The New International Encyclopædia/Nordhoff, Charles

NORDHOFF, nôrd′hō̇f, Charles (1830-1901). An American journalist, descriptive and miscellaneous writer, born in Erwitte, Westphalia. He came to America in 1835, was educated in Cincinnati, and was for nine years at sea, in the navy and merchant service; from 1853 to 1857 in various newspaper offices; was then employed editorially by the Harpers (1861), and for the next ten years on the staff of the New York Evening Post. From 1871 to 1873 Nordhoff traveled in California and visited Hawaii. He then became Washington correspondent of the New York Herald. The more noteworthy of his books are: Man-of-War Life, largely autobiographical (1855); The Merchant Vessel (1855); Whaling and Fishing (1856), both the result of personal experience, as was also Nine Years a Sailor (1857); then for ten years politics and sociology were his themes in Secession Is Rebellion (1860); The Freedmen of South Carolina (1863); America for the Working Men (1865). To sociology he contributed: Politics for Young Americans (1875), perhaps the best known and most useful of his books; The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875). Later volumes are God and the Future Life (1881) and Peninsular California (1888). Nordhoff died in California in July, 1901.