Nea-New: Neal through Newton

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.


NEAL, Elizabeth, delegate to the (Garrisonian) Anti-Slavery Society, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, Eastern Branch, Philadelphia.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 286)


NEAL, Isaac, 1793-1844, theologian, teacher, writer, American Colonization Society.

Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888:

NEAL, Isaac, clergyman, born in Bedford, New Hampshire, in 1793; died in Amherst, Massachusetts, 28 April, 1844, was graduated at Yale in 1814. He studied theology, was ordained and became a teacher at the asylum for the deaf and dumb in Hartford, Connecticut, and afterward labored as a missionary among the colored people in Washington, D. C., and other southern cities, being employed by the American colonization society. He was proficient in mathematics and the natural sciences, and had a talent for mechanics, one of his inventions being an air-tight stove. He was a voluminous writer for the newspaper and periodical press, contributing forty-five letters signed “Hampden” to the New York “Commercial Advertiser,” and eighty letters over the signature of “Timoleon” to the Boston “Courier.” Among his unpublished manuscripts is a commentary on the books of “Daniel” and “Revelation.” Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


NEAL, John, 1793-1876, Portland, Maine, author, activist, women’s rights activist, anti-capital punishment activist.  Secretary of the Portland, Maine, American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 484; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 398; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 219-220)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 484:

NEAL, John, author, born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. (now Portland, Maine), 25 August, 1793; died there, 21 June, 1876. He was of English descent, and for two generations of Quaker stock on both sides. He left school at twelve years of age, but educated himself by continuous reading, which he systematically pursued through life. Neal was variously employed as shop-boy, accountant, and salesman, and then taught penmanship, drawing, and painting, though he was without experience. Later he established himself in the dry-goods trade in Boston, and then he formed a partnership in Baltimore with John Pierpont, the poet. This firm failed in trade in 1816, and dissolved, taking out of the business only a warm and life-long friendship. Neal then studied law in Baltimore, was a member of the Delphian club of that city, famous for its wits, and supported himself by his pen, copying, indexing, and writing poems, novels, essays, and criticisms for the press. His first productions appeared in the “Portico” magazine. He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1819, and practised his profession. In 1823 he sailed for England, as he said, “to answer on the spot the question ‘Who reads an American book?’” As a pioneer in American literature his success at home and abroad was a surprise to all. Preceding James Fenimore Cooper by several years, while Nathaniel Hawthorne was yet a boy and his compatriot, Charles Brockden Brown, less widely known or less quickly accepted, Neal attracted and compelled attention to American topics and American writings at a time when English literature was regarded as a monopoly of Great Britain. He was the first American contributor to the English and Scotch quarterlies. His sketches of the five American presidents and the five candidates for the presidency in “Blackwood’s,” and a series of like articles on American politics and customs, won for the young author reputation and money. At this time, though in need of money and, as he said, “hopelessly in debt, but hopeful,” he spent the whole of his first “Blackwood” check for two gold pencils that caught his eye in a shop-window, and sent one to his twin sister, Rachel, who was then teaching school in Portland. His writings attracted the notice of Jeremy Bentham, who invited and easily persuaded “Yankee Neal” to come and live with him as one of his students and secretaries, where various literary celebrities were to be met. In 1827 Neal returned to the United States, intending to resume the practice of law in Baltimore, but, in consequence of opposition and threatened persecution from his fellow-townsmen when he visited his sister, he characteristically sent for his law-library and opened his offices in his native place. On 1 January, 1828, he began his editorship of “The Yankee,” and for half a century was a frequent but irregular contributor to most of the magazines and newspapers. He wrote much of what is known as Paul Allen’s “History of the American Revolution” in a wonderfully short time, and his pen remained active through life.
He was an earnest opponent of capital punishment, more especially of public executions, and he was the first to advocate in 1838, in a Fourth-of-July oration, the right of woman suffrage. He was abstemiously temperate, yet he wrote in opposition to the Maine liquor law. He was a firm believer in physical training, and established the first gymnasium in this country, copied from the foreign models, and, being an expert gymnast, horseman, swordsman, and boxer, he established and taught classes of young men, and even in his last years kept up his own physical exercise as his only medicine. Phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism one after another, attracted his attention and examination, and counted him as among their fairest and least prejudiced investigators. With a quick eye and ready sympathy he sought out, welcomed, and encouraged young men, or gently and successfully discouraged those that afterward were grateful for his advice. Edgar A. Poe received his first encouragement from Mr. Neal. With the instincts of a born journalist, he dashed off novels with great rapidity, while, in the stern spirit of a reformer, he edited forgotten newspapers. He fulminated against fleeting and frivolous opinions, and whipped into a light and airy froth some of the graver issues of life. He was read out of the Society of Friends in his youth, as he says, “for knocking a man head over heels, for writing a tragedy, for paying a militia fine, and for desiring to be turned out whether or no,” but he became late in life an earnest Christian, uniting with the church in 1850. His works include “Keep Cool” (2 vols., Baltimore, 1817); “Niagara” (1819); “Goldan” (1819); “Errata” (2 vols., New York, 1823); “Randolph” (1823); “Seventy-Six” (2 vols., Baltimore, 1823); “Logan” (4 vols., London, 1823); “Brother Jonathan” (3 vols., 1825); “Rachel Dyer” (Portland, 1828); “Principles of Legislation,” translated from the manuscript of Jeremy Bentham, with biographies of Bentham and Pierre Dumont (Boston, 1830); “The Down Easters” (2 vols., New York, 1833); “One Word More” (Portland, 1854); “True Womanhood” (Boston, 1859); “Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life” (1869); and “Great Mysteries and Little Plagues” (1870). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


