Phe-Pit: Phelps through Pitkin

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


PHELPS, Anson Greene, 1781-1853, merchant, philanthropist, president of the American Bible Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind, and the Colonization Society of the State of Connecticut. He was particularly interested in the latter as affording the best method of dealing with negro slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 751; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 525-526). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 525-526:

PHELPS, ANSON GREENE (March 24, 1781- November 30, 1853), merchant and philanthropist, was born at Simsbury, Connecticut, the youngest of the four sons of Thomas and Dorothy (Woodbridge) Phelps. He was the descendant in the sixth generation of George Phelps who, with his brother William, emigrated from Gloucestershire, England, to Dorchester, Massachusetts, about 1630 and five years later removed to Windsor, Connecticut. His father was a part owner in a saw and gristmill at Simsbury and had served through most of the Revolution. After his parents died, his father in 1789 and his mother in 1795, the orphaned boy spent the next few years in the home of the local minister learning the saddler's trade from his elder brother, who became his guardian. Shortly after the opening of the century he settled in Hartford and there followed his trade. On October 26, 1806, he was married to Olivia Eggleston, who bore him seven daughters and one son. His first successful mercantile operation was in manufacturing a large number of saddles and shipping them south. His business prospered; he established a branch in Charleston, South Carolina, and soon he was extending his interests in other lines, particularly in the merchandising and importing of tin plate and other metal s. About 1812 he removed to New York, where he associated himself in business with Elisha Peck under the firm name of Phelps, Peck & Company. This company soon became one of the lea ding concerns in the country in the importing and merchandising of various metals and began to extend its operations into metal manufacturing at Haverstraw and el sew here in New York state. The partnership was dis solved in 1828. The chief set back to a business career of almost uninterrupted success came in 1832, when a large warehouse he had recently constructed at the corner of Cliff and Fulton streets collapsed with the loss of several lives. At this time he invited his two sons-in-law, William Earl Dodge [q.v.] and Daniel James, the father of Daniel Willis James [q.v.], to join him as partners in the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Company. Under the direction of Phelps and Dodge the firm expanded its interests from merchandising into manufacturing, mining, and railroads. In the middle thirties it became interested in copper manufacturing at Birmingham on the Naugatuck River in Connecticut. Prevented from extending north along the Naugatuck, Phelps and his associates purchased a site farther south, erected a dam, a factory, and some dwelling houses. From this grew the city of Ansonia, named in his honor. Later the Birmingham Copper Mills were consolidated with the Ansonia Manufacturing Company as the Ansonia Brass and Copper Company. Phelps, Dodge & Company was important in the development of Lake Superior copper and Pennsylvania iron, and its loans to George W. Scranton [q.v.] and his brother were important to the growth of the city of Scranton (Martyn, post, pp. 146-47).

Phelps was as well known in his lifetime as a philanthropist as he was as a business man. Extracts printed from his diary indicate a man with an intense desire to follow the Christian teaching, and his life did not belie his piety. He spent an hour each morning in prayer and other devout exercises, and he frequently presided at the weekly prayer-meetings of the Presbyterian Church. He generously supported and at some time acted as president of the American Bible Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind, and the Colonization Society of the State of Connecticut. He was particularly interested in the latter as affording the best method of dealing with negro slavery. After an extended European trip in pursuit of health he died in New York leaving almost $600,000 of his large fortune to religious and benevolent purposes (Martyn, post, p. 154).

[G. E. Prentiss, A Sermon Preached on the Death of Anson G. Phelps with some Extracts from his Diary (1854); J. L. Rockey, History of New Haven County, Connecticut (1892), volume II, 479; Carlos Martyn, Wm. E. Dodge (1890); D. S. Dodge, Memorials of Wm. E. Dodge (1887), pp. 17-19; 0. S. Phelps and A. T. Servin, Phelps Family (1899), volume II.]

H. U. F.


PHELPS, Charlotte Brown, first president, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), wife of abolitionist leader Reverend Amos Phelps (Yellin, 1994, pp. 47-49, 47n, 125)


PHELPS, Isaac, New York, abolitionist leader (Sorin, 1971)


PHELPS, Reverend Amos Augustus, 1805-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, editor. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-35, Vice-President, 1834-35, Executive Committee, 1836-38, Rec. Secretary, 1836-40, Editor, Emancipation and The National Era. Husband of abolitionist Charlotte Phelps.

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 182, 185, 266, 276, 285; Pease, 1965, pp. 71-85; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 290; Yellin, 1994, pp. 47, 54, 54n, 59-60, 125; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 751; Phelps, “Lectures on Slavery and its Remedy,” Boston, 1834).

PHILLIPS, Abner, Massachusetts, leader in Massachusetts, Free Soil Party.  (Rayback, 1970, p. 248)


PHILLIPS, Stephen Clarendon, 1801-1857, philanthropist.  U.S. Congressman, Whig Party.  Also member of Free Soil Party. 

(Mabee, 1970, p. 161; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 437; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 763; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PHILLIPS, Stephen Clarendon, philanthropist, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 1 November, 1801; died on St. Lawrence river, 26 June, 1857. He was graduated at Harvard in 1819, and began the study of law, but soon discontinued it to engage in business in Salem. He was in the lower house of the legislature in 1824-'30, was elected to the state senate in the latter year, and in 1832-'3 was again a member of the legislature. He was then chosen to congress as a whig to fill a vacancy, and served during three terms—from 1 December, 1834, until his resignation in 1838—when he became mayor of Salem, which place he then held until March, 1842. On his retirement from this office he devoted the whole of his salary as mayor to the public schools of Salem. He was the Free-soil candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1848-'9, and a presidential elector in 1840. Mr. Phillips discharged several state and private trusts, and was many years a member of the state board of education. Retiring from public life in 1849, he engaged extensively in the lumber business in Canada, and met his death by the burning of the steamer “Montreal” while coming down the St. Lawrence river from Quebec. Mr. Phillips was president of the Boston Sunday-school society, and author of “The Sunday-School Service Book,” in several parts (Boston). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 763.


PHILLIPS, Wendell, 1811-1884, lawyer, orator, reformer, abolitionist leader, Native American advocate.  Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Called “abolition’s golden trumpet.”  Member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  Advocate of Free Produce movement. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 182, 186, 273, 340; Filler, 1960, pp. 39, 42, 45, 59, 80, 94, 130, 138, 140, 183, 204, 206, 214, 275; Hofstadter, 1948; Mabee, 1970, pp. 72, 86, 105, 109, 116, 123, 124, 136, 165, 169, 173, 180, 193, 200, 243, 248, 261, 262, 269, 271, 278, 279, 286, 289, 295, 301, 309, 316, 337, 364, 369; Pease, 1965, pp. 339, 459-479; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 54, 56, 169, 309, 399, 476, 602-605; Yellin, 1994, pp. 35, 82, 86, 260, 306, 308n, 309-311, 311n, 333; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 759-762; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 546-547; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 454; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 314-315; Bartlett, Irving H. Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961; Sherwin, Oscar. Profit of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips. New York: Bookman, 1958). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 546-547:

PHILLIPS, WENDELL (November 29, 1811 February 2, 1884), orator and reformer, was the eighth child and fifth son of John and Sarah (Walley) Phillips, and traced his ancestry back to Reverend George Phillips [q.v.], who landed at Salem on the Arbella in June 1630. He inherited not only a superb physique and family traditions of a high order, but also ample wealth and an excellent social standing in Boston. At the Boston Latin School, to which he was sent in 1822, he won distinction in declamation; and later, at Harvard, where he graduated in the class of 1831, he showed ability as a debater and a student of history. He was obviously a patrician, animated by chivalric ideals and a spirit of noblesse oblige. After three years at the Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the Suffolk County bar and at once opened an office in Boston. Although he was never enthusiastic about his profession, he was able during his first two years of practice to pay his expenses, and he later enjoyed a fair clientage. He married, October 12, 1837, Ann Terry Greene, orphan daughter of Benjamin Greene, a wealthy Boston merchant. She soon became a nervous invalid, confined usually to her room and often to her bed, but their domestic life was very happy. They had no children.

Even before his marriage, Phillips had become identified with the anti-slavery movement, and his wife encouraged him in his abolitionist views. On March 26, 1837, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Lynn, he spoke for twenty minutes announcing his allegiance to the cause, but he at first took no part in the work of the organization. His real opportunity presented itself on December 8, 1837, at a public meeting held in Faneuil Hall to protest against the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy [q.v.], the abolitionist editor, at Alton, Illinois. Phillips listened in the audience while James T. Austin [q.v.], attorney general of the commonwealth, compared the assassins of Lovejoy to the Revolutionary patriots; then, urged by friends, he responded with a stirring indictment of the outrage. His personality and passionate eloquence caught the imaginations of the audience, and his impromptu address was received with cheers. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, he took his place in the front rank of the leaders of the anti-slavery protest.

