Par-Pet: Parker through Pettigrew

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


PARKER, James (March 3, 1776-April 1, 1868), legislator. During his legislative career he was particularly interested in the act of 1817 establishing free schools in the state, the act authorizing aliens to purchase and hold real estate in New Jersey, and the act passed in 1820 prohibiting, under the severest penalties, the exportation of slaves from the state.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 227-228:

PARKER, JAMES (March 3, 1776-April r, 1868), legislator, was born in Bethlehem township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, the son of James and Gertrude (Skinner) Parker. His father was a member of the Provincial Council and of the Board of Proprietors of the colony. The family had taken refuge in Hunterdon County during the Revolutionary struggle but returned in 1783 to the ancestral home in Perth Amboy. Here James Parker was educated by the Reverend Joseph I. Bend, Rector of St. Peter's Church, before going to a preparatory school at Amwell, Hunterdon County. He entered Columbia, College, New York, in 1790 and was graduated second in the class of 1793. He was placed in the counting house of John Murray, then a leading merchant in New York, but the death of his father in 1797 obliged him to return home to take up the management of the family estate. In 1806 he was elected to the New Jersey Assembly from Middlesex County. He was reelected annually until 1811, and again in 1812, 1813, 1815, 1816, and 1818. During his legislative career he was particularly interested in the act of 1817 establishing free schools in the state, the act authorizing aliens to purchase and hold real estate in New Jersey, and the act passed in 1820 prohibiting, under the severest penalties, the exportation of slaves from the state.

Parker returned to the legislature in 1827 chiefly for the purpose of promoting the construction of a canal between the Delaware and Raritan rivers. Although the bill which he reported did not pass in the legislative session of t827-28, he had the satisfaction a few years later of witnessing the actual construction of a canal essentially the same as that which he had proposed when the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company was organized, he became a director and held this post until his death. His interest in the boundary question between New York and New Jersey led him to serve on the different boundary commissions until a settlement was reached in 1829. In 1815 and again in 1850 he was chosen mayor of Perth Amboy. Although he had always been a Federalist, he supported the candidacy of Andrew Jackson for the presidency and served as presidential elector in 1&'24. "When Jackson became president in 1829, Parker: was appointed collector of the port at Perth Amboy, which at that time had considerable foreign trade. While serving in this office, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1832 and was reelected in 1834. His distrust of Martin Van Buren led him to align himself with the Whig party in 1840 and to support its candidates until the fifties, when he joined the Republican party. He was one of the most influential members of the convention called in 1844 to frame a new constitution for New Jersey and served as chairman of the committee on the bill of rights. His interest in education was recognized by his election to the boards of trustees of Rutgers College and of the College of New Jersey. He was elected vice-president of the New Jersey Historical Society at its formation and subsequently became its president. For many years he was a vestryman of St. Peter's Church, Perth Amboy, and usually represented that parish in the Protestant Episcopal Convention of New Jersey. Freed from the necessity of earning his own living by a generous patrimony, he was always willing to answer the call to public service. He was twice married: on January 5, 1803, to Penelope Butler, daughter of a once wealthy Philadelphia merchant, who di ed in 1823, and on September 20, 1827, to Catherine Morris Ogden, sister of David B. Ogden [q.v.]. John Cortlandt Parker [q. v. ] was a son by the first marriage.

[R. S. Field, "Address on the Life and Character of the Hon. J as. Parker," Proceedings New Jersey Historical Society, 2 ser. I (1869); K. M. Beekman, "A Colonial Capital: Perth Amboy and Its Church Warden, Jas. Parker," Ibid., n.s. III (1918); Jas. Parker, The Parker and Kearney Families of New Jersey (Perth Amboy, 1925); W. N. Jones, The History of St. Peter's Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1923); Daily State Gazette (Trenton), April 3, 1868.]

W.S.C.


PARKER, Joel (January 25, 1795-August 17, 1875), jurist. In politics he was Whig, then Republican. When Senator Charles Sumner was brutally attacked in congress over the issue of slavery, he made a speech of protest which, according to a correspondent to the Edinburgh Review (October 1856, p. 595), "for earnestness and solemnity of denunciation has not been anywhere surpassed."

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 231-232:

PARKER, JOEL (January 25, 1795-August 17, 1875), jurist, was born in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. He was descended from Abraham Parker, a native of Wiltshire, England, who had settled in Woburn, Massachusetts, by 1645. His father, Abel Parker, a Revolutionary soldier, was married in 1777 to Edith Jewett of Pepperell and three years later moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and cleared a farm. Joel Parker studied at Groton Academy and at Dartmouth, graduating in 1811. He read law in Keene, New Hampshire, and was admitted to the bar in 1817. In 1821 he went to Ohio with a view to opening an office, but he returned in 1822 to resume his practice at Keene. He followed the law with singleness of purpose and achieved a success which was substantial but not sudden. In 1833 he was appointed to the superior court-the highest court in the state and five years later was promoted to be chief justice. As a trial judge he inspired juries with courage. Lawyers might call him obstinate, but as a colleague explained, this was excusable in a judge who was almost always right. In deciding cases he reasoned to his own conclusions. Upon declining to follow a multitude of decisions sustaining a certain rule, he said: "they are so many that their very number furnishes cause of suspicion that the rule is not quite sound .... It would seem, if the rule had a solid foundation, that one fifth, or one tenth, of the number might have settled the question. Its numerical strength, therefore, is weakness" (14 New Hampshire, 215, 228). This independence came to notice through his clash with Justice Story. The New Hampshire court gave one construction to the word lien in the Bankruptcy Act of 1841, while Story (who had framed the act) enforced a contrary view in the federal circuit court. Neither would recede, but after Story's death the Supreme Court upheld Parker's construction (14 New Hampshire, 509 and 48 U.S., 612).

In November 1847 Parker was appointed Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. On January 20, 1848, he was married to Mary Morse Parker, of Keene. In June he resigned from the bench after having moved to Cambridge. In his new position he was ill at ease and· was tempted to go back to New Hampshire. The moot court was a pleasure, but lecturing required a painful adaptation, and he had to begin with unfamiliar subjects. His method was formal and thorough rather than vivid. The poorer men could not follow. "His law . . . was . . . exasperatingly sound; but he could no more give a comprehensive view of a whole topic than an oyster, busy in perfecting its single pearl, can range over the ocean floor" (Batchelder, post, p. 223). Yet such men as Joseph Choate and Henry Billings Brown [qq.v.] found him a fountain of knowledge, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, another pupil, referred to him as "one of the greatest of American judges, ... who showed in the chair the same qualities that made him famous on the bench" (Speeches by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1891, p. 35). In 1868 he resigned his professorship. For years the great triumvirate, Parker, Theophilus Parsons, and Emory Washburn, had reported that "there have been no new arrangements in relation to the organization of the School or the course of instruction." Unlike Langdell who presently came to invigorate the school, Parker in his methods had not been ahead of his time.

