JIGSAW GENS
Transcendentals — A Legacy of Purity & Intuition
The Transcendentals (“Prairie Embryos” or “Blue Shirts”) drove a transition from nationalistic unity to sectarian fracture
My “Jigsaw Gens” series from the first half of 2023 has featured America’s eight most recent generational cohorts: Hemingrebels, GI-Gens, Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, Zoomers, and Alphas.
As I’ve expanded this series to spotlight who came before the Hemingrebels, I’ve categorized generations from prior to the 1880s as the Missionaries, Stowegressives, Golden Renegades, and Redeemers.
So who came before the Redeemers?
That would be members of the generation whom I’ve classified as the “Transcendentals.”
Who They Are
Transcendentals were born approximately between 1799 to 1810 — give or take a few years on either end. They comprised much of the Transcendental cohort of “prophets” and “idealists” as constructed by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. Members from their generation became active in supporting (or working against) the American transcendentalist movement of the 1820s through 1840s.
