T-V: Tabor through Vaughn

See below for annotated biographies of Free Soil Party leaders, members and supporters. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.

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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L.R.H.


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

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2. 300-301; Tappan MSS. are in the Library of Congress. Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). Sewell, 1976, pp. 19, 166; See also F. P. Weisenburger, "Ohio Politics during the Jacksonian Period" (unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan); T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (1897); E. A. Holt, "Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F.P.W.  


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

(Blue, 2005; Burin, 2005, p. 89; Dumond, 1961, pp. 159, 218, 287; Filler, 1960, pp. 26, 31, 50, 55, 61, 63, 68, 72, 94, 102, 130, 136, 138, 144, 150, 152, 158, 164, 165, 168, 174, 177, 189, 194, 210, 247, 262; Harrold, 1995; Mabee, 1970, pp. 8, 9, 13-19, 21, 24, 26, 38, 42-49, 51, 55, 58, 91, 93, 104, 105, 130, 190, 151-156, 190, 202, 219-221, 226-229, 233, 234, 251-253, 257, 334, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345; Mitchell, 2007; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 106, 161, 162, 163, 166, 174, 290, 362; Sewell, 1976, pp. 36, 37, 41, 45, 49, 61, 75, 108-109, 110, 117, 120, 124, 128-129, 134, 137, 155, 160n, 163-164, 242, 287; Sorin, 1971, pp. 70, 93, 96, 102, 113, 114, 131; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 32-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 303; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 21, p. 311; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 321; Tappan, Lewis. Life of Arthur Tappan. New York, Hurd and Houghton: 1870; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 673-675; Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery, 1969; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 76, 128-129, 219, 228, 230; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

F.J.K.


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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


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


THAYER, Eli, 1819-1899, Worcester, Massachusetts, abolitionist, educator, congressman, established Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, 1854, which changed to New England Aid Company in 1855. 

(Filler, 1960, pp. 238-239; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 56; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 71-72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 402; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 21, p. 488; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Sewell, 1976, pp. 298, 314-316, 364).

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

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

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

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

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

Thayer's subsequent life was not a happy one. He served as a treasury agent in 1861-62, obtained some support at Washington for a plan of military colonization of Florida, and in 1864-70 was land agent in New York for Western railroad interests. Returning to Worcester, he was a candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket in 1874 and 1878. In 1887 he entered on a period of vigorous newspaper controversy with the Garrisonian abolitionists, whom he condemned whole-heartedly as disunionists and as having added nothing but disloyalty to the national struggle against slavery. He felt that his efforts in securing Kansas for freedom were not properly recognized. His speeches in Congress appear in Six Speeches, with a Sketch of the Life of Hon. Eli Thayer (1860). He was the author of The New England Emigrant Aid Company, and Its Influence, through the Kansas Contest, 1tpon National History (1887), also printed in Collect ions of the Worcester Society of Antiquity (volume VII, 18 88), and of A History of the Kansas Crusade, Its Friends and Its Foes (1889), in which he expressed his feelings regarding the part he played in that movement.

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

H. D. J.


THORNTON, Jessy Quinn, 1810-1888, jurist, lawyer.  Chief Justice of the Oregon Provisional Government, 1847.  Supporter of “Wilmot Proviso” to prohibit extension of slavery in the new territories acquired after war with Mexico. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 700; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 502; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 21, p. 607 H. H. Bancroft, History of Oregon, volume I (1886); H. W. Scott, History of the Oregon Country (6 volumes, 1924); C. H. Carey, History of Oregon (1922)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 2, p. 502;

THORNTON, JESSY QUINN (August 24, 1810-February 5, 1888), Oregon pioneer, was born near Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia), a descendant of an English immigrant who came to Virginia in 1633. His parents moved to Champaign County, Ohio, when he was an infant. He received a good education. Choosing the law for a profession, he spent nearly three years in London as a student, and on his return continued his preparation in the office of John H. Peyton of Staunton, Virginia. After his admission to the bar in 1833 he attended law lectures at the University of Virginia. In 1835 he opened a law office in Palmyra, Missouri, and in the following year edited a newspaper in that town. On February 8, 1838, at Hannibal, Missouri, he married Mrs. Nancy M. Logue, and three years later moved to Quincy, Illinois. Their health failing, in 1846 he and his wife set out for Oregon, overtaking on the way the California-bound ox-train of Colonel William Henry Russell [q.v.] and arriving in the Salem neighborhood in November.