NEALL, Daniel, Jr., Society of Friends, Quaker, member of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 118, 154, 156; Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, pp. 286, 292-293)


NEALL, Daniel, Society of Friends, Quaker, member of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 118, 154, 156)


NEALL, Elizabeth, abolitionist, Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Officer, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (PASS).  Attended World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, 1840.  Wife of abolitionist Daniel Neall.  

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, pp. 84, 301-302, 307, 316, 332-333)


NEALL, Rebecca Bunker, abolitionist, member of the New England Non-Resistance Society

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, pp. 292-293)


NEEDLES, Edward, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 153)

NEEDLES, John, Baltimore, Maryland, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-1840, 1840-4182.


NEEDLES, Mary, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, pp. 74, 80)


NELL, Lavinia, African American, abolitionist

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, p. 58n40)


NELL, Louisa, African American, abolitionist

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, 1994, p. 58n40)


NELL, William Cooper, 1816-1874, African American, abolitionist leader, author, civil rights activist, community leader.  Wrote Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812.  First African American to be appointed a clerk in the U.S. Post Office.  Active in equal rights for African American school children in Boston, Massachusetts. 

(Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 98, 105, 116, 124, 126, 150, 157, 164, 165, 166, 171-181, 291n24, 295, 337; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 54; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 489; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 413; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 8, p. 429)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 413:

NELL, WILLIAM COOPER (December 20, 1816-May 25, 1874), negro writer, was born in Boston. He was the son of William G. and Louisa M. Nell, the latter a native of Brookline, Massachusetts, and the former of Charleston, South Carolina. The father, a tailor by trade, was steward on the ship General Gadsden when she escaped from the British brig Recruit in July 1812, and became a member of the General Colored Association of Massachusetts in 1826. Young Nell attended one of the separate primary schools, which had been established for negro children in Boston in 1820, and subsequently graduated with honors from the Smith School, of grammar grade, opened in 1835. He looked on while the white children were given prizes which he, although of equal scholarship, was debarred from receiving on account of his color.

This incident made a deep impression on him and henceforth he worked unceasingly for equal school rights to all children irrespective of the color of their skins. He read law for a time in the office of William I. Bowditch but, on the advice of Wendell Phillips, refrained from applying for admission to the bar, an act that would have entailed the taking of an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, which, in Phillips' opinion, compromised with the slave power. Nell then became affiliated with the antislavery movement as an organizer of meetings, at some of which he spoke acceptably. He also made himself useful by carefully preserving data and documents that would be helpful to the cause. In 1840 his name headed the list of signers of the first petition presented to the Massachusetts legislature asking for the opening of the public schools to negro children. For many years thereafter he was to agitate this reform, since it was not until April 28, 1855, that a law was passed abolishing the separate schools for colored children.

In the meantime he had developed into a journalist and author. During 1851 he assisted Frederick Douglass [q.v.] in the publication at Rochester, New York, of the North Star. In May of the same year he issued a pamphlet entitled Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. This was followed in 1855- by a larger volume, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, to which Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an introduction. In this book Nell paid a tribute to Crispus Attucks [q.v.], the first martyr of the Revolution, for whom, on March 5, 1851, he had unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to erect a monument. In it he also dwelt on the injustice of making only free white persons eligible for positions in the federal service. When, however, John G. Palfrey was named postmaster of Boston in 1861 he ignored this restriction and appointed Nell one of his clerks; thus he became the first colored man to hold a post under the federal government. This position he filled until the time of his death. A wife survived him.

[William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: the Story, of His Life, Told by His Children (4 volumes, 1885-89); S. J. May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (1869); W.W. Brown, The Rising Sun (1874); John Daniels, In Freedom's Birthplace (1914); Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author: Her Development in America (1931); Liberator, December 18, 1846, February II, 1848; C. G. Woodson, The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis I8oo-186o (1926); Boston Daily Globe, May 26, 1874; Boston Transcript, May 26, 29, 1874.]

H. G. V.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 489:

NELL, William Cooper, author, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 20 December, 1816; died there, 25 May, 1874. He was of African descent. He was graduated at Boston grammar-school, winning a medal for scholarship, read law with William I. Bowditch, and was prepared for admission to the bar, but by advice of Wendell Phillips would not take the oath of allegiance to the constitution with slavery. He became a clerk in the Boston post-office in 1861, being the first colored man to hold a post under the National government, and remained there till his death. Mr. Nell was active in his efforts for the improvement of his race, obtaining equal school privileges for the colored youth of Boston, and forming many literary societies. Besides several pamphlets, he published “Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776-1812”; and “Colored Patriots of the American Revolution,” with an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston, 1855).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 489.


NELSON, David, Quincy, Illinois, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS).