Possessing an adequate private income which made it unnecessary for him to rely on his profession, he now became a lecturer on the lyceum platform, speaking mainly on the slavery question. His relatives thought him fanatical, but his wife's encouragement counteracted their influence. His ability and family prestige, as well as his charm and persuasive power, made him invaluable as a champion. Broadly speaking, he followed William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] in his refusal to link abolitionism with the program of any political party and like Garrison he condemned the Constitution of the United States because of its compromise with the slave power, but he was never a non-resistant, and he and Garrison occasionally differed on this point. Phillips contributed frequently to Garrison's Liberator and, in 1840, went to London as a delegate from Massachusetts to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, where he supported Garrison in the latter's insistence that women should have the same rights on the floor as men. On October 30, 1842, speaking in Faneuil Hall on the fugitive-slave issue, he said, "My curse be on the Constitution of these United States" (Sears, post, p. ro2). As time went on, he became more denunciatory in his language, arousing such hostility that on several occasions he was almost mobbed. He opposed the acquisition of Texas and the war with Mexico; and he condemned Webster bitterly for his "Seventh of March" speech, in 1850. Ultimately Phillips, like Garrison, demanded the division of the Union. During the Civil War, he was frequently a severe critic of the Lincoln administration, but the Emancipation Proclamation met with his approval as marking a victory for freedom. When, in 1865, Garrison urged the dissolution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Phillips successfully maintained that it should not be disbanded, and was himself chosen president.

Regarding his mission as one of education, he devoted himself after the Civil War to advocating other moral causes, including prohibition, a reform in penal methods, concessions to the Indians, votes for women, and the labor movement. He was nominated in 1870 by the Labor Reform Party and the Prohibitionists for the governorship of Massachusetts and polled 20,000 votes; the following year he presided over the Labor Reform convention at Worcester and drew up its platform, which contained these words: "We affirm ... that labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates ... we avow ourselves willing to accept ... the overthrow of the whole profit-making system .... We declare war with the wages system ... with the present system of finance" (The Labor Question, 1884, p. 4; Austin, post, p. 264). In this same year (1871) he supported General B. F. Butler [q. v. ] for the governorship. His denunciation of the moneyed corporations and his urging that the laboring class organize to further its own interests were regarded by some of his contemporaries as marking aberrations of a noble mind. Actually he seems to have had an unusually clear perception of national trends, but he was even further ahead of his time in his labor agitation than he had been when he championed abolition in 1837. In his seventieth year, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa Centennial Oration at Harvard College, and showed himself to be still uncompromising by denouncing the timidity of academic conservatives. His last public address was delivered at the unveiling of a statue of Harriet Martineau on December 26, 1883. He died after a week's suffering from angina pectoris, and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall his body was interred in the Granary Burying Ground.

Phillips was an aristocratic-looking man, with a rich, persuasive voice and a graceful, self-assured manner. Although famous as an orator, he was seldom rhetorical, and he was amazingly free from verbosity and pomposity. His subjects were many, among the most popular being "The Lost Arts," on which he spoke more than two thousand times; "Street Life in Europe"; "Daniel O'Connell"; "The Scholar in a Republic"; and "Toussaint L'Ouverture." He spoke before all kinds of audiences, large and small, sympathetic and hostile, and, in his prime, he seemed untiring. An omnivorous reader and a thorough scholar, he knew how to impart his knowledge in an easy and appealing way. His mission was that of an agita tor, aiming to stir his countrymen to eliminate the evils in their midst. Like all extremists, he was frequently sharp of tongue and unfair to his opponents, but he was courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous, and lofty in his ideals, and has been rightly called the "Knight-Errant of unfriended Truth."

[Two volumes of Phillips' Speeches, Lectures, and Letters were published, the first in 1863 and the second, after his death. in 1891. The best biographies are Lorenzo Sears, Wendell Phillips (1909); G. L. Austin, The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (1884); and C. E. Russell, The Story of Wendell Phillips (1914). See also T. W. Higginson, Contemporaries (1900), reprinting a paper first published in the Nation (New York), February 7, 1884; G. E. Woodberry, "Wendell Phillips," in his Heart of Man and Other Papers (1920); and Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips (1890).]

C. M. F.


PHILLIPS, William Addison (January 14, 1824-Nov. 30, 1893), soldier, congressman from Kansas. In 1855 he went to Kansas as a special correspondent of the New York Tribune and became conspicuous as a radical anti-slavery journalist and politician. He wrote The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and her Allies (1856) in the interest of Fremont's candidacy for president.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 548-549:

PHILLIPS, WILLIAM ADDISON (January 14, 1824-November 30, 1893), soldier, congressman from Kansas, author, was born at Paisley, Scotland, the son of John Phillips. He emigrated with his parents to the United States about 1838 and settled in Randolph County in southern Illinois, where he was reared in the strictest tenets of Presbyterianism. He went to the local schools and acquired some training in Latin and mathematics. He became editor of a newspaper at Chester, Illinois, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In 1855 he went to Kansas as a special correspondent of the New York Tribune and became conspicuous as a radical anti-slavery journalist and politician. He wrote The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and her Allies (1856) in the interest of Fremont's candidacy for president. He was a participant in many of the important political gatherings in Kansas Territory and became a member of the state legislature. In 1858 he and four associates founded the town of Salina. In 1859 he married Carrie Spillman, who died in 1883. They had four children. At the outbreak of the Civil War he became an officer in the Union Army, winning prominence as a commander of Indian troops in Indian Territory and Arkansas. He was mustered out as colonel of the 3rd Indian Regiment on June 10, 1865.

After the Civil War he returned to law and politics. While most of the anti-slavery radicals became conservatives, he merely transferred his radicalism to economic issues. His economic theories were given formal statement in a book called Labor, Land and Law; a Search for the Missing Wealth of the Working People (1886). Repudiating Henry George's single tax, he presented a program including: a graduated land tax for the purpose of reducing the size of holdings, preservation of public timber and reforestation of cut-over land, lease of grazing rights on public domain in tracts large enough to support a family, reservation in the public interest of subsoil rights to minerals, postal-savings banks through which the government might borrow from its people in national emergencies, organization of all labor, graduated taxation of large fortunes and inheritances, and regulation of public utilities. He was elected to Congress from Kansas in 1872, 1874, and 1876, and while there he was interested chiefly in land legislation, postal-savings banks, postal telegraphy, greenbacks, and silver. He was a Republican in politics, and, when he found it necessary to choose between his party and his principles, he supported the party. On questions that were not partisan issues he was independent. His Civil War experiences resulted in close association with problems relating to Indians, especially the Cherokee. After his retirement from Congress he became attorney for the Cherokee and engaged in law practice in Washington, D. C. In 1890 he was again nominated for Congress but was defeated by the candidate of the People's party. He wrote voluminously, fiction, verse, and essays, as well as economic and political discussions. From 1885 to 1887 he published several articles in the North American Review (November 1885, July, September 1886, August 1887). However, much of his writing was anonymous and can not be identified. He was survived by his second wife, Anna B. (Stapler) Phillips, to whom he was married in 1885 at Tahlequah in the Indian Territory.

[A few letters in the Library of Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka; papers in possession of nephew, A. M. Campbell, Jr., Salina, Kansas; Cherokee material in the collections of the University of Okla.; Kansas Historical Society Collections, volume V (1896); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); A. H. Abel, The American Indian ... in the Civil War (1919) and The American Indian under Reconstruction (1925); Wiley Britton, Memoirs of the Rebellion on the Border (1882), The Civil War on the Border (2 volumes, 1890- 99), and The Union Indian Brigade (1922); Daily Republican (Salina, Kansas), December 1, 1893.]

J.C.M.


PICTON, Thomas, (May 16, 1822-February 20, 1891), soldier of fortune, journalist, he edited the "True National Democrat," the organ of the Free-Soilers.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 572-573; Obituaries in the New York Recorder, February 25, 1891; New York Tribune, February 22, 1891

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PICTON, Thomas, journalist, born in New York City, 9 May, 1822, entered Columbia, and subsequently the University of New York, where he was graduated in 1843. After studying law he was admitted to the bar in 1843. Several years later he visited Europe, and, after travelling over the continent, resided in the environs of Paris, participating in the Revolution of 1848 as an officer of the 2d Legion of the Banlien. Upon his return to New York he began the publication of "The Era" in 1850 in conjunction with Henry W. Herbert, and in 1851 he became one of the editors of "The Sachem," afterward entitled the " True American," a vigorous advocate of the Associated Order of United Americans. A little later he edited the "True National Democrat," the organ of the Free-Soilers. On the reorganization of the "Sunday Mercury" he became one of its editors, and contributed to the paper a series of popular stories under the name of "Paul Preston." These were subsequently published in book-form, and had an extensive sale. At the beginning of the Civil War he raised a battalion, which was consolidated with the 38th New York Regiment, with which he went to the field. During the reign of Maximilian in Mexico, Mr. Picton was employed in the service of the Liberals, and wrote a " Defence of Liberal Mexico," which was printed for distribution among the statesmen of (his country. General Rosecrans remarked that this publication had "done more for the cause of Mexico than all other external influences combined." He has translated some of the first modern romances from the French, and several of his light dramas are popular. He is the author of "Reminiscences of a Sporting Journalist," issued in serial form, and. besides the works mentioned, has edited "Frank Forester's Life and Writings" (New York, 1881). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 6.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 572-573:

PICTON, THOMAS (May 16, 1822-February 20, 1891), soldier of fortune, journalist, was Thomas Picton Milner, the son of Jane Milner (General Alumni Catalogue of New York University, 1906), who, shortly after his birth, was listed in New York City directories as "widow." Nothing is known of his father. He spent his youth in the home of his maternal grandmother, a woman of wealth, who provided him with a good education. Later in life he dropped his last name, becoming known to his contemporaries as Thomas Picton. After graduating in 1840 from New York University he spent several years abroad. While in France he became an officer in the French army under Louis Philippe, who is said to have made him a knight of the "Legion of the Stranger." With the fall of Louis Philippe in 1848 he returned to New York, but an adventurous spirit still dominated him, and probably toward the close of 1850 he joined the force which Narciso Lopez was collecting in the United States to lead against Cuba. Barely escaping capture when Lopez was taken prisoner, Picton sought refuge from his enemies in the steamer Palmero, which was pursued by a Spanish man-of-war. He finally succeeded in reaching New York and for a few years busied himself in journalistic pursuits. But the preparations which William Walker was making for the invasion of Nicaragua once more aroused his filibustering instincts, and he attached himself to Walker's force, becoming for a time paymaster in the General's army. After the shooting of Walker he returned to the United States and with the outbreak of the Civil War raised a company of soldiers which was later incorporated in the 38th New York Infantry, but Picton himself seems to have played no part in the war.

Picton's career as a journalist began as early as 1850 when for a short time he edited in conjunction with his teacher and friend, Henry William Herbert ("Frank Forester"), a periodical called the Era. He had already become associated with Edward Z. C. Judson ("Ned Buntline"), active in the organization of the Native American movement, and during the early fifties he became an editor of the Sachem, and on its discontinuance, the founder of the True American, both organs of the new movement. His love of sports also found expression through journalistic channels, and during his later years he contributed to the Clipper; Turf, Field, and Farm; and the Spirit of the Times. For the last-named periodical he wrote a series of articles, beginning with the issue of February 19, 1881, called "Reminiscences of a Sporting Journalist." These articles, which appeared intermittently until a short time before his death, dealt with sporting, social, and historical topics having reference to the New York of Picton's youth and early manhood. During his years as a journalist, he was also connected with the True National D emo crat, the Sunday Dispatch, and the Sunday Mercury. He frequently wrote under the pseudonym of "Paul Preston." Among his publications so designated were Paul Preston's Book of Gymnastics: 01, Sports for Youth (n.d.) and The Fireside Magician (1870). His interest in the history of old New York led to the publication in 1873 of a small pamphlet called Rose Street; its Past, Present, and Future. He also contributed a biographical sketch of Henry Herbert to the Life and Writings of Frank Forester (1882). Among his more creative efforts were two light dramas: A Tempest in a Teapot (copyright 1871), and There's No Smoke Without Fire (copyright 1872). A volume of poems, Acrostics from Across the Atlantic, published in London in 1869 and signed "A Gothamite," has also sometimes been ascribed to him.

Picton was familiarly known to his wide circle of New York acquaintance as Colonel "Tom" Picton. He was a distinguished Mason and frequently wrote articles of Masonic interest. At one time he was a member of a city engine company and at another was city paymaster. For some years, too, he acted as assistant cashier of the Nassau Bank. About 1860 he married a Miss Gardner; daughter of a Confederate officer of that name, but a few years later the couple separated. At the time of his death in New York City he was without immediate family connections, and he was buried in the lot of the Press Club in Cypress Hills Cemetery

[Obituaries in the New York Recorder, February 25, 1891; New York Tribune, February 22, 1891; Spirit of the Times, February 28, 1891; Masonic Chronicle and Official Bulletin, March 1891.]

N. F. A.


PIERCE, Henry Lillie (August 23, 1825- December 17, 1896), manufacturer of cocoa, mayor of Boston, congressman, worked “hard for the Free-Soil party in the national elections. This interest in freeing the slaves was for some time the dominant note in his outlook on public affairs.”

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p 12. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 582-583; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe);J. M. Bugbee, "Memoir of Henry Lillie Pierce," Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series XI (1897))

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PIERCE, Henry Lillie, member of Congress, born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, 23 August, 1825. He received a good education, engaged in manufacturing, and as early as 1848 took an active part in organizing the “Free-Soil” Party in Massachusetts. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1860–6, and in 1860 was instrumental in getting a bill passed by both branches of the legislature removing the statutory prohibition upon the formation of militia companies composed of colored men. He was elected to Congress as a Republican to fill the vacancy caused by the death of William Whiting, was re-elected for the next congressional term, and served from 1 December, 1873, till 3 March, 1877, when he declined a renomination. In the presidential election of 1884 he was prominent in organizing an independent movement in support of Cleveland, and has since taken a leading part in the effort to revise the tariff legislation and reduce the taxes on imports. He was mayor of Boston in 1873, and again in 1878. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 12.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 582-583:

PIERCE, HENRY LILLIE (August 23, 1825- December 17, 1896), manufacturer of cocoa, mayor of Boston, congressman, was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, the son of Jesse Pierce and Elizabeth Lillie and a descendant of John Pers (or Peirce) who emigrated to New England in 1637. Edward Lillie Pierce [q.v.] was his younger brother. The father was ultra-conscientious and sensitive; the mother was more forceful, plain-spoken, and with strong prejudices. This environment was scarcely cheerful, but it was tempered with fair educational advantages at home and at Bridgewater and Milton academies. At seventeen, Pierce suffered an illness which ended his formal education and from which he never fully recovered. Even as early as this, however, his interest in public affairs showed itself in the form of contributions to the county paper. By 1848 he was serving as a member of the school committee of Stoughton and was working hard for the Free-Soil party in the national elections. This interest in freeing the slaves was for some time the dominant note in his outlook on public affairs. For a number of years he engaged in light farm work but in 1849 he moved to Dorchester and there worked in the cocoa factory of his uncle, Walter Baker. Save for one short period, this association continued till his death. In 1854, after the death of Baker and his partner, Sidney B. Williams, the trustees leased the plant to Pierce. From that time till his death he worked to make and then to keep his factory the leader in its field, and saw its business grow forty times over. In 1884 he became full owner of the plant. He was progressive in his methods and constantly alert to discover and introduce improved process es. In all the years he never had any trouble with his employees. He took particular pride in the fact that his products were a warded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1867.

Pierce 's political career included four years as representative to the General Court, where he served as chairman of its committee on finance in 1862; three years (1869-71) as alderman of Boston; two years (1872, 1877) as mayor of Boston, and two terms, from 1873 to 1877, as a member of Congress. He opposed the Know-Nothing movement at the height of its power. As mayor he set his face against the vested interests in administration which had been acquired by the city council. He was instrumental in furthering the movement, general throughout the country, which resulted in the transfer of administration from committees of the council to boards set up for special purposes. The health and fire departments were so reorganized during his first term and the police department during his second. These boards were made responsible to the mayor, and he restored to th at office its former prestige. In Congress his chief service was as a member of the committee on commerce and was directed toward relieving coastal vessels from state pilotage fees. In the Hayes-Tilden controversy, he and one other Massachusetts Representative were the only Republicans to vote to throw out the Louisiana electoral vote which the electoral commission had counted for Hayes. His voluntary retirement from Congress soon followed as he found himself in many ways out of harmony with his party. In the 1884 campaign he refused to support Blaine and from then till 1896, in presidential elections, he voted with the Democrats. In 1887 he became president of the Massachusetts Tariff Reform League, which was formed to secure general reductions in the tariff. His refreshing sincerity and independence made him a more than usually outstanding local personality at a time when public life generally throughout the country was at a low ebb.

Pierce was a man who acted upon impulses, often odd ones. He masked his keen judgment behind a kindly and innocent-appearing exterior. Wendell Phillips said of him that if Diogenes came to Boston he would find his honest man in the mayor's chair. Particularly in his later years, he became a liberal giver, especially to struggling colored schools in the South and to small Western colleges. He never married, and at his death more than had his large estate was carefully apportioned to various charitable, educational, and religious institutions. In the latter group, he left money to Catholic and Unitarian churches alike.

[J. M. Bugbee, "Memoir of Henry Lillie Pierce," Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series XI (1897); Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, volume III (1881); T. T. Munger, "An American Citizen: The Late Henry L. Pierce," the Century, July 1897; "A Model Citizen," the Critic, January 9, 1897; Boston Transcript, December 18, 1896; Boston Herald, December 18, 19, 1896.)

E.S.G.