Thornton at once came into public notice, and on February 9, 1847, Governor George Abernethy [q.v.] appointed him judge of the supreme court of the provisional government. In October he was delegated to proceed at once to the national capital and press the demand of the people for the organization of a territory. Making the trip by water, he arrived in Washington in May 1848, and was soon joined by Joseph L. Meek [q.v.], who, with similar instructions, had traveled by land. With the support of President Polk, Thornton worked tirelessly against a hostile, or indifferent, majority in Congress, and was successful in obtaining the passage of an act establishing the territorial government of Oregon on August 14, the last day of the session. A disagreement with the President lost for him, however, a reappointment as judge. While in Washington he wrote Oregon and California in 1848, which was published early the following year, in two volumes, in New York; a second edition appeared in 1855. Returning to Oregon, he was appointed Indian sub-agent for the region north of the Columbia, but soon gave up the post. He then resumed the practice of law and became active in politics. In 1864-65 he represented Benton County in the legislature. For some years he lived in Oregon City, later in Albany and Portland, and from 1871 in Salem. His later years were spent in poverty. He died in Salem, and was buried there in the Methodist churchyard. He was survived by his wife.

Thornton was one of the leading figures in early Oregon, and his work was important and useful. Into the act establishing the territory he succeeded in incorporating a provision doubling the amount of land ordinarily set aside for school purposes, and thus made possible the rapid expansion of educational facilities in the young community. He was a voluminous writer. For the meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association of 1874 he expanded the sketch of the provisional government given in his book, and for the meeting of 1878 he prepared an account of the emigration of 1846. Both articles are printed in Transactions of the Association. He was also the author of a series of political articles in the New York Tribune under the pen-name of Achilles de Harley, and he wrote many letters for the local press. Much of his writing is bitterly critical of some of his contemporaries, and though late in life he made partial amends for this censoriousness, he set in motion controversies that continued long after his death.

[H. H. Bancroft, History of Oregon, volume I (1886); H. W. Scott, History of the Oregon Country (6 volumes, 1924); C. H. Carey, History of Oregon (1922); Portland Morning Oregonian, February 7, 1888; information from J. Neilson Barry, Portland, Oregon.]

W. J. G.


TREADWELL, Seymour Boughton, 1795-1867, political leader, temperance and anti-slavery activist.  Wrote, “American Liberties and American Slavery Morally and Politically Illustrated,” 1838.  Editor of anti-slavery newspaper, Michigan Freeman.  Member Free-Soil Party. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, vol. VI, pp. 155-156)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

TREADWELL, Seymour Boughton, politician, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1 June, 1795; died in Jackson, Michigan, 9 June, 1867. His parents moved in his infancy to Monroe County, New York, where he was educated. He taught in western New York and Ohio, and in 1830 engaged in trade in Albion, New York, where he began to attract notice as a temperance and anti-slavery advocate. He moved to Rochester in 1837, and went to Michigan in 1839 to conduct the “Michigan Freeman,” an anti-slavery organ, at Jackson. He took an active part in all the conventions and movements of the Abolitionists, supporting James G. Birney for president in 1840 and 1844 and John P. Hale in 1852. In 1854 he was nominated by the Free-Soil party for commissioner of the state land-office and twice elected. He acquired note, especially by a remarkable state paper in which he denied the constitutionality of the payment by the state of the expenses of the judges of the supreme court. The correctness of his views on the question was maintained by the state auditors in opposition to the attorney-general. He lived in retirement after 1859 on a farm near Jackson. He became first known to the public as the author of a work entitled “American Liberties and American Slavery Morally and Politically Illustrated” (Rochester, 1838). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 155-156.


TUCK, Amos, 1810-1879, Parsonfield, Maine, lawyer, politician, abolitionist.  Co-founder of the Republican Party.  Free-Soil and Whig anti-slavery member of the U.S. Congress.  Opposed the Democratic Party and its position supporting the annexation of Texas and the extension of slavery to the new territories.  Elected to Congress in 1847 and served until 1853.  Prominent anti-slavery congressman, allied with Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio and John G. Palfrey of Massachusetts. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 27 Autobiography Memoir of A. Tuck (privately printed, 1902); C.R. Corning, Ames Tuck (1902); J. W. Dearborn, Sketch of the Life and Character of Hon. Amos Tuck (n.d.,) 1889 Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Congressional Globe; Sewell, 1976, pp. 132, 153, 166, 168n, 218, 241, 244, 280)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 27;

TUCK, AMOS (August 2, 1810-December 11, 1879), congressman, was born at Parsonsfield, Maine, fourth of six children of John and Betsey (Towle) Tuck, and a descendant of Robert Tuck who settled on the New Hampshire coast in 1638. His parents were people of strong character, intelligent, industrious, ambitious for their children, but handicapped by the grinding struggle for a livelihood on a New England farm. The boy farmed at home Until he was seventeen, then, with intermittent attendance at various schools, worked as a common laborer, taught district school, and in time accumulated resources financial and scholastic for admission to Dartmouth College.