NELSON, David, 1793-1844, Tennessee, abolitionist leader, Army surgeon, clergyman.  Pastor in the Presbyterian Church, Danville, Kentucky, in 1828.  President of Marion College, Palmyra, Missouri.  Advocate of compensated emancipation. Agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 491; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 414; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 92, 135, 199, 223; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 35; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 617). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 414:

NELSON, DAVID (September 24, 1793-October 17, 1844), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, abolitionist, was born near Jonesboro, Tennessee, one of a family of Presbyterian ministers. His parents, Henry and Anna (Kelsey) Nelson, of English and Scotch extraction respectively, had migrated to East Tennessee from Rockbridge County, Virginia. David studied under the Reverend Samuel Doak [q. v.] at Washington College, two miles from his home. Upon his graduation at the age of sixteen he determined to become a physician, and after an apprenticeship to Dr. Ephraim McDowell [q.v.] at Danville, Kentucky, he went to Philadelphia for further study. He began his active practice as surgeon in the War of 1812 with an expeditionary force that invaded Canada, and later served with Andrew Jackson's army in Alabama and Florida. After peace was declared he returned to Jonesboro, and during the ensuing decade built up a lucrative practice in his profession.

While studying medicine, Nelson had been captured by the naturalistic doctrines then rife among members of his profession, and had become "an honest, unreflecting deist." He was big, fun-loving, and attractive; he drank and played cards to an extent distressing to his family, and after settling in Jonesboro, he eloped at the age of twenty-two with the charming young daughter of David Deaderick, a prominent merchant. She appears to have been sincerely religious, however, and he r influence, together with several years of reflection upon his deistical principles, brought him back to the Presbyterian Church. His return from deism to Calvinism he later recorded in a powerful tract, The Cause and Cure of Infidelity, written in 1836, of which more than a hundred thousand copies were distributed by the American Tract Society, and many thousands more by tract societies in England. with time his convictions deepened; in April 1825 he was licensed to preach by the Abingdon Presbytery, and six months later he gave up his medical practice and was ordained as an evangelist. From 1827 to 1829 he was one of the editors of the Calvinistic Magazine and in 1828 he succeeded his brother, Samuel Kelsey Nelson, as pastor of the Presbyterian church at Danville, Kentucky. Though careless in dress and eccentric in manner, he was a pulpit orator of great ability (R. J. Breckinridge, in Sprague, post, p. 687) and became one of the notable preachers of his day in his denomination.

In 1831 he founded and became president of Marion College, near Palmyra, Missouri, "for the training of pious young men," converts of the Great Revival of 1830. The next year the "modern abolition" movement invaded the Presbyterian Church in the West. At Western Reserve College, Theodore D. Weld, abolition revivalist extraordinary, started among the faculty an antislavery discussion whose repercussions were heard throughout the Western Reserve. The next year among the students at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati he inspired a debate on slavery that converted the student body and disrupted the school. At St. Louis, Missouri, Elijah P. Lovejoy [q.v.] echoed the perilous agitation in the columns of the St. Louis Observer, the Presbyterian paper for the Far West. Nelson's convictions had led him, before he went to Missouri, to free his own slaves, and now, surrounded as he was by the agitation, he could no.t remain unmoved: at the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1835, in Pittsburgh, Theodore Weld found him ready for the abolition gospel. Together with more than one-fourth of his fellow delegates, he "pledged himself openly to the Cause" (Emancipator, Boston, June 16, 1835).

Nelson was no faint-hearted reformer. A month after his return to Marion College he accepted a regular agency from the American Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1836, from the pulpit of his Presbyterian church in Palmyra, he called upon the slave-holders of his congregation to repent their sins and free their slaves. He was straightway expelled from Marion College and from Missouri, not escaping mob violence on the way, and the faculty of Marion College published a manifesto, nervously asseverating their loyalty to the institutions of the community. At Quincy, Illinois, he now founded a new college, a "manual labour institution," where students were to support themselves by building their own dwellings and raising food for their sustenance on the college farm. The school did not survive its first year, and Nelson again took up agency work for the American Anti-Slavery Society. As anti-slavery lecturer in western Illinois, he was only moderately successful, partly on account of increasing disability from epilepsy. Intermittently he labored for the slave until 1840, when his health gave way completely. He died at Oakland, Illinois, four years later.

[A short biography of Nelson is the second American edition (n.d.) of his Cause and Cure of Infidelity; and a biographical sketch, with reminiscences of several colleagues, appears in W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume IV (1858). Contemporary events are recorded in the Calvinistic Magazine, 1827-28; St. Louis Observer, 1835-36; Alton Observer, 1837; Philanthropist, 1836-40; and Minutes of the Agency Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-40. An obituary appears in Presbyterian of the West (Springfield, Ohio), November 21, 1844. D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (1898).]