PIERPONT, Francis Harrison (January 25, 1814-March 24, 1899), governor of the "restored" state of Virginia, 1861-68. Being an ardent antislavery and Union man, he supported Lincoln in 1860. When Virginia in 1861 decided in favor of secession, Pierpont organized a mass meeting at Wheeling in May which called a convention to meet in that town during the following month. This convention, holding that the secessionist officials of the state had vacated their offices, elected Pierpont provisional governor of Virginia. He thereupon organized the Unionist members of the legislature from the western counties into a rump legislature; a constitution was framed, and the name West Virginia adopted. Representatives from this government were seated in the Federal Congress, and in 1863 the state was admitted to the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 384-385:

PIERPONT, FRANCIS HARRISON (January 25, 1814-March 24, 1899), governor of the "restored" state of Virginia, 1861-68, was the son of Francis and Catherine (Weaver) Pierpoint. The name was spelled Pierpoint by the Virginia branch of the family until 1881 when Francis Harrison returned to the older spelling, Pierpont. His grandfather, John Pierpont, removed from New York State in 1770 and established a farm near Morgantown, Monongalia County, in western Virginia. Here young Francis was born in 1814, but during the same year his father removed from the old homestead to the neighborhood of Fairmont, in what is now Marion County, W. Virginia. As the boy grew up he helped his father on the farm and in his tannery. In 1835 he entered Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, and was graduated with the bachelor's degree in 1839. For two years he taught school in Virginia and in 1841 went to Mississippi to engage in the same occupation, but his father's poor health necessitated his return home the next year. Having read law in his spare time, he was now admitted to the bar. In 1848 he became local attorney for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and in 1853 engaged in mining and shipping coal.

From 1844 to 1860 Pierpont took an active interest in politics as an adherent of the Whig party, serving as a presidential elector on the Taylor ticket in 1848. Being an ardent antislavery and Union man, he supported Lincoln in 1860. When Virginia in 1861 decided in favor of secession, Pierpont organized a mass meeting at Wheeling in May which called a convention to meet in that town during the following month. This convention, holding that the secessionist officials of the state had vacated their offices, elected Pierpont provisional governor of Virginia. He thereupon organized the Unionist members of the legislature from the western counties into a rump legislature; a constitution was framed, and the name West Virginia adopted. Representatives from this government were seated in the Federal Congress, and in 1863 the state was admitted to the Union. A new governor was elected for the new state, but meanwhile Pierpont had been granted a four-year term as governor of the "restored" state of Virginia; that is, governor of the few counties which were in Federal hands and not in West Virginia. He now moved his capital to Alexandria and carried on under military protection. Upon the fall of the Confederate government, he moved his capital to Richmond and became in fact the governor of Virginia. Under the Johnson regime he conducted the affairs of the state until the reconstruction act went into effect and he was replaced by a military commander on April 16, 1868. While at the head of affairs in Richmond he did what he could to alleviate the suffering and the bitterness which oppressed the people during those ghastly years. Upon his retirement from office, he returned to his home in West Virginia and resumed the practice of law. Subsequently he sat for one term in the legislature (1870) and was collector of internal revenue under Garfield. He died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where for two years he had lived in the home of a daughter. He was buried at his home near Fairmont, West Virginia.

Pierpont was apparently one of that large class of men who are selected as leaders in troubled times because they possess strength of conviction rather than strength of intellect. In 1910 a statue of him was placed by West Virginia in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. In 1854 he married Julia Augusta Robertson, daughter of Samuel and Dorcas (Platt) Robertson of New York.

[The material dealing with the establishment of West Virginia is voluminous and largely of a partisan nature; the best study is J. C. McGregor, The Disruption of Virginia (1922). There are sketches of Pierpont in T. C. Miller and Hu Maxwell, W. Virginia and Its People (1913), volume II; M. V. Smith, Virginia, A History of the Executives (1893); R. A. Brock, Virginia and Virginians (1888), volume I; L. G. Tyler, Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915), volume III; Encyclopedia of Contemporary Biography of West Virginia (1894); Statue of Governor Francis Harrison Pierpont: Proceedings in Statuary Hall (1910), being Senate Doc. No. 656, 61 Congress, 2 Session; F. S. Reader, History of the Fifth W. Virginia Cavalry (1890); Pittsburgh Post, March 25, 1899; Wheeling Register, March 25, 1899.]

T . P. A.


PIERPONT, John, 1785-1866, Massachusetts, poet, lawyer, Unitarian theologian, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  Liberty Party candidate for Massachusetts.  Free Soil candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 14; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 586; Dumond, 1961, p. 301; A. A. Ford, John Pierpont, a Biographical Sketch (1909))

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PIERPONT, John, poet, born in Litchfield, Conn., 6 April, 1785; died  in Medford, Massachusetts, 26 Aug., 1866. He was a great-grandson of James, who is noticed below. He was graduated at Yale in 1804, and after assisting for a short time in the academy at Bethlehem, Conn., in the autumn of 1805 went to South Carolina, and passed nearly four years as a private tutor in the family of Colonel William Allston. After his return in 1809 he studied law at Litchfield, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised for a time in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The profession proving injurious to his health, he relinquished it, and engaged in business as a merchant, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore. In 1816 he abandoned commerce for theology, which he studied, first at Baltimore, and afterward at Cambridge divinity-school. In April, 1819, he was ordained pastor of the Hollis street church, Boston. In 1835 he made a tour through Europe and Asia Minor, and on his return he resumed his pastoral charge in Boston, where he continued till 10 May, 1845. The freedom with which he expressed his opinions, especially in regard to the temperance cause, had given rise to some feeling before his departure for Europe; and in 1838 there sprung up between himself and a part of his parish a controversy which lasted seven years, when, after triumphantly sustaining himself against the charges of his adversaries, he requested a dismissal. He then became for four years pastor of a Unitarian church in Troy, New York, on 1 Aug., 1849, was settled over the Congregational church in Medford, and resigned, 6 April, 1856. He was a zealous reformer, powerfully advocated the temperance and anti-slavery movements, was the candidate of the Liberty party for governor, and in 1850 of the Free-soil party for congress. After the civil war began, though seventy-six years of age, he went into the field as chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment, but, finding his strength unequal to the discharge of his duties, he soon afterward resigned, and was appointed to a clerkship in the treasury department at Washington, which he held till his death. Mr. Pierpont was a thorough scholar, a graceful and facile speaker, and ranked deservedly high as a poet. He published “Airs of Palestine” (Baltimore, 1816); re-issued, with additions, under the title “Airs of Palestine, and other Poems” (Boston, 1840). One of his best-known poems is “Warren's Address at the Battle of Bunker Bill.” His long poem that he read at the Litchfield county centennial in 1851 contains a description of the “Yankee boy” and his ingenuity, which has often been quoted. He also published several sermons and addresses. See Wilson's “Bryant and his Friends” (New York, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 14.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 586-587:

PIERPONT, JOHN (April 6, 1785-August 27, 1866), Unitarian clergyman, poet, reformer, great-grandson of James Pierpont and grandfather of John Pierpont Morgan [ qq.v.], was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the second of the ten children of James Pierpont, a clothier, by his wife, Elizabeth Collins. He graduated from Yale College in 1804, in the same class with John C. Calhoun, and, after assisting Azel Backus [q.v.] for a few months in an academy at Bethlehem, went to South Carolina as tutor, 1805-09, in the household of "William Alston, father of Joseph Alston [q.v.]. On his return he studied in the Litchfield Law School under Tapping Reeve and James Gould [qq.v.] and on September 23, 1810, married his fourth cousin, Mary Sheldon Lord, who bore him three sons and three daughters. Their eldest child was named for William Alston. Having been called to the bar in 1812, he opened a law office at Newburyport, Massachusetts, and, in the leisure afforded by a total absence of clients, composed The Portrait (1812), a poem surcharged with Federalist sentiment, which he declaimed October 27, 1812, before the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport. It brought him renown as a bard but no retainers, and in 1814 he and his brother-in-law, Joseph L. Lord, went into the retail dry-goods business in Boston and soon took John Neal [q.1 1.] into the firm. They started a branch in Baltimore and for a while the venture flourished, but the dizzy fluctuations of wartime prices were more than they could cope with, and in 1815 the business collapsed. Still in Baltimore, Pierpont published the next year his beautifully executed Airs of Palestine (Baltimore, 1816), which was reprinted twice in Boston in 1817, and which put him for the time being in the front rank of American poets. Two later volumes, Airs of Palestine and Other Poems (1840) and The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (1843), comprise the bulk of his verse. He was an accomplished prosodist. In some of the temperance pieces he is unintentionally humorous, but as the expression of a vigorous, witty, noble mind his poetry has character and is continuously interesting.