After his graduation in 1835 he taught school, studying law in the meantime, and upon his admission to the bar in 1838 began practice in Exeter where within a few months he was admitted to partnership with James Bell, his former preceptor. In 1842, as a Democrat, he served a term in the New Hampshire legislature, but in 1844 definitely broke with the Democratic party On the Texas question and three years later, after an exciting and embittered contest, was elected to the Thirtieth Congress by a fusion of independent Democrats and Whigs. The contest conducted in New Hampshire by Amos Tuck and John P. Hale [q.v.], who was elected to the Senate as a result of the same campaign, was in many respects a forerunner of the great party upheavals of the next decade and attracted national attention. Tuck served three terms in Congress (1847-53). His independent position in the House, where with Joshua R. Giddings [q.v.] of Ohio and John G. Palfrey [q.v.] of Massachusetts he constituted a nucleus of antislavery sentiment, was prominent rather than influential. His views, however, well expressed in his speech of January 19, 1848, against the Mexican War and extension of slavery, were eventually to become predominant in the Northern states.

Defeated for a fourth term because of a temporary waning of anti-slavery fervor in his state together with an effective gerrymander by the legislature, he continued active in the movement against slavery, but his essential sanity and political acumen kept him out of its more extravagant manifestations and his activity was therefore vastly more effective-so effective, indeed, that his admirers have often claimed that the Republican party was really a New Hampshire creation. At all events, he was instrumental in 1853 and 1854 in bringing about a merger of the dissatisfied into a new party alignment. At the Republican convention of 1856 he was a vice-president and in 1860 he was a member of the platform committee; in 1861 he attended the unsuccessful conference at Washington which endeavored to avert the final break between North and South. He was a loyal adherent of President Lincoln, with whom he had formed a personal friendship in Congress and from whom in 1861 he accepted the post of naval officer for the district of Boston and Charlestown. He served in this capacity until removed by President Johnson in 1865.

From the professional standpoint the most successful period of Tuck's career followed the Civil War. Although he retained his residence at Exeter, his clients were now of national importance and their affairs took him into courtrooms and business offices in the financial centers of the country. He was interested in the Western railroad development and his shrewd sense of investment values enabled him to accumulate a large estate. He was a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy from 1853 to 1879, and from 1857 to 1866 of Dartmouth College, where in 1900 his son Edward Tuck established the Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance. Tuck's fine appearance, personal charm, and public spirit gave him a prominent place in that group of lawyers and party leaders which made Exeter one of the influential centers of New England life of the nineteenth century. He was twice married, first to Sarah Ann Nudd, who bore him eight children, and after her death early in 1847, on October 10 of the same year to Mrs. Catharine (Townsend) Shepard, daughter of John Townsend of Salisbury. Three of his children survived him.

[Autobiography Memoir of A. Tuck (privately printed, 1902); C.R. Corning, Ames Tuck (1902); J. W. Dearborn, Sketch of the Life and Character of Hon. Amos Tuck (n.d., 1889); Joseph Dow, Tuck Genealogy: Robert Tuck of Hampton, New Hampshire and His Descendants (1877); C.H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of N. H. (1894) and History of the Town of Exeter, New Hampshire (1888); L. M. Crosbie, The Phillips Exeter Acad. (1923); J. K. Lord, A History of Dartmouth College (1913); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); J. O. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (copyright 1906); Concord Daily Monitor, December 12, 1879; MSS. in Dartmouth College archives.]

W. A. R.


TYNDALE, Hector, (March 24, 1821-March 19, 1880), merchant, Union soldier.  Joined the Free-Soil Party in 1856, then affiliated himself with the new Republican party, and served as a member of the first Republican committee in Philadelphia, Pa.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 202. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1 p. 100; John McLaughlin. A Memoir of Hector Tyndale (1882); Re-union of the 28th and 147th Regiments, Pennsylvania Volunteers (1872); F. B. Heitman. Historic Register and Directory U. S. Army (1903)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