G.H.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 491:

NELSON, David, clergyman, born near Jonesborough, Tennessee, 24 September, 1793; died in Oakland, Illinois, 17 October, 1844. He was educated at Washington college, Virginia, and studied medicine at Danville, Kentucky, and Philadelphia, where he was graduated. He went to Canada with a Kentucky regiment as surgeon in the war of 1812, subsequently accompanied the army of General Andrew Jackson to Alabama and Florida, and after the establishment of peace settled in practice in Jonesborough. He had early in life made a profession of religion, but had relapsed into infidelity. Becoming convinced anew of the truth of Christianity, he left a lucrative professional career to enter the Presbyterian ministry, and was licensed in April, 1825. He preached for nearly three years in Tennessee, and at the same time was connected with the “Calvinistic Magazine” at Rogersville. In 1828 he succeeded his brother Samuel as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Danville, Kentucky, and in 1830 he removed to Missouri and established Marion college, twelve miles from Palmyra, of which he became president. In 1836, in consequence of the slavery question, Dr. Nelson, who was an ardent advocate of emancipation, removed to the neighborhood of Quincy, Illinois, and established an institute for the education of young men. In addition to articles for the religious press, he published “Cause and Cure of Infidelity” (New York, 1836), which has been republished in London and elsewhere. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 491.


NELSON, Homer A., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


NELSON, Hugh, 1768-1836, Virginia, U.S. Congressman, diplomat, jurist.  Vice-President of Richmond, Virginia, auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  Son of Virginia Governor Thomas Nelson. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 492; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 416; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 107)


NELSON, Thomas Henry (c. 1823-March 14, 1896), lawyer, diplomat. In his active law practice in western Indiana and eastern Illinois he met as a legal opponent, and presently as a friend, Abraham Lincoln. He became a leader of the Whig party, and was one of the founders of the Republican party in the Middle West. Several times he was a delegate to state and national conventions.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 424-425:

NELSON, THOMAS HENRY (c. 1823-March 14, 1896), lawyer, diplomat, was born near Maysville, Kentucky, an elder brother of William Nelson [q.v.], and the son of Dr. Thomas W. Nelson and Frances (Doniphan) Nelson of Mason County, Kentucky, in whose home the Clays, the Crittendens, and other members of the old Kentucky aristocracy were familiar guests. After completing his studies in the Maysville schools, he went in 1844 to Rockville, Indiana, where he studied and practised law for six years, and then moved to Terre Haute, which became his permanent home. In 1855 he formed a law partnership with Abram Adams Hammond, who afterward became governor of Indiana, and in 1856 a partnership with Isaac N. Pierce. In his active law practice in western Indiana and eastern Illinois he met as a legal opponent, and presently as a friend, Abraham Lincoln. He became a leader of the Whig party, and was one of the founders of the Republican party in the Middle West. Several times he was a delegate to state and national conventions. Only once, however, was he a candidate for a public office: in 1860 he made a joint canvass with Daniel W. Voorhees in a campaign for Congress, and his rival won the election. On June 1, 1861, Nelson was appointed minister to Chile by his old friend Lincoln.

Tall and soldierly in bearing, distinguished in appearance, vigorous in action, a brilliant and compelling orator, skilful in public affairs, gifted with a contagious friendliness, he exerted his best efforts to win the friendship of Chile for the United States, and was notably successful, even while he was bringing American claims outstanding against Chile to a speedy and satisfactory settlement. Perhaps the high point of Chilean enthusiasm for Nelson was reached after the terrible fire in the Church of Campaign in Santiago on December 8, 1863, in which about 2,000 persons perished. On this occasion Nelson, with other Americans, showed great heroism in rescuing several individuals. The people of Santiago devoted the following Fourth of July to a celebration to do him honor. In 1865, when hostilities broke out between Chile and Spain, Chile believed that the United States would become her ally. Nelson labored tirelessly to bring about a peaceful settlement between the two warring countries, but was not authorized to involve the United States as a belligerent. The people of Chile were much disappointed, even resentful, but the Minister's policy of neutrality was subsequently indorsed by the State Department.

Returning to the United States in 1866, he campaigned vigorously in favor of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In 1869 he was appointed minister to Mexico, and served there ably and faithfully until 1873, although no outstanding incident marked this period of service. The death of his wife, Elizabeth (Key) Nelson, in Mexico City in 1872 was a severe blow to him. The daughter of Colonel Marshall Key, a Kentucky political leader, she was possessed of great charm, intelligence, and many accomplishments, and since her marriage in 1844 had taken an important part in her husband's career. (See the article on Mrs. Nelson written by William Cullen Bryant, in the Annual Cyclopedia for 1872.) After his resignation from the diplomatic service, Nelson returned to Terre Haute, where he again practise d law and took a prominent part in politics. He died there in 1896, survived by two of his six children.

[A Biography History of Eminent and Self-Made Men of the State of Indiana (1880), volume II; H. C. Bradsby, History of Vigo County, Indiana, with Biographical Selections (1891); Osgood Hardy, "When the Monroe Doctrine Was Forgotten," in Chile (New York), March 1930; C. C. Oakey, Greater Terre Haute and Vigo County (1908), volume I; U. S . Department of State, Diplomatic Correspondence, Chile, volumes XVIII-XXIII, Mexico, volumes XXXVIX LVIII; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U.S., 1863 (pt. 2), 1864 (pt. 4), 1866 (pt. 2), 1870, 1871, 1872 (pt. 1), 1873 (pt. 1); Thomas H. Nelson, Official Letter Books, 1861-65 (MSS.), MSS. Div., Library of Congress; "Report and Accompanying Documents ... on the Relations of the United States with Mexico," House Report No.701, 45 Congress, 2 Session; F. F. Hamilton, Ancestral Lines of the Doniphan, Frazee, and Hamilton Families (1928); Sunday Journal (Indianapolis), March 15, 1896. Date of birth, given in secondary accounts as August 12, 1824, is incompatible with date of September 27, 1824, given for birth of his brother William.]

