Ric-Rob: Rice through Robinson

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.


RICE, Alexander Hamilton, 1818-1895.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Boston, Massachusetts.  Four term Congressman, December 1859-March 1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 232-233; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 534; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 534-535:

RICE, ALEXANDER HAMILTON (August 30, 1818-July 22, 1895), manufacturer, congressman, governor of Massachusetts, was the son of Thomas and Lydia (Smith) Rice. Born at Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, where his father was proprietor of a paper mill, he attended public and private schools in and near Newton, obtaining at the same time considerable training in his father's business. At seventeen he entered a drygoods store in Boston as a clerk, but was forced to return home shortly on account of illness. Two years later he was employed in Boston by Wilkins & Carter, wholesale dealers in paper and publishers of music books and dictionaries. He joined the Mercantile Library Association, where he found books to study and, at its meetings, stimulating friends. His ambition was stirred, and with the encouragement of J. H. Wilkins, one of his employers, he entered Union College in 1840. A disfigurement of his upper lip, the result of being thrown from a horse, not only delayed his entrance into college but also prevented him from going into law as he had intended. In time, however, the scar on his lip became practically unnoticeable, while he completely overcame the impediment in his speech which had been caused by the injury. He graduated from Union in 1844 with highest honors, and the following year returned to Boston as a member of the firm by which he had previously been employed. He later headed the concern, which in 1889 came to be the Rice-Kendall Company, manufacturing paper in Newton with warehouses and offices in Boston. At the time of his death he was also president of the Keith Paper Company at Turner's Falls, and of the American Sulphate Pulp Company, and a director of the Montague Paper Company. His other business interests included the Massachusetts National Bank, the American Loan and Trust Company (Boston), and the Mutual Life Insurance Company (New York).

Rice entered politics in 1853 as a Whig member of the Common Council of Boston. Reelected in 1854, he was made its president. He was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Massachusetts, and he was that party's first mayor of Boston (1856 and 1857), though elected on the "Citizen's" ticket over the "Know Nothing" candidate. During his terms as mayor, improvements in the Back Bay section were inaugurated, the City Hospital was established, 'and the city's public institutions were organized under a single board. He returned to politics as a Republican congressman (1859-67), being assigned to the Committee on Naval Affairs, of which he was chairman in 1866. From 1876 to 1878 he was governor of Massachusetts. During his three terms he was much interested in social legislation, but a plan for the reorganization of the state charities presented during this period by a special commission was rejected by the legislature. The hospitals for the insane at Danvers and Worcester were completed while he was in office. He commuted, on the grounds of youth, the death sentence of Jesse Pomeroy, the notorious murderer. His stand against change in the new local-option law on the grounds that there were no evidences of flagrant evils resulting from it and that it should be tested further before the passage of other legislation brought upon him unjust criticism from many prohibitionists, but his geniality, combined with thoughtfulness, discernment, and, sound judgment, won for him quite general favor.
He was a member of many learned societies and a trustee of many important public institutions, while his broad interests and commanding oratory made him much in demand as a speaker on public occasions. He was twice married: first, August 19, 1845, to Augusta E. McKim of Lowell, who died in 1868, having borne two sons and two daughters; and; second to Angie Erickson Powell of Rochester; New York, He died after a long illness at the Langwood Hotel in Melrose.

[Bostonian, November, December 1895; Bay State Monthly, February 1884; New-England Historical and Genealogical. Register, January 189 6; S. F. Smith, History of Newton, Massachusetts (1880); J. C. Rand, One of a Thousand (1890); D. P. Toomey, Massachusetts of Today (1892); Boston Morning Journal, January 2, 1878, July 23, 1895; Boston Transcript, July 22, 1895.)

R. E. M.  

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 232-233:

RICE, Alexander Hamilton, governor of Massachusetts, born in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, 30 August, 1818. He received a business training in his father's paper-mill at Newton and in a mercantile house in Boston, and, after his graduation at Union college in 1844, established himself in the paper business at Boston. He became a member of the school committee, entered the common council, was chosen president of that body, and in 1855 and 1857 was elected mayor of Boston on a citizens' ticket. During his administration the Back Bay improvements were undertaken, the establishment of the Boston city hospital was authorized, and on his recommendation the management of the public institutions was committed to a board composed in part of members of the common council and in part chosen from the general body of citizens. He served several years as president of the Boston board of trade, and has been an officer or trustee of numerous financial and educational institutions. He was elected to congress by the Republican party for four successive terms, serving from 5 December, 1859, till 3 March, 1867. He served on the committee on naval affairs, and, as chairman of that committee in the 38th congress introduced important measures. He was a delegate to the Loyalists' convention at Philadelphia in 1866, and to the Republican national convention in 1868. He was governor of Massachusetts in 1876, 1877, and 1878. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 232-233. 


RICE, Reverend David, 1733-1816, educator, clergyman, Virginia.  Presbyterian Church of Danville, Kentucky.  Co-founder of Hampden-Sydney College and Transylvania University.  Member of the Kentucky Abolition Society.  Opponent of slavery.  Wrote speech, “Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy.”  Rice wrote: “A slave is a human creature made by law the property of another human creature, and reduced by mere power to an absolute, unconditional subjection to his will…  A slave claims his freedom; he pleads that he is a man, that he was by nature free, that he has not forfeited his freedom, nor relinquished it… His being long deprived of this right, by force or fraud, does not annihilate it; it remains; it is still his right… If my definition of a slave is true, he is a rational creature reduced by the power of legislation to the state of a brute, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity… that he may minister to the ease, luxury, lust, pride, or avarice of another, no better than himself… a free moral agent, legally deprived of free agency, and obliged to act according to the will of another free agent of the same species; and yet he is accountable to his Creator for the use he makes of his own free agency.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 233-234; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 537; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 90, 134-135; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 90, 117f, 166, 170, 183, 186; Martin, 1918; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 39; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 407). 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 233-234: 

RICE, David, clergyman, born in Hanover county, Virginia, 29 December, 1733; died in Green county, Kentucky, 18 June, 1816. He was graduated at Princeton in 1761, studied theology, was licensed to preach in 1762, and was installed as pastor of the Presbyterian church at Hanover, Virginia, in December, 1763. At the end of five years he resigned on account of dissensions among the church-members, and three years later he took charge of three congregations in the new settlements of Bedford county, Virginia, where he labored with success during the period of the Revolution. When Kentucky was opened to settlement he visited that country in October, 1783, removed thither with his family, and in 1784 organized in Mercer county the first religious congregation in Kentucky, and opened in his house the earliest school. He was the organizer and the chairman of a conference that was held in 1785 for the purpose of instituting a regular organization of the Presbyterian church in the new territory, and the principal founder of Transylvania academy, which developed into Transylvania university. He was a member of the convention that framed a state constitution in 1792. In 1798 he removed to Green county. His wife, Mary, was a daughter of Reverend Samuel Blair. He published an “Essay on Baptism” (Baltimore, 1789); a “Lecture on Divine Decrees” (1791); “Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Policy” (1792); “An Epistle to the Citizens of Kentucky Professing Christianity, those that Are or Have Been Denominated Presbyterians” (1805); and “A Second Epistle to the Presbyterians of Kentucky,” warning them against the  errors of the day (1808); also “A Kentucky Protest against Slavery” (New York, 1812).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 233-234. 


RICE, John H., 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)


RICHARDS, Samuel, abolitionist, founding member, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 514; Nathan, 1991)


RICHARDS, William M., Deerfield, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


RICHARDSON, Albert Deane (October 6, 1833-December 2, 1869), journalist. He served for short periods as adjutant-general of the Kansas Territory and secretary of the legislature and campaigned in support of the free soil movement. Journalist for the New York Daily Tribune during the Civil War.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 562-563:

RICHARDSON, ALBERT DEANE (October 6, 1833-December 2, 1869), journalist, was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, the younger of the two sons of Elisha Richardson by his second wife, Harriet Blake. The Richardsons had lived in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, for five or six generations. Albert's father, a farmer, had been a schoolmate of Horace Mann, was a friend and parishioner of Nathaniel Emmons, and lived his entire life within a few miles of the farm that he had inherited from his father. Albert's brother, Charles Addison Richardson, was for many years editor of the Boston Congregationalist. Albert attended the public schools and the Holliston Academy, felt no liking for farm work, and for a few terms taught schools in Medway and other nearby towns. Although he is represented as having been somewhat of a Horatio Alger hero, he did not breathe freely in the atmosphere of the old homestead, and when eighteen years old he set out for the West and got as far as Pittsburgh. There he taught school, worked on a newspaper, studied shorthand, wrote farces for Barney Williams, the actor, and-with some qualms of conscience-appeared a few times on the stage. In 1852 he went on to Cincinnati, where he remained for five years, writing for various newspapers and acquiring local renown as an able, alert, energetic writer. In April 1855 he married Mary Louise Pease of Cincinnati, by whom he had five children. His longing for Western adventure still unsatisfied, he took his family in 1857 to Sumner, Kansas, near Atchison, but spent much of his time at Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Topeka as correspondent for the Boston Journal. He served for short periods as adjutant-general of the Territory and secretary of the legislature and campaigned in behalf of free soil. In 1859 he accompanied Horace Greeley and Henry Villard to Pike's Peak and returned by himself through the Southwest, which was then little known territory. Thereafter, until his death, he was connected with the New York Daily Tribune.

