Zac-Zak: Zachos through Zakrzewska

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


ZACHOS, John Celivergos (December 20, 1820-March 20, 1898), educator, Unitarian clergyman, author, and inventor.  At the outbreak of the Civil  War, Zachos joined the Union army as assistant surgeon, enlisting under General Rufus Saxton, and was stationed at Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina, being practically governor of the island.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 640-641:

ZACHOS, JOHN CELIVERGOS (December 20, 1820-March 20, 1898), educator, Unitarian clergyman, author, and inventor, was born in Constantinople, the son of Nicholas and Euphrosyne Zachos, natives of Athens. The father, a general in the Greek army during the Grecian Revolution, died in 1824 in battle. In 1830, Zachos was brought to America by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe,[q.v.]. He attended preparatory school at Amher.st, Massachusetts, and in 1836 entered Kenyon College; Gambier, Ohio, where he was graduated B.A. with honors in June 1840 and delivered the Greek oration for his class. From 1842 to 1845 he studied at the Medical School of Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, but did not take a degree. Ori July 26, 1849, he married Harriet Tomkins Canfield,, by whom he had six children. He was associate principal (1851-54) of the Cooper Female Seminary, at Dayton, Ohio, one of the editors (1852-53) of the Ohio Journal of Education, and principal (1854-57) of the Grammar School of Antioch College, Yellow Springs; Ohio. In this latter position which also involved the teaching of literature, he was associated with Horace Mann [q.v.].

At the outbreak of the Civil  War, Zachos joined the Union army as assistant surgeon, enlisting under General Rufus Saxton, and was stationed at Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina, being practically governor of the island. He had studied theology privately for some time, and when the war ended he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church in West Newton, Massachusetts. In 1866-- 67 he was pastor of the Unitarian church at Meadville, Pennsylvania, and professor of rhetoric at the Meadville Theological School. From 1871 until his death he made his home in New York City. There he taught literature and oratory at Cooper Union, which he also served as curator.

Especially interested in spoken English, Zachos produced several textbooks in elocution and oratory, including The New American Speaker (1851), Analytic Elocution (1861), A New System of Phonic Reading without Changing the Orthography (1863), The Phonic Primer and Reader (1864),and The Phonic Text (1865), "A Method of Teaching Reading by the Signs of Sound without Altering the Orthography of the


ZAKRZEWSKA, Marie Elizabeth (September 6, 1829-May 12, 1902), physician and pioneer in the movement for the emancipation of women, became an outspoken and radical abolitionist, closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 642:

ZAKRZEWSKA, MARIE ELIZABETH (September 6, 1829-May 12, 1902), physician and pioneer in the movement for the emancipation of women, was born in Berlin, Germany. The Zakrzewski family, formerly extensive landowners in Poland, were dispersed in 1793. Marie's father, Ludwig Martin Zakrzewski, went to Berlin, where he served as an army officer and later as a governmental official, but his liberal tendencies lost him his position, and his wife, descended from the gypsy tribe of the Lombardi, became a midwife in order to support her family of seven children. Marie, the eldest, left school at the age of thirteen. A studious, unattractive child, she took a great interest in nursing and ultimately decided to become an accoucheuse. She became a special student at the great Charite Hospital in Berlin, graduated, and began practice within its walls, but friction soon developed between her and the authorities. Thwarted in her desire to become a physician, she emigrated with one of her sisters to America, arriving in New York in May 1853. There she remained in poverty for a year, earning, by sewing, a meager living for herself, her sister, and two more of the children who had joined her. Not unmindful of her original idea in coming to America, she turned to Elizabeth Blackwell [q.v.], already qualified as a physician, for help in obtaining a medical education. In spite of the fact that she could hardly say a word in English, she was sent to Cleveland Medical College, a department of Western Reserve College, which had opened its doors to women in 1847. Helped by friends and encouraged by the dean, John J. Delamater, she received her degree of M.D. in 1856.

She returned to New York, helped Elizabeth Blackwell and her sister to raise funds both there and in Boston, and served as resident surgeon in the newly founded New York Infirmary (1857), staffed entirely by women. The next year she accepted the chair of obstetrics in the New England Female Medical College, Boston. After three years, dissatisfied because of the lax standards of the college and the failure of the trustees to build her a hospital for clinical work, she resigned. Willing friends assisted her in starting a little ten-bed hospital of her own, the nucleus of the large New England Hospital for Women and Children. For some years she acted as resident physician, matron, head nurse, and general manager. She was virtually head of the hospital from its founding (1862) for a period of forty years. Here she carried on her duties as a physician and taught two generations of women to become nurses or doctors. At the same time her private practice increased rapidly, and she became the outstanding woman physician in New England. In addition, she gave many lectures on a wide variety of subjects, and became an outspoken and radical abolitionist, closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips [qq.v.], and others. Retiring in 1899, she died a few years later after a period of invalidism. She never married. A pioneer in rights for women, she opened the way, with the Blackwells, for the entrance of women into medicine. With a sound intellect and a large and sympathetic heart, she unselfishly devoted herself to the service of humanity.

[See autobiographical notes in Caroline H. Dall, A Practical Illus. of "Woman' s Right to Labor" (1860); Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska: a Memoir (1903); Agnes C. Vietor, A Woman's Quest (1924), which is partly autobiographical; Boston Evening Transcript, May 13 and October 30, 1902.]

H. R. V.



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