He served in the New Hampshire legislature for three years (1824, 1825, 1826); as delegate from Cambridge to the constitutional convention of 1853, and as commissioner to revise the statutes of Massachusetts. In politics he was Whig, then Republican. When Sumner was attacked he made a speech of protest which, according to a correspondent to the Edinburgh Review (October 1856, p. 595), "for earnestness and solemnity of denunciation has not been anywhere surpassed." He opposed the doctrine that secession was constitutional and criticised Taney's opinion in the Merryman case (J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, IV, 1918, p. 880). He defended the capture of Mason and Slidell. But as the drama of war and Reconstruction unfolded, his conservative nature recoiled. The Republicans had "dug the grave of the Constitution" (To the People of Massachusetts, 1862, p. 10). When Parker's conduct or opinions were impeached, he retaliated. "A good stand-up fight was meat and drink to him" (Batchelder, p. 225). He was especially irritated by clergymen who argued that the president might abolish slavery, saying that their "impudent assumption" that they had a greater knowledge of constitutional law than men trained to the profession was a "nuisance." "If any of them have D.D. attached to their names, that does not disqualify them from being also ASS, and mischief-makers besides" (Constitutional Law and Unconstitutional Divinity, 1863, pp. 6, 10). But he had a more genial side. He read poetry and loved flowers. At home and among friends he was affectionate. Students invited to dine were surprised to find he could regard a glass of wine with real enjoyment, and that he was witty. He published more than a score of articles and pamphlets, among which may be mentioned Daniel Webster as a Jurist (1852); Non-Extension of Slavery, and Constitutional Representation (1856); Personal Liberty Laws (Statutes of Massachusetts) and Slavery in the Territories (1861); Habeas Corpus and Martial Law (1862); International Law (1862); The War Powers of Congress, and of the President (1863); Revolution and Reconstruction (1866); and The Three Powers of Government ... The Origin of the United States, and the Status of Southern States (1869).

[G. S. Hale, "Joel Parker," American Law Review, January 1876; Emory Washburn, memoir in Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, volume XIV (1876), and in Albany Law Journal, August 28, 1875; C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); Charles Warren, History of the Harvard Law School (1908), volume II; The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School (1918); S. F. Batchelder, Bits of Harvard History (1924); New England Magazine, July 1912; F. C. Jewett, History and Genealogy of the Jewetts of America (1908), volume I; Boston Transcript, August 19, 1875.]

C.F.


PARKER, John P., 1827-1900, African American, former slave, abolitionist, businessman.  Born a slave.  Bought his freedom.  Worked in aiding fugitive slaves from Kentucky in the Cincinnati area.  May have helped more than 1,000 fugitive slaves.  Recruited volunteers for the U.S. Colored Regiment.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 8, p. 592; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 36)


PARKER, Jonathan, Member of Congress from Virginia.  Opposed slavery as member of U.S. House of Representatives.

(Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 138f, 139; Annals of Congress)


PARKER, Josiah, 1751-1810, Virginia, Revolutionary War soldier, politician, Member of the first Congress.  Supported citizens’ right to petition Congress against slavery.  Called slavery “a practice so nefarious.”  Voted against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 54; Annals of Congress, 1 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1230; 2 Congress, 2 Session, p. 861; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 234). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 234:

PARKER, JOSIAH (May 11, 1751-March 14, 1810), Revolutionary soldier and politician, was the son of Nicholas and Ann (Copeland) Parker and descended from Thomas Parker, who obtained land grants in Virginia as early as 1647. This ancestor was a member of a landed family of Cheshire, and the family seat in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Josiah's birthplace, bore the name "Macclesfield." In 1773 Josiah Parker married Mary (Pierce) Bridger, widow of Colonel Joseph Bridger, and they had one daughter. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Parker entered the army and also became a member of the local committee of safety and of the Virginia revolutionary convention. He served in Virginia under Lee, and later was attached to the northern army under Washington. He attained the rank of major in 1776 and that of colonel the following year, and at the battle of Trenton he was lieutenant-colonel of the 5th Virginia Regiment. In that battle, as well as at Princeton and Brandywine, he received the commendation of the Commander-in-chief. His figure is included in the group of soldiers in Trumbull's painting, "Capture of the Hessians," and it has been stated that he received the sword of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall at Trenton. His temper was hasty and impulsive, and in consequence of a controversy he resigned from the army in 1778. Near the close of the war, when his native state became the scene of operations, he was appointed by Governor Jefferson to command the Virginia militia south of the James River, and cooperated with Lafayette. He received large grants of land after the war, was a member of the House of Delegates, and from 1786 to 1788 was naval officer for
the port of Norfolk.

Parker was an Anti-Federalist and a strong supporter of Patrick Henry. He presented himself as a candidate for delegate to the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788, but was defeated. He was a member of the First Congress, and with his colleagues he gave his vote for a future capital on the Potomac River. His career in Congress extended from 1789 to 1801, and he was at one time chairman of the naval committee. His death occurred on the family estate in Isle of Wight County.

[A. G. Parker, Parker in America (1911), pp. 257- 61; W. T. Parker, Gleanings from Parker Records (1894), pp. 38-41; F. B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army (1893); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Norfolk Gazette and Public Ledger, March 19, 1810, which gives day of death as Wednesday, March 14.]

E. K. A.


PARKER, Mary S., leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 199; Yellin, 1994, pp. 36, 43, 51-53, 55, 61, 64, 174, 176)


PARKER, Reverend Theodore, 1810-1860, Boston, Massachusetts, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist leader, reformer.  Secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Opposed Fugitive Slave Act.  Organizer, Committee of Vigilance to help fugitive slaves escape capture in Boston, Massachusetts.  Wrote anti-slavery book, To a Southern Slaveholder, in 1848.  Also wrote Defense.  Supported the New England Emigrant Aid Society and the Massachusetts Kansas Committee.  Member of the Secret Six group that clandestinely aided radical abolitionist John Brown. 

(Chadwick, 1900; Dirks, 1948; Drake, 1950, p. 176; Filler, 1960, pp. 6, 94, 126, 140, 141, 184, 204, 214, 239, 241, 268; Mabee, 1970, pp. 13, 82, 233, 253, 254, 256, 273, 302, 309, 316, 318, 320, 321; Pease, 1965, pp. 654, 656; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 207, 289, 327, 337, 338, 478; Sernett, 2002, pp. 69, 205, 211, 213; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 654-655; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 238-241; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 43; Commager, Henry S. Theodore Parker. 1947.). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 238-241:

PARKER, THEODORE (August 24, 1810- May 10, 1860), theologian, Unitarian clergyman, publicist, born in Lexington, Massachusetts, was a descendant of Thomas Parker of Norton, Derbyshire, England, who settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1635, and in 1640 was one of the founders of the town and church of Reading. A grandson removed to Lexington in 1712 and had for grandchild the Captain John Parker [q.v.] who led the Lexington minute-men, April 19, 1775. John (1761-1836), son of the Revolutionary captain, a farmer and mechanic with a vigorous mind and love of knowledge, married February 17, 1784, Hannah Stearns of Lexington, a woman of sensitive religious feeling without concern for doctrinal disputes. Of their eleven children only Theodore, the youngest, became eminent.