He gained great acclaim a year later by going to New Orleans as secret correspondent of his paper. It was a dangerous assignment, but Richardson acquitted himself well and returned safely after more than one close escape from lynching. He then became the chief correspondent for the Tribune in the theatre of war. On May 3, 1863, while attempting, with Junius Henri Browne of the Tribune and Richard T. Colburn of the New York World, to run past the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg in a tugboat, he was captured and spent the next eighteen months in various Confederate prisons. On December 18, 1864, he and Browne made their escape from Salisbury and four weeks later arrived at the Union lines near Knoxville, Tennessee Meanwhile his wife and an infant daughter, whom he had never seen, died at his parents' home in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1865 he went to California with Schuyler Colfax, Samuel Bowles, and Lieut.-Governor William Bross of Illinois. From his newspaper correspondence he compiled two books, The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape (1865) and Beyond the Mississippi (1866), which were sold by subscription and were enormously popular. His style was clear, concrete, and popular in tone. His Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant (1868) was written on Partonian lines and was much superior to the ordinary campaign biography. After his death his widow collected his fugitive writings as Garnered Sheaves (1871). His end came with tragic suddenness. In 1869 he became engaged to marry Abby Sage McFarland, who had recently been divorced from her husband, Daniel McFarland, a confirmed drunkard with pronounced paranoiac tendencies. On November 25, 1869, McFarland shot Richardson at  his desk in the Tribune office. Richardson died a week later at the Astor House. On his deathbed he was married to Mrs. McFarland, the ceremony being performed by Henry Ward Beecher and Octavius Brooks Frothingham. At the trial McFarland, a Fenian and a Tammany henchman, was acquitted amid a great demonstration of popular approval. Mrs. Richardson published several books and translated and adapted plays for Daniel Frohman, whom she had met in the Tribune office. She died in Rome December 5, 1900.

[J. A. Vinton, The Richardson Memorial (1876): biog. sketch by his widow in Garnered Sheaves (1871); The Trial of Daniel McFarland (1870), compiled by A. R. Cazauran; The Richardson-McFarland Tragedy (1870); New York Daily Tribune, November 26-December 6, 1869, and April 5-May 13, 1870.]

G. H. G.

RICHARDSON, Asa, New York, American Abolition Society.

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


RICHARDSON, Charles L., Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1843-48.


RICHARDSON, Jonas, New York, American Abolition Society.

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


RICKETSON, Daniel, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 184)


RIDDELL, William, S. Deerfield, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President.


RIDGELLY, Abraham, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Chester-Town Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1791. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 224, 241n24)


RIDDLE, Albert Gallatin (May 28, 1816-May 16, 1902), lawyer, congressman. “He was an ardent Whig and was against slavery. Upon the nomination of Zachary Taylor, he issued the call for a mass meeting at Chardon that inaugurated the Free-Soil party of Ohio. Soon afterward, he was nominated by the Whigs and Free-Soilers of his district for the state House of Representatives, was elected, and became at once the recognized leader of these two groups in the House from 1848 to 1850.”

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 591)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

RIDDLE, Albert Gallatin, lawyer, born in Monson, Massachusetts, 28 May, 1816. His father moved to Geauga County, Ohio, in 1817, where the son received a common-school education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1840, practised law, and was prosecuting attorney from 1840 till 1846. He served in the legislature in 1848–9, and called the first Free-Soil Convention in Ohio in 1848. In 1850 he moved to Cleveland, was elected prosecuting attorney in 1856, defended the Oberlin slave-rescuers in 1859, and was elected to Congress as a Republican, serving from 4 July, 1861, till 3 March, 1863. He made speeches then in favor of arming slaves, the first on this subject that were deliver in Congress, and others on emancipation in the District of Columbia and in vindication of President Lincoln. In October, 1863, he was appointed U.S. consul at Matanzas. Since 1864 he has practised law in Washington, D.C., and, under a retainer of the State Department, aided in the prosecution of John H. Surratt for the murder of President Lincoln. In 1877 he was appointed law-officer to the District of Columbia, which office he now (1888) holds. For several years, from its organization, he had charge of the law department in Howard University. Mr. Riddle is the author of “Students and Lawyers,” lectures (Washington, 1873); “Bart Ridgely, a Story of Northern Ohio.” (Boston, 1873); “The Portrait, a Romance of Cuyahoga Valley” (1874); “Alice Brand, a Tale of the Capitol" (New York, 1875); “Life, Character, and Public Services of James A. Garfield” (Cleveland, 1880); “The House of Ross” (Boston, 1881); “Castle Gregory.” (Cleveland, 1882); “Hart and his Bear” (Washington, 1883); “The Sugar-Makers of the West Woods” (Cleveland, 1885); “The Hunter of the Chagrin" (1882); “Mark Loan, a Tale of the Western Reserve” (1883); “Old Newberry and the Pioneers” (1884); “Speeches and Arguments” (Washington, 1886); and “Life of Benjamin F. Wade’’ (Cleveland, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 248.

American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 591:

RIDDLE, ALBERT GALLATIN (May 28, 1816-May 16, 1902), lawyer, congressman, author, was the son of Thomas and Minerva (Merrick) Riddle and the grandson of Thomas Ridel or Riddell who emigrated from Ireland as a child and died in Monson, Massachusetts. The grandson was born there, and the next year the family removed to Geauga County, Ohio. When Albert was only seven years old his father died. When he was twelve he was apprenticed to a well-to-do farmer; but he was not inclined toward farming and in 1831 worked with his two elder brothers as a carpenter. His ambition, though, was for something else, and during the following two years he spent part of his time in study. In 1835 he went to Hudson, where he entered school, and later he attended for a year the academy at Painesville. There he became interested in oratory and debating. He began the study of law under the direction of Seabury Ford in the spring of 1838, and after a period of intensive application to his work he was admitted to practice in 1840. He proved himself a successful political speaker in the Harrison campaign of 1840, and three weeks after his admission to the bar he was nominated for the office of prosecuting attorney, was elected, settled at Chardon, and served six years. He was an ardent Whig and very bitter against slavery. Upon the nomination of Zachary Taylor, he issued the call for a mass meeting at Chardon that inaugurated the Free-Soil party of Ohio. Soon afterward, he was nominated by the Whigs and Free-Soilers of his district for the state House of Representatives, was elected, and became at once the recognized leader of these two groups in the House from 1848 to 1850. In January 1845 he married Caroline Avery of Chardon. They had seven children. He removed to Cleve land in 1850. In 1859 he acted as counsel for the defense in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue case (for argument see History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, 1859, comp. by J. R. Shiperd). He won the respect and confidence of his fellows and was very attentive to business. He distinguished himself in many arguments in Congress, among them on the bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The first battle of Bull Run was fatal to his congressional career, for in connection with it he made certain confidential critical statements that gained publicity and were used against him. He did not seek reelection in 1862. He again devoted himself to the law, but in the autumn of 1864 he accepted a consulate in Cuba as a convenient pretext for making an examination into the plans and workings of the blockade runners. This service he performed in a satisfactory manner. He then established himself in the practice of law in Washington. He claimed that, by a just construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution, women were entitled to vote. He was law officer for the District of Columbia from !877 to 1889.

He was a successful writer as well as orator. His first publication was a series of eight lectures delivered before the law department of Howard University, Law Students and Lawyers (1873). His first novel, Bart Ridgeley (1873), was commented on as the best American novel oi the year. The ensuing year appeared The Portrait and in 1875 Alice Brand, a story of Washington after the war. He prepared many of the biographical sketches in a History of Geauga and Lake Counties (1878). In 1880 he published The Life, Character, and Public Services of John A. Garfield. Old Newbury and the Pioneers was published in 1885 with some family and local history, his Life of Benjamin F. Wade in 1886, and Recollections of War Times in 1895. He did much newspaper 'Work and wrote many short stories. He died in Washington, D. C., and was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery.

[History of Geauga: and Lake Counties, ante, but sketch not signed by self; Pioneer and General History of Geauga County (1880); Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); G. T. Ridlon, History of the Ancient Ryedales (1884); Cleveland Leader, May 16, 1902.]

H. L.


RIDGELLY, Abraham, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Chester-Town Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1791. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 224, 241n24)


RIGGS, Joseph, Lawrence County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-39.


