Che-Cin: Cheadle through Cinque

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


CHEADLE, Rial, Ohio, abolitionist, conductor on the Underground Railroad.  Aided fugitive slaves.


CHEANEY, Person Colby, 1828-1901, Manchester, New Hampshire, statesman, soldier, abolitionist, businessman, paper manufacturer, Republican politician, abolitionist.  U.S. Senator, 35th Governor of New Hampshire.  His father was abolitionist Moses Cheney. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 54)


CHEEVER, George Barrell, April 17, 1807-October 1, 1890, clergyman, reformer, publisher, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1835-1837. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 597; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 48-49)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 597:

CHEEVER, George Barrell, clergyman and author, born in Hallowell, Maine, 17 April, 1807. He was the son of Nathaniel Cheever, who removed from Salem, Massachusetts, to Hallowell and established the “American Advocate,” was graduated at Bowdoin in 1825, at Andover seminary in 1830, and was ordained pastor of Howard street Congregational church, Boston, in 1832. While at Andover and Salem he contributed prose and verse to the “North American Review,” “Biblical Repository,” and other periodicals. Engaging in the Unitarian controversy, he wrote a “Defence of the Orthodoxy of Cudworth,” and, espousing the temperance cause, published in a Salem newspaper in 1835 an allegory entitled “Inquire at Deacon Giles's Distillery.” The friends of the deacon made a riotous attack on Mr. Cheever, and he was tried for libel and imprisoned thirty days. Resigning his pastorate, he went to Europe, contributed letters to the “New York Observer,” and on his return in 1839 took charge of the Allen street Presbyterian church, New York city. He delivered lectures on the “Pilgrim's Progress,” and on “Hierarchical Despotism,” the latter being in answer to a discourse of Bishop Hughes. In 1843, in three public debates with J. L. O'Sullivan, he argued for capital punishment. He was in Europe in 1844 as corresponding editor of the New York “Evangelist,” of which he was principal editor after his return in 1845. From 1846 until he retired in 1870 he was pastor of the Church of the Puritans, which was organized for him, in New York, and was distinguished as a preacher for his rigorous and forcible application of orthodox principles to questions of practical moment, such as the Dred Scott decision, the banishment of the Bible from the public schools, the operation of railroads on Sundays, the war with Mexico, intemperance, and slavery. On retiring from the pulpit, Dr. Cheever gave his house in New York to the American board of commissioners for foreign missions and the American missionary association, to be held jointly, and fixed his residence at Englewood, New Jersey. He contributed much to the “Independent” and the “Bibliotheca Sacra.” Among his publications are “Commonplace Book of Prose” (Cooperstown, 1828); “Studies in Poetry” (Boston, 1830); an edition of the “Select Works of Archbishop Leighton” (1832); “Commonplace Book of Poetry” (Philadelphia, 1839); “God's Hand in America” (New York, 1841); “Lectures on Hierarchical Despotism”; “Lectures on the ‘Pilgrim's Progress’” (1844); “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Switzerland” (1845-'6); “Defence of Capital Punishment” (1846); with J. E. Sweetser, “Christian Melodies, a Selection of Hymns and Tunes”; “Poets of America” (Hartford, 1847); “The Hill of Difficulty” (1847); “Journal of the Pilgrims, Plymouth, New England, 1620,” reprinted from the original volumes, with illustrations (1848); “Punishment by Death, its Authority and Expediency” (1849); “Windings of the River of the Water of Life” (New York, 1849); “The Voice of Nature to her Foster-Child, the Soul of Man” (1852); “Powers of the World to Come” (1853); “Thoughts for the Afflicted”; “The Right of the Bible in our Public Schools” (1854); “Lectures on the Life, Genius, and Insanity of Cowper” (1856); “God against Slavery, and the Freedom and Duty of the Pulpit to Rebuke it” (1857); “Guilt of Slavery and Crime of Slaveholding” (1860). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 597.


CHEEVER, Henry T., Jewitt City, Connecticut, S. Royalston, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Secretary, 1859-62, 1862-64.


CHENEY, Abigail, New Hampshire, abolitionist.  Wife of abolitionist Moses Cheney.  Conductor on the Underground Railroad. 

(Cheney, 1907)


CHENEY, Ednah Dow Littlehale, 1824-1904, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.