TYNDALE, Hector, soldier, born in Philadelphia, 24 March. 1821: died there, 19 March, 1880. His father was a merchant engaged in the importation of china and glassware, and young Tyndale succeeded to the business in 1845, in partnership with his brother-in-law, Edward P. Mitchell. He made several tours of Europe, inspecting closely all the chief factories, and becoming practically familiar with the whole art of pottery. His natural taste, thus cultivated, made him a most expert connoisseur, and led to his selection in 1876 as one of the judges of that section of the Centennial exhibition, in which capacity he wrote the elaborate report on pottery. His private collection was one of the most complete in the country. He first became interested in politics in 1856 as a Free-Soiler, and was a member of the first Republican committee in Philadelphia. He was not an Abolitionist, and had neither knowledge of nor sympathy with John Brown's raid, but when Mrs. Brown came to Philadelphia on her way to pay her last visit to her husband and bring back his body after his execution, she was without escort and was believed to be in personal danger. An appeal was made to Tyndale, who at once accepted the risks and dangers of escorting her. In the course of this self-imposed duty he was subjected to insults and threats, and on the morning of the execution was shot at by an unseen assassin. It had been threatened in the more violent newspapers of the south that John Brown's body should not be restored to his friends, but ignommiously treated, and a "nigger's" body substituted for his friends. When the coffin was delivered to Tyndale by the authorities, he refused to receive it until it was opened and the body was identified. He was in Europe when he heard the news of the firing on Fort Sumter, and at once returned home and offered his services to the government. He was commissioned major of the 28th Pennsylvania Regiment in June, 1861, and in August was put in command of Sandy Hook, opposite Harper's Ferry. The regiment fought in twenty-four battles and nineteen smaller engagements, in all of which Tyndale took part, except when he was disabled by wounds. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in April, 1802, and served in General Nathaniel P. Banks's corps in the Shenandoah valley, under General John Pope at Chantilly and the second battle of Bull Run, and later in General Joseph K. F. Mansfield's corps. At Antietam as the senior officer, he commanded a brigade in General George S. Greene's division of the 12th Corps, holding the ground in front of the Dunker church against three separate assaults of the enemy, in which the brigade captured seven battle-flags and four guns. Early in the day he received a wound in the hip, but he kept the field until the afternoon, when he was struck in the head by a musket-ball and carried off the field. For "conspicuous gallantry, self-possession, and good judgment at Antietam" he was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers, 29 November, 1862. After slow and partial recovery from his wounds he applied for active duty, and in May, 1863, was assigned to a brigade under General Erasmus D. Keyes near Yorktown. and served with the Army of the Potomac until September, when he was sent with General Joseph Hooker to the relief of Chattanooga. In the battle of Wauhatchie he carried by a bayonet charge a hill (subsequently known as Tyndale's hill), thus turning the flank of the enemy and relieving General John W. Geary's division from an assault by superior numbers. He also participated in the series of battles around Chattanooga, and in the march to the relief of Knoxville. He was sent home on sick-leave in May, 1864, and, finding his disability likely to be lasting, he resigned in August. In March, 1865, he was brevetted major-general of volunteers for gallant and meritorious services during the war. In 1868 he was the Republican nominee for mayor of Philadelphia, and was defeated by 68 votes in a poll of more than 120,000. In 1872 his kinsman. Professor John Tyndall of London, delivered a series of lectures in this country, and resolving to devote the proceeds to the establishment of a fund "for the promotion of science in the United States by the support in European universities or elsewhere of American pupils who may evince decided talents in physics," he appointed General Tyndale with Professor Joseph Henry and Dr. Edward L. Youmans trustees. Professor Tyndall in 1885 changed the trust and established three scholarships, in Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. The last-named institution called its share the Hector Tyndale scholarship in physics. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 202.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1 p. 100;

TYNDALE, HECTOR (March 24, 1821-March 19, 1880), merchant, Union soldier, was the son of Robinson and Sarah (Thorn) Tyndale. His father, who was reputed to be a lineal descendant of William Tyndale the Bible translator and martyr, had emigrated from Ireland to Philadelphia early in the nineteenth century and become a dealer in china and glass; his mother was a Philadelphian by birth and a member of the Society of Friends. Young Tyndale was educated at a Philadelphia school, upon leaving which he was offered an appointment to the United States Military Academy. Yielding to the wishes of his mother he declined the appointment, and went into business with his father. In August 1842 he married Julia Nowland, and, at the death of his father in 1845, he and his brother-in-law, Edward P. Mitchell, formed a partnership in the business of importing glass. He subsequently made numerous trips to Europe, visiting the leading factories there, collecting many specimens of pottery, and becoming an authority in the field of ceramics.

A Free-Soiler in politics, he affiliated himself with the rising Republican party, and served as a member of the first Republican committee in Philadelphia. In 1859 the wife of John Brown stopped at Philadelphia on her way to Charles Town, Virginia (now W. Virginia), to visit her imprisoned husband, and, after his execution, to bring his body North for burial. Tyndale believed her to be in such personal danger at that time that he voluntarily served as her escort. He was never an abolitionist, but years after this incident occurred his political enemies accused him of disloyalty to the Union because of his gallant gesture in behalf of a defenseless woman.