I. L. T.


NESMITH, James Willis, 1820-1885, jurist, lawyer.  U.S. Senator from Oregon.  U.S. Senator 1861-1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 494-495; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 430-431; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 430-431:

NESMITH, JAMES WILLIS (July 23, 1820- June 17, 1885),. pioneer, lawyer, soldier, legislator, was born in New Brunswick, Canada, while his parents were visiting there. Descended from James Nesmith, a Scotch-Irish founder of Londonderry, New Hampshire, he was the son of William Morrison Nesmith, of Washington County, Maine, and Harriet Willis, who died before he was a year old. His father's extensive holdings in New Brunswick were destroyed in 1825 by a forest fire from which the family barely escaped, the step-mother dying from resulting exposure. James then lived with various relatives in New England, learning at a tender age to earn his own living. Winters he attended common-schools desultorily, and as a strapping boy worked near Cincinnati for some years where he had his last chance at schooling. But he loved books, mastered their contents almost without effort, and retained what he had learned, an aspiring spirit in a superb body. At seventeen or eighteen he drifted to Missouri, then to western Iowa, and spent the season of 1842 working as a carpenter at Fort Scott, Kansas. From there he joined the Great Emigration of 1843 which established the Oregon colony. He was a natural leader of men, for he was handsome, rugged, democratic, and fun-loving. He was elected orderly sergeant of the Emigrating Company. In Oregon he read some law, was elected supreme judge under the provisional constitution in 1845, was a member of the legislature later, was commissioned captain of volunteers in the Cayuse War in 1848 and in the Rogue River War of 1853, and colonel in the Yakima War of 1855-56. In the years 1857-59 he was superintendent of Indian affairs.

In 1860, as a Douglas Democrat, he gained one of two United States senatorships owing to a combination of Republicans and Douglas men in the legislature against the Lane followers, Edward Dickinson Baker, Republican, winning the other. Powerful in debate, whole-hearted in defense of the Union, Nesmith was a tower of strength to the Lincoln cause. He took an independent stand as a Democrat to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment and he came to the administration's rescue in several critical situations. But fallible judgment betrayed him into supporting McClellan for the presidency in 1864, and this mistake, together with his ardent friendship for Andrew Johnson, virtually terminated his political course. In 1873, as a purely personal triumph, he was elected to Congress, and in 1876 he had the votes to be chosen senator but lost the prize. He had married in 1846 Pauline Goff and settled on a farm at Rickreall, Oregon, which was thereafter his home, and there he was buried. Though most men loved him, others hated or feared him. Few were indifferent. He nourished bitter animosities, and George H. Williams, for preventing Nesmith's confirmation as minister to Austria, later found himself checkmated by Nesmith when Grant wished to make him chief justice of the Supreme Court. But he was essentially genial, humorous, and kindly.

[There are important Nesmith letters in the Deady Collection, Oregon Historical Society An intimate sketch by Harriet K. McArthur, his daughter, is in the Trans ... Oregon Pioneer Association, 1886. See also: Nesmith's address, Ibid., 1875, "A Reminiscence of the Indian War, 1853," Quarterly Oregon Historical Society, June 1906, and his reports as superintendent of Indian affairs. Other sources include: G. H. Williams and W. D. Fenton, "Political History of Oregon from 1853 to 1865," Quarterly Oregon Historical Society, March, December 1901; W. C. Woodward, "Rise and Early History of Political Parties in Oregon," Quarterly Oregon Historical Society, March 1912; R. C. Clark, History of the Willamette Valley, Oregon (1927), volume I; C. H. Carey, History of Oregon (1922) 

J. S.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 494-495:

NESMITH, James Willis, senator, born in New Brunswick, Canada, 23 July, 1820; died in Polk county, Oregon, 17 June, 1885. He was left an orphan at an early age, received no education, and was forced to earn his livelihood. He removed to the United States, and in 1843 went with the first emigrants to Oregon, where he took an active part in forming the provisional government. He was made a judge in 1845, having studied law during two years in Oregon City. He commanded as captain two expeditions against the Indians during the Cayuse war of 1848, and the Yakima war in 1855. In 1853-'5 he was U. S. marshal for Oregon. He was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for Oregon and Washington territories in 1857, and was elected U. S. senator for the term from 1861 till 1867, serving on the committees on military and Indian affairs, a special committee that was appointed to visit the Indian tribes of the west, and those on commerce and Revolutionary claims. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia union convention of 1866, and subsequently was appointed U. S. minister to Austria, but was not confirmed. While engaged in farming in Oregon he was elected to congress as a Democrat to fill a vacancy, serving from 1 December, 1873, till 3 March, 1875. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 494-495.


DE NEUVILLE, M. Hyde, French Minister to the United States.  Life member of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).


