[82Rigger]

Keith,

In order to understand this, you will have to view it through the eyes
of someone living in the nineteenth century.

The knowledge wasn't there for the "light bulb coming on" to illuminate.
They were just "storms". You had storms no matter where you lived...New England, the Upper Midwest, or the Gulf and Atlantic coast.

Until the early 1800s they weren't known to be cyclonic. They were assumed to be straight-line winds like squalls or thunderstorms.

They were Acts of God. They came with the territory...like Indians.

There was no U.S. Weather Service until 1875. Between 1875 and 1900 only TWO major hurricanes hit Texas. There was no wireless communications, so little was known about how hurricanes tracked. It was believed that all hurricanes
recurved to the North somewhere between the 75th and 85th lines of longitude.
The tropical storms that hit the Gulf Coast were thought to have been "born" in the Gulf and moved north over the coast.

Storm surge was not understood at all.

You also have to weigh in the commercial importance of New Orleans and Galveston in those times. In their own eras they were key to the economy of the United States and to Texas. A "boom town" with good paying jobs and successful business is going to attract people...in the same way that the very rich volcanic soil at the base of a volcano attracts people.