Tyndale was in Paris at the outbreak of the Civil War. He immediately hastened home, and in June 1861 was commissioned major of the 28th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. This regiment participated in a total of forty-three engagements during the war, Tyndale taking part in practically all of them. He commanded the forces near Harpers Ferry in August 1861, and at that time received several wounds. In April 1862 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel. He next served in Banks's Corps in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, and under Pope in the battles of Chantilly and second Bull Run. At Antietam, where three horses were shot from under him, he was twice wounded and left on the field for dead. Because of his conspicuous bravery at that battle he was promoted brigadier-general, November 29, 1862. He subsequently went to the support of Thomas at Chattanooga; led a bayonet charge to relieve Geary at Wauhatchie, Tenn.; distinguished himself at Missionary Ridge; and, with Sherman, participated in the campaign to relieve Knoxville. With health seriously impaired by disease and strenuous campaigning, he resigned from the service in August 1864. He was brevetted major-general the following March for gallant and meritorious service during the war.

As a civilian, Tyndale was highly esteemed. He was a successful merchant; a member of many patriotic and scientific societies; and, as the Republican candidate for mayor of Philadelphia in 1868, was defeated by a narrow margin. He was trustee of a fund which provided a number of university scholarships in physics, and one of these, at the University of Pennsylvania, bears his name. He died in Philadelphia; his wife, but ' no children, survived him.

[John McLaughlin. A Memoir of Hector Tyndale (1882); Re-union of the 28th and 147th Regiments, Pennsylvania Volunteers (1872); F. B. Heitman. Hist. Register and Directory U. S. Army (1903); Public Ledger (Philadelphia) and Philadelphia Press, March 20, 1880; Philadelphia Record, March 22, 1880; New York Tribune, March 21, 1880; Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, January 1916, pp. 1-3; University of Pennsylvania Catalog, 1931-32 (1931), p. 163.)

R. W. I.


UNDERWOOD, Francis Henry, born 1825.  “He went to Massachusetts in 1850, and took an active part in the anti-slavery cause. He was clerk of the Massachusetts Senate in 1852, and afterward literary adviser of the publishing-house of Phillips, Sampson, and Company. He conceived the idea of uniting the literary force of the north to the Free-Soil movement by means of a magazine, and after several years of effort was the means of securing the eminent writers that made the fame of the "Atlantic Monthly." He assisted in the management of that magazine for two years”.

(L. M. Underwood, The Underwood Families of America (2 volumes, 1913); Amherst College Biographical Record (1927); J. T. Trowbridge, "The Author of Quabbin," Atlantic Monthly, January 1895; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 209-210. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1 pp. 112-113.)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

UNDERWOOD, Francis Henry, author, born in Enfield, Massachusetts, 12 January, 1825. He was educated partly at Amherst, then taught in Kentucky, read law, and was admitted to the bar. He returned to Massachusetts in 1850, and thenceforward took an active part in the anti-slavery cause. He was clerk of the Massachusetts Senate in 1852, and afterward literary adviser of the publishing-house of Phillips, Sampson, and Company. He conceived the idea of uniting the literary force of the north to the Free-Soil movement by means of a magazine, and after several years of effort was the means of securing the eminent writers that made the fame of the "Atlantic Monthly." He assisted in the management of that magazine for two years, until the firm with which he was connected came to an end. He was then (1859) elected clerk of the superior court in Boston, which post he held for eleven years, when he resigned and entered private business, chiefly to obtain more leisure for literary work. His studies have been mainly in English literature, but his writings cover a wide field. He served for thirteen years in the school board of Boston. In 1885 he was appointed U. S. consul at Glasgow, Scotland. His lectures on "American Men of Letters" and his occasional speeches, such as that before the Glasgow Ayrshire society "On the Memory of Burns," have been much admired. In 1888 the University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL. D. His works include a " Hand-Book of English Literature" (Boston. 1871); "Hand Book of American Literature" (1872); "Cloud Pictures." a series of imaginative stories, chiefly musical (1872); "Lord of Himself," a novel of old times in Kentucky (1874); "Man Proposes," a novel (1880); " The True Story of Exodus, an abridgment of the work by Brugsch-Bey (1880); and biographical sketches of Longfellow (1882), Lowell (1882), and Whittier (1883). Dr. Underwood is engaged upon an elaborate popular history of English literature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 209-210.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1 pp. 112-113;

