Tab-Tha: Tabor through Thayer

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


TABOR, Horace Austin Warner, (November 26, 1830-April 10, 1899), bonanza king. In 1855 he joined a company of Free-Soil emigrants to Kansas and in 1856 and 1857 was a member of the Topeka legislature.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2 pp. 263-264.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

TABOR, Horace Austin Warner, senator, born in Holland, Orleans County, Vermont, 30 November, 1830. He received a common-school education, and learned the trade of a stone-cutter in Massachusetts. but in 1855 he moved to Kansas and engaged in farming, and was an active member of the Free-Soil party. In 1856 he was a member of the Topeka legislature that was dispersed at the point of the bayonet by order of President Pierce. In 1859 he moved to Colorado, and the following spring he settled in California Gulch (now Leadville). There he worked in the mines until 1865, when he engaged in business, and combined both occupations I till May, 1878. During the latter month August Rische and George F. Hook, to whom he had advanced money, discovered what was afterward known as the "Little Pittsburg" mine. By the terms of his agreement. Mr. Tabor was entitled to a one-third interest, which he sold the following year for $ 1,000,000. This capital he invested in mines, banking stock, and other remunerative property, which greatly increased his wealth. In October, 1878, he was elected the first lieutenant-governor of Colorado, and he held the office until January, 1884. He was chosen U. S. Senator to fill the unexpired term of Henry M. Teller, resigned, and served from 2 February till 4 March. Besides the investments mentioned above, Senator Tabor has purchased 175,000 acres of copper lands in Texas, and 4,600,000 acres of grazing lands in southern Colorado, and is interested in irrigating canals and other enterprises that give employment to a large number of laborers. He has also obtained from the republic of Honduras a grant of every alternate section of land for 400 miles bordering on the Patook River. On this tract are immense groves of mahogany, ebony, and similar valuable woods, orchards of bananas and other tropical fruits, together with deposits of gold, silver, and coal. In addition to the section-grant, he has secured a mineral grant of 150 square miles in the interior. Altogether Mr. Tabor is probably one of the largest owners of land in the world. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2 pp. 263-264:

TABOR, HORACE AUSTIN WARNER (November 26, 1830-April 10, 1899), bonanza king, was born at Holland, Vermont, the son of Cornelius Dunham and Sarah (Farrin) Tabor. His early years were spent on the farm and at the village school. He was a stonecutter for eight years. In 1855 he joined a company of Free-Soil emigrants to Kansas and in 1856 and 1857 was a member of the Topeka legislature, returning to Vermont to marry on January 31, 1857, Augusta Pierce, daughter of his former employer.

Unsuccessful as a farmer in Kansas, in 1859 he took wife and baby and joined the Pike's Peak gold rush. His first season of prospecting was barren of results, and his wife took in boarders to pay expenses through the winter. The next spring Tabor went to the headwaters of the Arkansas, where rich platers  were found. Here he prospered, first as a miner, then as a merchant, until the diggings played out and his business dwindled. Soon, however, the black sand that had cluttered the sluice boxes was found to contain silver, and a new rush to the district set in. Tabor, continuing with his store, grubstaked needy prospectors, among them August Rische and George F. Hook, who in May 1878 discovered the body of silver ore which became the famous Little Pittsburgh Mine. On account of the grubstake, one third of the find came to Tabor. He bought up near-by prospects and they turned into rich mines. In that same year he became the first mayor of Leadville.

The silver stream that poured into his lap he spent with lavish hand. In the saloon he was prodigal; at gambling his stakes were high; no beggar went from him empty-handed. An opera house and gifts for civic and fraternal purposes were bestowed on Leadville. His bounty extended to Denver and was reflected in the Tabor Block and the magnificent Tabor Grand Opera House. His investments were important in transforming Denver from a town into a city and in determining the direction of its growth. His popularity made him lieutenant-governor of Colorado in 1879-83, and his money procured him a seat in the United States senate (January 27-March 3, 1883), to complete an unexpired term. The conservative wife who had endured his poverty was put aside for a dashing young divorcee, Elizabeth (McCourt) Doe, to whom he was married secretly September 30, 1882, and remarried publicly March I, 1883, with President Arthur as a guest of honor.

By now, however, as the money he put into banks, real estate, and business buildings showed good returns, Tabor had turned to less conservative buying. Promoters were able to sell him worthless mines in Mexico and South America, timber lands in Central America, -and railroads built on paper. Then the production of his mines decreased and the price of silver declined; to bolster weak holdings he mortgaged sound ones; and the crash of 1893 and the repeal of the Sherman Act left him bankrupt. Heroically but vainly he tried to recoup his losses. He was old and broken in 1898 when friends secured him appointment as postmaster of Denver, and the following year he died. One son of his first marriage and, two daughters of his second survived him. His first wife had died in 1895; the second returned to Leadville and spent her last years in destitution in a shack beside the Matchless Mine; here on March 7, 1935, she was found frozen to death:

[Interviews with Tabor and Mrs. Tabor (I 884) and with their son Maxcy (1922), and the Dawson Scrapbooks, in the possession of the State Historical Society of Colorado; History of the City of Denver (1880); L.A. Kent, Leadville (1880); Portrait and Biographical Record of the State of Colo. (1899); W. N. Byers, Encyclopedia of Biographical of Colo. (1901); J. C. Smiley, Semi-Centennial History of the State of Colo. (1913), volume II, and History of Denver (1901); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); David Karsner, Silver Dollar, the Story of the Tabors (1932), containing much fictionized detail; H. D. Teetor, in Magazine of Western History, January 1889, pp. 268-73; G. F. Willison, Here They Dug the Gold (1931); L. C. Gandy, The Tabors: 4 Footnote of Western History (1914); Rocky Mountain News (Denver). Denver Republican, New York Times, and Washington Post, April 11, 1899; New York Times, March 8, 1935.]

L.R.H.  


TALLMADGE, James, Jr., 1778-1853, lawyer, soldier.  U.S. Congressman, New York.  Introduced legislation in House of Representatives to prohibit slavery in new state of Missouri in 1819.  Challenged Illinois right to statehood with state constitution permitting existence of slavery in the new state. 

(Basker, 2005, pp. 318-321, 327, 349; Dumond, 1961, pp. 101-103, 106; Hammond, 2011, pp. 138, 150-151, 272; Mason, 2006, pp. 155, 177, 181, 184, 185, 191, 209; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 35, 129, 386, 471-472; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 26; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 285; Tallmadge Amendment, pp. 177-212; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 281)

Tallmadge declared: “The interest, honor, and faith of the nation required it scrupulously to guard against slavery’s passing into a territory where they [Congress] have power to prevent its entrance.” (16 Con., 1 Session, 1819-1820, II, p. 1201)

Tallmadge further said: “If the western country cannot be settled without slaves, gladly would I prevent its settlement till time shall be no more.”