The boy's precocious childhood had marks of independent and varied aptitudes. To the end of his life he recalled the thrill of his first discovery of conscience when, in his fourth year, a childish misdeed was checked by a voice within saying loud and clear, "It is wrong." In advance of all instruction, religious awareness began in a form which in. his learned maturity he identified with the unrationalized experience of primitive man. When his New England Primer taught him the doctrine of eternal damnation he wept with terror, but vanquished the distress by trusting the divinations of his own kinder heart. In very early years he had an intense passion for beauty in every form. A child of seven years, he inferred from graduations of lichen, moss, grass, bush, and tree, a hierarchy of ascending forms throughout nature. In growing boyhood his historical lore claimed attention in the political discussions of his elders. These varied propensities, early awakened, prefigured his career.

His schooling was limited to four months of two summers, three months of ten winters in a district school taught by college students, and a few months in Lexington Academy. All other weeks were given to farm work and carpentry, but in leisure hours he read borrowed books with voracious appetite and a phenomenally retentive memory. Discerning teachers taught him Latin and Greek and he undertook modern languages by himself. At ten years he made a botanical catalogue of all vegetables, plants, trees, and shrubs that grew by his home, and when not yet twelve he turned to astronomy and metaphysics. At seventeen he began four years of teaching in neighboring district schools. He walked to Cambridge August 23, 1830, and passed the examination for entrance to Harvard College. Too poor to enroll, he was allowed to take the examinations throughout the course and in 1840 was made an honorary master of arts. In March 1831 he became assistant in a private school in Boston and a year later opened his own school in Watertown. He now gained the friendship of Watertown's learned pastor, Convers Francis [q.v.], steeped in German thought, and won the tender love of Lydia Cabot, daughter of John Cabot of Newton. Long hours of teaching, of studying for Harvard examinations, of acquiring Semitic languages and poring over Cousin and Coleridge made a life without play or exercise; they also deprived him of the give-and-take fellowship with other youths £hat might have trained him to more sustained good humor and more tolerant indifference to praise and blame.

In April 1834 he entered the Harvard Divinity School, where he. lived ascetically on scant savings, meager earnings, and a bursary, but prodigally in the expenditure of mental energy-"an athlete in his studies," said his fellow student Christopher P. Cranch [q.v.]. His journal shows a knowledge of twenty languages, and of the most necessary, the knowledge was exact. In Prof. John Gorham Palfrey's absence, he gave the instruction in Hebrew. Echoing the thought of the faculty, he believed in an inspired Bible, a revelation evidenced by miracles, in Christ as the Son of God supernaturally conceived. Nevertheless, in editing with two classmates The Scriptural Interpreter he made use of mild German criticism that brought protests from the readers, and when he graduated, July 1836, he had some doubt of miracles and the virgin birth. A month later he began to translate De Wette's Einleitung in das Alte Testament, a work for which America was not yet ready.

Half a dozen churches offered him a settlement, but because of its proximity to libraries he chose the modest parish of West Roxbury, a suburb of Boston, and there, after marriage with Lydia Cabot, April 20, he was ordained June 21, 1837. In his sermons he avoided controversial matters and presented religion only in terms of his inward experience, but this habit led him, in his private reflections, away from dependence on miraculous revelation to a main reliance on the direct, intuitive religious functioning of man's spirit, "the felt and perceived presence of Absolute Being infusing itself in me." Furthermore, the friendships now made were with the progressive spirits of the New England renaissance Dr. William Ellery Channing and his nephew W. H. Channing, Charles Follen, Frederic H. Hedge, Wendell Phillips, George Ripley, Emerson, and Alcott [qq.v.]. He hailed Emerson's Divinity School Address (1838) as "the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to ... [though] a little exaggerated, with some philosophical untruths" (Frothingham, post, p. ro6). To the controversy that followed he contributed a pamphlet under the pseudonym of Levi Blodgett, arguing that an intuitive religious faculty makes external props like miracles unnecessary. Difference of opinion on this question was then creating division in Unitarian circles and rumors of Parker's attitude cost him the customary exchanges with the Boston pastors. From such disfavor, in spite of a militant disposition, he suffered abnormally, and the more keenly since his intense studies were now often interrupted by physical depression and despondent moods. German thought and sympathy with Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson, however, were surely developing his native reliance on intuition into a systematic intellectual form. An undesigned rupture came with a sermon on The Transient and Permanent in Christianity, preached at an ordination in South Boston, May 19, 1841. In it he demanded that "we worship, as Jesus did, with no mediator, with nothing between us and the father of all." This was Emerson's lyrical deliverance done with a ruder prose, and a community already irritated by controversy reacted violently. The orthodox denounced him in the press; the liberal clergy withheld all tokens of fellowship; nevertheless, the following winter laymen in Boston arranged for Parker to deliver a series of lectures, which were published under the title A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842). In this remarkable work, ill received in America but of large circulation in English editions and German translation; Parker's vast erudition fortifies an eloquent appraisement of Christianity as the highest evolutionary ascent of the universal and direct human experience of divine reality. He demanded a new theology, which should be a science of religion and interpret its data by the immanence of God in nature and human experience.

The Boston Association of Ministers, to which Parker belonged, was disquieted. Its members had relaxed inherited doctrine, but they rested truth on supernatural revelation. Feeling became acute when they read an article by Parker in The Dial of October 1842. Some of them had served on a council called to consider the conflict of the Reverend John Pierpont with his church over a sermon on traffic in liquor, and now they found their decision denounced as a Jesuitical document in the interest of the liquor trade. In January 1843 the Association suggested that Parker resign his membership, but he refused on the ground that the right of free inquiry was at stake. Soon after, he published his translation of De Wette's Einleitung, and then, to secure needed rest, he spent a year in European travel (September 1843-September 1844). It was a year of rich experience for a mind stored with knowledge of history and literature, and significant in Parker's life since conferences with the scholars of many lands made him confident in his theological position and convinced of a mission to spread enlightened liberalism. Opponents created his opportunity when Reverend J. T. Sargent invited Parker to speak in his mission chapel the controlling Fraternity of Churches intervened and Sargent resigned (November 1844). The rules for a traditional lecture in the First Church of Boston were revised to exclude Parker from future participation (December 1844). James Freeman Clarke's chivalrous exchange with Parker, January 1845, caused members of his church to secede. A group of men, therefore, resolved "that the Reverend Theodore Parker shall have a chance to be heard in Boston" and secured a hall for Sunday services. Parker was heard, and in January, definitely resigning the West Roxbury pastorate, he was installed as minister of the new Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society of Boston, which in November 1852 found nobler quarters in the new Music Hall. Parker defined this church as a union to cultivate love of God and man with a common regard for Jesus as the highest known representative of God. It was to be active in all possible ways for human welfare, and Parker's devotion to its enterprises entailed the sacrifice of a cherished plan to elaborate a true science of religion with its own specific scientific method.