UNDERWOOD, FRANCIS HENRY (January 12, 1825-August 7, 1894), author, lawyer, and United States consul, was the son of Roswell Underwood, a farmer of Enfield, Massachusetts, and Phoebe (Hall) Underwood. He was probably a descendant of Joseph Underwood who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. In spite of extreme poverty he managed to prepare himself for college and entered Amherst with the class of 1847. After one year, however, he left college to teach school in Kentucky, declining the offer of an uncle to pay the expenses of his education on condition that he become a minister. In the South he studied law, was admitted to the bar (1847), and married, in Taylorsville, Kentucky, May 18, 1848, Louisa Maria Wood. His original antipathy to slavery was increased by what he saw of the institution, and he returned to Massachusetts in 1850 an ardent advocate of Free Soil principles. After twelve months of private law practice in Webster, Massachusetts, he was appointed clerk of the state Senate for the session of 1852. Political feeling in the North had been roused by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, but had not yet taken form. Underwood succeeded in interesting John Punchard Jewett [q.v.], the publisher of Uncle Toni's Cabin, in a scheme for establishing a magazine which should enlist the literary forces of New England in a crusade against slavery. He secured the cooperation of a distinguished list of contributors and was ready to launch the new venture in December 1853. But at the last moment the publishers declined to proceed and the whole scheme had to be temporarily abandoned.

Underwood next entered the publishing house of Phillips, Sampson & Company, Boston, as literary editor, and for some time devoted himself to extending his acquaintance among Boston and Cambridge authors. He then revived the project of a magazine. The cautious Phillips was slow to accept the proposal, but Underwood's efforts were warmly seconded by William Lee, a junior member of the firm, and by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Their united persuasions at length overcame the publisher's reluctance. On May 5, 1857, occurred the memorable dinner at the Parker House when Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, and James E. Cabot joined Phillips and Underwood in discussing plans for the yet unnamed magazine. In consequence of this and several succeeding dinners Underwood, who naturally expected to act as editor, was sent abroad to solicit contributions from British authors. He returned in midsummer to find the success of the project imperiled by the financial panic of 1857. Realizing at once that the prestige of James Russell Lowell [q.v.] as editor would strengthen the undertaking, Underwood, "without a suggestion from any person," nominated his friend for the position, and Lowell accepted. At the same time Holmes christened the new publication the Atlantic Monthly. The first number appeared under the date of November 1857, and almost at once the magazine assumed the lead among American periodicals. Underwood's connection with th e enterprise that he had projected and brought into being lasted only two years, during which time he loyally performed the routine work of assistant editor, sifting all contributions and making up numbers subject to Lowell's approval. In 1859 both Phillips and Sampson died, their firm was dissolved, and the Atlantic became the property of Ticknor & Fields. Underwood, to his deep regret, was not retained by the new proprietors. After leaving the Atlantic he was elected (1859) clerk of the Superior Criminal Court of Boston. Social, literary, and civic affairs occupied much of his time. He was an original member and second president of the Papyrus Club, and for ten years served on the Boston school committee. To secure leisure for more sustained literary work he resigned his clerkship in 1866 and engaged in private business ventures, some of which proved to be unfortunate. Meanwhile he wrote manuals of English and American literature; Cloud-Pictures (1872), a volume of short stories; Lord of Himself (187 4), Man Proposes (1885), and Doctor Gray's Quest (1895), novels; and biographies of Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier. His wife, by whom he had had five children, died in 1882. By appointment of President Cleveland (confirmed, April 28, 1886) Underwood succeeded Francis Brett Harte [q.v.] as United States consul at Glasgow. He was recalled when the Democrats went out of office, but returned to Scotland (appointment confirmed, September 2, 1893) at the beginning of Cleveland's second term, this time to be consul at Leith. He died in Edinburgh. Underwood's life abroad brought him many friend ships and new distinctions, including an honorary LL.D. from the University of Glasgow. He also found consolation in a young Scotch wife, Frances Findlay of Callendar, near Glasgow. In the interval between his consulships he wrote his best book, Quabbin, the Story of a Small Town (1893), a pleasantly discursive account of Enfield as he remembered it from his boyhood. Nevertheless, his last years were not entirely happy. He was painfully conscious that he had not won the recognition that his industry, talent, and genial nature deserved. Always it had been his fate to play a secondary role, contributing much to the fame of others but gaining little credit for himself. As Francis Parkman lucidly pointed out to him, he was " neither a Harvard man nor a humbug" and so, being both unassuming and unsupported, a victim of his own merit.

[L. M. Underwood, The Underwood Families of America (2 volumes, 1913); Amherst College Biographical Record (1927); J. T. Trowbridge, "The Author of Quabbin," Atlantic Monthly, January 1895; Bliss Perry, "The Editor Who Was Never the Editor," Park-Street Papers (1908); M.A. De W. Howe, The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (1919); obituary in Times (London), August 9, 1894; scrapbook of newspaper clippings relating to Underwood's years in Scotland in the Jones Library, Amherst.]