RILEY, Bennet, 1787-1853, soldier, territorial governor of California.  In the fall of 1848 when he was transferred with his regiment to California and assigned to the important command of the military department on the Pacific he became ex-officio provisional governor of California. In September 1849, he convened the constituent assembly at Monterey which drew up the first constitution for California and applied for admission into the Union as a free stste. His able direction of affairs at this critical time greatly hastened the formation of the new state government to which he relinquished his authority in November 1849, when the first elected civil governor took office.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 52; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 254; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 608-609; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 512; Historical Register and Dict., U. S. Army (1903); C. K. Gardner, A Dict. of All Officers of the Army (1860); Official Army Registers, 1850-53; C. J. Peterson, The Mil. Heroes of the War with Mex. (10th ed., 1858).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 608-609:

RILEY, Benet 

spent much of his time fighting Indians. He was brevetted major in 1823 for distinguished service in a battle with the Arikara Indians in Dakota Territory. In 1829 he convoyed a large merchant caravan from St. Louis, Missouri, to Santa Fe, N. Mex., and back again and received a sword from the legislature of Missouri in recognition of his services. During 1831 and 1832 he fought in the Black Hawk War. He was promoted to the rank of major on September 26, 1837, and to lieutenant-colonel on December I, 1839. From 1839 to 1842 he participated in the Seminole wars in Florida, where his energy and courage won for him the brevet of colonel. At the beginning of the Mexican War he commanded the 2nd Infantry, but was quickly advanced to the command of a brigade. He participated in the siege of Vera Cruz and distinguished himself at Cerro Gordo where he was brevetted brigadier-general. It was at Contreras on August 20, 1847, however, that he won lasting fame. His brigade formed part of a force under Persifor Frazer Smith [q.v.], which was sent around to the rear of the Mexican position, and Riley was designated to lead the assault. In his official report of the battle  General Smith says: "The opportunity afforded to Colonel Riley by his position was seized by that gallant veteran with all the skill and energy for which he is distinguished. The charge of his noble brigade down the slope, in full view of friend and foe, unchecked even for a moment, until he had planted all his colours upon their farthest works, was a spectacle that animated the army to the boldest deeds" (Scott and His Staff, post, p. 160). For his gallant conduct on this occasion he was brevetted major-general. He continued in command of his brigade to the end of the Mexican War. After the war he served in Louisiana and Missouri until the fall of 1848 when he was transferred with his regiment to California and assigned to the important command of the military department on the Pacific and became ex-officio provisional governor of California. In September 1849, he convened the constituent assembly at Monterey which drew up the first constitution for California and applied for admission into the Union. His able direction of affairs at this critical time greatly hastened the formation of the new state government to which he relinquished his authority in November 1849, when the first elected civil governor took office. On January 31, 1850, he was promoted to colonel of the 1st Infantry and ordered to join that regiment on the Rio Grande River, but owing to disability from cancer he was unable to comply with the order. He settled in Buffalo, New York, where he died leaving a widow, Arbella Riley, and five children.

[Records of the Pension Office, the Adjutant General and the Senate Committee on Pensions, Wash., D. C.; F. B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary, U. S. Army (1903); C. K. Gardner, A Dictionary of All Officers of the Army (1860); Official Army Registers, 1850-53; C. J. Peterson, The Mil. Heroes of the War with Mex. (10th ed., 1858); General Scott and His Staff (1848); J. H. Smith, The War with Mex. (1919), volume II; Z. S. Eldredge, History of Cal., volume III (n.d.); Maryland Historical Magazine, September 1917; Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, June 10, 1853; New York Times, June II, 1853.]

S. J. H.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 254:

RILEY, Bennett, soldier, born in Alexandria, Virginia, 27 November, 1787; died in Buffalo, New York, 9 June, 1853. He entered the army from civil life at an early period, being appointed from Maryland an ensign of rifles, 19 January, 1813, and continued in the service until he died. He became lieutenant on 12 March, served in the war of 1812, and was promoted captain, 6 August, 1818, major, 26 September, 1837, and lieutenant-colonel, 1 December, 1839. He served with gallantry in 1823 in an action with the Arickaree Indians, and for his services at Chakotta, Florida, 2 June, 1840, he was brevetted colonel. In the Mexican war of 1846-'7 he was given important commands. He led the 2d infantry under Scott, and the 2d brigade of Twiggs's division in the valley of Mexico. He received the brevet of brigadier-general, 18 April, 1847, for gallantry at Cerro Gordo, and that of major-general, 20 August, 1847, for Contreras. After one of his successful engagements with the enemy General Winfield Scott assured him that his bravery had secured a victory for the American army. At the conclusion of the war General Riley was placed in command of the Pacific department, with headquarters at Monterey. He was appointed military governor of California, and served as the first chief magistrate of the territory and until the admission of the state into the Union. He became colonel of the 1st infantry on 31 January, 1850. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 254.  


RIEGER, Johann Georg Joseph Anton (April 23, 1811-August 20, 1869), pioneer Evangelical clergyman. His first mission field was at Alton, Illinois, where he arrived on November 28, 1836. During his ministry at this place, he lived at the home of Elijah Parish Lovejoy [q.v.], and assisted in the latter's abolitionist activities.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 599-600:

RIEGER, JOHANN GEORG JOSEPH ANTON (April 23, 1811-August 20, 1869), pioneer Evangelical clergyman, was born in Aurach, Bavaria, Germany. He was left an orphan before he reached the age of eleven, and for a  time lived with an aunt in Epinal, France. From earliest childhood he had been destined for priest-hood in the Catholic Church, but absorbed some Lutheran doctrine as a boy while helping a classmate with his catechism lessons. An open avowal of his Protestant leaning brought such strenuous opposition on the part of his aunt that he fled in 1832 to Basel, Switzerland, where he found refuge in the home of a Reformed minister and was brought in contact with the mission house of that place. Four years later when a group of American Christians applied to the Basel headquarters for: German missionaries for the West, Rieger was chosen to go. He was among the first of the German missionaries who had the vision to introduce the use of English into the evangelical service.

His first mission field was at Alton, Illinois, where he arrived on November 28, 1836. During his ministry at this place, he lived at the home of Elijah Parish Lovejoy [q.v.], and assisted in the latter's abolitionist activities, but his most strenuous efforts in the direction of a spiritual revival were so meagerly rewarded that he left in August of the following year for Beardstown, Illinois, where he stayed until the spring of 1839. In this year he returned to Germany where he made the acquaintance of Minette Schemel, who returned to the United States with him in 1840 as his bride. They settled first at Highland, Illinois, where their two children were born and died. In 1840, when the Deutsche Evangelische Kirchen-Verein des Westen, later called the Evangelische Synode van Nord-Amerika, was formed, Rieger was recognized as one of the dominating figures in the movement. In October 1843, two months after he had moved from Highland to Burlington, Iowa, his wife died. He made a second trip to Germany in 1844 and married Henrietta Wilkins at Bremen on April 15, 1845. For two years after his return to the United States he sold literature for the Bible and Tract Society of New York and then moved to Holstein, Missouri, where his two small daughters fell ill of cholera and died.

His principal work during these years was done in connection with the establishing of the Evangelical Seminary, at Marthasville, Missouri, in 1850, after it had been housed in his own home for two years. His ministry of thirteen years at Holstein ended when he moved to Jefferson City in 1860. He became one of the trustees of the Lincoln Institute, a college for negroes, and did admirable work among the prisoners at the state penitentiary. He was universally beloved: Southerners left their valuables in the safe-keeping of this abolitionist preacher when Federal soldiers approached; rich and poor, black and white, Catholic and Protestant sought out the humble clergyman for advice. When he died the whole city went into mourning. His widow and seven children survived him.,

[Manuscript diary of Joseph Rieger in the possession of relatives; Edward Huber, "Pastor Joseph Rieger," Eighth Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland (1894); Joseph Rieger, Bin Lebensbild aus der Evangelischen Kirche Nord-Amerikas (1871); Hugo Kamphausen, Gesch. des Religiosen Lebens in der Deutschen Evangel. Synode van Nord Amerika (1924); Albert Mucke, Gesch. der Deutschen Evangel. Syt1ode von Nord-Amerika (1915); J. W. Flucke, Evangelical Pioneers (1931); W. G. Bek, "The Followers of Duden, Joseph Rieger-Colporteur," Missouri Historical Review, January 1924; Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), August 31, 1869.)  

W.L.B-r.


RITCHIE, John, 1817-1887, Indiana, anti-slavery activist, Union Army officer.  Moved to Kansas in 1855 to support the efforts to have Kansas enter the Union as a Free State.  Served as a delegate in two Kansas Constitutional Conventions.  He supported Free State leader James H. Lane.  Served as a Colonel in the Civil War.


RITNER, Joseph (March 25, 1780-October 16, 1869), governor of Pennsylvania. More independent than most contemporary executives of northern states, he denounced the gag law.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 629-630:

RITNER, JOSEPH (March 25, 1780-October 16, 1869), governor of Pennsylvania, was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the son of a German emigrant and ardent Revolutionary patriot, Michael Ritner. Six months' schooling and instruction in weaving constituted his formal education, but he taught himself English from books and after his marriage to Susan Alter in 1802 explored her brother's library of German treatises. His annual wage at farm labor rose from $80 to $120; and then he sought the Washington County frontier, where he developed a prosperous farm. In the War of 1812 he was a private. In his home community he became supervisor of roads, in building which he introduced the plow, and he participated in numerous Democratic caucuses. His thrifty habit of hauling freight and driving stock to Philadelphia in slack seasons made this stout countryman, with his massive head, strong face, and broad chest, a familiar sight along main-traveled roads; and his extensive family connections made him favorably known in ten German counties. During service to the Assembly, 1821-26, the speakership came to him twice, 1825 and 1826, unanimously the second time.