(American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 164-165; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 777)


CHENEY, Moses, 1793-1875, New Hampshire, abolitionist, printer, state legislator from New Hampshire.  Cheney printed the abolitionist newspaper, The Morning Star, a Free Will Baptist newspaper.  He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and an associate of African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.  Husband of Abigail Cheney. 

(Cheney, 1907)


CHENEY, Oren Burbank, 1816-1903, Maine, Free Will Baptist clergyman, state legislator in Maine, educator, newspaper editor, abolitionist.  Editor of The Morning Star.  Founder and President of Bates College.  Conductor on the Underground Railroad for seven years.  Son of abolitionists Moses and Abigail Cheney.

(Cheney, 1907 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, pp. 53-54).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, pp. 53-54:

CHENEY, OREN BURBANK (December 10, 1816-December 22, 1903), Baptist clergyman, college president, was the son of Moses Cheney, a member of the New Hampshire legislature, and of Abigail (Morrison) Cheney, a woman of great energy and strength of character. His early education consisted of a few terms at private schools, a few at public schools, and a year when he was thirteen at New Hampton Institute. When he was sixteen he was sent to Parsonsfield Seminary, the first school founded and maintained by Free Baptists, where, as a student, he helped organize a temperance society, believed to be the first school society of that kind in the world. He was present in the same year at the organization of the Free Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. From this school he went again to the New Hampton Literary Institute. A year at Brown in 1835 was followed by a period at Dartmouth where he took his B.A. degree in 1839, and his M.A. in 1842. He taught the Indians who camped near the college, preached at a Free Will Baptist church at Grantham, ten miles away, and taught a school during the winters at Peterboro to pay his college expenses. In the fall after his graduation he was principal at the Farmington (Maine) Academy with Caroline Adelia Rundlett as his assistant. They were married a few months later. The following year he taught at Greenland, New Hampshire, walking to Northampton on Sundays to preach. Soon after he was licensed to preach. At this time he began to contribute articles to the Morning Star which appeared more or less regularly for sixty years. Called subsequently to be principal of Parsonsfield Seminary, he remained there for two years. Then, as he felt that he needed more theological preparation, he went to Whitestown, New York, to study. At the end of a year he accepted a country pastorate at West Lebanon, Maine, at a salary of $175 a year. His wife had died, and in 1847 he married Nancy S. Perkins, daughter of a Baptist clergyman. At Lebanon, with his customary energy, he founded an academy. After six years here in the church and at the academy, he was called to the Augusta (Maine) Baptist pastorate. In 1851, he was elected to the Maine legislature by a combination of the Free Soil, Independent, and Whig parties. He secured $2,000 from the legislature for the Lebanon Academy and voted for the first prohibition measure introduced in the Maine legislature by Neal Dow. In 1852 he was elected a delegate to the Maine Free Soil Convention at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which nominated John P. Hale for the presidency. When Parsonsfield Seminary was burned in 1854, he was deeply stirred and at this time began to consider an ideal school in which students could depend on their own efforts to pay their way. The result was the Maine State Seminary in Lewiston, Maine, which opened September 1, 1857, with Cheney as principal. In 1863, the trustees were induced to vote to establish a course of collegiate study, the legislature was petioned for an enlarged charter, received the ensuing year, and the name was changed to Bates College in honor of its most generous patron. Women as well as men had attended the seminary, but when the college was opened the feeling was so strong against women that all but one withdrew, the one, however, stayed and obtained her degree, and Bates as a result has remained a coeducational institution as its charter first provided. Cheney remained president of the college until 1894 and was president emeritus until his death in 1903. He was married a third time in 1892 to Emeline S. (Aldrich) Burlingame who had been much interested in Christian and reformatory work.

[General Catalog Bates College and Cobb Divinity School, 1863-1915 (1915); E. Burlingame-Cheney, Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College (1907).]