While in Rome in 1844, reflecting on America's historic task, he judged that popular ignorance and corrupt leadership required a campaign of intellectual, moral, and religious education. In his new pulpit and on lecture tours over a wide area, as well as in frequent publications, he discussed problems of war, temperance, prisons, divorce, education, human rights, the careers of American statesmen, always with a wealth of knowledge and a sober practical judgment. His faith was that social wrong would be righted as men attained consciousness of the infinite perfection of God, of the eternal right, of immortal life. Inevitably, the national situation involved him in the agitating discussion of slavery and thus of political parties and political leaders. Bold speech and bold courage gave him enthusiastic followers and bitter enemies, his frequent harsh invectives and ascription of rapacious motives intensifying the social division.

The results of his intensive study of the history and economic aspects of slavery were presented in A Letter to the People of the United States Touching the Matter of Slavery (1848) and in articles in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review (1847-1850). Webster's Seventh of March speech and the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) created a crisis, and Parker made passionate speeches in Faneuil Hall (March 25, October 14) and as leader of a vigilance committee was dramatically active in the escape of the fugitive slaves William and Ellen Craft (November 1850) and in the foiled plot to rescue Thomas Sims (April 1851). On October 31, 1852, a week after Webster's death, Parker preached a sermon on the statesman's career, recognizing his great abilities but reprobating his character and motives. Believing in the right to secede and not averse to a separation of North and South, Parker failed to comprehend Webster's supreme devotion to national union and laid his policy to ambition for the presidency with Southern support and to financial obligations to Boston capitalists. Two days after the arrest of Anthony Burns [q.v.], another fugitive slave (May 24, 1854), Parker incited Faneuil Hall hearers to rescue the prisoner by an attack on the court house, but the plan miscarried and Burns was deported. With six others, Parker was indicted by the grand jury, but on April 3, 1855, the indictment was dismissed as ill framed. This fact did not hinder Parker from publishing an elaborate Defence, valuable for its accounts of the fugitive slave episodes but marred by invectives against the responsible authorities. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 occasioned a fresh outburst of sermons and addresses, some passionately rhetorical, others with forceful economic argument. He now foresaw and predicted civil  war. With voice and purse he supported the New England Emigrant Aid Society, the Massachusetts Kansas Committee, and as one of a secret committee abetted John Brown's project of a foray in the mountains of Virginia. At Parker's invitation Brown disclosed his plans at a secret meeting in Boston, March 4, 1858, and though Parker predicted failure, he favored the project as likely to precipitate the now inevitable conflict. His political influence is evidenced by his immense correspondence with Sumner, Seward, Chase, John P. Hale, and Charles Francis Adams. Through the mediation of William H. Herndon [q.v.] he influenced Abraham Lincoln, who probably derived from him the formula "government of the people, by the people, for the people" (see Chadwick, post, p. 323).

Parker's life was strenuous and exciting; sermons, voluminous correspondence, journeys, lectures-in one year as many as ninety-eight pastoral labor, and publications crowded full each hour. After exposure on a lecture tour in the spring of 1857 he became ill; an operation for fistula, a laming accident, and symptoms of tuberculosis followed. A violent hemorrhage, January 9, 1859, ended all public activity. With wife and friends he sailed for Vera Cruz, February 3, and, much improved, journeyed in June to London and Paris and then on to the home of his friend Edward Desor in Combes Varin, Switzerland. After a winter in Rome, he died in Florence on May 10, 1860, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery outside the Pinto Gate. At a great memorial meeting in Boston, June 17, he was eulogized by Emerson and Phillips. His rich library of nearly 16,000 volumes, bequeathed to the Boston Public Library, is a noble memorial of his far-ranging mind.

Parker's inability to forget social ostracism measures an affectionate man's craving for love. To humble folk and the unworldly great who were his friends, he abounded in beneficence and delightful discourse. Lacking distinguished presence, ungraceful in bearing, unmusical in voice, with little animation of manner, he yet dominated audiences by reasoning power, by full knowledge of facts, by the thrill of his moral idealism, his poetic joy in the world's ineffable beauty, and the glowing ardor of his disclosures of the mystery of communion with God. The sermons of this religious genius have lost none of their kindling power and claim the attention of students of religious experience. The theological views which disturbed his contemporaries have become characteristic of their descendants. His writings are collected in Theodore Parkers Works (14 volumes, 1863-70), edited by Frances P. Cobbe and published in London; also in the Centenary Edition (15 volumes, 1907-11), published by the American Unitarian Association, which includes a valuable introduction and critical notes. A German edition of his writings, Theodor Parkers Saemmtliche Werke (5 volumes, 1854-61) was prepared by Johannes Ziethen.

[John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (1864); O. B. Frothingham, Theodore Parker, A Biography (1874); J. W. Chadwick, Theodore Parker, Preacher and Reformer (1900); Albert Reville, Theodore Parker, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres (Paris, 1865; English ed., London, 1865); Alfred Altherr, Theodor Parker in seinem Leben und Wirken (St. Gallen, 1894). Detailed bibliographies are in Chadwick's Life and in volume XV of the Centenary Edition of Parker's works.]

F.A.C.


PARRIS, Susan, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 659; Yellin, 1994, p. 74)


PARRISH, John, 1729-1807, preacher, Society of Friends, Quaker, anti-slavery activist.  Wrote Remarks on the Slavery of Black People (1806), in which he said:  “I am no politician, but it is clear that the fundamentals of all good governments, being equal liberty and impartial justice, the constitution and laws ought to be expressed in such unequivocal terms as not to be misunderstood, or admit of double meaning…  A house divided against itself cannot stand; neither can a government or constitution.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 659; Bruns, 1977, p. 470; Dumond, 1961; Locke, 1901, pp. 65, 132, 173, 175-177)


PATTERSON, Daniel Todd, 1786-1839, Naval Commander, USS Constitution.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 671; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 301-302; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 134), 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 301-302:

PATTERSON, DANIEL TODD (March 6, 1786-August 25, 1839), naval officer, was born on Long Island, New York, the son of John Patterson, former collector of customs at Philadelphia, and Catharine (Livingston) Patterson, great-granddaughter of Robert Livingston [q.v.]. On June II, 1799, he joined the sloop Delaware as acting midshipman and sailed in her on two West Indian cruises during the naval war with France. He was warranted midshipman in August 1800, after his first cruise, and was one of the 159 midshipmen out of 352 retained in the peace establishment of May 1801. He carried on nautical studies till December. Until March 1803 he was in the Constellation of the second squadron sent against Tripoli. In May following he sailed again for the Mediterranean in the Philadelphia and was a prisoner for more than nineteen months after she was stranded and captured by the Tripolitans on October 31, 1803. Under the excellent tutelage of Captain William Bainbridge and Lieut. David Porter [qq.v.], he was, however, enabled "to profit by the seeming misfortune" (manuscript memoir of his services, November 1813, in Navy Department Library). Upon his return he was stationed at New Orleans from January 1806 to June 1807. He was married in 1807 to George Ann Pollock, the daughter of George Pollock of New Orleans. They had two sons, Carlile Pollock and Thomas Harman [q.v.], and three daughters, one of whom, George Ann, was married in 1839 to David D. Porter [q.v.].

