contemporary newspapers and his texts were published in the whole region from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Cincinnati and to Boston.
Smolnikar, however, soon tried to free himself from the dependence and goodwill of the editors of various newspapers. He started to think how he could begin to publish his own journal. In the spring of 1841 he made a concept for such a journal and published it on the last pages of his book Eines ist Noth. Here he defined the planned contents of the journal and invited persons interested in it to collaboration. Towards the end of 1841 the first number of Friedensbotschaft an alle Volker appeared in press. Originally the journal was planned as a weekly, yet owing to financial difficulties it appeared irregularly. Fifteen numbers of this journal are preserved, the last of which bears the date April 19th, 1842; yet we know from Smolnikar’s later statements that altogether 26 numbers were actually published (A.B. Smolnikar: The Great Message to All Governments and All Nations, Philadelphia 1864, p. 13), probably till June 1842. Most of the contents was written by Smolnikar himself; still, the journal contains also some minor contributions by Smolnikar’s supporters, above all two poems which celebrate Smolnikar and his mission. The contents of the first issues is rather varied, later numbers consist of long articles by Smolnikar which extend over several numbers in which he speaks about his own message, about his coworker Johann Jakob Thomson, and leads a heated debate against German and American Swedenborgians. Occasio-
nally Smolnikar’s text gives interesting reminiscences of his life in Slovenia, before his departure to America. The whole text is written in German and printed in Fraktur. The printer of Frie-densbotschaft an alle Volker was Julius Botticher, who had - as we are informed on the front page of the journal - his press in Philadelphia at the corner of the Dock and 3rd Street on the third floor, opposite the Post Office and Girard Bank. Julius Botticher is a comparatively well known name in the history of German journalism in America22, who was also the printer of several books by Smolnikar. For the distribution of Frieden-botschaft Smolnikar developed a net of distributors which included besides the printer Botticher also Friedrich Klett, apothecary in Philadelphia, Samuel Coleman in New York, and Matthew Ludwig in Boston. He even tried to distribute his paper in Europe. The result of this was an order issued by Count Sedlnit-zky, President of the Court Police Office in Vienna, that all copies of Friedensbotschaft, as soon as they reach Trieste, must be destroyed. This order also explicitly speaks of 26 numbers of the journal.23
From Smolnikar’s later works we learn that he had his journal also translated into English and that several numbers of this English edition were published under the title Message of Peace to All Nations. 24 They were printed by the press Barret and Jones in Philadelphia. It is not known how many numbers appeared in press. No English copies are known to have been preserved.
Also in later years Smolnikar repeatedly entertained the idea to start again a journal of his own, yet he was never able to realize this idea. In 1850 he planned to publish a periodical under the title The True Republican 26, and towards the end of his life, when he owned his farm at Donally Hills, he again made a detailed plan - in 1864 and 1866 - to start a new journal, this time under the title The Peace Union Message, but all in vain.26
When we try to evaluate Smolnikar’s publications we must be aware of the fact that the journals of the XlXth century differ greatly from those of the present times, and that there are also great differences between contemporary periodicals. Compared with the publications of the same kind and interests that appeared in the first half of the XlXth century in America, they do not differ from them too much. The importance of them
for us frequently does not depend so much on the message they bring, but rather on the historical importance of their editors, and on the place they have in the history of a given journalism. From this point of view, however, Smolnikar’s work is significant. And if we celebrate this year (1991) 100 years since the appearance of Amerikanski Slovenec, the first Slovene newspaper in the United States, it is also right we remember that this year exactly 150 years have also passed since Smolnikar had tried, as the first Slovene in America, to create his own journal in America, Friedensbotschaft an alle Volker, with an English parallel edition Message of Peace to All Nations.
NOTES
1 A bibliography of all Slovene periodical publications in Slovenia and abroad (including Slovene emigrant press) can be found in: Janko Šle-binger: Slovenski časniki in časopisi, bibliografski pregled 1797-1936. Razstava slovenskega novinarstva v Ljubljani 1937. Ob 140 letnici Vodnikovih 'Lublanskih noviz' in 30-letnici svoje stanovske organizacije izdali slovenski novinarji. Ljubljana 1937. Izdalo Jugoslovansko novinarsko združenje, ljubljanska sekcija.
2 A bibliography of Slovene emigrant press can be found in Jože Bajec: Slovensko izseljensko časopisje 1891-1945. Ljubljana 1980. Založba Slovenska izseljenska matica, 146 str. Bajec gives in this book also a survey of all locations in Slovenia where individual numbers of each journal are preserved.
3 On the long prehistory of journalism in Slovenia see: Fran Vatovec: Slovenski časnik 1557-1843, Maribor 1961, Založba Obzorja, 266 pp.