G. F. W.


VAN BUREN, Martin, eighth president of the United States, born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, 5 December, 1782: died there, 24 July, 1862. Supported the Wilmot Proviso limiting the extension of slavery into the territories.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

[…] But on the newly emergent question of Texas annexation he took a decided stand in the negative, and on this rock of offence to the southern wing of his party his candidature was wrecked in the Democratic national convention of 1844, which met at Baltimore on 27 May. He refused to falter with this issue, on the ground of our neutral obligations to Mexico, and when the nomination went to James K. Polk, of Tennessee, he gave no sign of resentment. His friends brought to Polk a loyal support, and secured his election by carrying for him the decisive vote of New York. Van Buren continued to take an interest in public affairs, and when in 1847 the acquisition of new territory from Mexico raised anew the vexed question of slavery in the territories, he gave in his adhesion to the " Wilmot Proviso." In the new elective affinities produced by this "burning question" a redistribution of political elements took place in the chaos of New York politics. The "Barnburner" and the "Hunker" factions came to a sharp cleavage on this line of division. The former declared their "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery." In the Herkimer Democratic convention of 26 October. 1847, the Free-Soil banner was openly displayed, and delegates were sent to the Democratic national convention. From this convention, assembled at Baltimore in May, 1848, the Herkimer delegates seceded before any presidential nomination was made. In June, 1848, a Barnburner convention met at Utica to organize resistance to the nomination of General Lewis Cass. who. in his "Nicholson letter," had disavowed the "Wilmot proviso." To this convention Van Buren addressed a letter, declining in advance a nomination for the presidency, but pledging opposition to the new party shibboleth. In spite of his refusal, he was nominated, and this nomination was reaffirmed by the Free-Soil national convention of Buffalo, 9 August, 1848, when Charles Francis Adams was associated with him as candidate for the vice-presidency. In the ensuing presidential election this ticket received only 291,263 votes, but, as the result of the triangular duel. General Cass was defeated and General Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, was elected. The precipitate annexation of Texas and its natural sequel, the war with Mexico, had brought their Nemesis in the utter confusion of national politics. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but his popular Democratic vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York exceeded that of Cass. Henceforth he was simply a spectator in the political arena. On all public questions save that of slavery he remained an unfaltering Democrat, and when it was fondly supposed that "the slavery issue" had been forever exorcised by the compromise measures of 1850, he returned in full faith and communion to his old party allegiance. In 1852 he began to write his "Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States" (New York, 1867), but it was never finished and was published as a fragment. He supported Franklin Pierce for the presidency in 1852, and, after spending two years in Europe, returned in time to vote for James Buchanan in 1856. In 1860 he voted for the combined electoral ticket against Lincoln, but when the Civil War began he gave to the administration his zealous support. Van Buren was the target of political accusation during his whole public career, but kept his private character free from reproach. In his domestic life he was as happy as he was exemplary. Always prudent in his habits and economical in his tastes, he none the less maintained in his style of living the easy state of a gentleman, whether in public station at Albany and Washington, or at Lindenwald in his retirement. As a man of the world he was singularly affable and courteous, blending formal deference with natural dignity and genuine cordiality. Intensely partisan in his opinions and easily startled by the red rag of "Hamiltonian Federalism," he never carried the contentions of the political arena into the social sphere. The asperities of personal rivalry estranged him for a time from Calhoun, after the latter denounced him in the Senate in 1837 as "a practical politician," with whom " justice, right, patriotism, etc., were mere vague phrases," but with his great Whig rival. Henry Clay, he maintained unbroken relations of friendship through all vicissitudes of political fortune. Asa lawyer his rank was eminent. Though never rising in speech to the heights of oratory, he was equally fluent and facile before bench or jury, and equally felicitous whether expounding the intricacies of fact or of law in a case. His manner was mild and insinuating, never declamatory. Without carrying his juridical studies into the realm of jurisprudence, he yet had a knowledge of law that fitted him to cope with the greatest advocates of the New York bar. The evidences of his legal learning and acute dialectics are still preserved in the New York reports of Johnson. Cowen, and Wendell. As a debater in the Senate, he always went to the pith of questions, disdaining the arts of rhetoric. As a writer of political letters or of state papers, he carried diffusiveness to a fault, which sometimes hinted at a weakness in positions requiring so much defence. As a politician he was masterful in leadership—so much so that, alike by friends and foes, he was credited with reducing its practices to a fine art. He was a member of the famous Albany regency which for so many years controlled the politics of New York, and was long popularly known as its " director." Fertile in the contrivance of means for the attainment of the public ends which he deemed desirable, he was called "the little magician," from the deftness of his touch in politics. But combining the statesman's foresight with the politician's tact, he showed his sagacity rather by seeking a majority for his views than by following the views of a majority. Accused of "non-committalism." and with some show of reason in the early stages of his career, it was only as to men and minor measures of policy that he practised a prudent reticence. On questions of deeper principle — an elective judiciary, Negro suffrage, universal suffrage, etc.—he boldly took the unpopular side. In a day of unexampled political giddiness he stood firmly for his sub treasury system against the doubts of friends, the assaults of enemies, and the combined pressure of wealth and culture in the country. Dispensing patronage according to the received custom of his times, he yet maintained a high standard of appointment. That he could rise above selfish considerations was shown when he promoted the elevation of Rufus King in 1820, or when he strove in 1838 to bring Washington Irving into his cabinet with small promise of gain to his doubtful political fortunes by such an "unpractical" appointment. As a statesman he had his compact fagot of opinions, to which he adhered in evil or good report. It might seem that the logic of his principles in 1848, combined with the subsequent drift of events, should have landed him in the Free-Soil party that Abraham Lincoln led to victory in 1860: but it. is to be remembered that, while Van Buren's political opinions were in a fluid state, they had been cast in the doctrinal molds of Jefferson, and had there taken rigid form and pressure. In the natural history of American party-formations he supposed that an enduring antithesis had always been discernible between the "money power" and the "farming interest " of the land. In his annual message of December, 1838, holding language very modern in its emphasis, he counted "the anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth " as among the strains that had been put upon our government. This is indeed the mam thesis of his " Inquiry," a book which is more an apologia than a history. In that chronicle of his life-long antipathy to a splendid consolidated government, with its imperial judiciary, funding systems, high tariffs, and internal improvements— the whole surmounted by a powerful national bank as the "regulator" of finance and politics—he has left an outlined sketch of the only dramatic unity that can be found for his eventful career. Confessing in 1848 that he had gone further in concession to slavery than many of his friends at the north had approved, he satisfied himself with a formal protest against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, carried through Congress while he was travelling in Europe, and against the policy of making the Dred Scott decision a rule of Democratic politics, though he thought the decision sound in point of technical law. With these reservations, avowedly made in the interest of " strict construction" and of "old-time Republicanism" rather than of Free-Soil or National reformation, he maintained his allegiance to the party with which his fame was identified, and which he was perhaps the more unwilling to leave because of the many sacrifices he had made in its service. The biography of Van Buren has been written by William H. Holland (Hartford, 1835); Francis J. Grand (in German, 1835); William Emmons (Washington, 1835): David Crockett (Philadelphia, 1836): William L. Mackenzie (Boston, 1846); William Allen Butler (New York, 1862); and Edward M. Shepard (Boston, 1888). Mackenzie's book is compiled in part from surreptitious letters, shedding a lurid light on the "practical politics" of the times. Butler's sketch was published immediately after the ex-president's death. Shepard's biography is written with adequate learning and in a philosophical spirit.