NESMITH, John (August 3, 1793-October 15, 1869), merchant, manufacturer, inventor. As a young man he served a term in the New Hampshire legislature. His interest in the antislavery and temperance movements made him later in life an active member of the newly formed Republican party, and as a presidential elector he voted twice for Abraham Lincoln. In 1862 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 431:

NESMITH, JOHN (August 3, 1793-October 15, 1869), merchant, manufacturer, inventor, was born in the part of Londonderry, New Hampshire, that is now Windham, son of John and Lucy (Martin) Nesmith. The father, a successful farmer, was a grandson of Deacon James Nesmith, one of the Irish. Presbyterians who settled Londonderry. John, after scanty schooling, was apprenticed at fourteen to John Dow, a merchant of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Having learned the business, he returned to Windham where with his brother Thomas (1788-1870) he opened a general store. The two also worked up a profitable trade in buying and selling linen thread, then manufactured in the neighborhood by the Irish descendants. In 1822 they opened a second store, in Derry. They might have continued to be country merchants but in the thirties, attracted by the opportunities developing at Lowell, Massachusetts, they sold their New Hampshire interests and bought the estate on which Judge Edward St. Loe Livermore had lived in the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, and to which he had given the name "Belvidere." There the Nesmiths laid out streets and house lots on which were built many of the most pretentious residences of a fast-growing community. Their own houses were large, solidly constructed, and in good taste. Of the brothers, John Nesmith, positive, aggressive, and yet public-spirited, became the more prominent in business and politics. Educating himself broadly, he studied the sciences and made himself an expert mechanic. He operated woolen-mills at Lowell, Dracut, and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and at Hookset, New Hampshire; he invented machines for shawl fringing and for weaving wire fence; and he inaugurated a system of using several New Hampshire lakes as storage basins to regulate the flow of the Merrimack River. As a member of the Essex Company he was one of the founders of the city of Lawrence.

As a young man he served a term in the New Hampshire legislature. His interest in the antislavery and temperance movements made him later in life an active member of the newly formed Republican party, and as a presidential elector he voted twice for Abraham Lincoln. In 1862 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. Declining a renomination in 1863 he was appointed collector of internal revenue for his district, an office which he held until just before his death. His enthusiasm for the temperance cause was intense and practical. He gave liberally to the local charities. He was interested in the arts of design, a generous patron of the portrait painter Thomas B. Lawson, for several years resident at Lowell. His death was said to be due to his suddenly wearing out after a life of unusual physical and mental activity. Re solutions of the Massachusetts State Temperance Society, of which he was a vice-president, stated: "We tenderly remember his benignant countenance and gentle manly bearing, his form somewhat bowed with the weight of age but his heart aglow with the sensibilities of youth." He had marri ed three times: in June 1825, Mary Ann, daughter of Samuel Bell [q.v.], of Chester, New Hampshire; in 1831, Eliza Thom, daughter of John Bell, of Chester; in October 1840, Harriet Rebecca, daughter of Aaron Mansur, of Lowell. He had nine children.

[See: L. A. Morrison, The History of Windham (1883); C. C. Chase's "Lowell," in D. H. Hurd, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1890), volume II; Illustrated History of Lowell and Vicinity (1897), published by the Courier-Citizen Company; F. W. Coburn, History of Lowell and Its People (1920), volume II; J .C. Chase, History of Ch ester, New Hampshire (1926); obituaries and editorials in the Lowell Daily Citizen and Lowell Courier, October 15, 1869. The author of this sketch was given access to letters and other manuscript material in the possession of the family.]

F. W. C.


NEVIN, John W., Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1837.


NEWBERRY, John Stoughton (November 18, 1826-January 2, 1887), lawyer, manufacturer, U.S. congressman.  From his majority he had supported and voted the Whig ticket, but upon the formation of the Republican party he joined forces with it and thereafter remained a stanch supporter.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 444-445:

NEWBERRY, JOHN STOUGHTON (November 18, 1826-January 2, 1887), lawyer, manufacturer, congressman, was born at Sangerfield, Oneida County, New York, the son of Elihu and Rhoda (Phelps) Newberry. He was a descendant of Thomas Newberry who emigrated from Devonshire, England, to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1634. Oliver and Walter Loomis Newberry [qq.v.] were John's uncles. Elihu moved from Oneida County westward, finally settling at Romeo, Michigan, where John prepared for college. Later he entered the University of Michigan, took high rank as a student, and graduated in 1847.