Aversion to secret societies made him the anti-Masonic gubernatorial candidate four times, 1829, 1832, 1835, 1838. His modest initial vote increased in 1832 with National Republican support, in spite of Democratic broads ides averring that this "Deist" propagated the principles of Paine's Age of Reason and that "a re spectable and well-known citizen saw Joseph Ritner on the Sabbath Morning, keep tally, while others were amusing themselves playing ball, in his meadow!" (Joseph Ritner a Deist, in Political Broadside Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania). The split in 1835 among the Democrats over Jackson and the schools gave him his one term as governor, just when Pennsylvania was exceptionally upset. The ill-assorted coalition of Whigs and anti-Masons behind his election was at one on nothing but opposition to Jacksonianism. Warfare over bank deposits and the antiquated constitution, financial panic, canal and railroad lobbying, anti-abolitionist rioting, and the fanatic genius of Thaddeus Stevens, together taxed Ritner beyond his ingenuity. The hostile press incessantly abused his administration. Even nature opposed him, with a flood on the Juniata engulfing forty miles of costly canal construction, just when he was solicitous over canal appropriations. Yet he achieved something in the democratic movement. He obtained a large increase in the  permanent school appropriation and the number of common schools. Into a "schoolhouse-fund" he directed the $500,000 received from the federal government, to prevent the sacrifice of instruction to equipment. But he lost his campaign for a separate office of state school superintendent and for an "immediate and efficient means ... for the preparation of common school teachers" (Wickersham, post, p. 346). More independent than most contemporary executives of northern states, he denounced the gag law, practised and preached temperance, and investigated the new "manufacture of iron with mineral coal." He opposed Jackson's bank policy on economic as well as political grounds, impatiently awaiting the safe resumption of specie payments, and finding the event, as he wrote Biddle, "to me, personally, truly gratifying" (August  I, 1838, Etting Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania). His real integrity of purpose was obscured by inability to limit canal appropriations, to prevent the chartering of banks wholesale, and to stop dictation to the state by "private companies and sectional jealousies." He long distrusted Stevens and tried vainly to break his hold on the anti-Masonic party, but finally he named him canal commissioner and manager of his 1838 campaign. His party lost that virulent contest and brought upon him the "Buckshot War" and much loss of dignity. Nevertheless, as ex-governor, prestige returned. Whigs chose him to cast an electoral vote for Harrison in 1840, Taylor nominated him for director of the Mint in 1849, Republicans sent him in Pennsylvania's delegation to the Fremont convention in 1856, and the Civil War found him serving as an enthusiastic, though elderly, inspector of the educational institutions so near his heart.

[Letters of Ritner, Stevens, and Biddle, and Political Broadsides of 1832, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Gubernatorial Papers, Educational Building, Harrisburg; Life of Joseph Ritner, Farmer of Washington County (1835); Lives of D. R. Porter and Joseph Ritner (1838); Report of Proceedings in Relation to the Governor Jos. Ritner Monument (n.d.); W. C. Armor, Lives of the Governors (187.2); Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County (1893); E. W. Biddle, Governor Joseph Ritner (1919); L. G. and M. J. Walsh, History. of Education in Pennsylvania (1930); J. P. Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania (1886); H. R. Mueller, The Whig Party in Pennsylvania (1922); S. W. McCall, Thaddeus Stevens (1899).]

J. P.N.


RITTER, Thomas, New York, New York, abolitionist, American Abolition Society, Executive Committee, 1855-1856.


RIVES, John Cook (May 24, 1795-April 10, 1864), journalist. In 1833 he became a partner of Francis Preston Blair and the financial manager of the Washington Dailey Globe. Rives was one of the most philanthropic citizens of Washington, D. C.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 635-636:

RIVES, JOHN COOK (May 24, 1795-April 10, 1864), journalist, was probably the son of George Rives of Franklin County, Virginia. At eleven years of age he we nt to Kentucky to live with his uncle, Samuel Casey. There he received a good frontier education before he went to Edwardsville, Illinois, to work as a clerk in a branch of the Bank of the United States. About 1824 he became cashier in a bank in Shawneetown. Meantime he read law and was admitted to the bar, but he never practised. For three years he worked in the office of the United States' Telegraph, where he won the esteem of Duff Green who recommended him to Jackson in 1829 as a devoted Democrat entitled to his confidence and friendship He was soon appointed to a clerkship in the fourth auditor's office and served there until on April 11, 1832, he became an employee of Francis Preston Blair [q.v.] of the Washington Daily Globe. In 1833 he became a partner of Blair and the financial manager of the Globe. With the exception of a farm that he created out of lands known as " the Bladensburg races," everything he touched made profits. Upon the dissolution of the Blair-Rives partnership in the Globe in 1849 Rives received over $100,000 for his share. He maintained an expensive country estate with several slaves for the benefit of his children, whom he wanted to rear on a farm. He had the respect and confidence of the Democratic presidents from Jackson to Buchanan. He remained steadfastly an orthodox Democrat and spent his money freely for the party during presidential campaigns. Blair loved Rives so much that he entrusted his investments to him, and he is said to have asked for a dissolution of the firm of Blair and Rives to avoid any embarrassment to Rives, when Blair followed Van Buren into the Free-Soil party. Rives was one of the most philanthropic citizens of Washington, D. C., during his successful business career. In one year he gave over $17,000 to widows and orphans. As an editor  he wrote in a facetious, forceful, and graphic style. He filled the editorial columns of the Globe, when Blair felt indisposed to write. Blair attacked the powerful political enemies in a vitriolic fashion, while Rives in his short editorials damned the recalcitrant small fry of his party with faint praise. He often produced fake defenses purposely to ruin the disloyal Democratic politicians.

His great contribution was the Congressional Globe. His was the idea of reporting' the congressional debates impartially. For thirty years from December 2, 1833; to April 10, 1864, he published them, and his soil Franklin continued the work until the beginning of the Congressional Record in 1873 by act of Congress. In 1842 he became a partner of Peter Force [q.v.] in publishing the documentary sources of the American Revolution. He was a loyal Union man, opposed to slavery in principle, but he denied the right of the national government to force the abolition of slavery. He agreed with Clay on internal improvements and foreign affairs. His big rugged body and deep voice were remembered by those who once met him. He was six feet five inches high and weighed normally two hundred and forty pounds. At the age of thirty-eight he married Mary, one of his ' bindery girls. She died in 1859, the mother of seven children. By will the Globe was left to two of the sons, Franklin and Jefferson, over $50,000 in bonds were divided among his other five children, and his farm was left to his family with the specification that it should revert to the government if his descendants refused to live on it  

[Blair Papers in possession of Gist Blair, Washington, D. C.; Blair-Rives Papers, Library of Congress; Records in Supreme Court Bldg., Washington, D. C. Records in Congressional Cemetery; Rives vault in Congressional Cemetery; W. B. Bryan, A History of the National Capital (1916), volume I; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872 (1873);  R. Wilson, Washington the Capital City (2 volumes, 1901); J. R. Childs, Reliques of the Rives (1929); Daily Globe (Washington), June 23, 1856.]  

W.E.S.


RIVES, William Cabel, 1793-1868, Albemarle County, Virginia, U.S. Congressman, Senator, protégé of Thomas Jefferson.  American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1838-1841. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 267; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 635; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 107-207)


ROANE, John, Virginia, U.S. Congressman.  Member and supporter of the American Colonization Society. 

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 107)


ROBBINS, James W., Lenox, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


ROBBINS, Sampson, Lockport, New York, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-46.


ROBERTS, Anthony Ellmaker, 1803-1885, Pennsylvania, abolitionist.  U.S. Marshal.  Two-term Member of Congress from the Ninth District of Pennsylvania, 1855-1859.  Republican leader in Republican Party in Pennsylvania.  Opposed slavery.  Roberts was supported by Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens. 

(Herringshaw, 1902; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1949)


ROBERTS, Benjamin Franklin, 1814-1881, African American, abolitionist, printer, journalist, newspaper publisher, opposed colonization.  Published the Anti-Slavery Herald in Boston, Massachusetts.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 9, p. 481)


ROBERTS, Benjamin Titus (July 25, 1823-February 27, 1893), clergyman, one of the organizers of the Free Methodist Church, opposed slavery and the compromising attitude of the Methodist Church toward slavery.

(B. H. Roberts, Benjamin Titus Roberts (1900); W. T. Hogue, History of the Free Methodist Church of North America (2 volumes, 1915)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 2-3:

ROBERTS, BENJAMIN TITUS (July 25, 1823-February 27, 1893), clergyman, one of the organizers of the Free Methodist Church, was born in Gowanda, Cattaraugus County, New York, the son of Titus and Sally (Ellis) Roberts. He was a descendant of William Roberts of East Hartford, Connecticut, whose father (Robards), husband of Catharine Leete, or Leeke, emigrated to New England about the middle of the seventeenth century. As a boy Benjamin showed more than ordinary mental alertness, won renown in the spelling matches of the countryside, and revealed a genius for mathematics. At the age of sixteen he was teaching school. In 1842 he entered a law office in Little Falls, New York, but returned to his home town two years later to continue his legal training in an office there. About this time he experienced conversion and a call to the ministry. After a few months' preparation in Lima Seminary, he entered the sophomore class of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1845, and graduated in 1848. That same year he was admitted to the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on trial, and on May 3, 1849, he married Ellen Lois Stowe, by whom he had seven children. He was ordained deacon, September 29, 1850; and elder, September 12, 1852. Until the fall of 1858 he was pastor of various churches in Western New York.

Roberts was one of a group of preachers in the Genesee Conference who laid much stress on the doctrine of Christian perfection, or sanctification, and whose piety was fervid and aggressive. They felt that the Conference as a whole had flagrantly departed from the precepts and practices of early Methodism, and condemned especially violation of the Discipline rules regarding plain churches with free seats and the wearing of adornments; the compromising attitude of the Church toward slavery; and membership of Christians in secret societies. They also contended that the Conference was virtually controlled by a band of secret-society men. A conflict arose, carried on in part through pamphlets and religious periodicals, which resulted in disciplinary measures being taken by the Conference against some of the reformers. On specifications based on an article entitled "New School Methodism," published in the Northern Independent of Aurora, New York, in 1857, Roberts was charged with unchristian and unmoral conduct. At the annual meeting of the Conference, 1857, he was tried, found guilty, and reprimanded. At the Conference of the following year, because of the republishing and circulation of his articles with which he claimed to have had nothing to do--he was expelled. Against both decisions he appealed to the General Conference, but without avail.