VAN DYKE, Henry Herbert, financier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809; died in New York City, 22 January, 1888. “He was subsequently  with the Albany "Argus," and was active in state politics as a Free-Soil Democrat, following the lead of Martin Van Buren in the revolt against the "Hunker" Democrats that resulted in the election of Zachary Taylor to the presidency as a Whig. He subsequently joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 245.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

VAN DYKE, Henry Herbert, financier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809; died in New York City, 22 January, 1888, was apprenticed to a printer early in life, and at twenty-one years of age became editor of the Goshen "Independent Republican." He was subsequently connected with the Albany "Argus," and was active in state politics as a Free-Soil Democrat, following the lead of Martin Van Buren in the revolt against the "Hunker" Democrats that resulted in the election of Zachary Taylor to the presidency as a Whig. He subsequently joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856. He became superintendent of public instruction for the state of New York in 1857, and in 1861 superintendent of the state banking department, holding office till 1865, when he was chosen by President Johnson assistant U. S. treasurer. The failure of his health compelled his resignation of that post in 1869. He was president of the American Safe Deposit Company in 1883-'8, and, among other business offices, held the presidency of the Erie Transportation Company. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 245.


VAUGHN, John C., Ohio newspaper editor.  Active in Free Soil movement.  Stated in editorial that anti-slavery was “the best means by Northern action of securing Southern emancipation…” 

(Rayback, 1970, p. 249; Foner, 1970, p. 118 FN 40; Sewell, 1976, p. 314)



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