TAPPAN, Arthur, 1786-1865, New York City, merchant, radical abolitionist leader, educator.  Co-founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833.  Manager, 1833-1837, and Member of the Executive Committee, 1833-1840 of the AASS. President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Member of the Executive Committee, 1840-1855. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 286; Filler, 1960, pp. 26, 40, 55, 58, 60-61, 63-64, 68, 84, 132, 262; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 8, 9, 14-18, 21, 38-41, 44, 48, 51, 55, 71, 107, 129, 134, 151, 152, 153, 200, 234, 235, 242, 285, 293, 340; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 106, 161, 162, 163, 166, 320, 362; Sorin, 1971, pp. 73, 75, 102, 114; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 33; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 298-300; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 311; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 320-321; Tappan, Lewis. Life of Arthur Tappan. New York, Hurd and Houghton: 1870). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 298-300:

TAPPAN, ARTHUR (May 22, 1786-July 23, 1865), philanthropist, abolitionist, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, the eighth of eleven children of Benjamin and Sarah (Homes) Tappan. Benjamin and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.] were his brothers. Reared in a serious, pious household, he attended the town school until the age of fifteen, when he was given a clerkship with Sewall & Salisbury, hardware and dry-goods dealers in Boston. Here for a time he sat under the preaching of William Ellery Channing. He entered business for himself as a dry-goods importer at the age of twenty-one, establishing the firm of Tappan & Sewall in Portland, Maine, with a nephew of one of his former employers. Some two years later he moved his business to Montreal, where he married Frances Antill, September 18, 1810. To them were born two sons, one of whom died in infancy, and six daughters.

Returning to the United States after the outbreak of the War of 1812, Tappan struggled against difficulties for several years before, in 1826, he started his most successful enterprise a silk jobbing firm in New York in which he was joined two years later by his brother Lewis. Although he met with various reverses, he came to be esteemed a wealthy man. He attributed his success to the fact that he charged a fixed uniform price for articles, a practice not then customary. "I had but one price," he said, "and sold for cash or short credit" (L. Tappan, Life, post, p. 70). Heavily overstocked in a period of falling prices, the firm of Arthur Tappan & Company was forced to close its doors during the panic of 1837, but in eighteen months its creditors had all been paid.

As soon as he began to accumulate wealth Tappan began "to reflect seriously upon his obligations as a STEWARD of the Lord" (Life, p. 62). He gave generously of his substance and of his time, strength, and executive ability, to a multitude of religious and humanitarian causes. He was a supporter of the American Sunday School Union, the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the American Education Society, and the American Home Missionary Society, and held office in most of these organizations. He was concerned in the movement for stricter Sabbath observance, the temperance crusade, and the fight against tobacco. In 1827 he founded the New York Journal of Commerce to provide the city with a daily newspaper free from "immoral advertisements" and regardful of the Sabbath, but it did not prove the moral force he had desired, and after a year he turned it over to his brother Lewis. He supported the effort made to suppress licentiousness and vice in New York and in 1831 was president of the New York Magdalen Society, which sponsored a sensational report exposing conditions in that city. Though for some years a member successively of the Presbyterian congregations of John Mitchell Mason and Samuel Hanson Cox [qq.v.], he was an active promoter of the free church movement in New York, and with his brother was instrumental in leasing the Chatham Street Theatre and subsequently building the Broadway Tabernacle for Charles Grandison Finney [q.v.]. He gave a scholarship to Andover Theological Seminary and paid the tuition of a large number of divinity students at Yale. He contributed toward the establishment of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, of Auburn Theological Seminary, of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati; and in 1835, after the withdrawal of most of the Lane students because of restrictions upon the discussion of slavery, gave $10,000 and made a private pledge of his entire income in order to secure the establishment of Oberlin College.

Moved by concern for the welfare of the negroes, he joined the American Colonization Society, but becoming convinced that its policy was wrong withdrew and united with those who were agitating for the abolition of slavery. He first became associated with William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] in 1830 by paying a fine to free Garrison from prison in Baltimore, and subsequently helped support the publication of the Liberator. About 1831 he promoted an unsuccessful project to establish a college for negroes in New Haven. In March 1833 he took an active part in launching the Emanciptor in New York; in October of the same year he helped form the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and in December, the American Anti-Slavery Society, being chosen the first president of each. In 1835 he volunteered assistance to Prudence Crandall [q.v.], arrested for opening a school for negro girls at Canterbury, Connecticut, and in this connection financed the establishment in Windham County of the anti-slavery Unionist, under the editorship of C. C. Burleigh [q.v.].

In 1840, believing that Garrison would weaken the cause of abolition by his action in associating with it other movements, such as that for women's rights, Tappan with others withdrew from the American Anti-Slavery Society, formed a new organization-the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was elected president-and founded a new journal, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter. Convinced that slavery could be destroyed under the Constitution by political action, he supported the Liberty Party and its presidential candidate, James G. Birney [q.v.], and was instrumental in establishing in Washington the anti-slavery weekly, the National Era. Meanwhile, in 1846, distressed by the refusal of several of the missionary organizations he had aided to espouse the cause of abolition, he took part in founding the American Missionary Association, and remained a member of its executive committee until his death. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 he declared his determination "in the fear of God" to disobey it, and continued to give all the aid within his power to escaping fugitives.

Tappan was never of strong constitution and throughout his mature years suffered from constant headache. He had no humor and was stern and severe, with himself as well as others. As a champion of unpopular movements, through most of his career he was subjected to violent criticism; his business was endangered; and he himself was threatened with kidnapping, assault, and assassination. Abuse and threats, however, for the most part he heard calmly and ignored. He had a certain rigidity in maintaining his principles, owing partly to his natural austerity of thought and partly to the position of eminence he attained as the financial backer of many reform movements Though his money gifts were somewhat curtailed-to his great distress-by his failure about 1842 through ill-advised speculation in real estate, he kept up his active interest in reform until his death. In 1849 he purchased an interest in "The Mercantile Agency" established by his brother, but retired from all business -some five or six years later and took up his residence in New Haven, where he died.

[D. L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); Lewis Tappan, The Life of Arthur Tappan (1870); C. W. Bowen, Arthur and Lewis Tappan (1883); J. A. Scoville ("Walter Barrett"), The Old Merchants of New York City, volume I (1863); G. H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery impulse (1933); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Annie H. Abel and F. J. Klingberg, A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations …Correspondence of Lewis Tappan (1927); D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (copyright 1898); Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the U.S. in 1841 (1842); New York Herald, July 25, 1865.]

F.J.K.


TAPPAN, Benjamin, (May 25, 1773-April 20, 1857), U.S. senator from Ohio, jurist, anti-slavery leader.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2. 300-301; Tappan MSS. are in the Library of Congress. Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). See also F. P. Weisenburger, "Ohio Politics during the Jacksonian Period" (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); E. A. Holt, "Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850,"

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2. 300-301:

TAPPAN, BENJAMIN (May 25, 1773-April 20, 1857), senator, jurist, anti-slavery leader, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, eldest of the seven sons of Benjamin and Sarah (Homes) Tappan. Among the other children of the family were the eldest sister, Sarah, who became the mother of David Tappan Stoddard [q.v.] and the much younger brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.]. Their father, a goldsmith, later a dry-goods merchant, was descended from Abraham Toppan, who came from Yarmouth, England, to settle in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1637; their mother, of Irish Presbyterian stock through the paternal line, was also a grandniece of Benjamin Franklin. A public-school education for the younger Benjamin was followed by an apprenticeship to a copperplate printer and engraver, a voyage to the West Indies, brief study of portrait painting under the famous Gilbert Stuart, and then a thorough legal education under Gideon Granger [q. v.].