CHENEY, Person Colby, 1828-1901, abolitionist, businessman, Union Army officer.  Son of Moses and Abigail Cheney.  Later, Governor and Senator from New Hampshire. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, pp. 54-55; Cheney, 1907)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, pp. 54-55:

CHENEY, PERSON COLBY (February 25, 1828- June 19, 1901), manufacturer, governor of New Hampshire, was born at Holderness (now Ashland), New Hampshire. He was the son of Moses and Abigail (Morrison) Cheney, his father being one of the pioneer paper manufacturers of the state, a business with which he himself was identified throughout the greater part of his life. The family then moved to Peterboro in 1835, and after completing his education at Hancock Literary and Scientific Institution and the academy at Parsonsfield, Maine, Cheney entered business in the same town, becoming in 1853 a partner in the firm of Cheney, Hadley & Gowing, paper manufacturers. In 1863, he served as quartermaster in the 13th New Hampshire Infantry, but was discharged because of ill health after a few months' service. A year later he was elected railroad commissioner for a three-year term. In 1866 he moved to Manchester. He now reorganized and extended his business, engaging in paper-making at Goffstown and the manufacture of wood pulp at Peterboro. Mills at both these places were under the same corporate organization and operations were later extended to several other towns as well. The business prospered, and Cheney became known as one of the leading industrialists of the state. He was also interested in banking in Manchester and was for some time president of the People's Savings Bank.

In 1872 he was elected mayor of Manchester and in the same year a trustee of Bates College of which his brother, Oren Burbank Cheney [q.v.], was president. He served one year as mayor, refusing renomination because of the pressure of private business. He was interested, however, in Republican activities and was an influential leader in party matters. In 1875 he was nominated for the governorship and after a campaign so closely contested that fin al choice rested with the legislature, was elected. In 1876 he was again elected, this time by the popular vote. He was a successful executive. His terms fell in a period of unemployment and business depression, and his efforts were largely devoted toward economy, improved administration, and the reduction of the public debt. In 1876 when the state was about to hold a constitutional convention he urged the adoption of a simplified amending process, a reduction in the size of the lower house, a larger Senate, the abolition of the religious test for office, and biennial elections. On the liquor question, then an active issue in the state, he declared that the most effective effort was that which "untiringly seeks to write on men's hearts the law of individual self control." After retirement from office he devoted himself to business affairs but in 1886 served out the unexpired term of Austin F. Pike in the United States Senate (November 24, 1886-June 14, 1887). From December 1892 to June 1893 he served as envoy extraordinary to Switzerland. He was from 1892 until his death a member of the Republican National Committee. In both business and politics he represented the better type of the period, and in both won its conventional rewards for successful effort. He was twice married: on May 22, 1850, to Annie, daughter of Samuel M. Moore of Bronson, Michigan, and after her death in 1858, on June 29, 1859, to Mrs. Sarah W. Keith.

[G. F. Willey, Semi-Centennial Book of Manchester (Manchester, New Hampshire, 1896), pp. 257-58; Albert Smith, History of the Town of Peterborough, New Hampshire (1876); Manchester (Manches ter, New Hampshire, 1875); J. N. McClintock, sketch in Granite Missouri, III, 65, and obituary, Ibid., XXXI, p. 60.]

W.A.R.


CHESTER, Elisha W., New York, New York, abolitionist.  American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1853-55.


CHILD, David Lee, 1794-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, author, journalist.  Leader, manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Child served as a manager and a member of the Executive Committee of the AASS, 1840-1843, Vice-President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-1836.  Published, The Despotism of Freedom—or The Tyranny and Cruelty of American Republican Slaveholders.  Co-editor with his wife, Lydia, of The Anti-Slavery Standard. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 269; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 193, 327; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 398, 399; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 65; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 165-166; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 804; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 324)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 65:

CHILD, DAVID LEE (July 8, 1794-September 18, 1874), journalist, was born in West Boylston, Massachusetts, the son of Zachariah and Lydia (Bigelow) Child. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1817. The following year he became sub-master of the Boston Latin School. In 1820 he served as secretary of legation at Lisbon, Portugal. Later in Spain he engaged in the war against the French, saying that he felt it was always his duty to help secure and defend liberty. From then on he engaged in many struggles for freedom of various sorts. He returned to the United States in 1824 and began the study of law with his uncle, Tyler Bigelow, in Watertown, Massachusetts, being admitted to the Suffolk County bar in 1828. During the same year he was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature, edited the Massachusetts Journal, a leading Adams paper, and, in October, married Lydia Maria Francis [see Lydia Maria Francis Child], an author who later became prominent in the anti-slavery movement. Child was himself an early member of the anti-slavery society and in 1832 addressed a series of letters on the subject to Edward S. Abdy, an English philanthropist. He was a trustee of Noyes Academy at Canaan, New Hampshire, in 1834, and was instrumental in opening the institution to colored youths at that time. In 1836 he went to Belgium to study the beet-sugar industry. He returned and erected in Northampton, Massachusetts, the first beet-sugar factory in this country. The factory failed financially and was closed in 1844. But Child had proved the value of the commodity. He published a pamphlet in 1840 called Culture of the Beet, and Manufacture of Beet-sugar.