In March 1808, after a visit to the North, and promotion to the rank of lieutenant, he returned to New Orleans where his friend Porter was in charge. From January 1810 to February 1811 he had a semi-independent command of twelve gunboats, that operated from a base at Natchez and transported most of the troops for the occupation of Baton Rouge in 1810. He was made master commandant on July 24, 1813, and from December following commanded the New Orleans station. Against the Gulf buccaneers his most effective stroke was delivered on September 16, 1814, when, raiding the base of the pirate Jean Laffite [q.v.] at Barataria Bay, La., with the schooner Carolina and six light gun vessels, he captured six schooners and other small craft. Although it was supported by twenty guns mounted on shore, Laffite's band, about 1,000 strong, fled without resistance, much to Patterson's disappointment (C. F. Goodrich, "Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates," Naval Institute Proceedings, September-October, 1916, p. 1471). He foresaw clearly the designs of the British against New Orleans in 1814 and indicated the best lines of defense. On September 2, 1814, he refused Jackson's request to send his naval forces to Mobile, and maintained his position at New Orleans where the delay he caused the enemy by the gunboat action on Lake Borgne on December 15 greatly facilitated Jackson's final victory. He was aboard the Carolina during her very effective two-hour bombardment of the British camp on the evening of December 23, shouting at the first discharge, "Give them this for the honor of America" (Niles' National Register, September 28, 1839, p. 71). The Carolina was destroyed by enemy fire on December 27, but with his remaining vessel, the Louisiana, he continued to render valuable artillery service, and in the battle of January 8 he commanded a battery of naval guns on the west bank of the river. These had to be spiked and abandoned on the retreat of Morgan's militia but were repaired and ready for action next day. His excellent cooperation throughout the campaign has perhaps not been fully recognized, though he was highly commended by Jackson, received a vote of thanks from Congress, and was made captain on February 28, 1815. Patterson is described at this time as a "stout, compact, gallant-bearing man ... his manner ... slightly marked by hauteur" (J. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 1860, volume II, p. 28).

A welcome change from the isolated southern station came finally in 1824 when he was appointed fleet captain and commander of the flagship Constitution in Commodore Rodgers' Mediterranean Squadron. Upon his return in 1828, partly no doubt as a warm friend and supporter of Jackson, he was given the important office of one of the three navy commissioners. Afterward he commanded the Mediterranean Squadron from 1832 to 1836. In negotiations to enforce claims against Naples for commercial injuries during the Napoleonic wars, his squadron gave effective support by entering the harbor at Naples one ship after another, until all six were assembled. His death occurred at the Washington navy yard, of which he was commandant, 1836-39, and he was buried in the Congressional Cemetery.

[Master Commandants' Letters, 1813, and Captains' Letters, 1814-24, in Navy Dept. Library; E. N. McClellan, "The Navy at the Battle of New Orleans," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Dec. 1924; Daily National Intelligencer, January 30, February 3, 22, 23, March 6, Dec. 2, 1815, August 26, September 23, 1839; E. B. Livingston, The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (1910); information from family sources. ]

A. W.


PATTERSON, James Willis, 1823-1893, educator.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire.  Congressman 1863-1867.  Elected U.S. Senator 1866-1873.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 672; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 303-304; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 303-304:

PATTERSON, JAMES WILLIS (July 2, 1823-May 4, 1893), educator, politician, the second child of William and Frances (Shepard) Patterson, was born at Henniker, New Hampshire. His boyhood was spent for the most part in hard work on his father's farm and in the mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, where the family resided for several years. About 1838 he completed his early schooling, which had been somewhat meager, at the local academy in Henniker. After two years' employment in Lowell, and four years as a teacher, he was able to complete his preparation for college. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1848 with high honors. Planning a legal career, he served as principal of Woodstock Academy in Connecticut (1848-5I), studying law in the meantime. For a time he considered the ministry as a career and spent a year in the study of theology at New Haven, but he had already made a reputation as a successful teacher, and in 1852 he received and accepted the offer of a tutorship at Dartmouth. In 1854 he was appointed professor of mathematics and on December 24 of the same year married Sarah Parker Wilder of Laconia, New Hampshire. Five years later he was appointed professor of astronomy and meteorology and held this chair until 1865.

From 1858 to 1862 Patterson was school commissioner of Grafton County. In the latter year he served a term in the New Hampshire legislature and in 1863 he was elected, a Republican, to the national House of Representatives. His House service covered the years 1863-67 and in 1866 he was elected to the United States Senate. Throughout his ten years in Washington he was especially interested in the District of Columbia for which he drafted several education laws, emancipation having created many new problems. As chairman of the joint select committee on retrenchment he submitted notable reports on the consular service (Senate Report 154, 40 Congress, 2 Session) and on the excessive costs and abuses in the collection of customs revenue (Senate Report 380,41 Congress, 3 Session). His career in Washington closed under a cloud created by the Credit Mobilier scandal, but historians have been puzzled to understand why he was recommended for expulsion when no drastic action was taken in the cases of other more serious offenders. That his conduct had been indiscreet is unquestionable; and his apparent attempt to conceal relevant facts created a bad impression; but many believed the truth of his own statement that he had supposed the stock purchased for him was Union Pacific rather than Credit Mobilier. His term ended within a few days after the Senate investigating committee had submitted a report recommending his expulsion, and without opportunity for discussion on the floor, a fact which led many to believe that he had been unjustly dealt with. His defense subsequently published, and reprinted in a public document (Senate Report 519, 42 Congress, 3 Session), is somewhat naive but strengthens the impression that he was innocent of corrupt motives.

He had been defeated for renomination in 1872 and spent the years following his retirement in Hanover. He traveled extensively and was in frequent demand as a public speaker and lecturer. He again represented Hanover in the legislature for two terms, 1877-78. From 1881 to 1893 he was state superintendent of public instruction. He was largely instrumental in securing the passage of the Act of 1885 substituting the town for the local district as the unit of public-school organization. He resigned in 1893 when again appointed to the Dartmouth faculty, this time as professor of rhetoric and oratory. His reappointment was considered a measure of vindication which he did not live to enjoy fully, his death occurring unexpectedly a few weeks later.