Admitted to the bar at Hartford, Connecticut, in his twenties, he became a first settler (1799) of what is now Portage County, Ohio. On March 20, 1801, he was married in Wethersfield, Connecticut, to Nancy Wright (d. 1822), sister of John Crafts Wright, later a congressman from Ohio. Accompanied by his bride he returned to Ravenna, Ohio, where he became an aggressive force in local politics. Having served as a member of the state Senate, 1803-05, he moved in 1809 to Steubenville, where he continued the practice of law. He served as an aide to Major-General Elijah Wadsworth during the War of 1812 and as president judge of the 5th circuit of the court of common pleas, 1816-23. His decisions for 1816-19, published as Cases Decided in the Courts of Common Pleas, in the Fifth Circuit of .... Ohio (1818-19), referred to as Tappan's Reports, were the first law reports in the state. Failing to be reelected (Tappan to E. A. Brown, Steubenville, January 29, 1823; MS. in Ohio State Library), he returned to private practice. He then served as an Ohio canal commissioner.

An ardent Jacksonian, he was a presidential elector in 1832, and served as a federal district judge until his appointment, together with those of other Democrats, was rejected by the Senate in May 1834. In 1838, Thomas Morris [q.v.] having assumed a position as "the first abolition senator" (Smith, post, p. 24) that made him unacceptable to the Ohio Democracy, Tappan was chosen as his successor. The latter had long been known as an opponent of slavery "in all shapes except that of abolitionism" (Cincinnati Gazette, December 27, 1838); hence his selection satisfied the anti-slavery Democrats. His law office was then intrusted to his partner, Edwin M. Stanton [q.v.].

In the Senate, Tappan refused to present abolition petitions from his constituents, asserting that Ohioans should not attempt to interfere with local institutions elsewhere and chiding women petitioners for leaving the home "to mix with the strife of ambition or the cares of Government" (Ohio Statesman, February 10, 1840). He was an anti-bank Democrat and "as uncompromising upon hard money as the Rock of Gibraltar" (Matthias Martin to William Allen, quoted by Holt, post, p. 576). His agency in the publication in the New York Evening Post (April 27, 1844) of Calhoun's proposed treaty for the annexation of Texas, which was being secretly considered, led to a severe censure by the Senate (Senate Journal, 28 Congress, l Session, pp. 439ff.). Like his colleague Allen, in 1845 he refused to follow the instructions of the Whig legislature in opposition to Texas annexation. Remaining an anti-slavery man, on July 12, 1849, he presided at a Northwest Ordinance (Free Soil) political celebration at Cleveland, and in 1856 he cast his last presidential vote for Fremont.

A lawyer of eminent talents and consistently a man of democratic principles, "of an intractable disposition" (American Union, April 22, 1857), and with a gift of sarcasm which he used on friend and foe, he held firmly to his independent convictions. His views on slavery and corporate privileges were deemed radical by many of his contemporaries and he was referred to as "the hoary-headed skeptic" (McLean MSS., Library of Congress) because of his blunt professions of religious heterodoxy. Exemplary in private life and scholarly in tastes, he devoted his last years to an interest in mineralogy and conchology. At his death in Steubenville he was survived by two sons, Benjamin and Eli Todd Tappan [q.v.], the latter born to his second wife, Betsy (Lord) Frazer (d. 1840), whom he had married in 1823.

[MSS., including an autobiography to 1823, are owned by J. K. Wright of New York; other Tappan MSS. are in the Library of Congress. Sketches are found in D L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); U. S. Magazine and Democratic Review, June-July 1840; J. B. Doyle, 20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio (1910); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). See also F. P. Weisenburger, "Ohio Politics during the Jacksonian Period" (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); E. A. Holt, "Party Politics m Ohio, 1840-1850," Ohio Arch. and Historical Society quarterly, July 1928, January-April 1929. The best obituary is in the Evening Post (New York), April 24, 1857. The Tappan family Bible, owned by Mr. Wright, and the American Union (Steubenville), April 22, 1857, give April 20, 1857, as the date of Tappan's death.]

F.P.W.  


TAPPAN, Charles, Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1839-


TAPPAN, Juliana, abolitionist

(Yellin, 1994, pp. 26-27, 40n, 41-43)


TAPPAN, Lewis Northey, 1788-1873, New York, NY, merchant, radical abolitionist leader.  Lewis Tappan and his brother, Arthur, were among the most important activists in the cause of abolition in America.  With his brother, Arthur, in 1828, Lewis began publishing anti-slavery newspaper, The Emancipator, paying for the editor and expenses for printing.  Lewis Tappan’s house was destroyed by a pro-slavery mob in July 1834.  He was a member of the Free-Soil Party from its beginning.  Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1855, Treasurer, 1840-1842, Secretary, 1842-1844, Corresponding Secretary, 1845-1846, 1848-1855.  Leader of the Philadelphia Free Produce Association.  Wrote Life.  Both Lewis and Arthur Tappan were despised by slaveholders in the South.

(Blue, 2005; Burin, 2005, p. 89; Dumond, 1961, pp. 159, 218, 287; Filler, 1960, pp. 26, 31, 50, 55, 61, 63, 68, 72, 94, 102, 130, 136, 138, 144, 150, 152, 158, 164, 165, 168, 174, 177, 189, 194, 210, 247, 262; Harrold, 1995; Mabee, 1970, pp. 8, 9, 13-19, 21, 24, 26, 38, 42-49, 51, 55, 58, 91, 93, 104, 105, 130, 190, 151-156, 190, 202, 219-221, 226-229, 233, 234, 251-253, 257, 334, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345; Mitchell, 2007; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 106, 161, 162, 163, 166, 174, 290, 362; Sorin, 1971, pp. 70, 93, 96, 102, 113, 114, 131; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 32-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 303; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 311; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 321; Tappan, Lewis. Life of Arthur Tappan. New York, Hurd and Houghton: 1870; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 673-675; Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery, 1969; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 76, 128-129, 219, 228, 230; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

TAPPAN, Lewis, merchant, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 23 May, 1788; died in Brooklyn, New York, 21 June, 1873, received a good education, and at the age of sixteen became clerk in a dry-goods house in Boston. His employers subsequently aided him in establishing himself in business, and he became interested m calico-print works and in the manufacture of cotton. In 1827 he moved to New York and became a member of the firm of Arthur Tappan and County, and his subsequent career was closely identified with that of his brother Arthur. With the latter he established in 1828 the “Journal of Commerce,” of which he became sole owner in 1829. In 1833 he entered with vigor into the anti-slavery movement, in consequence of which his house was sacked and his furniture was destroyed by a mob in July, 1834, and at other times he and his brother suffered personal violence. He was also involved in the crisis of 1837, and afterward withdrew from the firm and established the first mercantile agency in the country, which he conducted with success. He was chief founder of the American missionary association, of which he was treasurer and afterward president, and was an early member of Plymouth church, Brooklyn. He published the life of his brother mentioned above, but afterward joined in the Free-Soil movement at its inception. He was widely known for his drollery and wit and for his anti-slavery sentiments. Judge Tappan published “Cases decided in the Court of Common Pleas,” with an appendix (Steubenville, 1831). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 32-34.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 303:

TAPPAN, LEWIS (May 23, 1788-June 21, 1873), merchant, abolitionist, brother of Benjamin and Arthur Tappan [qq.v.], was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, and grew up in the devout household presided over by his father, Benjamin, and his mother, Sarah (Homes) Tappan. He was educated in the town school and at the age of sixteen became an apprenticed clerk to a drygoods importing firm in Boston. Here he sat for a time under the preaching of William Ellery Channing, and in 1825, to the distress of his Calvinistic family, served as treasurer of the American Unitarian Association. Soon, however, he returned to Orthodox views, and by 1828 was writing pamphlets upholding Evangelical convictions against Unitarianism. The family Calvinism also appears in his Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Tappan (1834). Meanwhile, assisted by his employers, he had endeavored to set up a business of his own, but in 1828 he entered into partnership with his brother Arthur as a silk jobber in New York. In the same year he took over from Arthur the New York Journal of Commerce, but in 1831 sold it to David Hale and Gerard Hallock [qq.v.]. As credit manager of Arthur Tappan & Company he was an important factor in the prosperity of the firm in the years preceding the panic of 1837. Shortly thereafter he withdrew from the partnership, and in 1841, under the firm name of Lewis Tappan & Company, established "The Mercantile Agency," the first commercial-credit rating agency in the country. He conducted this enterprise with great success until 1849, when he retired to devote himself to the humanitarian labors which had become his chief concern. In deliberately planning to draw upon his accumulated capital for his support for the rest of his life he was acting upon theories regarding the use of wealth which he later set forth in a pamphlet entitled Is It Right to Be Rich ? (1869).

Like his brother Arthur, Lewis Tappan from the time of his first business success was a supporter of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the American Bible Society. He was a promoter of the free church movement in New York, and with Arthur was instrumental in leasing the Chatham Street Theatre and building the Broadway Tabernacle for the revivalist Charles Grandison Finney [q.v.], and subsequently in sending Finney as professor of theology to Oberlin College. He was one of the founders of the New York Anti-slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and by his activities in behalf of abolition drew upon himself hate and obloquy; in July 1834 his house was wrecked by a mob, and his furniture burned. In 1839-41 he was the outstanding member of the committee which undertook to secure the freedom of the Amistad captives, successfully defended before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams [q.v.]. Although at first both Tappans worked with William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.], Lewis, like Arthur, repudiated Garrison when the latter proposed to attach other reforms to the cause of abolition, and with the resulting schism in the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, he took a leading part in forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was the first treasurer. He was especially conscious of the international aspect of the American struggle and for this reason maintained a wide and frequent correspondence with sympathetic interests in England, especially with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. At the suggestion of John Quincy Adams, he attended the international anti-slavery convention in London in 1843 (Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume XI, 1876, pp. 380, 405). Realizing that the attitude of Great Britain could have an almost decisive bearing on the outcome of the struggle in the United States, he discussed with his English friends such matters as the annexation of Texas, the position of the negro in the United. States, Canada, and Liberia, the coastwise slave trade, and the attitude of the churches. Believing that slavery could be abolished within the Union, he worked to win the cooperation of churches and missionary societies. When the older foundations which he had supported, notably the American Board, declined to enlist in the fight for abolition, he helped to found and became treasurer of the American Missionary Association (1846), explicitly committee! to the cause of the negro. After the passage of-the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, he became a supporter of the work of Alexander M. Ross, who traveled through the South helping slaves to escape by the Underground Railroad (W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 1898, p. 180; A. M. Ross, Recollections of an Abolitionist, 1867).

As the struggle in America reached its crisis, Tappan gradually adopted the view that slavery was illegal everywhere and could be abolished by the federal government in all the slave states under the terms of the Constitution. He thus came to favor a more radical method of action than that sponsored by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1855 resigned as corresponding secretary of that body to accept office in a new organization known as the Abolition Society. By now, however, age was beginning to limit his  activity. As the need for anti-slavery agitation lessened, he gave more attention to the constructive work for negroes being undertaken by the American Missionary Association. In 1870 he published The Life of Arthur Tappan, and suffered a paralytic stroke just as the book went to press. Three years later he died, as. the result of another stroke, at the age of eighty-five. He was married twice: first, September 7, 1813, to Susanna Aspinwall, by whom he had six children, and second, in 1854, to Mrs. Sarah J. Davis. The youngest of his five daughters married Henry Chandler Bowen [q.v.]. From 1856 Tappan was a member of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and his funeral sermon was preached by his pastor, Henry Ward Beecher.

[D. L. Tappan, Tappan-Toppan Genealogy (1915); C. W. Bowen, Arthur and Lewis Tappan (1883); J. A. Scoville ("Walter Barrett"), The Old Merchants of New York, volume I (1863); E. N. Vose, Seventy-five Years of The Mercantile Agency, R. G. Dun & Co., 1841-1916 (1916); G. H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse (1933); G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (2 volumes, 1934); A. H. Abel and F. J. Klingberg, A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839-1858, Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1927); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the U. S. in 1841 (1842); American Missionary, August 1873; Harper's Weekly, July 12, 1873; New York Times, June 23, 1873.]

F.J.K.


TAPPAN, Mason Weare, 1817-1886, lawyer, soldier.  U.S. Congressman, Free Soil Party, 1855-1861. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 33-34; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography

TAPPAN, Mason Weare, lawyer, born in Newport, New Hampshire, 20 October, 1817; died in Bradford, New Hampshire, 24 October, 1886. His father, a well-known lawyer, settled in Bradford in 1818, and was a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement. The son was educated at Kimball Union Academy, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1841, and acquired a large practice. He was early identified with the Whig party, and afterward was a Free-Soiler and served in the legislature in 1853-'5. He was elected to Congress as a Free-Soiler, by a combination of the Whigs, Free-Soilers, Independent Democrats, and Americans, at the time of the breaking up of the two great parties, Whigs and Democrats. He served from 3 December, 1855, till 3 March, 1861, and was a member of the special committee of thirty-three on the rebellious states. On 5 February, 1861, when a report was submitted recommending that the provisions of the constitution should be obeyed rather than amended, he made a patriotic speech in support of the government. Mr. Tappan was one of the earliest to enlist in the volunteer army, and was colonel of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment from May till August, 1861. Afterward he resumed the practice of law, and held the office of attorney-general of the state for ten years preceding his death. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia Loyalists' convention of 1866, and presided over the New Hampshire Republican convention on 14 September, 1886. In the presidential election of 1872 he supported his life-long friend, Horace Greeley. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 33-34.