4 This article by Kappus has been reprinted by Erik Kovačič: Slovenski misijonar Kapus in zemljepisna odkritja v Severni Ameriki, Ave Marija koledar LXIX (1982), 63-69.
5 The full title of Stocklein's work is Der neue Welt-Bott mit Allerhand Nachrichten derer Missionarioum Soc. Jesu. Allerhand So Lehr- als Geist-reiche Brief, Schrifften und Reis-Beschreibungen, welche von denen Missionariis der Gesellschafft Jesu aus Beyden Indien, und andern ubern Meer gelegenen Landern, Seit An. 1642 biss auf das Jahr 1726 in Europa angelangt seynd. Jetzt zum erstenmal Theils aus Handschrifftlichen Urkunden, Theils aus denen Franzosischen Lettres Edifiantes verteutscht und zusammen getragen von Joseph Stocklein, gedachter Societat Jesu Priester. Cum Privilegio Caesareo & Superiorum P'aeultate ac Indice locupletissimo. Augsburg und Gratz. In Verlag Philipp, Martin und Johann Veith seel. Erben. 1728. - After Stocklein, later volumes were edited first by Peter Probst, and afterwards by Franciscus Keller.
As seen from the title of Stocklein's collection, this German work was an imitation and partly a translation of the classical work in this field, Charles Le Gobien: Lettres čdifiantes et curieuses, ecrits des
missions etrangčres par quelques missionaires de la Compagnie de Jesus, Paris 1702-1776, in 36 volumes. Vol. 1-8 were edited by C. Le Gobien, 9-26 by J.B. Du Halde, 27 and 28 by L. Patouillet, while the final vols. appeared annonymously.
This French work was translated also into Spanish: Charles Le Gobien: Cartas Edificantes y Curiosas, Escritas de las Missiones Estran-jeras, por Algunos Missioneros de la Compania de Jesus. Traducidas del Idioma Frances por el Padre Diego Davin, Madrid 1753-1757, in
16	volumes.
In a much abbreviated form this work appeared also in English: Travels of the Jesuits from Various Parts of the World. Compiled from Their Letters. Now First Attempted in English. By John Lockman, London 1743, 2 volumes.
6 About Joseph Stocklein, cf.: Constant von Wurzbach: Bibliographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. XXXIX, Wien 1879, p. 99-100; - Augustin et Aloys de Backer and Carlos Sommervogel, S.J.: Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus, Bruxelles/Paris (reprint) vol. VII, p. 1585-1586.
7 Joannes Ratkay was born at Ptuj in Slovenia in 1647 and died in
1683 at Carichi in western Chihuahua, Mexico. Letter of Ratkay appeared in Der neue Welt-Bott, vol. I, part I, p. 77-81 under No. 25.
8 Cf. Der neue Welt-Bott, vol. I, part II, p. 86-88, under No. 56. A modern reprint of Kappus's letter can be found in Janez Stanonik: Letters of Marcus Antonius Kappus from Colonial America 4, Acta Neo-philologica XXII (1989), 39-50.
9 Literature about the Leopoldinen-Stiftung: Johannes Thauren: Ein Gnadenstrom zur Neuen Welt; Wien 1940. - Theodore Roemer: Ten Decades of Alms, St. Louis and London, 1942, - Benjamin J. Blied: Austrian Aid to American Catholics 1830-1860, Milwaukee, 1944. Naturally, the most important source of information are the Berichte themselves.
10 Even the largest German bibliographies leave the Berichte either completely unmentioned, or their information is incomplete and unreliable. My information is based on the supplied by the catalogue of the Austrian National Library (Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna.
11 Ray Allen Billington: The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860. A Study of the Origins of American Nativism. New York: Rinehart, 1952 (cf. esp. pp. 71-
12 The detailed biographical data of all missionaries, whose letters were published in Berichte and in Zgodnja Danica and whose names we mention in our present study, can be found in Slovenski biografski leksikon, Ljubljana 1925-1991.
Frideric Baraga was born in 1797 at Mala vas near Dobrnič in Lower Carniola and died at Marquette, Mich., in 1868. He came to America in 1830 and worked in northern Michigan among Chippewa and Ottawa Indians. In 1853 he was consecrated the first Bishop for Upper Michigan, since 1857 the bishopric of Sault Ste Marie. He is the author of several religious books in Slovene and Chippewa languages, of a grammar and the dictionary (in two volumes) of the Chippewa language and of a work on the folklore of American Indians. - His letters in Berichte and in Zgodnja Danica can be found reprinted (in Slovene) in: Jože Gregorič: Baragova misijonska pisma, Ljubljana 1983, Družina publishing house.