Having graduated in October 1818 from the Harvard Divinity School, he was ordained April 14, 1819, as minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. He edited two school readers, The American First Class Book (1823) and The National Reader (1827), which went through many editions and were the first American readers to include selections from Shakespeare; visited Europe and Palestine in 1835-36; published various sermons and lectures; and grew steadily in reputation as an eloquent, thoughtful minister. His penchant for reform was also growing steadily. He worked for the abolition of the state militia and of imprisonment for debt; became an enthusiastic propagandist for phrenology and spiritualism; and pressed to the forefront of the peace, the anti-slavery, and the temperance movements. The pew-holders of the Hollis Street Church did not share these enthusiasms; their temper may be deduced from the fact that the church cellar was rented out to a rum merchant for a warehouse. Several rum merchants who did not attend Pierpont's preachings bought pews in the church; and in 1838 there began a concerted movement, known locally as the "Seven Years' War," to oust him. Pierpont resisted with wit, eloquence, pertinacity, and a fixed determination to maintain the freedom of the Unitarian pulpit. As the war proceeded it became an unscrupulous attempt to destroy his character. He was vindicated by an ecclesiastical council before which he was tried in July 1841, but his enemies continued their campaign against him. Finally, with his back salary paid in full and all the honors on his side, he resigned in 1845. Subsequently he was pastor of the newly organized First Unitarian Society of Troy, New York, 1845-49, and of the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church of West Medford, Massachusetts, 1849-58. His first wife having died on August 23, 1855, he married, on December 8, 1857, Harriet Louise (Campbell) Fowler of Pawling, New York, who survived him. For two weeks of 1861 he was chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, but the post was too strenuous for his seventy-six years. From then until his death, which took place at Medford, he was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington. He was known throughout the eastern United States as a lecturer, and by those who came into immediate contact with him he was remembered as a man with more than a touch of genius.

[F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume V (1911), with list of sources and a bibliog. of Pierpont's writings; C. R. Eliot, sketch in S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith, volume II (1910), with list of sources; O. B. Frothingham, Boston Unitarianism 1820-50 (1890), pp. 184-86; A. A. Ford, John Pierpont, a Biographical Sketch (1909); Henry Ware, A Sermon Delivered in Boston, April 14, 1819, at the Ordination of the Reverend John Pierpont (1819); Proceedings in the Controversy between a Part of the Proprietors and the Pastor of Hollis Street Church, Boston, 1838 and 1839 (Boston, n.d.); S. K. Lothrop, Proceedings of an Ecclesiastical Council in the Case of the Proprietors of Hollis-Street Meeting-House and the Reverend John Pierpont (1841); G. L. Chaney, Hollis Street Church from Mather Byles to Thomas Starr King (1877); H. W. Simon, The Reading of Shakespeare in American Schools and Colleges (1932), pp. 20-22; J. R. Dix, Pulpit Portraits (1854); Boston Transcript, August 27, 1866.]

G. H. G.


PIKE, Frederick Augustus, 1817-1886, lawyer.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine.  Member of Congress 1861-1869.  Active in emancipation of slaves.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 18-19; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


PIKE, James Shepard, 1811-1882, journalist, diplomat, anti-slavery activist.  Washington correspondent and associate editor of the New York Tribune. He was as an uncompromising anti-slavery whig, and later as an ardent Republican.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 18; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 595-596; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 512). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 595-596:

PIKE, JAMES SHEPHERD (September 8, 1811 November 29, 1882), journalist, author, was born in Calais, Maine, the son of William and Hannah (Shepherd) Pike, and died in that town in his seventy-second year while en route from his home at Robbinston, Maine, to the South for the winter months. He was a descendant of John Pike and his son Robert [q.v.], who came to Massachusetts from England in 1635. His parents were among the early settlers of Calais, where his father was conspicuous in town affairs and was instrumental in establishing the first schools (1810). In these, maintained with difficulty through the War of 1812, young Pike received his only formal education, which he later described as "not worth mentioning." The sudden death of his father in 1818 left the family in straitened circumstances; and, at the age of fourteen, James entered upon a series of business ventures in his native town, first as a clerk, later in a grain and shipping business, and in 1836, as cashier of the short-lived St. Croix Bank.

By 1840 his success in business was such as to permit him to devote himself to the more congenial work of journalism, in which he had already shown an interest by editing the Boundary Gazette and Calais Advertiser (April 12, 1835-July 28, 1836), distinguished for its Whig sympathies and its early advocacy of Harrison for the presidency. Despite his limited education, he had acquired literary taste, a vigorous and picturesque diction, and forceful style. After 1840 he lived during the winter months in Boston, New York, and Washington, becoming actively associated with newspaper work. As correspondent for the Portland Advertiser, and especially for the Boston Courier, he became familiarly known through letters signed "J. S. P." As Washington correspondent for the Courier he described with characteristic vigor and effectiveness the persons and events in Washington during the debates on
the compromise measures of 1850. Of Henry Clay; on the occasion of the Compromise speech, he said, ''he was neither profound, brilliant, nor soul stirring," and he characterized Robert Toombs as "burly, choleric, and determined, "while Foote was described as "the coltsfoot of the bed of senatorial eloquence." The embarrassed editor of the Currier was moved to explain that "we do not look singly at the dark side, which he presents in his letter" (Boston Courier, April 10, 1850, p. 2). In 1850 he was the Whig candidate for Congress from the seventh district of the state of Maine in opposition to T. J. D. Fuller. Although this district had been strongly Democratic, the seat was closely contested and it was not until ten days after the election that Fuller's victory was assured (Portland Advertiser, Sept 11-13, 1850). In April of that year Pike was. invited by Horace Greeley to become a regular correspondent of the New York Tribune, and in 1852 he was made an associate editor. Most of the time between 1850 and 1860 he was Washington correspondent for the Tribune. His letters during that period, together with the earlier letters to the Boston Courier, are the most interesting of his journalistic achievements, a vivid and colorful description of official Washington during the decade preceding the Civil War. Widely quoted, bitterly attacked or enthusiastically praised, they exerted a profound influence upon public opinion and gave to their author national prominence, first as an uncompromising anti-slavery whig, and later as an ardent Republican.

When Lincoln was elected to the presidency he named Pike as minister resident to The Hague, and on March 28, 1861, the Senate confirmed his appointment. He arrived at The Hague on June 1, 1861. His diplomatic correspondence reveals him chiefly as an observer of the economic effects of the Civil War upon Europe. The relatively quiet life in a country which offered but few diplomatic problems proved uncongenial, and he returned to the United States on May 17, 1866, although his recall was not presented to the King of the Netherlands until December 1, The remaining years of his life were devoted chiefly to writing, to collecting and publishing his earlier correspondence, and to the attractions of his summer home in Robbinston, Maine. He was twice married: first, in 1837, to Charlotte Grosvenor of Pomfret, Connecticut; second, in 1855, to Elizabeth Ellicott of Avondale, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He published successively The Financial Crisis: Its Evils and Their Remedy (1867); The Restoration of the Currency (1868); and Horace Greeley in 1872 (1873). All of these works were based upon what he had previously written for the New York Tribune. In 1873 he published his Chief Justice Chase, and in the following year, The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government, the result of his observation of the working of the reconstruction government in South Carolina, also published in a Dutch translation in 1875. In 1875 his Contributions to the Financial Discussion, 1874-1875, appeared, and was followed in 1879 by The New Puritan, a study of seventeenth century New England, based primarily upon the career of Robert Pike, and by First Blows of the Civil War, a contemporaneous exposition of the ten years of preliminary conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860.

[G. F. Talbot, "James Shepherd Pike," Colls. a11d Proceedings Maine Historical Society, 2 series I (1890); New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, April 1883; C. W. Evans, Biographical and Historical Accounts of the Fox, Ellicott, and Evans Families (1882). Joseph Griffin, History of the Press of Maine (1872); I. C. Knowlton, Annals of Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (1875); Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1861-67 (1861- 68); Portland Advertiser, April 10-20, 1850, November 29, 1882; Boston Courier, esp. April 10, 1850, and November 30, 1882; New York Tribune, March 29, 1861; Sun (New York), November 30, 1882.]

T. C. V-C.


PILLSBURY, Parker, 1809-1898, reformer, newspaper editor.  Garrisonian abolitionist.  Wrote and published: Act of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, Rochester, NY, 1883.  Wrote: The Church as it is; or The Forlorn Hope of Slavery, Boston, 1847.  Agent for the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and American Anti-Slavery Societies. In 1840 and again in 1845-46 he edited the Herald of Freedom, at Concord, New Hampshire, and from January to May 1866, the National Anti-Slavery Standard, New York City. After the Civil War, he labored for negro suffrage.  