Having acquired a practical knowledge of civil engineering, he spent two years with the Michigan Central Railroad. Then, after a year of travel, he entered a law office in Detroit, and was admitted to the bar in 1853. He was soon recognized as an expert in admiralty cases and in 1857 published Reports of Admiralty Cases in the Several District Courts of the United States. In 1855 he married Harriet Newell Robinson, who died in 1856 leaving one son; on October 6, 1859, he married Helen Parmelee Handy and to this union were born two sons. From his majority he had supported and voted the Whig ticket, but upon the formation of the Republican party he joined forces with it and thereafter remained a stanch supporter. President Lincoln appointed him provost-marshal of Michigan in 1862, with the rank of captain of cavalry, an office which he held until 1864, during which time he organized two drafts. Familiar with the needs of the army, he was one of a company of Detroit capitalists who established in 1862 or 1863 the Michigan Car Company to build freight cars for the Union forces; of this company he became president, continuing as such until 1880. Although this venture led him to abandon the practice of law, it developed into a highly profitable enterprise and formed the basis of his large personal fortune, estimated at his death to be from three to four million dollars. The firm soon h ad branches in London, Ontario, and St. Louis, and employed some five thousand men. In 1878, with James McMillan [q. v.], who was associated with the Michigan Car Company, he formed the firm of Newberry & McMillan, capitalists. As the car-building enterprise prospered, so did his other ever-widening business ventures. He helped organize a corporation to build the Detroit, Mackinac & Marquette Railroad. He also established the Vulcan Furnace Company at Newberry, Michigan. As investor he held large interests in banks, factories, and centrally located Detroit real estate. So wide and varied were these holdings that at his death he was a director in almost every local industry.

With the exception of his term as provost marshal, he held public office but twice. In 1862 he was elected to the Detroit board of education, and in 1878 he won the Republican nomination fo r representative to Congress from the First District, and was elected. He served on several important committees and was chairman of the committee on commerce. After one term he retired, feeling that his business interests demanded his full attention. A Congregationalist in his youth, he later joined the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he was noted for regular attendance and his stanch support of church activities. He was interest ed in philanthropic projects and one of his last undertakings was the establishment, together with James McMillan, of the Grace Homeopathic Hospital, to which Newberry gave $100,000. His will contained bequests of $650,000 to institutions and charities.

[J. G. Bartlett, Newberry Genealogical (1914); Cyclopedia of Michigan (1890); Charles Moore, History of Michigan (191 5); Henry Hall, America's Successful Men of Affairs, volume II (1896); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Detroit Free Press, January J, 1887; Evening News (Detroit), January 3, 1887.]

J.J.S.


NEWBOLD, William, Trenton, New Jersey, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 129).


NEWCOMB, Harvey, 1803-1863, clergyman, strong advocate for Black and Native American rights, editor author.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 502; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 450; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 16, p. 328). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, p. 450:

NEWCOMB, HARVEY (September 2, 1803-August 30, 1863), Congregational clergyman, editor, and author, a descendant of Captain Andrew Newcomb who was in America as early as 1666, was born in Thetford, Vermont, the son of Simon and Hannah (Curtis) Newcomb. In 1818 the family moved to Alfred, New York, where Harvey taught school for eight years. Turning his attention to journalism, he became the owner and editor of the Western Star of Westfield, New York (1826-28), editor of the Buffalo Patriot, an anti-Masonic paper (1828-30), and of the Pittsburgh Christian Herald, a paper for children (1830-31). The following ten years were devoted to writing books for children and young people.

Without a college or seminary training, but with the preparation afforded by his years of teaching and writing, Newcomb turned toward the ministry. He was licensed in 1840 and supplied the Congregational church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, during the two following years. On October 6, 1842, he was ordained pastor of the church in West Needham, now Wellesley, Massachusetts, where he remained till July 1, 1846, when with twenty-six of his parishioners he withdrew and founded the church at Grantville, now Wellesley Hills. Returning to journalism in 1849 he was assistant editor of the Boston Traveller for a year and of the New York Observer for two years. He then settled in Brooklyn, where he conducted a private school for young ladies and engaged in authorship and in Sunday-school and mission work. In 1859 he became pastor of a church in Hancock, Pennsylvania, and remained a s such till ill health forced his retirement to Brooklyn, in which city he died.

Newcomb had a genius for assimilating and imparting information and his literary output is estimated at as high as 178 volumes, some of which were published anonymously. He had an intelligent conception of Bible study and in some respects anticipated the historical criticism of a later generation. He probably, also, came as near as any author of his day to adapting his writings to the mental capacity of children and young people. His series of nineteen Sunday school question books had a circulation of 300,000 copies, and his fourteen volumes of church history had wide popularity. His How to be a Man (1847) and How to be a Lady (1846; 8th ed., 1850) had a circulation of 34,000 copies each. A series on the Indians of North America and missionary work among them was abandoned at the end of the second volume for lack of popular interest in the subject. His most important work was his Cyclopaedia of Missions (1854), in which the enterprises of all denominations and the fields occupied were fully described, together with the histories of individual missions and missionaries. His writings are characterized by taste, judgment, wide and accurate information, and an intense desire to benefit humanity. He was an ardent and zealous worker, but in his contact with people his zeal sometimes outran his tact, a factor which tended to make his pastorates of short duration. He was deeply interested in city mission work and has been called the father of the mission Sunday school. He wrote constantly for the press and was a frequent contributor to such papers as the Boston Recorder, the Puritan Recorder, and the New York Evangelist. His contributions to the Youth's Companion cover a period of many years. He left in manuscript an interesting autobiography. On May 19, 1830, he was married to Alithea A. Wells by whom he had two sons and two daughters.

[J . B. Newcomb, Genealogical Memoir of the Newcomb Family (1874); B. M. Newcomb, Andrew Newcomb and His Descendants (1923); Congregational Quarterly, October 1863; E. H. Chandler, History of the Wellesley Congregational Church (1898); G. K. Clarke, History of Needham, Massachusetts, I7II-I9II (1912); New York Observer, September 3, 1863.)