TAPPAN, Samuel Foster, 1831-1913, Manchester, Massachusetts, journalist, Union Army officer, abolitionist, Native American rights activist.  Co-founded Lawrence, Kansas, as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Company.  Active in the Free-Soil movement to keep slavery out of the territory of Kansas.  Served as a correspondent for the New York Tribune, reporting on the anti-slavery activities there.  Related to the abolitionist Tappan family.


TAPPING, Lewis, Iowa Territory, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40


TAYLOR, John W., 1784-1854.  Nine term Democratic U.S. Congressman from New York, 1813-1833.  Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Proposed legislation in 1819 to prohibit slavery in Arkansas Territory.  Later organized the Whig and National Republican Parties. 

(Basker, 2005, pp. 318, 319, 321, 324, 327, 349; Dumond, 1961, p. 104; Mabee, 1970, pp. 86, 191, 193, 199, 202, 204; Mason, 2006, pp. 146, 148, 181, 186; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 35, 36, 298;  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 46; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 335)

Taylor said during debate: “Our votes this day will determine whether the high destinies of this region, of these generations, shall be fulfilled, or whether we shall defeat them by permitting slavery, with all its baleful consequences, to inherit the wind.” (15 Congress, 2 Session, 1818-1819, p. 1170)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 335-336:

TAYLOR, JOHN W. (March 26, 1784-September 18, 1854), anti-slavery leader, was born at Charlton, New York, the son of Judge John Taylor and Chloe (Cox) Taylor, and a descendant of Edward Taylor who settled in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in 1692. After graduating from Union College, Schenectady, he began the study of law with Samuel Cook. Admitted to the bar in 1807, he formed a partnership with Cook and began to practise at Ballston Spa. On July 10, 1806, he married Jane Hodge, who died in 1838, having borne him three daughters and five sons. After two years in the New York Assembly (18u-12), he represented Saratoga County for twenty consecutive years in the federal House of Representatives (March 4, 1813-March 3, 1833). He favored a national bank and a protective tariff, although he regarded federal appropriations for roads and canals as unconstitutional. During the presidency of the second Adams he was a leader of administration policies and later a member of the Whig party.

The slavery question brought him into national prominence. He seconded the amendment of James Tallmadge [q.v.] to the Missouri bill, prohibiting the further introduction of slavery in the proposed state and liberating at the age of twenty-five all children born of slave parents. To the bill organizing Arkansas Territory, he moved a similar amendment. When his motion was lost he submitted a proposal prohibiting the introduction of slavery into the territories north of 36° 30', in support of his restrictive policy delivering some of the first anti-slavery speeches heard in Congress (Annals of Congress, 15 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 1170--93; 16, I Session, pp. 958-66). He argued that the power of Congress to admit new states implied a power to refuse to admit, and hence a power to prescribe conditions on which it would admit. As precedents he pointed to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which had been compelled to frame constitutions excluding slavery, and to Louisiana, where Congress had insisted on English as the official language and the guarantee of habeas corpus, jury tri al, and religious liberty. He also held that the provision vesting in Congress power to prohibit the "importation or migration" of slaves after 1808 was applicable in this connection, since the word "migration" meant the passage £rem one commonwealth to another. As to the expediency of restriction, he contended that slavery was ruinous to the economy of the country. He declared, also, that Congress was obligated to restrict slavery since slavery was incompatible with the "republican form of government" which it was the constitutional duty of the United States to guarantee to every state.

Taylor served two terms as speaker of the House of Representatives (November 15, 1820-March 3, 1821, December 5, 1825-March 3, 1827), in each case being defeated for reelection. In a letter to his son, he said: "I lost my third election as Speaker through my direct opposition to slavery" (MS., in the possession of Taylor's granddaughter, Mrs. Clarissa Taylor Bass, Freeport, Illinois). While the South never forgave the part he played in the Missouri controversy, the chief opposition came from his own state. The anti-Clintonian faction in New York encompassed his defeat in 1821, and the Van Buren Democrats were largely responsible for it in 1827. In November 1832 they thwarted his reelection to Congress. From 1840 to 1842 he was a member of the Nevi York Senate, from which ill health compelled his retirement. In 1843 he removed to Cleveland, Ohio, where he spent the remainder of his life at his daughter's home.

[Elisha Taylor, Genealogy of J1tdge John Taylor and His Descendants (1886); Biographical Directory American Co ng. (1928); Memoirs of John Q1tincy Adams, volumes IV-VII (1875); S. B. Dixon, The History of the Missouri Compromise and Its Repeal (1899); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volumes I, II (1906); E. F. Grose, Centennial History of the Village of Ballston Spa (1907); New York Tribune, September 22, 1854.]

J. G. V-D.


TAYLOR, Joseph Wright (March 1, 1810-January 18, 1880), philanthropist, physician, merchant, founder of Bryn Mawr College. Taylor was interested in most or the causes supported by the Society of Friends, such as abolition of slavery and promotion of international peace, temperance, and education.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 336-337:

TAYLOR, JOSEPH WRIGHT (March 1, 1810-January 18, 1880), philanthropist, physician, merchant, founder of Bryn Mawr College, was born in a farmhouse in Upper Freehold Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, the youngest of a family of seven. His father, Edward, descended from Edward Taylor who settled in Monmouth County in 1692, was a country physician, a graduate of the College of New Jersey. The Taylors were Baptists, but Edward joined the Society of Friend s after his marriage to Sarah Merritt, whose family had been among the early Quaker settlers of New Jersey. Sarah Taylor "had a concern" (in the Quaker phrase) for the insane, and in 1823 she and her husband became respectively matron and physician of the Friends' Asylum near Frankford, a suburb of Philadelphia. Joseph was educated at a boarding school near Frankford, and later studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the degree of M.D. at the early age of twenty. That same year, 1830, he sailed for India as surgeon and supercargo on a merchant vessel. Three years after his return he set off to join his brother Abraham, who had successfully established himself ten years earlier in Cincinnati as a tanner and dealer in leather. Joseph became purchasing agent for the firm and traveled widely in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

After fifteen prosperous years Taylor, an ardent traveler, started on his first European tour, and two years later settled in Burlington, New Jersey, where he purchased an estate and lived the life of a country gentleman. He was unmarried, but was devoted to his sister Hannah who kept house for him and had several warm friendships with other cultivated women. Descriptions in this period picture him as of medium height, unusually handsome in feature, exquisitely neat in dress, and distinguished in carriage. In 1861 he took another trip to England and the Continent, and in his later life traveled much in the United States. He was able to increase his fortune very materially by judicious investments after retiring from his brother's business.

Taylor was interested in most or the causes supported by the Society of Friends, such as abolition of slavery and promotion of international peace, temperance, and education. His determination to found a woman's college, which appears to have been fixed by the year 1875, probably had its origin in his perception of the real need for such an institution for the education of Quaker girls and his feeling that it was consistent with Quaker principles to provide the same facilities for the higher education of women in the neighborhood of Philadelphia as was provided for the education of men at Haverford College, of which he had been one of the managers since 1854.