About 1843-44, he for a time assisted his wife in editing the National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York. The remainder of his life was spent in bettering conditions among the freed people and in writing on various subjects having to do with freedom. The best examples of his writing and of his political interests are the two pamphlets, The Texan Revolution (1843) and The Taking of Naboth's Vineyard (1845). He died in Wayland, Massachusetts.

[Information concerning Child is to be found in Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts (1894); Bench and Bar Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1895); Elias Child, Genealogy Child, Childs and Childe Families (1881); and Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883). An account of Child's experiments with sugar-beets is given in F. S. Harris, The Sugar-Beet in America (1919).]

M. S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 603-604:

CHILD, David Lee, journalist, born in West Boylston, Massachusetts, 8 July, 1794; died in Wayland, Massachusetts, 18 September, 1874. He was graduated at Harvard in 1817, and was for some time sub-master of the Boston Latin-school. He was secretary of legation in Lisbon about 1820, and subsequently fought in Spain, “defending what he considered the cause of freedom against her French invaders.” Returning to this country in 1824, he began in 1825 to study law with his uncle, Tyler Bigelow, in Watertown, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar. He went to Belgium in 1836 to study the beet-sugar industry, and afterward received a silver medal for the first manufacture of the sugar in this country. He edited the “Massachusetts Journal,” about 1830, and while a member of the legislature denounced the annexation of Texas, afterward publishing a pamphlet on the subject, entitled “Naboth's Vineyard.” He was an early member of the anti-slavery society, and in 1832 addressed a series of letters on slavery and the slave-trade to Edward S. Abdy, an English philanthropist. He also published ten articles on the same subject (Philadelphia, 1836). During a visit to Paris in 1837 he addressed an elaborate memoir to the Société pour l'abolition d'esclavage, and sent a paper on the same subject to the editor of the “Eclectic Review” in London. John Quincy Adams was much indebted to Mr. Child's facts and arguments in the speeches that he delivered in congress on the Texan question. With his wife he edited the “Anti-Slavery Standard” in New York in 1843-'44. He was distinguished for the independence of his character, and the boldness with which he denounced social wrongs and abuses. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 603-604.


CHILD, Lydia Maria Francis, 1802-1880, author, reformer, abolitionist, member Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote for the Liberty Bell.  Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Prolific writer and ardent abolitionist.  In 1840’s, edited National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper.  Child published: Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Romance of the Republic (1867), Authentic Accounts of American Slavery (1835), The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery (1836), Anti-Slavery Catechism (1836), The Right Way, the Safe Way, Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies and Elsewhere (1860), Freedmen’s Book (1865), and articles “The Patriarchal Institution” and “The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law,” (1860), and edited Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 117, 176; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 273, 281; Karcher, 1994; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 37, 70, 108, 193, 320, 325, 359, 360; Meltzer, 1992; Meltzer & Holland, 1982; Nathan, 1991, p. 131; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 86-91; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 44, 199, 221-222, 398, 399, 519; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 97-98, 113-114, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 67; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 167-170; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 806; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 324-325) Mrs. Child's numerous books, published during a period of half a century, include, besides the works already mentioned, “The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution,” a novel containing an imaginary speech of James Otis, and a sermon by Whitefield, both of which were received by many people as genuine (Boston, 1822); “The First Settlers of New England” (1829); “The American Frugal Housewife,” a book of kitchen economy and directions (1829; 33d ed., 1855); “The Mother's Book,” “The Girl's Own Book,” and the “Coronal,” a collection of verses (1831); “The Ladies' Family Library,” a series of biographies (5 volumes, 1832-'5); “Philothea,” a romance of Greece in the days of Pericles (1835); “Letters from New York,” written to the Boston “Courier” (2 volumes, 1843-'5); “Flowers for Children” (3 volumes, 1844-'6); “Fact and Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (Philadelphia, 1851); “Isaac T. Hopper, a True Life” (1853); “The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages,” an ambitious work, showing great diligence, but containing much that is inaccurate (3 volumes, New York, 1855); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset” (1864); the “Freedman's Book” (1865); “Miria, a Romance of the Republic” (1867); and “Aspirations of the World” (1878). A volume of Mrs. Child's letters, with an introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips, was published after her death (Boston, 1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 603-604. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 67:

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA FRANCIS (February 11, 1802-October 20, 1880), author, abolitionist; was descended from Richard Francis, who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. Her paternal grandfather, a weaver, fought at Concord in 1775; her father, Convers Francis, a baker, of West Cambridge and Medford, Massachusetts, was a strong character, a reader, and a foe of slavery; her mother, Susannah Rand, had "a spirit busy in doing good." Lydia, youngest of six children, was born in Medford, where she attended the public schools and for one year a seminary; but her chief mental stimulus in youth came from her brother Convers, a Unitarian clergyman and later a professor in the Harvard Divinity School. As an author she was precocious, publishing two popular novels in 1824 and 1825-Hobomok, on early Salem and Plymouth, and The Rebels, or, Boston before the Revolution. From 1825 to 1828 she had a private school in Watertown, Massachusetts, and in 1826 started Juvenile Miscellany, a bi-monthly magazine. She married David Lee Child [q.v.], a Boston lawyer, in October 1828. They soon joined the abolitionists, and in 1833 Mrs. Child threw a bomb into the pro-slavery camps North and South, with An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. The little book made many converts; Channing, Sumner, Higginson, and other prominent opponents of slavery, acknowledged its influence on them then or later. It also aroused intense hostility: the sale of Mrs. Child's other books fell off badly, and Juvenile Miscellany died in 1834; the Boston Atheneum cancelled her free membership. But she kept on undaunted, attacking slavery in work after work, and attending tumultuous abolition meetings; in old age she remembered "collaring and pulling away a man who was shaking his fist in Mr. Phillips's face at a Music Hall mob-and her surprise when he tumbled down." From 1841 to 1849 she, with for a time the assistance of her husband, edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a New York weekly newspaper. In 1852 they retired to a small farm she had inherited in Weyland, Massachusetts, henceforth their home. Their interest in public affairs remained as keen as ever: out of a modest income they gave liberally to the anti-slavery cause; and when John Brown lay wounded and in prison, after Harper's Ferry, Mrs. Child asked the governor for permission to come to Virginia and nurse him. The ensuing correspondence, including a fiery letter from a Southern lady, Mrs. Mason, and a calm survey of slavery by Mrs. Child, was published in 1860 in pamphlet form as Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Governor Wise and Mrs. Mason of Virginia, and reached a circulation of 300,000 copies. During the Civil War she was dissatisfied because the abolition of slavery was not made the prime issue, and even the Emancipation Proclamation disappointed her as "merely a war measure"; but after. Lincoln's reelection she wrote, "I have constantly gone on liking him better and better." Her later life was uneventful; she survived her husband six years, remaining intellectually alert to the end.

Mrs. Child had a wholesome diversity of interests, best shown by her vivacious private correspondence and by her Letters from New York (2 volumes, 1843, 1845). "My natural inclinations," he said, "drew me much more strongly toward literature and the arts than toward reform." Beauty remained a life-long passion; ''I hang prisms in my windows," she wrote in old age, "to fill the room with rainbows." Her early novels, however, show a strong didactic bent; and The First Settlers of New England (1829), written before she became an abolitionist, contains the germs of her later ideas. At all events American literature lost little by her interest in reforms, for her creative gift was not great. Her stories and poems for children are notable only as pioneer work; some of her tales and sketches for adult readers have fanciful beauty or realistic force, but all lack the final touch; and even her later novels (Philothea, 1836, on the Age of Pericles; A Romance of the Republic, 1867, on slavery and the Civil War) are weak in structure and character-drawing. Mysticism and rationalism, which ran parallel in her nature, early freed her from accepted creeds. Although she never went wholly over into spiritualism, she believed in second sight and saw a profound dualism in all things. Her Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages (3 volumes, 1855) lacks a basis of adequate scholarship, but was for its time a remarkable attempt to see Christianity in its relation to other religions. Her practical books show great good sense and some advanced ideas. The Frugal Housewife (1829), packed with useful information and shrewd hints to thrift, seems the work of a female Franklin; it went to a twentieth edition in seven years. The Mother's Book (1831) urged that parents frankly instruct their children on "delicate subjects." Mrs. Child's writings on slavery are compounds of emotional idealism, cool logic, historical and economical truth, and anthropological error. She assumes that negroes and whites differ merely in "complexion," and infers an ancient negro civilization from Homer's reference to "the blameless Ethiopians." The Freedmen's Book (1865) abounds in hopeful counsels of perfection, including a daily cold tub and rub. The Appeal sometimes pictures appalling cruelties without names of witnesses or details of time and place, and the chapter on the slave trade is irrelevant in a discussion of domestic slavery as it then was; yet the style is strong, the tone calm, and the arguments against the moral and economic evils of slavery unanswerable. The crushing reply to Mrs. Mason avoids the faults of the Appeal, and is drawn largely from the laws of the Southern states. The Right Way the Safe Way (1860) is a solid piece of work, based on detailed knowledge of emancipation in the British West Indies. The best parts of Mrs. Child's writings on slavery make credible Whittier's statement: "She was wise in counsel; and men like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."