(Drake, 1950, p. 177; Dumond, 1961, p. 268; Mabee, 1970, pp. 114-115, 123, 200, 206-208, 214, 215, 221, 223, 233, 250, 262, 297, 329, 333, 335-337, 361-363, 389, 371, 494n24; Sernett, 2002, pp. 213, 218; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 20; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 608-609). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 608-609:

PILLSBURY, PARKER (September 22, 1809-July 7, 1898), reformer, was born at Hamilton, Massachusetts, the son of Oliver Pillsbury, a blacksmith and farmer, and Anna (Smith) Pillsbury. He was a descendant of William Pillsbury who came to Massachusetts about 1640. Parker's parents moved to Henniker, New Hampshire, in 1814 and the boy's early education was limited to what the district school of that town had to offer. Until he was well past twenty years of age he worked on farms in New Hampshire and as a wagoner in Massachusetts. In 1835 he entered Gilmanton Theological Seminary, graduating in 1838. After studying a year at Andover Theological Seminary, he was engaged to supply the Congregational church at Loudon, New Hampshire but in 1840 opposition to his denunciations of slavery from the pulpit led him to give up the ministry and devote himself to social reform. On January 1, 1840, he married Sarah H. Sargent of Concord, New Hampshire, who cooperated ardently in his activities.

He was an abolitionist of the Garrisonian type, and from 1840 until the emancipation of the slaves was lecture agent for the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and American anti-slavery societies. An admirer of John Brown, he spoke at a demonstration meeting in Rochester, New York, following Brown's execution. In 1840 and again in 1845-46 he edited the Herald of Freedom, at Concord, New Hampshire, and from January to May 1866, the National Anti-Slavery Standard, New York City. After the Civil War, he labored for negro suffrage, believing that the right to vote was necessary for the negro's protection. He was also interested in temperance, political reform, international peace, and woman's rights. To the last-named cause he gave his longest service, being one of the earliest and most uncompromising nineteenth-century advocates of justice to women. He severed his connection with the Standard, because its managers were more favorable to votes for the negro than to votes for women, long served as vice-president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association and helped draft the constitution of the American Equal Rights Association. For a year and a half (1868-,69) he was joint editor with Elizabeth Cady Stanton [q.v. ] of the Revolution, a radical weekly. Though he held no regular pastorate, he preached for free religious societies in Toledo, Ohio, Battle Creek, Michigan, Rochester, New York, and elsewhere. In addition to contributions to the papers with which he was identified, he wrote and published a large number of tracts on reforms, and was author of the Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (1883), a history of the abolition movement in New England; As a public speaker he was fluent, sarcastic, and thunderous in his denunciations. James Russell Lowell in 1846 referred to him ("Letter from Boston," Complete Poetical Works, 1896, p. rr2) as

" brown, broad-shouldered Pillsbury,
Who tears up words like trees by the roots,
A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots."

His interest in the work for human betterment continued to the last, and at the age of eighty-eight he wrote a letter to the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. His death occurred at Concord, New Hampshire. He had one daughter.

[D. B. Pillsbury and E. A. Getchell, The Pillsbury Family (1898); E. C . Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, The History of Woman Suffrage, volumes I-IV (1881-1902); I. H. Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (3 volumes, 1899-1908); People and Patriot (Concord, New Hampshire), July 7, 1898; Concord Evening Monitor, July 7, 1898.]

M.W.W.


PINKERTON, Allan (August 25, 1819-July 1, 1884), detective. An ardent Abolitionist he was also a "foreman" of the Underground Railroad and his shop was a station.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 622-623:

PINKERTON, ALLAN (August 25, 1819-July 1, 1884), detective, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of William Pinkerton, a sergeant of the police force. When Allan was ten years old his father, on duty during Chartist riots, was so severely injured that he never walked again. Four years later he died. Forced to help maintain the family, the boy was apprenticed at the age of twelve to a cooper; at nineteen he became an independent craftsman. His part in the Chartist demonstrations of 1842 led him to fear arrest, and he decided to go to America. On the day before sailing he married Joan Carfrae. They reached Chicago where Pinkerton found temporary employment in a brewery. The next year they moved to the Scotch settlement of Dundee on the Fox River where he established a cooper's shop of his own. One day while cutting hoop poles on an unfrequented island he chanced upon a rendezvous for counterfeiters and he led a party which captured the entire gang. Similar success followed in several local detective commissions, and in 1846 he was made deputy sheriff of Kane County. An ardent Abolitionist he was also a "foreman" of the Underground Railroad and his shop was a station. Wider recognition came with an invitation to become deputy sheriff of Cook County and he sold a prosperous business to move to Chicago. In 1850 he was attached to Chicago's newly organized police force as its first and at that time only detective. The same year, in response to suggestions from several railroad presidents following a series of robberies, he established, in partnership with E. G. Rucker, a lawyer, a private detective agency, one of the first of its kind in the country. Rucker withdrew within a year, and Pinkerton resigned his city connections to give full time to his venture.

The solution of several sensational Adams Express robberies gave the Agency a national reputation and brought it much Eastern business in the years before the Civil War. In January 1861 Pinkerton was employed by the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad to investigate threats by Southern sympathizers against its property. While his operatives were working on the case in Baltimore they learned of an intended attempt on Lincoln's life to be made as he passed through the city on the way to his inauguration. With several of Lincoln's advisers, Pinkerton worked out plans for the President's unexpected night trip (February 22, 23) ahead of schedule to the capital. In April 1861 Lincoln invited Pinkerton to a conference on the subject of a secret-service department, but no action was taken. A few weeks later, at the invitation of General George B. McClellan, a close friend and former client, Pinkerton agreed to organize and conduct a secret service for the Ohio Department which McClellan commanded. Agents were immediately sent into Kentucky and West Virginia, and Pinkerton himself, in disguise, toured Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi. When in July McClellan was made commander-in-chief Pinkerton accompanied him to Washington and established headquarters at the capital and an office in the field. He now also directed important counter-espionage activities in Washington. During the war he went under the name of Major E. J. Allen, and many officers who knew him well did not suspect his real identity. He resigned upon McClellan's removal in November 1862 and thereafter served as an investigator of numerous claims against the government.

At the close of the war he resumed the personal direction of his Agency and established branches in Philadelphia and New York. In 1869 he suffered a slight paralytic stroke, and thereafter left to others the work of actual investigation. More protective work was being done on an annual payment basis, a type of service inaugurated by Pinkerton in 1860. The Agency was building up a voluminous record of its criminal contacts which at the time was the most usefully complete in America. Pinkerton also devoted much time to writing reminiscent detective narratives to the extent of eighteen volumes, based for the most part upon the Agency's experiences. Written in pleasant style, the books sold like novels and did much to advance the fame and prestige of Pinkerton's name. From an autobiographical viewpoint the most valuable were Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches (1879); The Spy of the Rebellion (1883); and Thirty Years a Detective (1884). The policy in labor disputes that was to win the Pinkertons severe criticism in the closing years of the century was forecast during the strikes of 1877 when Allan Pinkerton still directed affairs. He had come into contact with the more vicious side of early labor combinations and apparently sincerely believed that Unions were hurting rather than helping the cause of the workingman. (See the introduction to his Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives, 1878.) His was not a mind for analyzing social problems but rather a genius for detail, organization, and practical results. After his death his two sons took over the direction of the Agency.

[All of Pinkerton's books are to some extent autobiographical and reveal his opinions. R. W. Rowan's The Pinkertons (1931) is popularly written. Pinkerton states in The Spy of the Rebellion, p. xxxi, that many of his Civil War papers were destroyed in the Chicago fire. See under E. J. Allen in the index to War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); McClellan' s report, House Executive Doc. 15, 38 Congress, 1 Session; Pinkerton's History and Evidence of the Passage of Abraham Lincoln from Harrisburgh, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D. C. (1868); Chicago Tribune, New York Tribune, July 2., 1884.]

O. W. H.


PINKERTON, LEWIS LETIG (January 28, 1812-January 28, 1875), clergyman, editor, prominent in the activities and controversies of the Disciples of Christ in Kentucky. A pronounced anti-slavery man and supporter of the Union, he was commissioned as surgeon in the IIth Kentucky Cavalry in September 1862, and also took upon himself the duties of chaplain.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp 623-624:

PINKERTON, LEWIS LETIG (January 28, 1812-January 28, 1875), clergyman, editor, prominent in the activities and controversies of the Disciples of Christ in Kentucky, was a native of Baltimore County, Maryland. His father, William, was of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and his mother, Elizabeth (Letig), of German. Five of their sons became preachers, and six of their grandsons. Soon after Lewis' birth the family moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and later to West Liberty, not far from Bethany, in what is now West Virginia. Here he encountered Campbellite influences, and in 1830, having already become dissatisfied with Presbyterianism, his father's faith, he ardently embraced the views of the Disciples. Such elementary schooling as necessary work on the farm had permitted him to secure was now completed at Pleasant Hill Seminary, West Middletown, Pennsylvania, and in 1831 he went to Trenton, Butler County, Ohio, and for four years studied medicine, supporting himself by teaching. On March 19, 1833, he married Sarah A. Bell. He began practice in 1834 and the following year settled in Carthage, Ohio. Although successful professionally, he felt impelled to preach, and his evangelical work finally led him in December 1839 to remove to Kentucky and abandon medicine for the ministry.

