Ramsey County History – Summer 2014: “‘A Banner with the Strange Device:’ Longfellow and Saint Paul”

“A Banner with the Strange Device:” Longfellow and Saint Paul
Author: Moira F. Harris

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is widely known as the poet who wrote “The Song of Hiawatha,” which was inspired by reports of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis. Although he never visited Minnesota, Longfellow wrote the poem “Excelsior” in 1841, which included in its lines a reference to a ‘banner with the strange device.” This particular Longfellow poem has taken on a life of its own over the years with the “Excelsior” motif being used in marketing all sorts of products and even a satirical look from writer Bret Harte. In St. Paul, Andrew Keller used the poem’s title as the name for his brewery. When Theodore Hamm acquired the Excelsior Brewery in 1864, he kept the name for the beer he brewed, but he named the business Hamm’s. Although there is no evidence as to why Excelsior was chosen as the name for a beer, Moira Harris speculates that Longfellow’s poem captured the spirit of striving and persevering in the face of multiple setbacks that was important to Americans of that time.
PDF of Harris article