His first plan was to open the college at Burlington near his own house in order to direct its growth himself. He was persuaded by his advisers, of whom Francis King, the president of the trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was the most trusted, that it would be wise to find a location more convenient to Philadelphia. President Gilman of Johns Hopkins, President Seelye of Smith, and other experienced educators were consulted, and two trips were made to New England to visit Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Welles-ley. Land was purchased at Bryn Mawr, eleven miles from Philadelphia, in 1878, and the building begun in 1879. Taylor directed the architect to use the administration building at Smith College as the model for the main building, later named Taylor Hall. He superintended the work of construction himself, making almost daily trips to Bryn Mawr. These activities were apparently too strenuous for his health and hastened his death, which resulted from heart disease. He bequeathed practically his entire fortune of about eight hundred thousand dollars, in addition to the land and buildings, to Bryn Mawr College, appointing a board of trustees of eminent Quakers, among them Dr. James E. Rhoads [q.v.], later president of the College. While unquestionably Taylor's purpose in founding Bryn Mawr was in part religious and even sectarian, it is clear from his choice of advisers and careful consideration of the need for educational facilities in the broadest sense that he wished to found a college which would be preeminent in cultivating the intellectual as well as the spiritual interests of the rising generation of women.

[Memoir of Joseph W. Taylor, M.D. (privately printed, 1884), written by President Rhoads in consultation with members of the Taylor family; Joseph Parrish, "Memorial Notice of Dr. Joseph W. Taylor," Transactions Medic. Society of New Jersey, 1880; Addresses at the Inauguration of Bryn Maw, College (1886); Elisha Taylor, Genealogy of Judge John Taylor and His Descendants (1886); Philadelphia Inquirer, January 20, 1880; unprinted letters and diaries in the possession of the Taylor family.]

H.T.M.


TEMPLE, Oliver Perry (January 27, 1820- November 2, 1907), lawyer and author. He took a leading part in the Southern Commercial Convention held in Knoxville in 1856, as proponent and advocate of resolutions against the reestablishment of the slave trade.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 363-364:

TEMPLE, OLIVER PERRY (January 27, 1820- November 2, 1907), lawyer and author, was born near Greeneville, Greene County, Tennessee, the son of James and Mary (Craig) Temple, and a descendant of William Temple, a native of England who was living in Goshen, Pennsylvania, in 1721. While a student at Greeneville College in 1838 Oliver volunteered as a soldier to aid regulars under General Winfield Scott [q.v.] in his work of pacifying the Cherokee Indians then being moved beyond the Mississippi. In 1841 he entered Washington College, Washington County, Tennessee, and was graduated with the cl ass of 1844. He at once entered the field of politics, delivering speeches throughout his congressional district in behalf of Henry Clay [q.v.], candidate for the presidency. Subsequently he read Jaw in Greeneville under Robert J. McKinney, and in 1846 was admitted to the bar. In July of the following year he was the Whig candidate for Congress against Andrew Johnson [q.v.], and in a campaign of three weeks, by dexterous attacks on his opponent's record he cut Johnson's usual majority of about 1500 to 314 votes.

In 1848 Temple removed to Knoxville, where he practised law in partnership with leaders of the East Tennessee bar. He was appointed in 1850 one of the commissioners to negotiate with the Indian tribes of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. On September 9, 1851, shortly after his return to Knoxville, he was married to Scotia C. Humes, of that city. He took a leading part in the Southern Commercial Convention held in Knoxville in 1856, as proponent and advocate of resolutions against the reestablishment of the slave trade. In 1860 he was a delegate to the National Union Convention, held at Baltimore, and aided in the nomination of John Bell [q.v.] as candidate for the presidency; subsequently, a s a Bell and Everett elector, he canvassed his congressional district. In November of the same year he made the first speech in Tennessee, after Lincoln's election, in behalf of the Union, and in December he planned a meeting of East Tennessee Unionists at Knoxville to consolidate the sentiment of that section against secession. The following year he stumped East Tennessee for the Union cause, and took a leading part in the Greeneville Convention of June 17, 1861, which declared for a separation of East Tennessee from the state of Tennessee. In July 1866, he was appointed one of the chancellors of Tennessee by Governor W. G. Brownlow [q.v.], and continued as such until September 1878. He then returned to the bar but after 1881 devoted his attention to his large estate.

When more than seventy-five years old he 'turned to authorship. His first production was The Covenanter, the Cavalier and the Puritan (1897). This was followed by East Tennessee and the Civil War (1899), and Notable Men of  Tennessee, published in 1912, after his death. He wrote in a vigorous and interesting,. though not graceful style, and drew copiously from his own rich store of reminiscences. His contribution to the progress of transportation and agriculture in East Tennessee was considerable. He was one of the originators of the Knoxville & Ohio Railroad; a director of the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad Company, and president of the first macadam turnpike company in his section of the state. Before the Civil War he was a member of the state board of agriculture, and in 1872 he was the prime mover in the organization of the East Tennessee Farmers' Convention. For many years he was active as a trustee of the University of Tennessee, and for a period served as chairman of the board. His work for the institution was directed principally toward the development of the agricultural department. After his death the Farmers' Convention built Temple Hall on the experimental farm of the University, in his honor.

[W. S. Speer, Sketches of Prominent Tennesseans (1888); biographical sketch by Temple's daughter, Mary B. Temple, in his Notable Men of Tennessee (1912); William Rule, Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee (1900); T. W. Humes, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee (188 8); W. T. Hale and D. L. Merritt, A History of Tennessee and Tennesseans (1913), volumes II, III, VII; Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Nashville Banner, January 30, 1904; Journal and Tribune (Knoxville), November 3, 1907.]

S. C. W.


TEN EYCK, John Conover, 1814-1879, lawyer.  Republican U.S. Senator from New Jersey.  Was a Whig until 1856.  Joined Republican Party in 1856.  Chosen Senator in 1859.  Served until March 1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 62; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


THACHER, George, 1754-1824, jurist.  Delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress 1787-1788.  U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts.  Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 68; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 386-387; Dumond, 1961; Hammond, 2011, p. 213; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 143, 160-162; Annals of Congress, 2 Congress, 2 Session, p. 861). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 386-387:

THACHER, GEORGE (April 12, 1754-April 6, 1824), congressman and jurist, was born in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, tenth of the eleven children of Lieut. Peter and Anner (Lewis) Thacher, and a descendant of Ant[h]ony Thacher who came to New England in 1635. He was prepared for college under the direction of Timothy Hilliard, the minister at Barnstable. He graduated from Harvard in 1776, and, except for one cruise on a privateer during the Revolution, he spent the three years thereafter studying law with that famous Cape Cod instructor, Shearjashub Bourne (letter, April 12, 1794, Massachusetts Historical Society). The confused land titles and rapidly growing settlements in Maine offered at that time special inducements to young lawyers, and thither he removed, settling finally in 1782 at Biddeford, where he succeeded to the practice of James Sullivan. After his election by the Massachusetts legislature in 1787 as delegate to the Continental Congress he was elected by the District of Maine as a Federalist to every Congress from 1789 until his retirement in 1801, when he accepted an appointment as associate judge of the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts. He held this office until his resignation in January 1824.