[Sources include: G. W. Patterson, las. W. Patterson as an Educator (1893), reprinted from Annual Report of Supt. of Pub. Instruction ... of New Hampshire, 1893; L. W. Cogswell, History of the Town of Henniker (1880); J. O. Lyford, Life of Edw. H. Rollins (1906); containing references to Patterson's political career; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Granite Monthly, October 1892, June 1893; J. K. Lord, A History of Dartmouth College (1913); obituary notices in New Hampshire newspapers. There is manuscript material on Patterson in the archives of Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth College Library has a large collection of Patterson's printed addresses and miscellaneous pamphlets.]

W. A. R.


PATTERSON, Robert, 1743-1824, Pennsylvania, mathematician, educator, soldier, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded 1775.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 671; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 305-306; Basker, 2005, pp. 223, 240n14; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 139). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 305-306:

PATTERSON, ROBERT (May 30, 1743- July 22, 1824), mathematician, was born near Hillsborough in the north of Ireland, the son of Robert and Jane Patterson. His great-grandfather had emigrated from Scotland to escape the persecution of the Presbyterians by the Stuarts. He was sent to school at an early age and distinguished himself for his progress in mathematics. During the wave of martial spirit that spread over Ireland when the French descended upon the coast, Patterson enlisted in a militia company. He was offered a commission in the British army but this he declined. After finishing his education, he emigrated to America in October 1768 and landed in Philadelphia practically penniless. He secured a position as schoolmaster in Buckingham, Bucks County, but left this position to return to Philadelphia, where he taught many of the leading navigators the computation of longitude by means of lunar observations. In 1772, having accumulated the sum of approximately five or six hundred pounds, he opened a country store in New Jersey. He was unfitted for business, however, and seized the first opportunity to close out the enterprise, resuming his former vocation as principal of the academy at Wilmington, Del. His early experiences in Ireland put him in a position to render valuable services as a military instructor upon the outbreak of the Revolution. Three companies were put under his charge. Later he entered the army with the rank of brigade major and served until the British evacuated Philadelphia.

Upon the reorganization of the College and Academy of Philadelphia as the University of Pennsylvania, Patterson was appointed professor of mathematics. He entered the services of the University in December 1779 and served continuously until 18r4 when he resigned and was succeeded by his son, Robert M. Patterson. For a period he was vice-provost of the University. He contributed several scientific papers to the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society and was a frequent contributor of problems and solutions to mathematical journals. He also published Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics (2 volumes, 1806), and Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles (1806, 1809), revised editions of the works of James Ferguson, the Scotch scientist. In 1808 he published a small book entitled the Newtonian System of Philosophy and in 1818 he published A Treatise of Practical Arithmetic, elaborated from his lectures on the same subject at the University of Pennsylvania. Though the exposition was clear, the book never reached the circulation it deserved because it was difficult for beginners. In the second volume of Robert Adrain's Analyst he set as the prize problem the question as to how to correct the measurements of a polygon whose sides are given in size and direction but which when plotted do not close up. The problem was renewed in Volume III and was finally solved by Nathaniel Bowditch in Volume IV.

In addition to his services at the University Patterson found time for public service. He was a member of Select Council of Philadelphia and was elected its president in 1799. In 1805 he received from President Jefferson the unsolicited appointment as director of the mint. He filled this office with distinction and resigned only at the time of his last illness. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1783 and became its president in 1819. He was richly endowed both in mind and body. His especial mental inclination was for exact science. He was not alone interested in the discovery of a mathematical or physical truth but was never satisfied until he could see its application in the world of every-day life. Patterson was married, on May 9, 1774, to Amy Hunter Ewing of Greenwich, New Jersey They had eight children.

[Memoir of Patterson in Trans. American Phil. Society, n.s. volume II (1825); F. Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the U. S. (1890); J. L. Chamberlain, Universities and Their Sons: University of Pennsylvania, volume I (1901); G. B. Wood, The History of the University of Pennsylvania (1834); W. E. Du Bois, A Record of the Families of Robt. Patterson (1847); Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, July 24, 1824.]

J. R. K.


PATTON, William, 1798-1879, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, clergyman, opponent of slavery, father of abolitionist William Weston Patton. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 317-318). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 317-318:

PATTON, WILLIAM (August 23, 1798-September 9, 1879), clergyman and author, was the third son of Colonel Robert Patton, who was of Scotch.-Irish ancestry, and had come to America when a young man. He had served under Lafayette in the American Revolution, and for more than twenty years, until his death in 1814, was postmaster of Philadelphia. William's moth er was Cornelia (Bridges) Patton, who traced her ancestry to the Culpeper and Fairfax families of Virginia and England. She died when William was eight years old. He united at the age of eighteen with the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, his native city, graduated at Middlebury College in 1818, and studied several months in Princeton Theological Seminary (1819-20). In 1819 he married Mary Weston. After being ordained to the ministry in 1820 by the Congregational Association of Vermont, he removed to New York City, the home of his wife. Impelled by a missionary spirit, he gathered together the members who constituted his first church, the Central Presbyterian, and served it several years without salary.

His pulpit and business ability led to his being called in 1833 to the secretaryship of the Central American Education Society. During the next four years he recruited the ministry and raised money for educational purposes, but in 1837 returned to the pastorate. At Spring Street Presbyterian Church he won much success in reviva1 work, in persuading young men to enter the ministry, and particularly in influencing children. Apparently the first to propose that a Presbyterian theological seminary be established in New York City, Patton in 1836 became one of the four ministerial founders of Union Seminary, and served as a director from the beg inning until 1849, and as instructor or "professor extraordinary" for three years. His last pastorate, begun in 1848, was at Hammond Street Congregational Church, New York, a new enterprise initiated by some of his close friends. Financial difficulties compelled the organization, in spite of increasing membership, to surrender its property in 1852.

During the remaining twenty-seven years of his life his home was in or near New Haven, Connecticut, and his time was devoted largely to supplying pulpits and to the literary work begun early in his career. In 1834 he h ad recast a British commentary, Thomas Williams' Cottage Bible and Family Expositor, making it substantially a new work. More than 170,000 copies of it were sold in America. In collaboration with Thomas Hastings, he published The Christian Psalmist (1839), a hymn book which for a time had a wide circulation, and he prepared British editions of Edwards on Revivals (1839) and of C. G. Finney's Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835). Between 1825 and 1879 he made fourteen voyages to Europe, partly on account of his health, which until middle age was precarious. Ambitious to inform Britain of the true spirit of America, in 1861 he wrote articles for English dailies explaining the anti-slavery background of the Civil War, and published in London a pamphlet, The American Crisis; or, The True Issue, Slavery or Liberty. In England, as in the United States, he constantly attacked slavery and the alcoholic traffic. He proposed and attended the meeting at London in 1846 which organized the Evangelical Alliance for promoting Christian union and religious liberty throughout the world. During his New Haven days he published additional books, including The Judgment of Jerusalem Predicted in Scripture, Fulfilled in History (1877) and Bible Principles Illustrated by Bible Characters (1879).