13 Franc Pirc was born in 1785 at Godič near Kamnik, he came to America in 1835 where he first worked in northern Michigan, and since 1852 in central and northern Minnesota among Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, in Minnesota also among the Winnebagoes. He returned to Europe in 1873 and died in Ljubljana in 1880. He wrote a book on the folklore of American Indians (St. Louis, 1885). - A bibliography of Pirc's contributions published in Berichte and in various journals in Slovenia can be found in: Janez Stanonik: Franc Pirc v Ameriki, published in: V spomin Franca Pirca, edited by France Adamič et al., Ljubljana-Maribor 1982, published by Sadjarsko društvo Slovenije, cf. pp. 27-32. - A collection of letters by Franc Pirc was published in Centralblatt and Social Justice, vol. 26, p. 195-396, vol. 27, p. 18-19, 54-56, 91-92, 321-322. Centralblatt and Social Justice was a monthly published in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1908-1938.
14 Ignacij Mrak, born in 1810 in Hotovlja near Poljane above Škofja Loka, went in 1845 to America where he worked in Upper Michigan, in 1869 he succeeded Baraga as Bishop of Sault Ste Marie, which responsibility he discontinued in 1879 owing to illness. He died at Marquette in 1901. Ignacij Tomazin, born in Ljubljana in 1843, left for America in 1864 where he worked in Upper Minnesota. He died in Chicago in 1916.
15 On Illyrisches Blatt, cf. Fran Vatovec, op. cit., p. 227-234.
16 Oton Skola, OSF, was born in Novo mesto in 1805, he left for America in 1841 where he worked first along the southern shores of the Lake Superior, later with the Menominee Indians in Wisconsin, in 1858 he returned to Europe. He died in 1874 at Trsat near Rijeka. Besides letters published in Zgodnja Danica he left a few landscape drawings with scenes from the Lake Superior area, and an Indian dictionary (Menominee?) which is still preserved as a manuscript in the Franciscan Library at Allegany, N.Y.
Lovrenc Lavtižar, born in 1820 in Srednji vrh above Kranjska gora, he went to America in 1854 where he worked in Michigan and later in Minnesota. He froze to death in December 1858 on Red Lake in Minnesota.
Ivan Čebulj, born in 1832 at Velesovo, left for America in 1859 where he worked in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, from 1878-1882 he lived in France and afterwards till his death in Michigan. He died in 1898 in Garden Bay.
Jakob Trobeč, born in Log near Polhov Gradec in 1838, in 1864 he left for America where he worked in northern Minnesota, in 1897 he was consecrated Bishop of St. Cloud. He died in 1921 at Brookway. Jožef Buh, born in 1833 in Lučine above the Poljane River valley, west of Škofja Loka, in 1864 he left for America where he worked in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, finally as Vicar general for the bishopric of Duluth. He died in 1923 in Duluth.
Simon Lampe, OSB, born in 1865 at Brezovica near Ljubljana, left for America in 1883 where he worked in northern Minnesota.
17 Louis Adamic: A Nation of Nations, New York: Harper and Brothers,
1945, p. 236.
18 This was the case with Peter Pohek, the first Slovene known to have lived in Indiana. Born around 1771 in Črnomelj, he joined Napoleon's
army, and after the defeat of Napoleon he remained in France where he married. In 1827 he moved with his family to New Alsace, Dearborn County, Indiana, where he bought a farm. Here he died in 1854. Cf.: James J. Divita: Slaves to no One. A History of the Holy Trinity Community in Indianapolis on the Diamond Jubilee of the Founding of Holy Trinity Parish, Indianapolis 1881, p. 7.
19 On Anton Fister's life in the United States cf.: Janez Stanonik: Anton Fister v Ameriki, published in the collectanea: Dr. Anton Fister v revoluciji 1848, edited by Marjan Britovšek, Maribor, Založba Obzorja, 1980, p. 106-119. - Fister's lectures he held in America and his autobiography will now be published in Slovene translation from his manuscripts.
20 On Smolnikar there is considerable literature, mostly in Slovene. Major studies in English are: John Humphrey Noyes: History of American Socialismus, New York, Hillary House Publishers, 1961 (exact reproduction of the original edition, Philadelphia 1870), cf. p. 213, 251-252. -Janez Stanonik: Longfellow and Smolnikar, Acta Neophilologica 1 (1968)	3-40 (with a bibliography of his independently published works). - Jon Alexander and David Williams: Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar: American Catholic Apostate and Millenial Prophet, The American Benedictine Review. - Karl J.R. Arndt: Smolnikars Beziehungen zu Georg Rapps Harmonie Gesellschaft, Acta Neophilologica 14 (1981), 11-42. - Karl J. R. Arndt: A Letter of A.B. Smolnikar to George Rapp, Acta neophilologica 20 (1987), 47-51.