A result of this disturbance was the organization at Pekin, New York, in August 1860, of the Free Methodist Church, of which Roberts was elected the first general superintendent, an office which he held until his death, thirty-three years later. During this period he served the interests of the growing denomination vigorously and in manifold ways. In January 1860 he established the Earnest Christian, which he published and edited for the remainder of his life; from 1886 to 1890 he was also editor of the Free Methodist. He took the leading part in the founding of Chili Seminary (A. M. Chesbrough Seminary) at North Chili, New York, in 1866, and served for a time as its principal. In the midst of his varied duties, which entailed much travel, he found time to write several books, among them: Fishers of Men or, Practical Hints to Those Who Would Win Souls (1878); Why Another Sect (1879); First Lessons in Money (1886), called forth by the prevailing discussion of the silver question; and Ordaining Women (1891), in which he advocated on Scriptural grounds the right of women to be admitted to the ministry. His death occurred at Cattaraugus, New York, in his seventieth year.

[Alumni Records of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1911); B. H. Roberts, Benjamin Titus Roberts (1900); W. T. Hogue, History of the Free Methodist Church of North America (2 volumes, 1915); Elias Bowen, History of the Origin of the Free Methodist Church (1871); F. W. Conable, History of the Genesee Annual Conference of M. E. Church (1876); Buffalo Courier, March 1, 1893; information from a son, Benjamin T. Roberts.]

H. E. S.


ROBERTS, Daniel, Manchester, Vermont, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-1840.


ROBERTS, Ellis Henry (September 30, 1827- January 8, 1918), U.S. congressman, financier,

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

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 6:

ROBERTS, ELLIS HENRY (September 30, 1827- January 8, 1918), congressman, financier, was born in Utica, New York, then a village, his parents, Watkin and Gwen (Williams) Roberts, having emigrated from North Wales some ten years previously. His father died when Ellis was four years of age, and the boy was early thrown on his own resources. He learned the printer's trade, and with his own earnings pursued his education at Whitestown Seminary and Yale College, where he graduated in 1850. Returning to Utica, he became identified with the Oneida Morning Herald, a daily newspaper of which his brother was one of the owners. This journal, later known as the Utica Morning Herald, he continued to serve in an editorial capacity, save for an interim of a few months, until the year 1890.

In politics he was a Republican; in 1866 he was elected to the state legislature, where he served one term, and in 1870 he was elected to Congress; he was returned in 1872, but defeated in 1874 by Scott Lord in the Democrat landslide of that year. In his early political life he was a supporter of Roscoe Conkling [q.v.], taking an active part, when a member of the New York legislature, in Conkling's first election as United States senator, but very shortly thereafter there was a breach in their friendly relations which was never healed. Roberts became the leader of the local faction of the Republican party known as the "Half-Breeds," opposed to Conkling and his "Stalwart" supporters, and in 1884 the diminished Republican vote in Oneida County, where the two leaders had their residence, was sufficient to account for the small plurality by which the electoral vote of New York was lost to the Republican presidential candidate.

In 1889 Roberts was appointed assistant treasurer of the United States by President Benjamin Harrison, in which office he served until 1893, when he became president of the Franklin National Bank of New York. In 1897, he was appointed treasurer of the United States by President McKinley, continuing in that office until 1905. After his retirement he returned to Utica, where he died in 1918 at the advanced age of ninety years.

Roberts early acquired distinction as a writer and speaker, and during his service in Congress gained recognition as one versed in questions of finance. He took a prominent part in the discussion and enactment of legislation for the resumption of specie payments, the refunding of the national debt, the redemption of bonds, and the reduction of war debts, as well as at all times advocating a policy of protection. In his first term he was accorded the unusual honor of an appointment upon the ways and means committee. He was also a member of a sub-committee which investigated the collection of customs, with a report which prompted several resignations and helped to bring about the repeal of the moiety laws. In 1884 he delivered a course of lectures at Cornell University which formed the basis of a volume entitled Government Revenue: Especially the American System; an Argument against the Fallacies of Free Trade (1884; 4th ed., 1888). He also wrote New York: The Planting and the Growth of the Empire State (2 volumes, 1887), in the American Commonwealths Series. In June 1851 he married Elizabeth Morris, but they were without children.

[M. M. Bagg, Memorial History of Utica (1892); H. J. Cookinham, History of Oneida County, New York (1912), volume I, esp. pp. 289-92; D. E. Wager, Our County and Its People ... Oneida County, New York (1896); J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress, volume II (1886); Obituary Record Graduates Yale University, 19I8 (1919); D.S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, III (1909), 169-70, 388; New York Times, January 9, 1918; files of Utica Daily Press and Utica Observer-Dispatch.]

W.J.K.


ROBERTS, John M., Maryland, agent for the Maryland State Colonization Society.  Hired in 1838. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 107-108)


ROBERTS, Jonathan Manning, 1771-1854, Upper Merion County, Pennsylvania, U.S. Senator, U.S. Congressman, opponent of slavery.  He was an enthusiastic Whig and strongly opposed to slavery. He was a delegate to the Free-soil Convention at Buffalo, New York, that nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848. Called for the prohibition of slavery in Missouri in the U.S. Senate. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 274; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

ROBERTS, Jonathan Manning, investigator, born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 7 December, 1821; died in Burlington, New Jersey, 28 February, 1888, studied law, was admitted to the bar at Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1850, and practised his profession for about a year, but abandoned it and engaged in commercial pursuits. These proving financially successful, he found time to gratify his desire for metaphysical investigations. He also took an interest in politics, being an enthusiastic Whig and strongly opposed to slavery. He was a delegate to the Free-soil Convention at Buffalo, New York, that nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848, and subsequently canvassed New Jersey for that candidate. When the so-called spiritual manifestations at Rochester, New York, first attracted public attention, Mr. Roberts earnestly protested against the possibility of their having a supernatural origin. After several years of patient inquiry he came to the conclusion that they were facts that could be explained on scientific principles and resulted from the operation of natural causes. This conviction led to his establishing an organ of the new faith at Philadelphia in 1878 under the title of “Mind and Matter.” His fearless advocacy of his peculiar views involved him in litigation and caused his imprisonment. Finding the publication of a journal too great a tax on his resources, he abandoned it, and devoted the rest of his life to study and authorship. Among his manuscript, of which he left a large amount, is “A Life of Apollonius of Tyana” and “A History of the Christian Religion,” which he completed just before his death.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888. Volume V, p. 274. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 9-10:

ROBERTS, JONATHAN (August 16, 1771- July 21, 1854), congressman and senator from Pennsylvania, was born near Norristown, Pennsylvania, the son of Jonathan and Anna (Thomas) Roberts and the descendant of John Roberts, a Welsh Friend who emigrated to Pennsylvania in William Penn's time. On that portion of his, origin al plantation known as "Swamp Vrass," in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, his great-grand-son passed his childhood. The boy received private tutoring, learned farming, and acquired a fondness for books under the guidance of his mother, who taught him to appreciate the ancient Stoics. After apprenticeship to a wheelwright, he returned to farming, and he and his broth er reported, " in seven years we could command s eve n thousand dollars, and had greatly increased our stock and improved our land" (Auge, post, p. 73). Nurtured upon the excitements of th e whiskey and house tax rebellions and breathing naturally the atmosphere of violent partisanship characteristic of that period, he equipped himself carefully for polemical politics and joined the Republicans in wresting control of Montgomery County from the Federalists. He helped to make up the majority of two in the lower house of the Assembly, 1799-1800, confronting the Senate Federalist majority of one. His next activity was in the state Senate, 1807-n, from which he was carried, along with other "war hawks," into the federal Congress, 1811 to 1814. There he confidently faced a war with the traditional enemy, " I repose safely in the maxim, 'Never to despair of the Republic.'" While the vote for war with Great Britain was pending, he prevented delay through indefinite adjournment by cannily proposing to suspend members' pay while adjourned, and at a crucial moment he called for the previous question (Annals of Congress, 12 Congress, 1 Session, cols. 1337-38, 1340) This stand, perforce, severed his religious connections with the Friends; but political connections grew apace. His close relations with Madison were revealed in his controversial letters defending the administration in the Aurora. As a committeeman on ways and means he guarded the national purse strings and took the role of floor defender of the secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, against Cheves, Calhoun, and Lowndes. At Gallatin's instance he visited Governor Snyder to urge veto of a Pennsylvania bank bill. Meanwhile, he had married in 1813 Eliza Hite Bushby of Washington. They had nine children. Soon, in February 1814, factional warfare deprived Michael Leib [q.v.] of his seat in the Senate, and the Pennsylvania legislature placed Roberts in it. There he marveled at the peaceful years ensuing, "I never knew a time so politically tranquil. . . . There is nothing indicative of that acrimony we have long been accustomed to" (Roberts to Monroe, June 9, August 22, 1818, in possession of Historical Society of Pennsylvania). But Roberts' existence speedily became normal, for from his cordial disapproval of Jackson's Florida foray sprang a lifelong antipathy between them. The Maine-Missouri question also brought conflict, for Roberts stoutly defended a plan of his own to prevent the introduction of any more slaves into Missouri (Annals of Congress, 16 Congress, I Session, cols. 85-86, 116-17, 119-28, 335-46).