After short pastorates in New Union and Lexington, he accepted a call to the church at Midway, which he served from 1844 to 1860. Here in the church edifice he opened a school for girls, the Baconian Institute, and soon built for it a schoolroom and dormitory. He was also instrumental in having established the Kentucky Female Orphan School, chartered by the legislature in 1847. For a year, 1848, he published a monthly magazine, the Christian Mirror; he edited the Kentucky department of the Christian Age, 1853-54; and during the latter year conducted a temperance paper, The New Era. Under the urgency of John B. Bowman [q.v.], founder of Kentucky University, Harrodsburg, Pinkerton became professor of English in that institution in 1860. A pronounced anti-slavery man and supporter of the Union, he was commissioned as surgeon in the IIth Kentucky Cavalry in September 1862, and also took upon himself the duties of chaplain. His service was soon terminated by a sunstroke, from the effects of which he suffered for the rest of his life. When Kentucky University was transferred to Lexington in 1865, he removed to that place.

After the war his career was a troubled and somewhat unhappy one. His aggressive support of the Union was resented by many of his coreligionists. Pulpits were closed to him; in 1866 he thought it best to resign his professorship; For a brief period he was agent of the Freedman's Bureau in Fayette County, but from 1869 to 1873 he had no fixed charge, though he was offered the presidency of Hiram College in 1867;. The opposition to him was not due to his politics alone, but also to his liberal theological convictions. He opposed the legalistic view of religion common among the Disciples, laying emphasis on personal righteousness rather than on conformity to prescribed doctrines and rites; rejected the verbal inspiration of the Bible; sanctioned the admission of the unimmersed into the Church; and advocated the Presbyterian form of church government. He set forth his view in the short-lived Independent Monthly, begun in January1869, which he edited with John Shackleford, Jr., and in other periodicals. Branded as a heretic in his day, he is now recognized as perhaps the first to combat a formalism that threatened the vitality of the Churches of Christ and as one who was a liberalizing force in the history of the Disciples. No one ever questioned his piety, his sincerity, his courage, or his unselfishness.

Apparently through the influence of his friend James A. Garfield, he was appointed in 1873 special mail agent. While he was on a trip to investigate irregular mail service in the Kentucky mountains in October 1874, an illness began from which he never recovered. He published A Discourse Concerning Some of the Effects of the Late Civil War on Ecclesiastical Matters in Kentucky (1866), and a few of his writings are preserved in Life, Letters, and Addresses of Dr. L. L. Pinkerton (1876), by John Shackleford, Jr.

[In addition to the Life mentioned above, see J. T. Brown, Churches of Christ (1904); W. T. Moore, A Comprehensive History of the Disciples of Christ (1909); W. E . Garrison, Religion Follows the Frontier (1931); A. W. Fortune, The Disciples in Kentucky (copyright 1932); Harry Giovannoli, Kentucky Female Orphan School: A History (1932); Christian Standard, February 6, 13, 1875.]

H.E.S.


PINKNEY, William, 1764-1822, Maryland, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, anti-slavery activist. Attorney General of the United States.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 26; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 626-629; Dumond, 1961, p. 106; Locke, 1901, pp. 92, 120f, 166, 179, 181). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 626-629:

PINKNEY, WILLIAM (March 17, 1764-February 25, 1822), lawyer, statesman, diplomat, was born at Annapolis, Maryland, one of four children of Jonathan Pinkney, an English immigrant, and Ann Rind, his second wife. The latter, a native of Annapolis, was a sister of Margaret Rind, Jonathan's first wife, by whom he had one child. When the father's property was confiscated by reason of Loyalist sentiment in the Revolution, poverty necessitated the son's withdrawal from the King William School of Annapolis, at the age of thirteen. In overcoming the handicap of deficient education, Pinkney devoted a lifetime to intense study. According to tradition, he favored Maryland's cause in the war and would often elude the paternal vigilance to mount guard with the Continental soldiers. Sometime later, while he was receiving instruction in medicine from a Baltimore physician, a fortuitous occurrence changed the course of his life. Samuel Chase [q.v.] heard him debate in a society of medical students and, perceiving his aptitude for the law, offered the use of his library if he would undertake its study. Pinkney accepted; and in February 1783 entered Chase's office to master the obscurities of pleading and tenures from the black-letter learning of the day. He was called to the bar in 1786 and removed to Harford County to practise.

His first efforts attracted public attention and resulted in his election to the state convention that ratified the Federal Constitution, in April 1788, although Pinkney, under the influence of Chase, voted against its ratification; a circumstance worthy of note in view of his later preeminence as a constitutional lawyer. (See B. C. Steiner, "Maryland's Adoption of the Federal Constitution," American Historical Review, October 1899 and January 1900; but Reverend William Pinkney, post, p. 17, insinuates that he voted for it.) He was a member of the legislature continuously from October 1788 until his retirement in 1792, At the session in 1789 he delivered a florid speech advocating the abolition of slavery which, twenty years later, was published and distributed in Congress by the Quakers to challenge the consistency of his position on the Missouri question. On March 16, 1789, he was married at Havre de Grace to Ann Maria Rodgers, sister of Commodore John Rodgers [q.v.] of the United States Navy; ten children-one of them being Edward Coote Pinkney [q.v. J-were born of this union, all of whom survived him. A capricious element in his character was exhibited in connection with his election to the Second Congress in 1790, which was disputed because he did not re side in the di strict from which he was chose n. He stubbornly contested the point and then, when successful, refused to serve. He was appointed a member of the state executive council in 1792 and was chairman of the council board when he resigned in 1795.

Meanwhile his rise at the bar had been sensational and, in 1796, Washington selected him as joint commissioner with Christopher Gore [q. v.], under the seventh article of the Jay Treaty, to adjust American claims for maritime losses. Eight strenuous years in London followed, significant years in his development. Speeches heard in Parliament and in the courts were the models of his la ter efforts. Contact with men of culture revealed, to his discomfort, the dearth of his own. Accordingly, he was tutored in Latin and Greek, read widely in law and literature, declaimed in private, and began a diligent study of dictionaries and lexicons that was never thereafter relaxed. From the work of the commission he also found time successfully to terminate a chancery suit instituted more than a decade before by Samuel Chase, recovering for the State of Maryland a large quantity of stock in the Bank of England. His prestige was great when he returned to practice in Baltimore in 1804, and on December 1, 1805, he became attorney-general of Maryland. He relinquished this office, however, after six months' service.

Following Pinkney's return, British Admiralty courts began to justify the condemnation of American shipping by reviving the so-called "Rule of the War of 1756." In January 1806 a memorial attacking this "Rule" was drafted by Pinkney for the merchants of Baltimore and forwarded to Congress (Memorial of the Merchants of Baltimore, on the Violation of Our Neutral Rights, 1806). It induced Jefferson to appoint l him, in the following April, as Joint commissioner with James Monroe [q.v.], then minister resident in London, to treat with the British cabinet on the subjects of reparations and impressments. Wholly abandoning the three conditions that by their instructions were to form the foundation of the agreement, they signed a treaty remarkable for its failure even to bind the British government. Jefferson angrily repudiated it without consulting the Senate, yet when Monroe left England in October 1807, Pinkney was retained as minister. Immediately affairs became further complicated by the attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake and the issuance of the British Orders in Council. Throughout the next four years Pinkney sought fruitlessly to obtain reparation for the former and repeal of the latter. No more difficult, futile task has been assigned to an American diplomat. The presence of a strong Anglophile party at home embarrassed his negotiations, while the conciliatory manner he was forced to adopt diminished his effectiveness. His correspondence with Canning, the foreign secretary, was distinguished alike for restraint under irritation and strength of argument. In finesse, however, he was wanting. On one occasion he was cajoled into making a written offer to repeal the Embargo in return for repeal of the Orders and, because the offer violated instructions, was deeply mortified by its prompt rejection. At length his notes to Wellesley, Canning's successor, elicited only vague replies after long delays, and Pinkney broke relations, rather inamicably, February 28, 1811, convinced that matters would lead, as they did, to war. To admirers of Pinkney the lawyer, Pinkney the diplomat was disappointing. Moreover, there were numerous strictures in the press upon various phase s of his work. Henry Adams declares, however, that "America never sent an abler representative to the Court of London" (Adams, post, VI, 21).