As a member of Congress he was faithful in attendance, although his long absences from home irked him. Not a partisan by nature-he once wrote, "Parties are not necessary to the existence or support of political liberty" (Ibid., May 11, 1796)-he was not especially active in Congress, although on occasion he spoke his mind in no uncertain terms. He did not believe a bill of rights necessary. He favored assumption of state debts, and was reconciled to the Potomac Bill. He opposed attempts to prevent Quaker anti-slavery petitions being read in Congress (Annals of Congress, 5 Congress, 2 Session, p. 658), and he again defended the right of petition when he urged the reference of the petitions of certain free blacks (Ibid., 6 Congress, 1 Session, p. 232). When the Mississippi Territory Bill came up in Congress, March 23, 1798, he moved to strike out the words "excepting that slavery shall not be forbidden." He defended Matthew Lyon [q.v.] in the Griswold Lyon fight, but objected to the expulsion of either. Though an ardent champion of the rights of Americans and strongly anti-French, he believed that peace should be preserved. With less than his usual judgment, he advocated making the Sedition Act permanent (Ibid., 5 Congress, 3 Session, p. 2902).

The political support which he gained in his district because of his intellectual power, his integrity, and his natural gift for friendship was sometimes challenged by current reports of his irreligion. A deist, he advocated cheerfulness in religion; he did not believe in the existence of a soul apart from the body; he was a "mortal enemy to the Devil and all such Notions." "Religion," he wrote, "heretofore destroyed the pleasures of Life and made the world a state of misery" (letters, February 22, 1789, and May 16, 1790, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections). He was a follower of Joseph Priestley [q.v.], whom he met while in Congress. He was sympathetic to Unitarian beliefs and was one of the founders of the Second Church in Biddeford. He was a great reader both in the classics and in contemporary books on religion, history, and education. In temperament he was more judge than politician. Of his judicial duties, in which his talent for weighing questions came to the fore, he wrote, "This Judge business is more agreeable than I had apprehended" (Ibid., June 17, 1801). When Maine was separated from Massachusetts in 1820, he moved, somewhat unwillingly, to Newburyport in order that he might continue in office, but on his retirement he returned to Biddeford, where he died shortly after. He married on July 21, 1784, Sarah, the daughter of Samuel Phillips Savage of Weston, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife and nine of their ten children.

[See J. R. Totten, "Thacher-Thatcher Genealogy," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1910-April 1913; D. W. Allen, Genealogical and Biographical Sketches of the Descendants of Thomas and Anthony Thacher (1872), which is not entirely accurate; Lawrence Park, Major Thomas Savage of Boston and his Descendants (1914); Biographical Directory American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); William Willis, A History of the Law, the Courts and the Lawyers of Maine (1863); George Folsom, History of Saco and Biddeford (1830); death notice in Eastern Argus (Portland, Maine), April 13, 1824. One collection of Thatcher’s papers, mostly letters to his wife, is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society; another, composed of letters to him-some of which are printed in History Magazine, and Notes and Queries, November, December 1869 -is in the Boston Public Library; a third, less important, is in the Maine Historical Society Until about 1815 he spelled his name Thatcher.]

R. E. M.


THARIN, Robert Seymour Symmes, b. 1830, lawyer (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 70). 


THATCHER, Benjamin Bussey (October 8, 1809-July 14, 1840), author, editor, and lawyer.  In 1833 he edited the Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, the organ of the Young Men's Colonization Society, of which he was corresponding secretary. Upon the lecture platform he constantly urged that African colonization should be supported "as offering the most effectual and unexceptionable proposal for promoting the welfare ... of our fellow-men now held in bondage" (Colonizationist, April 1833, p. II). To further this project he wrote a Memoir of Phillis Wheatley (1834), and a Memoir of S. Osgood Wright, (1834), the Liberian missionary.

(R. W. Griswold, The Biographical Annual (1841); Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, April 1833-April 1834; obituaries in Boston Daily Advertiser and Daily Atlas (Boston), July 15, 1840.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 393:

THATCHER, BENJAMIN BUSSEY (October 8, 1809-July 14, 1840), author, editor, and lawyer, was born at Warren, Knox County, Maine. He was the son of Sarah (Brown) and Samuel Thatcher and a first cousin of Henry Knox Thatcher [q.v.]. His father, a graduate of Harvard and a descendant of Samuel Thatcher who was admitted freeman at Watertown, Massachusetts, in May 1642, served as representative to the General Court of Massachusetts, as congressman, and as sheriff of Lincoln County, Maine. Benjamin attended Warren Academy, of which his father was a founder, and in 1826 was graduated from Bowdoin College. After studying law in Boston, he was admitted to the bar, and nominally practised law until his death. His deepest interest was in writing, however, and perhaps his greatest mistake in life was "an overestimate of literature as a profession and source of reputation" (Cleaveland and Packard, post, p. 357). He became a prolific author, contributing critical articles and verse to the leading magazines, especially the North American Review and the Essayist. In 1833 he edited the Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, the organ of the Young Men's Colonization Society, of which he was corresponding secretary. Upon the lecture platform he constantly urged that African colonization should be supported "as offering the most effectual and unexceptionable proposal for promoting the welfare ... of our fellow-men now held in bondage" (Colonizationist, April 1833, p. II). To further this project he wrote a Memoir of Phillis Wheatley (1834), and a Memoir of S. Osgood Wright, (1834), the Liberian missionary. He strove continually to restrain the more extreme reformers in his society, and to prevent the colonizationists from being identified with William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and the abolitionists. In 1834 he abandoned the Colonizationist in the belief that a magazine was not an effective vehicle for his cause. Despite the failure of the American Colonization Society, his faith in the Liberian venture never wavered, and he increasingly devoted more time and energy to the work of the local Massachusetts organization (Colonizationist, April 1834, pp. 357,384). In 1836 he was forced to go abroad to recover his health. In England he contributed an article on "Atlantic Steam Navigation" to the Quarterly Review of June 1838-sufficient evidence of his reputation as an author-and on his return to America published in the reviews sketches of his travels, with intimate vignettes of eminent people whom he had visited. His health, never robust, became increasingly poor, and in 1840 he died, it is said, from overwork (Cleaveland and Packard, post, p. 357).

Thatcher was prominent in philanthropic work in Boston, and wrote occasional verse to aid charity. His "Prayer for the Blind," printed on a piece of satin (5" x 8"), was widely sold for the benefit of the Institution for the Blind. He numbered most of the prominent authors of America among his friends. He was best known for his Indian Biography (2 volumes, 1832), which received flattering comment in the journals (North American Review, April 1833, p. 472) and was the first work of its kind to seek accuracy of portrayal. In general, his writings were ephemeral, and have little interest for the present-day reader. Among his more important works are seven articles in the North American Review, the first of which appeared in April 1832; Indian Traits (2 volumes, 1833), in Harper's Family Library; Traits of the Tea Party (1835); and The Boston Book (1837), a local literary anthology. He is said to have left an unpublished manuscript of his travels. His portrait, painted in England, now hangs in the Bowdoin Gallery.