From 1830 to 1870 he was a member of the executive committee of the American Home Missionary Society, and at his death, in New Haven, he left legacies to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to the American Missionary Association in Aid of the Freedmen, and to Howard University, whose president was his son, Reverend William Weston Patton. Of his ten children, five died early, the survivors being two so ns and three daughters. The mother of them all was Mary (Weston) Patton, who died in 1857. In 1860 he married Mrs. Mary (Shaw) Bird of Philadelphia, whose death occurred in 1863. His third wife, whom he married in 1864, was Mrs. Emily (Trowbridge) Hayes.

[W. W. Patton, A Filial Tribute (1880); Jonathan Greenleaf, A History of the Churches of All Denominations in the City of New York (1850); G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (1889); General Catalog of the Union Theological Seminary (1926); and Necrological Reports and Annual Proceedings of the Alumni Association of Princeton Theological Seminary, volume I (1891); New Haven Evening Register, September 10, 1879.]

P. F.


PATTON, William Weston, 1821-1889, theologian, educator, college president, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist.  On September 3, 1862, petitioned Lincoln to issue a proclamation of emancipation.  President of Howard University, 1877-1889.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888)


PAUL, Susan, 1809-1841, African American, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Paul authored the first autobiography of an African American published in the United States, entitled, Memoir of James Jackson, published in 1835. (Yellin, 1994, p. 58n40). 


PAYNE, DANIEL ALEXANDER (February 24, 1811-November 29, 1893), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, president of Wilberforce University.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 324-325:

PAYNE, DANIEL ALEXANDER (February 24, 18rr-November 29, 1893), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, president of Wilberforce University, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of London and Martha Payne, who were free persons of color. His parents having died before he was ten years old, he was cared for by relatives. For two years he attended a local Minor's Moralist Society School established by free colored men. He next studied under Thomas Bonneau, a private tutor, and not only mastered English and mathematics but made himself conversant with Greek, Latin, and French. Apprenticed first to a shoe maker and la ter to a tail or, Payne also worked for four years in a carpenter's shop, of which his brother-in- law was foreman. In 1826 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and three years later opened a school for colored children, which in a short while became the most successful institution of its kind in Charleston. It flourished until the South Carolina legislature passed a law, on December 17, 1834, imposing a fine and whipping on free persons of color who kept schools to t each slaves or free negroes to read or write. Obliged to discontinue his school, Payne on May 9, 1835, left Charleston for Pennsylvania, where he entered the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. There he supported himself by blacking boots, waiting at table, and doing other menial tasks. In 1837 he was licensed to preach and in 1839 was ordained by the Franckean Synod of the Lutheran Church. He accepted a call to a Presbyterian church in East Troy, New York. but in 1840 moved to Philadelphia, where he opened a school. In 1841 he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1842 was received as a preacher at the Philadelphia Conference of that denomination. After serving as a traveling preach er he was appointed to the Israel Church in Washington, D. C. In 1845 he was transferred to Baltimore, Maryland, where he was pastor of Bethel Church.

Chosen historiographer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1848, he traveled extensively in the United States searching for materials. In May 1852 he was elected bishop. As such he exerted himself to raise the cultural standard of the communicants of the denomination by promoting th e formation of church literary societies and debating lyceums. During the Civil War he pleaded with Lincoln and other prominent men for the emancipation of the slaves. Without a doll r in hand, on March 10, 1863, he had the temerity to purchase Wilberforce University, an Ohio institution established by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856 for the education of colored youths, to which many natural children of slave holders had been sent prior to the War. He was its president for thirteen years. On the day Lincoln was assassinated the main building of the institution was burned. This loss increased the financial burden he had to assume, but during his administration he was instrumental in securing more than $92,000. The enrollment of students also increased greatly. In 1867 he visited Europe for the first time. A delegate to the first Ecumenical Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in London, England, Payne on September 13, 1881, read a paper on Methodism and Temperance, impressing all by his dignified manners. He also took part in the Parliament of Religions, held in 1893 during the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago.

After his retirement from Wilberforce he devoted himself to writing and to a continuance of his unrelenting fight against the illiteracy of the colored Methodist ministers. He was of a light brown complexion and below the average height. Very thin and emaciated and weighing only one hundred pounds, he looked like a consumptive. He had sharp features, an intellectual forehead, keen, penetrating eyes, and a shrill voice. Among his publications were The Semi-Centenary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the U. S. of America (1866), A Treatise on Domestic Education (1885), Recollections of Seventy Years (1888), The History of the A. M. E. Church from 1816 to 1856 (1891). Payne was married in 1847 to Mrs. Julia A. Ferris, daughter of William Becraft of Georgetown, D. C.; she died within a year thereafter, and in 1853 he married Mrs. Eliza J. Clark.

[C. S. Smith, The Life of Daniel Alexander Payne (1894); J. W. Cromwell, The Negro in American History (1914); G. F. Bragg, Men of Maryland (1925); W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887); Wm. W. Brown, The Rising Son (1874); A. R. Wentz, History of Gettysburg Theological Seminary ... 1826-1926 (n.d.).]

H. G. V.


PECK, Sheldon, 1797-1869, radical abolitionist, social reformer, advocate for women’s rights, temperance, racial equality, education, pacifism.  Called for immediate end to slavery.  Agent for abolitionist newspaper, Western Citizen.  Delegate for the Liberty Party.


PEMBERTON, James, 1723-1808, merchant, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Founding officer and Vice-President and President of the Abolition Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1790-1803.  Aided numerous slaves. 

(Basker, 2005, pp., x, 80, 84-85, 92, 101; Bruns, 1977, pp. 510, 514; Drake, 1950, pp. 54, 93-94, 102, 113, 122; Locke, 1901, p. 92; Nash, 1991, pp. 49, 65, 124-125, 130; Soderlund, 1985, pp. 44, 140, 151, 161, 170, 171, 197, 199; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 159, 160; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 706; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 413).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 413:

PEMBERTON, JAMES (August 26, 1723-February 9, 1809), Quaker merchant and philanthropist, the eighth of the ten children of Israel and Rachel (Read) Pemberton, and brother of Israel and John Pemberton [qq.v.], was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania He was educated in Friends' School. In 1745 he traveled in the Carolinas and in 1748 he went to Europe, primarily for business purposes, as he was associated with his father and brother in the shipping trade. His main interest was in the Society of Friends and in the various religious organizations. An active member of Meeting, he sat at the head of the preacher's gallery for many years. When the Meeting for Sufferings, the executive body of the Friends, was established in 1756 he was, appointed a member; a position which he held until 1808. With his brother Israel he was .one of the trustees of the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures, and was a liberal contributor to its support. He as one of the founders of the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes, established in 1775. In 1787, when it became the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, he became vice-president, and in 1790 he succeeded Franklin as president, holding this office for thirteen years. He was a member of the Board of overseers of the public schools of Philadelphia, for both the city and the county, and took an active part in establishing secondary education in, the Friends' schools. A member of the first board. of managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital, he served for twenty-two years on the board, and acted as secretary from 1759 to 1772. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in January 1768.