After leaving the Senate in 1821, he endeavored to diminish Jackson's presidential chances, being "very decided" (Life of Gallatin, post, p. 588) that the Democracy needed Gallatin as a candidate in 1824 and serving in the Pennsylvania House, 1823-26, to stem the tide of Jacksonianism. The economic advancement of his own state he also held dear, advocating internal improvements, serving on the canal commission, and attending pioneer tariff conventions. After membership upon Biddle's bank board in 1836 he naturally gravitated into the Whig camp, supporting Clay, and he nominated Tyler for vice-president at the Harrisburg convention in 1839. Characteristically, when made collector of the port of Philadelphia he balked over the spoils system, and the president removed him in 1842. With this bold engagement the active political warfare of this sturdy Roman was concluded. He died on his farm in Montgomery County.

[Manuscript memoirs willed to his grandson, Jonathan Roberts of Atlantic City; letters to Madison, Monroe, and Gallatin in Library of Historical Society Pennsylvania, and Library of Congress; Moses Auge, Lives of the Eminent Dead (1879); Henry Adams, History of the U. S., volume VII (1891) and The Life of Albert Gallatin (1872); H. R. Mueller, The Whig Party in Pennsylvania (1922); Historical Sketches. A Collection of Papers Prepared for the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, volume III, IV (1905-ro); Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), volume III.]

J. P.N.


ROBERTS, JOSEPH JENKINS (March 15, 1809-February 24, 1876), first president of Liberia, West Africa. African American organizer for the American Colonization Society.

(H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 10-11:

ROBERTS, JOSEPH JENKINS (March 15, 1809-February 24, 1876), first president of Liberia, West Africa, was born of free, colored parents at Petersburg, Virginia, having seven-eighths or more of white blood. He married at an early age in Virginia but lost his wife, and in 1829 he migrated to Liberia with his widowed mother and younger brothers and there became a merchant. The governor of the colony at that time. Thomas H. Buchanan, a white appointee of the American Colonization Society, was having trouble with the natives, who were not reconciled to the invasion of the American freedmen. During the fighting with the Dey and Golah tribes, Roberts became one of Buchanan's most efficient leaders. Owing to his energetic work., most of the more threatening natives were reduced to submission. He then made every effort to make friends with the natives, and, after Buchanan died, he was appointed in January 1842 the first colored man to become governor of Liberia, at that time, however, comprising only the northern part of what is now its best territory. Although the colony of Maryland was not formally a part of Liberia until 1857, its governor, John Russwurm [q.v.], gave Roberts full cooperation. The necessity of organizing the country, pacifying the natives, and repelling the illicit slave traders, called for larger revenues than Roberts or Russwurm had. Accordingly, they decided to lay import duties on goods brought to Liberia. This precipitated grave international difficulties, for Liberia was not a sovereign country, nor was it, on the other hand, a recognized colony of the United States. The British approached the United States on the subject but received a non-committal answer. Since positive action seemed to be necessary, Roberts, after strengthening his treaties with the native tribes, visited the United States in 1844 in the hope of adjusting the matter. At such a difficult time, when the question of the annexation of Texas was forcing the slavery question to the front, the American government avoided taking any strong ground in defense of Liberia, and the American Colonization Society gave up all claims upon the colony.

He returned, continued his purchase of lands from the chiefs, and in 1847 called a conference at which the new republic of Liberia was proclaimed. He was elected as the first president, and, reelected in 1849, 1851, and 1853, he served his country carefully and wisely. As soon as the new nation was proclaimed, he hurried to England. His unexpected success there was due largely to his own character and finesse. He was a man of intelligence and poise, slight and handsome, with olive skin and crisp hair. He was an excellent conversationalist and had the manners of a gentleman. His second wife, Jane (Waring) Roberts, to whom he was married in Monrovia in 1836, was a woman of education and spoke excellent French. In Europe he received unusual attention. He signed a commercial treaty in 1849 with Great Britain, which recognized Liberia as an independent nation and gave Englishmen freedom of domicile. Before he left England, ten thousand dollars was raised by his English friends and given to him to buy the territory between Liberia and Sierra Leone,  where the slave trade was flourishing. Later he visited France and Belgium, where he was received by Leopold I, and also Holland and Prussia. In 1852 he again visited France, where he was received by the prince president, afterward Napoleon III. These visits were largely instrumental in obtaining speedy recognition of Liberia. After finishing his term he continued to be active in the interests of Liberia, even to the extent of taking the field against rebellious natives. In 1856 he was elected first president of the new College of Liberia and continued in that office until his death. He visited Europe again in 1854 and 1862, and on his return from the last trip he was appointed Belgian consul in Liberia. In 1869 he visited the United States, where he addressed the annual meeting of the  African Colonization Society at Washington on African Colonization (1869). When there arose in Liberia the financial difficulties with regard to a British loan (see sketch of Edward James Roye) Liberia came near to revolution. At the age of 63 and already broken in health by his long service, he was again elected to the presidency in 1871. Reelected, he served until January 1876 and died at Monrovia in February.

[H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I; B. G. Brawley, A Social History of the American Negro (1921); "A Visit to Monrovia," African Repository, January 1876; "Obituary," Ibid., April 1876; Sixtieth Annual Report of the American Colonization Society (1877), p. 6; date of death from African Repository and Report of the American Colonization Society]

W. E. B. D-B.


ROBERTS, JOSEPH JENKINS (March 15, 1809-February 24, 1876), first president of Liberia, West Africa. African American organizer for the American Colonization Society.

(H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 10-11:


ROBESON, Andrew, New Bedford, Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-, 1843-53, 1862-63.  Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1860.


ROBINSON, Andrew, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1843-1846.


ROBINSON, Charles, 1818-1894, territorial governor, Kansas, member Free Soil Anti-Slavery Party, 1855. In 1854 Eli Thayer appointed him Kansas resident agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 58; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 283; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 34; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 641). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

ROBINSON, Charles, governor of Kansas, born in Hardwick, Massachusetts, 21 July, 1818. He was educated at Hadley and Amherst academies and at Amherst college, but was compelled by illness to leave in his second year. He studied medicine at Woodstock. Vermont, and at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he received his degree in 1843, and practised at Belchertown, Springfield, and Fitchburg, Massachusetts, till 1849, when he went to California by the overland route. He edited a daily paper in Sacramento called the “Settler's and Miner's Tribune” in 1850, took an active part in the riots of 1850 as an upholder of squatter sovereignty, was seriously wounded, and, while under indictment for conspiracy and murder, was elected to the legislature. He was subsequently discharged by the court without trial. On his return to Massachusetts in 1852 he conducted in Fitchburg a weekly paper called the “News” till June, 1854, when he went to Kansas as confidential agent of the New England emigrants' aid society, and settled in Lawrence. He became the leader of the Free-state party, and was made chairman of its executive committee and commander-in-chief of the Kansas volunteers. He was a member of the Topeka convention that adopted a free-state constitution in 1855, and under it was elected governor in 1856. He was arrested for treason and usurpation of office, and on his trial on the latter charge was acquitted by the jury. He was elected again by the Free-state party in 1858, and for the third time in 1859, under the Wyandotte constitution, and entered on his term of two years on the admission of Kansas to the Union in January, 1861. He organized most of the Kansas regiments for the civil war. He afterward served one term as representative and two terms as senator in the legislature, and in 1882 was again a candidate for governor. In 1887 he became superintendent of Haskell institute in Lawrence. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 283.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 34:

ROBINSON, CHARLES (July 21, 1818-August 17, 1894), pioneer, first governor of the state of Kansas, was 'born at Hardwick, Massachusetts, the son of Jonathan and Huldah (Woodward) Robinson. He grew up in an abolition atmosphere, attended a private school in his native town, and was then sent to Hadley and Amherst academies. He entered Amherst College but was forced to withdraw after a year and a half because of weak eyes. Subsequently he studied medicine under Dr. Amos Twitchell at Keene, New Hampshire, and attended medical lectures at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Woodstock, Vermont. In 1843 he was married to Sarah Adams of Brookfield, and in the same year he began to practise his profession at Belchertown, Massachusetts. Two years later he and Josiah G. Holland [q.v.] opened a hospital at Springfield. After his wife's death in 1846 he joined a brother at Fitchburg and there continued the practice of medicine. In 1849 he accompanied a party of about forty Bostonians to California. After two weeks at mining on Bear Creek he formed a partnership and established a restaurant at Sacramento. In the contest between land speculators and settlers he was chosen president of the squatters' association. In an armed collision with town officials he received a wound thought to be fatal. He was arrested and placed on a prison ship, where he unexpectedly recovered. After miners and squatters had elected him to the legislature, he was admitted to bail and soon became co-editor of the Settlers' and Miners' Tribune at Sacramento. In the state Assembly he was antislavery and supported Fremont for the federal Senate. Eventually a nolle prosequi was entered on charges of assault, conspiracy, and murder. He returned to Massachusetts by way of Panama in 1851, and on October 30 of that year he was married to Sara Tappan Doolittle Lawrence, a young woman of good birth and education, daughter of Myron Lawrence of Belchertown, Massachusetts. She shared his interests and ambitions and was an important factor in helping him throughout his life. Her Kansas: its Interior and Exterior Life (1856) is a history of the Kansas struggle with a Free-State bias. For two years Robinson edited the Fitchburg News and practised medicine.