F. T. P.  

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 502:

NEWCOMB, Harvey, clergyman, born in Thetford, Vermont, 2 September, 1803; died in Brooklyn, New York, 30 August, 1863. He removed to western New York in 1818, engaged in teaching for eight years, and from 1826 till 1831 edited several journals, of which the last was the “Christian Herald,” in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. For the ten following years he was engaged in writing and preparing books for the American Sunday-school union. He was licensed to preach in 1840, took charge of a Congregational church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and subsequently held other pastorates. He was an editor of the Boston “Traveller” in 1849, and in 1850-'1 assistant editor of the “New York Observer,” also preaching in the Park street mission church of Brooklyn, and in 1859 he became pastor of a church in Hancock, Pennsylvania. He contributed regularly to the Boston “Recorder” and to the “Youth's Companion,” and also to religious journal. He wrote 178 volumes, of which fourteen are on church history, the others being chiefly books for children including “Young Lady's Guide” (New York, 1839); “How to be a Man” (Boston, 1846); “How to be a Lady” (1846); and “Cyclopaedia of Missions” (1854; 4th ed., 1856). He also was the author of “Manners and Customs of the North American Indians” (2 vols., Pittsburg, 1835). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 502.


NEWCOMB, J., Braintree, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-40.


NEWELL, William Augustus (September 5, 1817-August 8, 1901), congressman and governor of New Jersey.  In 1856 he had identified himself with the American party and was elected governor of New Jersey; he served two terms from 1857 to 1861. In these critical years he led in the unification of the interests of the American and Republican parties in the state. By 1860 he had become a Republican and was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago.

Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 459-460:

NEWELL, WILLIAM AUGUSTUS (September 5, 1817-August 8, 1901), congressman and governor of New Jersey, was born in Franklin, Ohio, the son of James Hugh and Eliza D. (Hankinson) Newell of Freehold, New Jersey. His parents had temporarily moved to Ohio but returned to New Jersey when he was three years of age. He attended school at New Brunswick, New Jersey, and was graduated from Rutgers College in 1836. He received the M.D. degree from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839 and began the practice of medicine with his uncle at Manahawkin, Ocean County, New Jersey. He went to Imlaystown and about 1844 settled at Allentown, New Jersey, where he built up a large and lucrative practice. The same year he began practice his attention was called to a shipwreck off the coast near his home, and, appalled at the loss of life when thirteen bodies were brought ashore, he began to experiment with lines and with a mortar to reach a wrecked vessel in the hope of preventing future accidents. He was so far successful that, eight years later when serving in Congress, he had plans for a life-saving service, which gave impetus to the establishment of a federal life-saving service that was adapted for the entire sea and lake coasts (Remarks of William A. Newell ... August 3, 1848, 1848; Letter from William A. Newell ... to Hon. William J. Sewell, 1898, with useful citations). He served two terms in Congress as a Whig, from 1847 to 1851, and then resumed practice in Allentown.

In 1856 he had identified himself with the American party and was elected governor of New Jersey; he served two terms from 1857 to 1861. In these critical years he led in the unification of the interests of the American and Republican parties in the state. By 1860 he had become a Republican and was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago. Under Lincoln's administration he was appointed superintendent of the life-saving service in New Jersey. He was for a period examining surgeon of drafted soldiers in his state. In 1865 he returned to Congress for one term. He was defeated for reelection as he was in several later efforts to be elected to the House and to the Senate as well as to the governorship. Nevertheless he continued to keep a firm hold on party patronage in the state. In 1875 he became president of the New Jersey state board of agriculture, and his efforts were important in the establishment of the federal agricultural bureau. In 1880 President Hayes appointed him governor of Washington Territory, in which office he served four years. Then he was appointed Indian inspector for the same territory. He practised a year in Olympia and was resident surgeon in the soldiers' and sailors' home there. He returned to Allentown, New Jersey, in 1889, where he continued to practise until the time of his death. He was married in early life to Joanna Van Deursen of New Brunswick, New Jersey, who di ed while he was governor of Washington Territory. They had three children.

[Information from Mrs. Wm. S. Meek, Elizabeth, New Jersey; The Biographical Encyclopedia of N. J . (1877); The New Jersey Coast (2 volumes, 1902); Biographical Dir. American Congress (1928); Who's Who in America, 1901-02; C. M. Knapp, New Jersey Politics during the Period of the Civil War (1924); C. A. Snowden, History of Wash. (1909), volume IV; Newark Evening News, August 8, 11, 1901.]

A.V-D.H.  


NEWHALL, Benjamin F., 1802-1863, abolitionist.  Member, Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1842-1843.  Member, Liberty and Free Soil Parties.  Active in Underground Railroad.


NEWTON, Alexander Herritage, 1837-1921, African American, abolitionist, soldier, clergyman.  Minister, African American Episcopal (AME) Church.  Worked aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 8, p. 448).

NEWTON, Calvin, Thomaston, Maine, Waterville College, Maine, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Member, Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS), 1840-1844. 

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)



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.