There were some mighty funny folks in 19th century America: writers Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce, for instance. And, by some accounts, stage comedians Fanny Rice and Marshall P. Wilder.
For a while, Rice was billed as the Funniest Woman in America. And Wilder, who specialized in mother-in-law jokes, was called the Funniest Man.
"It is one of the hardest things in the world to be funny," an aspiring comedian said in an 1887 reprint of a New York Journal story about Marshall Wilder and other comics, "because while what you are saying may be awfully comical, yet the fact that a lot of critical girls and fellows are looking at you makes you feel and look frightened."
![Marshall P. Wilder, called by some the Funniest Man in America, in the late 19th century.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/91f597b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1408x1408+0+0/resize/880x880!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2015%2F11%2F10%2Fmarshall-p-wilder_sq-f7f0f044e72abe90960700afa9e085b214d1eeec.jpg)
That fear didn't stop Americans from telling jokes. Sometimes the quips were crude or cruel or racist or just plain humorless. Here are half a dozen from the 1800s, lightly edited, that may still play well to contemporary sensibilities:
1870: While passing a house on the road, two Virginia salesmen spotted a "very peculiar chimney, unfinished, and it attracting their attention, they asked a flaxen-haired urchin standing near the house if it 'drawed well' whereupon the aforementioned urchin gave them the stinging retort: 'Yes, it draws all the attention of all the d***** fools that pass this road.' " Daily Milwaukee News, May 21, 1870
1872: A man said to a preacher, "That was an excellent sermon, but it was not original." The preacher was taken aback. The man said he had a book at home containing every word the preacher used. The next day the man brought the preacher a dictionary. Daily Phoenix, April 4, 1872
1888: There was a man whose last name was Rose. As a lark, he named his daughter Wild, "with the happy conceit of having her called Wild Rose." But that sentiment was "knocked out" when the woman grew up to marry a man whose last name was Bull. Weekly Journal-Miner in Prescott, Ariz., May 23, 1888
1890: Whatever troubles Adam had / No man could make him sore / By saying when he told a jest / "I've heard that joke before." Philadelphia Times, Feb. 23, 1890
1896: A fellow tells his ma that there are two holes in his trousers — and then tells her that's where he puts his feet through. Cincinnati Enquirer, Nov. 1, 1896
1899: A man got up one morning and couldn't find his alarm clock, so he asked his wife what had become of it. She said, "It went off at 6 o'clock." Salt Lake Herald, April 27, 1899
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