In 1854 Eli Thayer appointed him Kansas resident agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. He was well qualified for the position since his California adventure had given him a glimpse of Kansas and had introduced him to the contentious life of the frontier. In July 1854 the company sent him to the territory to arrange for its settlement. He had noted the beauty and fertility of the Kansas valley in 1849, so he explored the Missouri to Fort Leavenworth while a companion followed the Kansas to Fort Riley. He then went to St. Louis to meet the first body of New England emigrants and continued to conduct a second to the territory, which arrived at Kansas City in September. The two groups united at the present site of Lawrence and began the settlement of that town. In the spring of 1855 he conducted another party to the territory, which arrived in time to participate in the election of a legislature on March 30. Although there was illegal voting on both sides, proslavery candidates won a large majority of the seats. Three days after the election he wrote to Thayer for the loan of 200 Sharps rifles and two field pieces. At the first Fourth of July celebration at Lawrence he breathed defiance as he recommended, "Let us repudiate all laws enacted by foreign legislative bodies" (Kansas Conflict, post, p. 152). During the summer and fall of 1855 he attended numerous conferences held to unite antislavery factions in the territory. At the Lawrence convention: of August 14, he was appointed chairman of a Free-State executive committee of twenty-three, but a month later it was superseded by a smaller body headed by James H. Lane [q.v.]. A Free-State party was organized at Big Springs in September, and a constitutional convention was called to meet at Topeka on October 23. He was a delegate and led the radical wing of the party that opposed discrimination against free negroes, but without success. Largely through his influence, however, the convention refused to indorse the principle of popular sovereignty, urged by Lane and the administration faction.

When proslavery Missourians gathered on Wakarusa River in December and threatened to destroy Lawrence, he was appointed commanderin0chief. His cautious policy probably averted bloodshed for the belligerent Lane wished to take the offensive. The timely arrival of Governor Wilson Shannon ended the controversy, and both sides disbanded their forces. Yet the Wakarusa War was significant for it gave Lane the leadership of the radicals. On January 15, 1856, the Free-State party elected officers under the Topeka constitution, and Robinson was chosen governor. A legislature was organized at Topeka on March 4, and he delivered an inaugural address. He was soon indicted by a proslavery grand jury for treason and usurpation of office. While on his way east in May to obtain aid for Kansas he was arrested near Lexington, Missouri After four months of imprisonment at Lecompton he was released on bail, but the charges remained until the following year. In the fall of 1856 he resigned the  governorship and 'went east; but the Free-State legislature did not act upon his resignation, arid he withdrew it when he returned. He and Lane advised participation in the October election of 1857 for members of a territorial legislature. That policy was adopted, the Free-State party captured control of the territorial government, and the Topeka movement came to an end. In 1859 the Republican party supplanted the Free-State organization, and a new constitution was framed at Wyandotte.

Robinson was nominated for governor and elected over the Democratic candidate, Samuel Medary, but of course he did not take office until the state was admitted in 1861. He was sworn in as governor on February 9, and summoned the legislature to meet March 26. His message to the Assembly was able and comprehensive, and he evinced sound statesmanship in inaugurating the forms and functions of a new state government. Nevertheless, his administration of two years was beset with difficulties. Before he had been in office a year an abortive attempt was made to displace him. An election was held, but the canvassing board refused to count the votes, and the state supreme court held it illegal. Early in 1862 articles of impeachment were preferred against the auditor, secretary of state, and the governor because of alleged irregularities in the sale of state bonds. The first two were found guilty and removed from office, but Robinson was acquitted almost unanimously. Nevertheless, the bond transactions hurt him politically. In raising and officering state troops for the Civil War he and Lane worked at cross purposes. Lane had the confidence of Lincoln and Stanton, controlled Kansas patronage, and even usurped a part of the governor's prerogative. After the expiration of his term of office, he remained a great deal in retirement at his country home of "Oakridge" a few miles from Lawrence, although he engaged in politics sporadically. Always an independent, he joined the Liberal Republican movement. He was elected to the state Senate in 1874 and again in 1876. A decade later he was defeated for Congress on the Democratic ticket, and in 1890 he was an unsuccessful candidate for governor on a fusion ticket composed of Greenbackers, Populists, and Democrats. Throughout his Kansas career he was a promoter of education. As a member of the state Senate he obtained the passage of a comprehensive law regulating the public school system. From 1864 to 1874 and again from 1893 to 1894 he was a regent of the University of Kansas. As superintendent of Haskell Institute, 1887-89, he adopted a policy of industrialization, under which the school began to flourish. He was president of the Kansas State Historical Society from 1879 to 1880 and in 1892 published The Kansas Conflict. Cautious and calculative, logical and shrewd, judicious and argumentative, his greatest service to Kansas was that he gave the Topeka movement equilibrium and was the brake and balance wheel of the Free-State party. He was never very popular, but his common sense and business acumen gave great weight to his judgment, and his decisions were usually sound.

["Webb Scrap Book," 17 volumes, a collection of newspaper clippings, 1854-56, 1859, in the Kansas State Historical Library; The Kansas Conflict and Kansas: its  ... Life, ante; F. W. Blackmar, The Life of Charles Robinson (1902), and "A Chapter in the Life of Charles Robinson, the First Governor of Kansas," American Historical Association Report ... 1894 (1896); Eli Thayer, A History of the Kansas Crusade (1889); Kansas Historical Collections, volume XIII (1915); D. W. Wilder's Annals of Kansas (new ed., 1886).]

W. H. S-n.


ROBINSON, Christopher (May 15, 1806-October 3, 1889), lawyer, diplomatist. He was elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress (1859-61), where he voted for John Sherman for speaker and was a member of the Judiciary Committee and of the select committee of thirty-three on the "state of the Union." His sentiments were strongly anti-slavery and pro-Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 38:

ROBINSON, CHRISTOPHER (May 15, 1806-October 3, 1889), lawyer, diplomatist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Benjamin Robinson and his wife, Ann (Pitts). He was sent to a private school and thence to Brown University, where he was graduated in 1825. His personal inclinations were toward a career in which success would depend upon powers of speech: in education, religion, or the law. He chose the last, retaining a practical interest in the other two throughout his life. After his graduation he engaged for a time in academy teaching, and then read law under Senator Albert C. Greene. He was admitted to the bar in 1833, and made his appearance in public life the same year as Fourth-of-July orator in Woonsocket, where he had settled. A Universalist, he preached for the Universalist society before the completion of their meeting-house in 1839. In 1847 he was prominent, though unsuccessful, in an effort to link Woonsocket to Boston by a railroad. He was thrice married: to Mary Tillinghast, by whom he had one child who died; to Mary Jencks, who had no issue; and to Louisa Aldrich, to whom four children were born. Robinson did not enter politics until after the death of his third wife, in 1853. His political ambitions were rewarded when he was made attorney-general of Rhode Island, 1854-55. He was elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress (1859-61), where he voted for John Sherman for speaker and was a member of the Judiciary Committee and of the select committee of thirty-three on the "state of the Union." His sentiments were strongly anti-slavery and pro-Union. He was not returned in the election of 1860, but on June 8, 1861, was appointed minister to Peru by President Lincoln. This was an important, even critical, post, for diplomatic relations had been suspended in November 1860 by President Buchanan, and there were many partisans of the Confederacy in Lima. Robinson presented his credentials January II, 1862, and with patient persistence and unruffled temper urged upon dilatory and changing ministries the settlement of the claims of American citizens. He yielded to the Peruvian contention that the two most controversial cases should be submitted to arbitration (which was never effected, since the King of the Belgians declined to act as arbitrator), but he obtained the satisfactory settlement of the other claims by means of a mixed commission. He also won Peruvian sentiment over to the Federal government, turning to his advantage Peru's fears of European aggression, of which he offered Mexico as an example. When these fears were realized in 1864 by Spain's seizure of the Chincha Islands, he exerted himself to assure Peru of the active sympathy of the United States.

Robinson's mission was terminated in a peculiar manner. In July 1865 he received an instruction from the Department of State that his resignation had been accepted. He replied that any document purporting to be his resignation was a forgery, but that he was ready to retire. The investigation which followed involved the secretary of the legation, who was recalled. A new minister arrived in November, and Robinson's last important official act was to assemble the diplomatic corps at the legation (he was acting without instructions), where it was resolved to recognize a revolutionary government which had just overthrown the old. Robinson left Peru on December 21, and returned to private life in Woonsocket, January 16, 1866. He lived quietly and in comfortable circumstances there until his death at the age of eighty-three.

[E. Richardson, History of Woonsocket (1876); Woonsocket and other Rhode Island newspapers, esp. obituary notice in Providence Daily Journal, October 5, 1889, and note in Brown University Necrology, Ibid., June 18, 1890; Robinson's dispatches in the archives of the State Department; and Woonsocket tax records.]

G. V. B.


ROBINSON, Harriet Jane Hanson (February 8, 1825-December 22, 1911), woman's suffrage leader.  Her husband was journalist and reformer, William Stevens Robinson [q.v.] Throughout his lifetime, she loyally and enthusiastically supported her husband's activities in the anti-slavery crusade and other reform movements.  