On his return he was appointed attorney-general in Madison's cabinet, December II, 1811, and in this office assumed undisputed leadership of the American bar, a leadership he maintained until his death. Owing to the introduction of a bill in Congress, requiring the residence of the attorney-general at the seat of government, he resigned abruptly, February 10, 1814, before the bill was even reported out of committee. In pamphlets, under the pseudonym Publius, he vigorously supported the War of 1812, and a s a major of Maryland militia he commanded a battalion of riflemen in the battle of Bladensburg, August 24, 1814, being severely wounded in the arm. At the February term of the Supreme Court in 1815, he delivered a speech in the celebrated case of The Nereide (9 Cranch, 388), that was even extolled in the opinion (p. 430). He served in the Fourteenth Congress from March 4, 1815, until April 18, 1816, when he resigned to accept appointment as minister to Russia with a special mission to Naples en route. The object of the Naples mission was to obtain compensation from the existing government for shipping seized under the Murat regime. Through the strategy of the Marchese di Circello in avoiding an answer to Pinkney's note until after he had been forced to proceed on his way, the mission utterly failed and compensation was never secured. The prospect upon his arrival in Russia in January 1817 was not promising, for the controversy that followed the arrest of Kosloff, a Russian consul in America, had only recently been settled. Notwithstanding, he quickly accomplished one object of his mission by procuring the recall of every Russian diplomatic officer in the United States; and though he failed to negotiate the commercial treaty that was his primary object, he succeeded in establishing more friendly relations with Russia than had ever theretofore existed. His impatience to return to the bar had been daily increasing and, in declining appointment as minister to England, he wrote Monroe, "My desire is to be a mere lawyer" (Wheaton, Life, p. 160). In February 1818, he left Russia without awaiting his recall.

It was while serving in the United States Senate from December 21, 1819, until his· death that, as an interpreter of the Constitution, Pinkney performed his greatest work. In the Senate debates on the Missouri question, he became the champion of the slave-holding states and his speeches in opposition to Rufus King [q.v.] were an important factor in bringing about the Compromise. His most distinguished labors, however, were in the Supreme Court, where his arguments in McCulloch vs. Maryland (4 Wheaton, 316) and in Cohens vs. Virginia (6 Wheaton, 264) were his crowning achievements. Of the former, Justice Story wrote: "I never, in my whole life, heard a greater speech; it was worth a trip from Salem to hear it ... his eloquence was overwhelming" (Life and Letters, post, I, 325).

During these years his foppish dress, his affected, flamboyant manner of delivery, and his extravagant rhetoric made him a vivid, picturesque figure. Women crowded to hear him and Pinkney, excessively vain, sought their approval as much as the Court's. He literally lived for applause. Though he desired to excel in everything, his ruling ambition was to excel at the bar, and to sustain his reputation there he toiled incessantly, feverishly; yet, oddly enough, sought to create the impression that his knowledge resulted from hasty incursions and that his precise citations of cases, made in an offhand manner, were but chance recollections. Toward those who challenged his supremacy his conduct was insolent and ungenerous. Much criticism resulted from insults offered in court to Thomas Addis Emmet (1764-1827) and William Wirt [qq.v.]; and a duel with the latter was narrowly averted. For frequent discourtesies to Daniel Webster, the latter boasted of having extorted an apology under threat of a beating (Harvey, post, pp. 121-23). Conspicuous in Pinkney's physical appearance were his square shoulders, erect carriage, and intense blue eyes, but most conspicuous were the deep furrows in his face and the heavy circles under his eyes, and to conceal them he used cosmetics. He wore corsets to diminish his bulk. Despite apparent robust health, he was a hypochondriac. In society he was haughty and reserved. He had little sense of humor. Though he spent sixteen years in Europe, he was of counsel in seventy-two Supreme Court cases and acquired what has been described as the most extensive and lucrative practice of his time. That he was the most talented, versatile advocate of his time there can be little doubt. Volumes of contemporary eulogy attest his superiority. Chief Justice Marshall proclaimed him "the greatest man I ever saw in a Court of justice" (Tyler, post, p. 141). Chief Justice Taney wrote thirty years after his death: "I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United States, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none equal to Pinkney" (Ibid., p. 71). He never wrote his speeches, however, and no product of his pen' that remains would seem a worthy index of his living fame. But fame in life he considered more desirable and strove to preserve -it with increasing anxiety until, exhausted by overwork, he died at Washington and was buried there in the Congressional Cemetery.

[The two biographies are: Henry Wheaton, Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Speeches of William Pinkney (1826) and Reverend William Pinkney, The Life of William Pinkney (1853). Both are inadequate and panegyric; the latter must be read with care. Another sketch by Wheaton appears in Jared Sparks, The Library of American Biography, volume VI (1836). For good_ sketches see H. H. Hagan, Eight Great American Lawyers (1923) and A. S. Niles in volume II (1907) of Great American Lawyers, ed. by W. D. Lewis. The following periodicals are important: Law Reporter, September 1846; Albany Law Journal, August 20, 1870, March 18, 1876, August 2, 1879; New Jersey State Bar Assn. Year Book, 1906-07; U.S. Law Intelligencer, August 1830; American Lawyer, July 1905; North American Review, January 1827. For amusing anecdote see Forum (London), January 1874. On diplomatic career see: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, volumes Ill, IV (1832-34); J.C. Hildt, "Early Diplomatic Negotiations of the U. S. with Russia," in Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Sci., volume XXIV (1906); Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (4 volumes, 1865); Henry Adams, History of the U. S. (9 volumes, 1889-93); Madison and Monroe Papers (MSS. Div., Library of Congress). For contemporaneous estimates see Wm. Sullivan, Familiar Letters on Public Characters (1834); W. P. Kennedy, Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt (2 volumes, 1849); Life and Letters of Joseph Story (2 volumes, 1851) and The Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story (1852), both ed. by W. W. Story; Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney (1876); Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor (2 volumes, 1876), ed. by A. E. Ticknor and A. E. Hilliard; Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (1877); A. J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, volume IV (1919); Daily· National Intelligencer (Washington), February 26, 1822. The source for date of marriage is "Maryland Marriages, 1777-1804" (typescript in Maryland Historical Society); genealogical material has been taken from records in the possession of Mrs. L. Roberts Carton, Towson, Maryland]

J.J.D.


PITKIN, TIMOTHY (January 21, 1766-December 18, 1847), statesman, historian, economist. He was the author of a plan for the progressive emancipation of the slaves in the border states by the use of funds obtained through the sale of public lands.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 639:

PITKIN, TIMOTHY (January 21, 1766-December 18, 1847), statesman, historian, economist, was born in Farmington, Connecticut, the sixth child of the Reverend Timothy Pitkin (Yale, 1747), pastor of the church at Farmington. He came of distinguished ancestry, being descended from William Pitkin, 1635-1694 [q.v.], the founder of the family in America, who settled in Hartford in 1659, and a grandson of William Pitkin, 1694-1769 [q.v.], colonial governor of Connecticut. His mother, Temperance Clap, was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Clap [q.v.], rector of Yale College. Timothy Pitkin was prepared for college by his father and brother-in-law. Upon graduation in 1785 he had the honor of delivering the Latin salutatory address. After teaching Latin and Greek for a year at Plainfield Academy, he studied law at Windsor with Oliver Ellsworth [q.v.]. From him Pitkin received a strong leaning toward political life. Admitted to the bar in 1788, he began his political career two years later in the lower house of the Connecticut General Assembly. There he served until his election to Congress in 1805. As congressman, he devoted himself industriously to the study of economic conditions in the new nation. He collected public documents and state papers and continually made memoranda from confidential communications from the executive. He was a loyal member of a Federalist group led by Josiah Quincy, his lifelong friend, and to the cause, by supplying much of the statistical material used in Quincy's speeches against the Embargo and Non-Intercourse acts. In 1818 Pitkin served as a delegate to the convention which revised the Connecticut constitution. The defeat of the Federalists brought his service in Congress to an end in 1819. He was at once elected to the Connecticut legislature, retaining his seat until 1830, when he retired from politics. Soon afterward he gave up his legal work and devoted his remaining years to writing on historical and economic subjects.

In 1816 Pitkin had published A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America, a work of unusual importance. A second edition had appeared in 1817. This book he now revised and enlarged. In the third edition (1835), he brought together a large amount of valuable data on the foreign trade of the country and on taxation, manufactures, and internal improvements. His industry in collecting his material and his careful habits of writing made this book the outstanding work of its kind. It still remains a valuable reference work on American economic history. In 1828 he published in two volumes A Political and Civil History of the United States, which covered the period 1763- 97. Compiled from original sources, the work was marked by "accuracy, judicial temper, excellent judgment, and exhaustive rese arch." Although the style is somewhat uninteresting, and although it is now largely superseded by later histories using material inaccessible to Pitkin, his work is still useful. A continuation of the history he left uncompleted at his death. His interests were wide. He was the author of a plan for the progressive emancipation of the slaves in the border states by the use of funds obtained through the sale of public lands. In college he was interested in astronomy and succeeded in calculating and accurately predicting the famous annular eclipse of the sun in 1790. In recognition of his contributions to statistics, he was awarded in 1837 a medal by the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle. He died in New Haven. A devout churchman with pronounced religious convictions, for several years before his death he devoted much time to the study of theology. He married, June 6, 1801, Elizabeth Hubbard of New Haven, by whom he had six children.

[T. C. Pitkin, "Hon. Timothy Pitkin, LLD.," Memorial Biographies . . . . New-England Historical Genealogical Society, volume I (1880); F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume IV (1907); A. P. Pitkin, Pitkin Family of America (1887); Columbian Register (New Haven), December 25, 1847.]

P. W. B.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.