[The chief sources of information about Mrs. Child are the following: Elias Child, Genealogy Child, Childs and Chi/de Families (1881); Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883), with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier, Wendell Phillips's remarks at her funeral, a portrait of her at sixty-three, and a list of her works; Letters from New York (2 volumes, 1843, 1845); a biographical sketch by T. W. Higginson in Contemporaries (1899), reprinted with a few changes from Eminent Women of the Age (1869); T. W. Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898) and Letters and Journals (1921); G. T. Curtis, "Reminiscences of N. P. Willis and Lydia Maria Child," in Harper's Magazine, October 1890. Estimates of her work and personality may be found in,-the Atlantic, December 1882, and the New York Nation, January 25, 1883. Her more important works, in addition to those named above, are the following: Biographies of Lady Russell and Madame Guion (1832); Biographies of Madame de Stael and Madame Roland (1832); Good Wives (1833); History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (2 volumes, 1835); The Oasis (1834), an anti-slavery miscellany; Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery (1835); The Evils of Slavery and the Cure of Slavery (1836), in part a compilation of statements by Southerners; Fact and Fiction (1846), containing her best story, "The Children of Mount Ida"; Isaac T. Hopper (1853), life of a Quaker Abolitionist; Autumnal Leaves; Tales and Sketches in Prose and Rhyme (1857); Aspirations of the World (1878), selections from the religious books of the world, with introduction by Mrs. Child.]

W.C.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 603-604:

CHILD, Lydia Maria, author, born in Medford, Massachusetts, 11 February, 1802; died in Wayland, Massachusetts, 20 October, 1880, was descended from Richard Francis, who came from England and settled in Cambridge in 1636. Miss Francis attended the common schools, and studied with her brother, Reverend Convers Francis, D. D., afterward professor in the divinity-school at Cambridge. When seventeen years of age she chanced to read an article in the “North American Review,” discussing the field offered to the novelist by early New England history. Although she had never thought of becoming an author, she immediately wrote the first chapter of a novel entitled “Hobomok,” and, encouraged by her brother's commendation, finished it in six weeks, and published it (Cambridge, 1821). From this time until her death she wrote continually. She had taught for one year in a seminary in Medford, Massachusetts, and kept a private school in Watertown, Massachusetts, from 1824 till 1828, when she was married. She began, in 1826, the publication of the “Juvenile Miscellany,” the first monthly periodical for children issued in the United States, and supervised it for eight years. In 1831 both Mr. and Mrs. Child became deeply interested in the subject of slavery, through the writings and the personal influence of William Lloyd Garrison. Mrs. Child's “Appeal for that Class of Americans called African” (Boston, 1833) was the first anti-slavery work printed in America in book-form, and was followed by several smaller works on the same subject. The “Appeal” attracted much attention, and Dr. Channing, who attributed to it part of his interest in the slavery question, walked from Boston to Roxbury to thank Mrs. Child for the book. She had to endure social ostracism, but from this time was a conspicuous champion of anti-slavery. On the establishment by the American anti-slavery society of the “National Anti-Slavery Standard” in New York city, in 1840, she became its editor, and conducted it till 1843, when her husband took the place of editor-in-chief, and she acted as his assistant till May, 1844. During her stay in New York, Mrs. Child was an inmate of the family of Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist. After leaving New York, Mr. and Mrs. Child settled in Wayland, Massachusetts, where they spent the rest of their life. In 1859 Mrs. Child wrote a letter of sympathy to John Brown, then a prisoner at Harper's Ferry, offering her services as a nurse, and enclosing the letter in one to Governor Wise. Brown replied, declining her offer, but asking her to aid his family, which she did. She also received a letter of courteous rebuke from Governor Wise, and a singular epistle from the wife of Senator Mason, author of the fugitive slave law, threatening her with future damnation. She replied to both in her best vein, and the whole series of letters was published in pamphlet-form (Boston, 1860), and had a circulation of 300,000. Mrs. Child's anti-slavery writings contributed in no slight degree to the formation of public sentiment on the subject. During her later years she contributed freely to aid the national soldiers in the civil war, and afterward to help the freedmen. Wendell Phillips, in his address at Mrs. Child's funeral, thus delineated her character: “She was the kind of woman one would choose to represent woman's entrance into broader life. Modest, womanly, sincere, solid, real, loyal, to be trusted, equal to affairs, and yet above them; a companion with the password of every science and all literature.” Mrs. Child's numerous books, published during a period of half a century, include, besides the works already mentioned, “The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution,” a novel containing an imaginary speech of James Otis, and a sermon by Whitefield, both of which were received by many people as genuine (Boston, 1822); “The First Settlers of New England” (1829); “The American Frugal Housewife,” a book of kitchen economy and directions (1829; 33d ed., 1855); “The Mother's Book,” “The Girl's Own Book,” and the “Coronal,” a collection of verses (1831); “The Ladies' Family Library,” a series of biographies (5 vols., 1832-'5); “Philothea,” a romance of Greece in the days of Pericles (1835); “Letters from New York,” written to the Boston “Courier” (2 vols., 1843-'5); “Flowers for Children” (3 vols., 1844-'6); “Fact and Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (Philadelphia, 1851); “Isaac T. Hopper, a True Life” (1853); “The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages,” an ambitious work, showing great diligence, but containing much that is inaccurate (3 vols., New York, 1855); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset” (1864); the “Freedman's Book” (1865); “Miria, a Romance of the Republic” (1867); and “Aspirations of the World” (1878). A volume of Mrs. Child's letters, with an introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips, was published after her death (Boston, 1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 603-604. 


CHILDS, William H., New York, abolitionist leader, officer, Liberty Party, June 1848.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


CHON, Katherine, abolitionist.


Christiancy, Isaac Peckham, born 1812, Johnstown, New York. U.S. Senator, in 1848 Peckham was a delegate to the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention, having left the Democratic Party on the question of slavery. He was a member of the state senate from 1850 till 1852, and in the latter year was the Free-Soil candidate for governor.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 611)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, senator, born in Johnstown (now Bleecker), New York, 12 March, 1812. He was educated at the academies of Kingsborough and Ovid, New York, and when thirteen years old became the main support of his father's family. After teaching school he studied law with John Maynard till 1836, when he moved to Monroe, Michigan, and, on the completion of his law studies, was admitted to the bar. He was prosecuting attorney for Monroe county from 1841 till 1846, and in 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention, having left the Democratic Party on the question of slavery. He was a member of the state senate from 1850 till 1852, and in the latter year was the Free-Soil candidate for governor. He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party in Michigan, and was a delegate to its first national convention in Philadelphia in 1856. He purchased the Monroe “Commercial” in 1857, and became its editor, and in the same year was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. Senator. He was elected a judge of the State supreme court in 1857, re-elected in 1865 and 1873, both times without opposition, and became chief justice in January, 1872. He was elected U. S. Senator in 1875, and, resigning in February, 1879, on account of ill health, was sent as minister to Peru, where he remained for two years. During the Civil War Judge Christiancy was for a time on the staff of General Custer and that of General A. A. Humphreys. His judicial opinions, which are to be found in the “Michigan Reports” from volumes 5 to 31, inclusive, contain the best work of his life. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 611.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 611:

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, senator, born in Johnstown (now Bleecker), New York, 12 March, 1812. He was educated at the academies of Kingsborough and Ovid, New York, and when thirteen years old became the main support of his father's family. After teaching school he studied law with John Maynard till 1836, when he removed to Monroe, Mich., and, on the completion of his law studies, was admitted to the bar. He was prosecuting attorney for Monroe county from 1841 till 1846, and in 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo free-soil convention, having left the democratic party on the question of slavery. He was a member of the state senate from 1850 till 1852, and in the latter year was the free-soil candidate for governor. He was one of the founders of the republican party in Michigan, and was a delegate to its first national convention in Philadelphia in 1856. He purchased the Monroe “Commercial” in 1857, and became its editor, and in the same year was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. senator. He was elected a judge of the State supreme court in 1857, re-elected in 1865 and 1873, both times without opposition, and became chief justice in January, 1872. He was elected U. S. senator in 1875, and, resigning in February, 1879, on account of ill health, was sent as minister to Peru, where he remained for two years. During the civil war Judge Christiancy was for a time on the staff of General Custer and that of General A. A. Humphreys. His judicial opinions, which are to be found in the “Michigan Reports” from volumes 5 to 31, inclusive, contain the best work of his life. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CHRISTY, David, born 1802, abolitionist.

(Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 2, pt. 2, p. 97)


CHURCH, Jefferson, abolitionist, Springfield, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1851-53, Vice President.


CHURCH, William, abolitionist, New York, New York, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1840-41.


CHURCHMAN, Mordecai, abolitionist, officer of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 131)


CINQUE, born circa 1800, Caw-Mendi, Africa.

Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888:

CINQUE, chief of the Mendi Africans, born in Caw-Mendi, Africa, about 1800. In the spring of 1839 he was captured by slave-traders, with a large company of his countrymen and women, and taken to Havana, Cuba. Fifty-two of them were purchased by Montes and Ruiz, two Cuban planters, and shipped for a port on the southern coast of Cuba, on the schooner “Amistad.” Cinque organized a plan for regaining the freedom of the captives, and, when four days out from Havana, gave the prearranged signal for revolt. The captain of the schooner was killed with one of his crew, and two others were wounded in the fight that followed, while the rest surrendered. The passengers and crew were treated kindly and sent ashore; but Montes and Ruiz; the nominal owners, were retained on board and given to understand that they must navigate the vessel to Africa. The Spaniards managed to steer northward by night and during foggy weather, and after a few days sighted Montauk Point, L. I., where they anchored, and were presently taken in charge by the U. S. coast survey schooner “Washington,” whose commander, Lieut. Gedney, claimed salvage for vessel and cargo, Montes and Ruiz, through the Spanish minister, claimed the Africans as their property. The whole company was sent to Farmington, Connecticut, where quarters were provided for them pending the decision of the courts. The philanthropists of New England took an active interest in the case, engaged Roger Sherman Baldwin and other eminent lawyers as counsel, and began energetically to educate and convert the heathen thus brought to their doors. It is noteworthy that the residents of the little village where this strange colony was planted soon outgrew their dread of the Africans, and during the months of their stay learned to regard them without apprehension. Cinque exercised a stern rule over them, and would permit no transgression. Many of them, including their chief, learned to read and write a little, and acquired some ideas of civilization. In the mean time the case came up before the U. S. district court for the state of Connecticut, the U. S. district attorney appearing on behalf of Montes and Ruiz as well as of the Spanish minister. Never before had the country been so sharply divided on a question touching slavery. All trials for violation of the law prohibiting the slave-trade had until this time been held before southern courts, and no one had been convicted. The pro-slavery party regarded with natural apprehension the result of such a trial on the soil of a free state. Mr. John Quincy Adams, who was the anti-slavery leader in the house of representatives at the time, introduced resolutions calling on the president to communicate to congress the process or authority by which these Africans, charged with no crime, were kept in custody. Further than this, it was held by the advanced anti-slavery leaders that slavery and slave-dealing constitute a perpetual war between the enslaver and the enslaved. They alleged the right of persons held as were the “‘Amistad’ captives,” not only to overpower their guards whenever they could do so, but to hold them as prisoners and the ship and cargo as their lawful prize. They held that the U. S. government had no right to interfere between the Africans and the Cuban planters, and that the former had a valid claim to the ship and her cargo. After a protracted investigation the Connecticut court decided against the libellants, who promptly appealed to the U. S. supreme court. The venerable John Quincy Adams appeared with Mr. Baldwin as counsel. The progress of the trial was watched with intense interest by the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions throughout the country. The court eventually declared in substance that these Africans were born free, that they had never been legally held as slaves, and that they were amenable to no punishment for anything they had done. They were sent back to their native land at the public expense, and a Mendi mission was established and is still maintained for their benefit by the American missionary association not far from Sierra Leone. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.



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

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.