[G. T. Little, Genealogy and Family History of the State of Maine (1909), volume III, pp. 1491-93; Nehemiah Cleaveland and A. S. Packard, History of Bowdoin College (1882); R. W. Griswold, The Biographical Annual (1841); Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, April 1833-April 1834; obituaries in Boston Daily Advertiser and Daily Atlas (Boston), July 15, 1840.]

C. B--b.


THATCHER, Moses, N. Wrentham, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1833-37


THAYER, Eli, 1819-1899, Worcester, Massachusetts, abolitionist, educator, Congressman, established Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, 1854, which changed to New England Aid Company in 1855 which supported the free state movement in Kansas.

(Filler, 1960, pp. 238-239; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 56; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 71-72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 402; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 488; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 402:

THAYER, ELI (June 11, 1819-April 15, 1899), educator, originator of the Emigrant Aid Company, congressman, was born in Mendon, Massachusetts, the eldest child of Cushman arid Miranda (Pond) Thayer, and a descendant of Thomas Thayer, an early settler of Braintree, Massachusetts. Cushman Thayer was a farmer and later kept a store. Eli was educated somewhat irregularly, with interludes for school teaching and working in his father's store; but by the autumn of 1840, having finished his preparation at the Worcester Manual Labor High School (later Worcester Academy), he was able to enter Brown University. Here, delayed again by teaching, he graduated as salutatorian of his class in 1845. A position awaited him at his old school in Worcester, and from 1847 to 1849 he was principal. On August 6, 1845, he married Caroline M. Capron, by whom he had five daughters and two sons.

On Goat Hill, in an undeveloped part of Worcester, where he had been purchasing land since 1845, Thayer erected between 1848 and 1852 a large "castle," completely machicolated and with four-story round towers at its ends. This was the site of the Oread Collegiate Institute, a school for young women which Thayer established, and the residence of Thayer and his family for the greater part of fifty years. One of the pioneers in the history of education for women, he made provision in the institution for collegiate instruction. Three departments were established, primary, academic, and collegiate, the last offering a four-year course closely modeled on that of Brown and leading to the diploma of Oreas Erudita. Thayer himself retained the active headship-including the instruction in Latin and mathematics-for only a few years, and thereafter the Institute, which under his own guidance had flourished, soon lost much of its college emphasis and became a young ladies' seminary more close to the usual type.

Entering public life, Thayer held one or two municipal offices, and in 1852 was elected to the General Court as a Free Soiler, serving in 1853-54. There his chief effort was directed to securing a charter of a bank of mutual redemption. Its purpose was to redeem the bills of New England banks-its stockholders being such banks as cared to subscribe-and thus to enable country bankers to escape the tyranny of the Suffolk Bank in Boston. The charter was granted in 1855, though the institution did not begin operation till sometime later. Meantime, Thayer embarked on the great enterprise of his life, that of promoting organized emigration. In the spring of 1854, while the Kansas-Nebraska bill was pending, he interested a number of influential people in the cause of making Kansas' free by colonization, and within six weeks (April 26, 1854) obtained a charter for the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. The charter was thought to be defective and was given up, and a voluntary organization took its place, under the name New England Emigrant Aid Company, chartered February 16, 1855. Thayer always believed in the scheme as an investment, though many of his associates did not. Throughout various changes of organization and until its work was largely done (1856), he remained by far its most energetic promoter and for a period was paid a commission for the sums obtained through his efforts. His early enlistment of Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune in support of the movement gave it great aid. For over two years Thayer spent most of his time traveling in New England and New York on the business of the company.

In 1856 he was suddenly drafted as Republican candidate for Congress in the Worcester district, and served two terms, 1857-61. His position in Congress was unusual. So great was; his enthusiasm for company colonization of new lands that he came to regard the method as almost a panacea. It was his belief that free men, backed by investors and preceded by efficient agents to form "receiving stations," would suffice to create free and prosperous communities, and that the question of slavery--or, in the case of Utah, polygamy -would soon disappear. Even the border states, he thought, might be brought to freedom by this means, and in 1857-59 he worked hard in connection with the founding of Ceredo in western Virginia. Filibustering in Central America, he was convinced, could be stopped by the same means. All his very witty and genially satirical congressional speeches were directed to this theme, the implications of which formed a sort of popular-sovereignty doctrine which made him totally uninterested in congressional action about slavery in the territories. This most unorthodox Republicanism was anathema to many of Thayer; s constituents, and when in 1859 he swung a decisive though small group in the House to vote for the admission of Oregon, his political fate was sealed. As a delegate at the Chicago Convention his support of Lincoln rather than of Seward was a further count against him. In 1860 he was forced to run as an independent and was defeated. A painful episode of these years was Thayer's contact with John Brown, who visited him at the Oread, asked for arms to defend the free settlers of Kansas, and received all Thayer had. These arms were used at Harpers Ferry, and Thayer was always very bitter about the deception that had been practised on him (Boston Herald, August 22, 1887).

Thayer's subsequent life was not a happy one. He served as a treasury agent in 1861-62, obtained some support at Washington for a plan of military colonization of Florida, and in 1864-70 was land agent in New York for Western railroad interests. Returning to Worcester, he was a candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket in 1874 and 1878. In 1887 he entered on a period of vigorous newspaper controversy with the Garrisonian abolitionists, whom he condemned whole-heartedly as disunionists and as having added nothing but disloyalty to the national struggle against slavery. He felt that his efforts in securing Kansas for freedom were not properly recognized. His speeches in Congress appear in Six Speeches, with a Sketch of the Life of Hon. Eli Thayer (1860). He was the author of The New England Emigrant Aid Company, and Its Influence, through the Kansas Contest, 1tpon National History (1887), also printed in Collect ions of the Worcester Society of Antiquity (volume VII, 1888), and of A History of the Kansas Crusade, Its Friends and Its Foes (1889), in which he expressed his feelings regarding the part he played in that movement.

[A manuscript life of Thayer by his friend F. P. Rice, with a collection of clippings, is in the Harvard College Library; Thayer Papers and clippings are at Brown University, and other clippings, in the American Antiquarian Society; the Kansas State Historical Society has much material on the Emigrant Aid Company. Other sources include: Bezaleel Thayer, Memorial of the Thayer Name (1874); G. O. Ward, The Worcester Academy (1918) and sketch of Thayer in Worcester Academy Bulletin, June 1917; M. E. B. Wright, History of the Oread Collegiate Institute .. . 1849-1881 (1905); F. P. Rice, The Worcester of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-eight (1899); R. V. Harlow, in American Historical Review, October 1935; S. A. Johnson, in New England Quarterly, January 1930; Boston Transcript, April 15, 1899; Worcester Evening Gazette, April 15, 1899; Worcester Sunday Telegram, April 16, 1899; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe].

H. D. J.



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