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 289-290; Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A General, Political, Legal and Legislation History from 1774 to 1881 (1881, 1883).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 44-45:

ROBINSON, HARRIET JANE HANSON (February 8, 1825-December 22, 1911), woman's suffrage leader, was born in Boston, of old New England stock, the daughter of William and Harriet (Browne) Hanson. When about eight years old she moved with her widowed mother and three brothers to Lowell "where they lived for some years on one of the manufacturing 'corporations'" (Loom and Spindle, post, p. 160). Here she received her early education, and then became an operative in a Lowell mill. As one of Lowell's literary mill girls she wrote for The Lowell Offering, and was on intimate terms with its editors. She also contributed to the "annuals" and newspapers of the time, and it was through such contributions to the Lowell Courier that she met the journalist and reformer, William Stevens Robinson [q.v.] whom, on November 30, 1848, she married; they had two daughters and two sons. Throughout his lifetime, she loyally and enthusiastically supported her husband's activities in the anti-slavery crusade and other reform movements.

Her own particular interest, however, was in the advancement of women, and, following Robinson's death in 1876, she wrote and spoke freely in their behalf. She was the fir st woman to appear before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress, and she advocated the cause of suffrage before the legislature of Massachusetts. In 1888 she served as a member of the International Council of Women which met in Washington. She was keenly interested in the women's club movement, assisting in the formation of the General Federation of Women's Clubs in 1890, and serving as a member of its first advisory board. In association with Julia Ward Howe [q.v.] and others she helped to organize the New England Women's Club. She was also one of the first members of the Wintergreen Club of Boston.

Her earliest book was "Warrington" Pen-Portraits (1877), a memoir of her husband with selections from his writings. This was followed by Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A General, Political, Legal and Legislation History from 1774 to 1881 (1881, 1883); Captain Mary Miller (1887), a suffrage drama; The New Pandora (1889), a classical drama and " the heart-and-brain product of one who grew up as a working-girl"; Early Factory Labor in New England (1883, 1889); and Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls (1898). The closing years of her life were spent in Malden, Massachusetts, where she died in her eighty-seventh year.

[Lucy Larcom, in Loom and Spindle (1898); E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (4 volumes, 1881-1902); Who's Who in America, 1910-11; Boston Transcript, December 22, 1911.)

W.R.W.


ROBINSON, Marius R., 1806-1876, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, clergyman, abolitionist.  Alumnus of Lane University.  Robinson was active in the anti-slavery debates there.  He was editor of The Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1849-1856.  The newspaper was the official organ of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1850, he was elected President of the Western Anti-Slavery Society for six years, and was member of the Executive Committee for twelve years.  Robinson was active in the Western Peace Society.  He worked with Augustus Wattles to set up schools for free Blacks.  He worked with abolitionist James G. Birney in editing Philanthropist.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1843.  He was a travelling anti-slavery agent. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 160, 164, 174, 185, 220, 264). 


ROBINSON, Martin, born 1812, African American abolitionist.


ROBINSON, Rowland T., North Ferrisburg, Vermont, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1835-40, 1840-43.


ROBINSON, Sophia, leader, Boston Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).


ROBINSON, William Stevens, (December 7, 1818-March 11, 1876); journalist, in 1848 he served as secretary of the Free-Soil Convention which met in Worcester. His outspoken opinions on slavery and Massachusetts politics cost him his position, and he returned to Lowell, Massachusetts to start the Lowell American, which he conducted for nearly four years, becoming recognized as one of the most radical of Massachusetts anti-slavery journalists. (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 58).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

ROBINSON, William Stevens, journalist, born in Concord, Massachusetts, 7 December, 1818; died in Malden, Massachusetts, 11 March, 1876. He was educated in the public schools of Concord, learned the printer's trade, at the age of twenty became the editor and publisher of the "Yeoman's Gazette " in Concord, and was afterward assistant editor of the Lowell "Courier." He was an opponent of slavery while he adhered to the Whig Party, and when the Free-Soil Party was organized he left the "Courier," and in July, 1848, took charge of the Boston "Daily Whig." His vigorous and sarcastic editorials increased the circulation of the paper, the name of which was changed to the " Republican "; yet, after the presidential canvass was ended, Henry Wilson, the proprietor, decided to assume the editorial management and moderate the tone of his journal. Robinson next edited the Lowell "American," a Free-Soil Democratic paper, till it died for lack of support in 1853. He was a member of the legislature in 1852 and 1853. In 1856 he began to write letters for the Springfield "Republican" over the signature " Warrington," in which questions of the day and public men were discussed with such boldness and wit. that the correspondence attracted wide popular attention. This connection was continued until his death. From 1862 till 1873 he was clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. "Warrington," by his articles in the newspapers and magazines, was instrumental in defeating Benjamin F. Butler's effort to obtain the Republican nomination for governor in 1871, and in 1873 he was Butler's strongest opponent. Besides pamphlets and addresses, he published a "Manual of Parliamentary Law" (Boston, 1875). His widow published personal reminiscences from his writings entitled "Warrington Pen-Portraits," with a memoir (Boston, 1877).—His wife, Harriet Hanson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 8 February, 1825, was one of the intellectual circle of factory-girls that composed the staff of the " Lowell Offering." She is a sister of John W. Hanson. She contributed poems to the Lowell "Courier" while Mr. Robinson was its editor, and from this introduction sprang a friendship that resulted in their marriage on 30 November, 1848. She was his assistant in his editorial work, and was as devoted as himself to the anti-slavery cause. She has also taken an active part in the woman's rights movement, and in 1888 was a member of the International council of women at Washington. D. C. Her works include "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement" (Boston, 1881); "Early Factory Labor in New England" (1883); and " Captain Mary Miller," a drama (1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 289-290.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 58:

ROBINSON, WILLIAM STEVENS (December 7, 1818-March 11, 1876); journalist, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the sixth and last child of William and Martha (Cogswell) Robinson, and a descendant of Jonathan Robinson of Exeter, New Hampshire, who died in 1675. After attending the town school, he learned the printer's trade and in 1837 joined his brother in the office of the Norfolk Advertiser of Dedham, a strong temperance paper. In 1839 he became editor of the Yeoman's Gazette, later The Republican, of Concord, a Whig paper, and as an ardent Whig he attended, as delegate, the Whig Convention in Baltimore in 1840. Two years later he became assistant editor of the Lowell Courier and Journal, acting for a time as its Washington correspondent. In 1845 he went to Manchester, New Hampshire, to edit The American, but soon returned to the Lowell Courier, in which connection his strong anti-slavery views began to attract marked attention among the radicals of Massachusetts. His vigorous condemnation of slavery and caustic comments on Massachusetts politics and politicians finally cost him his position, and in 1848 he removed to Boston to succeed Charles Francis Adams [q.v.] as editor of the Boston Daily Whig, later the Boston Daily Republican, which he conducted through the presidential campaign of 1848. The same year he served as secretary of the Free-Soil Convention which met in Worcester. Again, however, his vigorous opinions on slavery and Massachusetts politics cost him his position, and he returned to Lowell to start the Lowell American, which he conducted for nearly four years, becoming recognized as one of the most radical of Massachusetts anti-slavery journalists. In 1852, and again in 1853, he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, and in the latter year served as clerk of the constitutional convention. Following the failure of the Lowell American in 1854, he joined the editorial staffs of The Commonwealth and the Boston Telegraph and violently opposed the rising tide of Know-Nothingism in Massachusetts. In 1856 his "Warrington" letters on Massachusetts politics and politicians began to appear in the Springfield Republican and at once attracted state-wide attention because of their thorough knowledge of Massachusetts politics and their frank personal comment on the public men of the state. Similar letters over the pen name "Gilbert" were contributed to the New York Tribune, on which paper Robinson was offered an editorial berth in 1859 which, feeling that his best work could be done in Massachusetts, he refused.

The friend of Charles Sumner, John A. Andrew, Henry Wilson, John G. Whittier, and other Massachusetts radicals, he was early associated with the fortunes of the Republican party in the state, and in 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, he aided in editing The Tocsin, a campaign paper "published by an association of Republicans who are in earnest, and who will be heard" ("Warrington" Pen-Portraits, post, p. 94). In 1862 he was chosen as clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, a position which he held for eleven years, during which he became known as the "Warwick" of Massachusetts politics. In 1863 he was made secretary of the Republican state committee, which important office he occupied until 1868, writing many of the addresses and memorials of the committee during these critical years of war and reconstruction. The strength of Robinson's political power in Massachusetts was most evident, perhaps, in 1871 and 1872 when he successfully led the opposition against Benjamin F. Butler [q.v.] in the latter's efforts to gain the governorship of Massachusetts. It was due to Butler's machinations, he believed, that he finally lost his clerkship in 1873. He then served for a short time on the staff of the Boston Journal, but in 1874 increasing ill health caused him to make a European trip, following which he returned to complete and publish Warrington's Manual (1875), a handbook of parliamentary law. He died the following year at his home in Malden, Massachusetts.

Robinson is described as "a lymphatic, shut-in man, smiling only around the mouth, which is carefully covered with hair to hide the smile; short, thick-set, with his head ... set ... directly on his shoulders; high forehead; slightly bald; thin hair; ruddy of face; ... the keenest political writer in America, and the best political writer since 'Junius' " (quoted in "Warrington" Pen-Portraits, p. 128). On November 30, 1848, he married Harriet Jane Hanson [see Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson], one of the literary mill girls of Lowell and for many years a leader in the woman suffrage movement in Massachusetts, a cause in which Robinson himself took much interest. They had four children, of whom three survived their father.

[Memoir in "Warrington" Pen-Portraits (1877), ed. by Harriet J. H. Robinson; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, October 1885, July 1890; Springfield Republican, March 13, 1876.]

W.R.W.



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.