Although I know it’s not true, I believe the word “hassle” comes from the man who founded what became the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has often been “hassled” (and worse) for its work on climate change.

Here’s why I want this all to be true. NOAA traces its history back to multiple agencies, including the US Survey of the Coast, an entity within the Treasury Department that was created by a bill signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson on February 10, 1807. In the 1870s its mission was expanded to include surveys in the interior of the country and it was renamed the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on February 10, 1957, 150 years after its predecessor was created.

While it’s a hassle to keep this history straight, that’s not why I think the word hassle comes from this story. Rather, it’s the connection with Ferdinand R. Hassler, a Swiss-born surveyor who immigrated to the US in 1805. Hassler, who had been employed on a major survey of Switzerland, and urged the US to follow the lead of other nations that were producing accurate maps of their lands, waterways, and coastal areas. Jefferson agreed with him in part because he hoped that better maps of the coasts would encourage more aid international trade.

After the law was signed, Jefferson tapped Hassler to lead the survey. But one month after he submitted his plan for the survey, the Embargo Act of 1807 created a hassle because it essentially halted all US overseas trade and the project was put on hold.

Four years later, in 1811, President James Madison authorized Hassler to travel to Europe to purchase the instruments needed for the survey. But while he was in England, the War of 1812 broke out, which created a hassle, because Hassler had to stay in England until the war ended in in 1815.

In 1816, nine years after the law authorizing the work, the survey finally started. Hassler began the work near New York City. But in 1818, Congress, which was unimpressed with the progress, decided to hassle the new entity by transferring it to the Army and Navy. Neither service thought the work was worth the hassle, so no surveys were conducted for the next 14 years.

It’s not clear what Hassler did for the next decade or so but in 1830 he became the first head of the Treasury Department’s Department of Weights and Measures, where he began the work of establishing national standards for weights and measures. Two years later, he returned to the coastal survey when Congress returned responsibility for the coastal survey to civilian control.

Finally, after more than two decades of hassles, the Survey could begin in earnest. Within a few years, the survey discovered the Gedney Channel at the entrance to New York Harbor, which significantly reduced sailing times to and from New York City. (It’s named for Lt. Thomas Gedney, who commanded the ship that found the channel). And in the early 1840s, the Survey began work in Delaware Bay to chart the approaches to Philadelphia.

In in 1838, George Bache, another naval officer attached to the Survey, suggested what has become standardized markings of buoys and navigational markers– painting those on the right when entering a harbor red and those on the left black. And in August 1839, the Coast Survey made another kind of history when one of its boats (also commanded by Gedney) intercepted and hassled the Amistad, a boat carrying people who going to be sold as slaves but had rebelled and taken control of the ship. Legal fights over their fates ultimately led to a landmark US Supreme Court case giving the men their freedom.

Hassler died in 1843. The entity that he helped build, of course, has continued, in various forms to the present-day NOAA. In the decades before the Civil War it produced nautical charts, performed the first systematic study of the Gulf Stream, created tidal prediction machines, and established a geodetic connection between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the 1870s. Congress expanded its responsibilities to include geodetic surveys of in the country’s interior. In the 1920s, its portfolio expanded further to include charting airways for the growing aviation industry. And in 1959, two years after the stamp was issued, its charter was expanded to include studying all of the world’s oceans.

In 1965, the survey was along with the Weather Bureau and several other entities were rolled into a new Environmental Science Services Administration in the Commerce Department. In 1970, NOAA was created as part of a government reorganization plan. Supposedly it was kept in the Commerce Department because of President Richard Nixon wanted to hassle Interior Secretary, Wally Hickel, who had written a letter urging Nixon to listen to people protesting the Vietnam War.

NOAA has been at the forefront of efforts to measure and assess climate change, something that has brought it into conflict with powerful forces that has hassled agency scientists as they do their work. NOAA also includes the National Weather Service, which y, you may recall, was hassled by President Trump over its accurate prediction that a powerful hurricane would not hit Alabama.

Given the agency’s long history of political meddling and second-guessing, you can see why I think that the word hassle, might, in fact have come from Ferdinand Hassler, a man who, even though often hassled, accomplished a great deal in his lifetime. In fact, it origins are unknown. Moreover, it’s only recently entered the lexicon. The first use of hassle as a noun apparently didn’t come until 1945; the first use as a verb was six years later. It’s usage grew steadily until about 2000 but has levelled off since then.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, try not to hassle people, and work for peace.