21 A survey of Smolnikars journalistic contributions, as much as this can be made, has been prepared in Janez Stanonik: Andrej Bernard Smolnikar in prvi slovenski poskus izdaje periodičnega glasila v Združenih državah, a typewritten research paper for Slovene Research Community (Raziskovalna skupnost Slovenije), Ljubljana 1980, 108 pp. cf. also: Janez Stanonik: Prvi slovenski poskus izdaje periodičnega glasila v Ameriki, Slovenski koledar 1982, XXIX, Ljubljana 1981, p. 226-231.
22 About Botticher: Emil Rothe: Julius Botticher, Der deutsche Pionier (Cincinnati) VII (March 1875), p. 101-102. - Karl J.R. Arndt and May E. Olson: German-American Newspapers and Periodicals 1732-1955, Second edition, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965, p. 123, 551-552.
23 State Archives of Slovenia, Presidial Acts, 1843, No. 695.
24 Andrew B. Smolnikar: The Great Message to All Governments and All Nations, Philadelphia 1864, p. 13. - Andrew B. Smolnikar: Pneumatolo-gy! Baltimore 1854, p. 26.
25 Andrew B. Smolnikar: Important Disclosures, Pittsburgh 1850. cf. p. 31.
26 Andrew B. Smolnikar: The Great Message to All Governments and All Nations, Philadelphia 1864, p. 79.
POVZETEK
PREDZGODOVINA SLOVENSKEGA ČASNIKARSTVA V ZDA
Janez Stanonik
Dan 3. september 1891, ko je v Chicagu začel izhajati Amerikanski Slovenec, se običajno smatra kot začetek slovenskega izseljenskega časnikarstva v ZDA in sploh med slovenskimi izseljenci po svetu. Vendar je ta trditev le pogojno točna. Slovenski izseljenci so že veliko prej pošiljali poročila iz raznih krajev sveta in jih objavljali v časopisih v Sloveniji ali v deželah, kjer so se naselili. Že petdeset let pred Amerikanskim Slovencem pa je v ZDA Andrej Bernard Smolnikar kot prvi Slovenec objavljal v zDA svoj lastni časopis v nemščini in angleščini.
Prvo izrazito časnikarsko poročilo kakega slovenskega izseljenca je dopis Marka Antonija Kappusa, jezuitskega misijonarja v Sonori (Mehika) objavljeno 1. 1707 v Leipzigu v almanahu Nova litteraria Germaniae alliorumque Europae regnorum, v katerem poroča o kopenski povezavi med Sonoro in Spodnjo Kalifornijo (Baja California), ki jo je odkril njegov sodobnik Eusebius Fran-ciscus Kino. Značilne za XVIII. stoletje so obširne kolekcije pisem jezuitskih misijonarjev, v katerih so poročali iz raznih delov sveta o svojem življenju in delu. Tako je v Gradcu izhajala v letih 1728-1758 zbirka Der neue Welt-Bott, ki je objavila tudi več pisem slovenskih jezuitov (Marcus Antonius Kappus, Joannes Rat-kay). Njena naslednica je bila v XIX. stoletju periodična publikacija Berichte der Leopoldinen-Stiftung, ki je izhajala na Dunaju med leti 1831 do 1913 in je objavila tudi številna pisma slovenskih misijonarjev (Friderik Baraga, Franc Pirc, Ignacij Mrak, Ignacij Tomazin). O Sloveniji je objavljal dopise misijonarjev iz Amerike Illyrisches Blatt (1819-1849), v drugi polovici pa je objavljala številne dopise misijonarjev iz raznih delov sveta Zgodnja Danica (1841-1912). V ZDA so slovenski misijonarji objavljali svoje dopise zlasti v tedniku Wahrheits-Freund, ki je izhajal v Cincinnatiju med leti 1837 in 1908.
Prvi slovenski laični izseljenec, ki je zapustil objavljene časopisne prispevke, je bil Anton Fister, ki je 1. 1876 objavil v Grazer Tagespost "Skizzen iiber Amerika". Zelo pomembno časopisno
dejavnost v ZDA pa lahko spremljamo ob življenju in delu Andreja Bernarda Smolnikarja, ki je po svojem prihodu v ZDA 1. 1837 začel objavljati svoje prispevke v celi vrsti nemških in angleških časnikov; ki so izhajali v Bostonu, New Yorku, Baltimoru in Philadelphiji. Nekateri časniki, v katerih je Smolnikar objavil svoje prispevke, spadajo med vodilna ameriška glasila svoje dobe. Najpomembneje pa je, da je Smolnikar 1. 1842 začel izdajati v Philadelphiji svoje lastno periodično glasilo v nemščini, Friedens-botschaft an alle Vol ker, ki je dokazano izšla v 26 številkah, ki pa so le deloma ohranjene. Nekaj teh številk pa je izšlo tudi v angleščini pod naslovom Massage of Peace to All Nations.