Pemberton was elected to the Assembly for the County. of Philadelphia but he resigned in June 1756 with five colleagues because of his opposition to a war with the Delawares. In 1757, as clerk of the Meeting, he signed a petition to the governor protesting against forcing the Friends of the Lower Counties to bear arms. He was reelected to the Assembly in 1765 and held office for four years. At the time of the Stamp Act, he signed the non-importation agreement. He opposed armed resistance to Great Britain and was arrested, imprisoned in the Free Masons' Lodge, and deported with nineteen other Quakers to Virginia. Since they were not permitted to attend meeting, Pemberton helped to set up one of their own. On his return to Philadelphia he gave up all active interest in politics. As early as 1756 he wrote An Apology for the People called Quakers, containing some Reasons for their not complying with Human Injunctions and Institutions in matters relative to the Worship of God. In his capacity as clerk of the meeting he wrote, as well, many documents of a religious nature, one of which was a "Remonstrance v s. Erecting a Theatre and Theatrical Performances in Philadelphia." (See Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives ... of Pennsylvania, 1775, volume V, p. 524.) During the exile in Virginia he kept a journal, but more interesting are his letters, which are descriptive, concise, and filled with comments up on the life in the city and country. He died in 1809, in his eighty-sixth year. He had married, on October 15, 1751, Hannah, daughter of Mordecai and Hannah (Fishbourne) Lloyd. After h er death in 1764, he married, on March 22, 1768, Sarah, daughter of Daniel and Mary (Hoedt) Smith of Burlington, N. J.  Two years after her death he married, on July 12, 1775, Phoebe (Lewis) Morton, daughter of Robert and M ary Lewis.

[See: F. W. Leach, "Old Philadelphia Families," Philadelphia North America, July 28, 1907; J. W. Jordan. ed., Colonial Families of Philadelphia (1911), volume I; Isaac Sharpless, A History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania (2 volumes, 1900) and Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsylvania (1919); R. M. Smith, The Burlington Smiths (1877); Thos. Gilpin, Exiles in Virginia (1848); Edward Needles, An Historical Memoir of the Pa. Society for Promoting the Abo1ition of Slavery (1848); G. B. Wood, An Address on the Occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital (1851); J. F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (1844), volume I; Friends' Miscellany, May 1835; Pennsylvania. Magazine of History and Biography, January 1889, July 1899, July 1914; Pennsylvania Archives, 2 series IX (1880); Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, volume VII (1851), volume IX (1852). There are Pemberton manuscripts in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society]

E.M.B-n.


PEMBERTON, John, 1727-1795, Delaware, abolitionist leader, Society of Friends, Quaker, leader and delegate of the Delaware Abolition Society, founded 1788, vice president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting Abolition of Slavery, 1787

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 706-707; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 413-414; Basker, 2005, pp. 225, 240n19; Nash, 1991, pp. 49, 56, 65, 163; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 269). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 413-414:

PEMBERTON; JOHN (November 27, 1727-January 31, 1795), Quaker preacher, ninth of the ten children of Israel and Rachel (Read) Pemberton and younger brother of Israel and James Pemberton, [qq.v.], was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he attended Friends' schools. He entered business with his father and brother s, but soon gave this up so that he might devote his full time to religious work. In 1750, while traveling abroad for his health, he came into contact with John Churchman, a Quaker minister who was on his way to Great Britain on a religious tour. He persuaded Pemberton to accompany him, and for three years they journeyed through the west counties of England, in Ireland, Scotland, and Holland. During the trip Pemberton was persuaded to preach and on his return to Philadelphia he devoted his time to preaching and to missionary work, visiting in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia. A member of the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures, he attended the Easton conference in 1756. Ten years later he was chosen with John Penn to present the remonstrance against stage plays, prepared by his brother James, to the governor. Further revealing his religious convictions is the provisional lease which Pemberton granted in 1780 for a Coffee House, in which the tenant promised to "preserve decency," keep the house closed on Sunday, and prohibit swearing and card playing, with a penalty of £100 for the first offense.

Opposed to the war against the Delawares in 1756, he was equally hostile to armed resistance to Great Britain in 1777. Early in September 1777 he was notified that orders had been received to take him prisoner. When he refused to leave the house or give up his keys a guard of ten men took him by force. His desk was broken open and the contents seized. With his brothers he was sent to Winchester, Virginia, a journey of nineteen days by wagon. The year before he had begun to keep a journal, commenting upon the arrest of Friends for refusing to bear arms, and deploring the loss of life caused by war and sickness. He kept this journal throughout his exile, giving a clear picture of his arrest and imprisonment. His chief complaint throughout his imprisonment was of the cold and rain. On April 21, 1778, he left Winchester, arriving in Philadelphia nine days later, the day after he received his official pardon from Washington. He continued to keep up his journal after his return, but the majority of the entries refer only to the Meeting and to various Friends. At the Quarterly Meeting, February 5, 1781, Pemberton was given a certificate to visit the Friends in England. Despite the fact that it was now against the law to leave the country without a passport, he notified the council that he intended to dispense with the formality. Permitted to leave, he went to England, Ireland, and Scotland, visiting and preaching for five years. He returned to Philadelphia but set out again on May 30, 1794, for Holland and Germany. He held meetings on shipboard, in Amsterdam, and in several towns in Prussia. Early in September he became ill, but he continued to Pyrmont, Westphalia. Thereafter he referred constantly in his journal and letters to his illness, though he commented also upon his surroundings, the scenery, and the people. His condition rapidly grew worse and he died at Pyrmont on the last day of January 1795. Pemberton's wife was Hannah, the daughter of Isaac and Sarah Zane, whom he married in Philadelphia on May 8, 1766.

[F. W. Leach, "Old Philadelphia Families," Philadelphia North American, July 28, 1907; J. W. Jordan, ed., Colonial Families of Philadelphia (19II), volume I; Isaac Sharpless, A History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania (2 volumes, 1900); J. F. Watson, Annals of Phila. (1844), volume I; Thos. Gilpin, Exiles in Virginia (1848); G. B. Wood, An Address on the Occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital (1851); Friends' Miscellany, January, February, March 1836; The Diary of John Pemberton for the Years I777 and 1778 (1867), ed. by E. K. Price; Thos. Wilkinson, Some Account of the Last Journey of John Pemberton to the Highlands, and Other Parts of Scotland (1811); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1885, April-October 1917.]

E. M. B-n.


PENDLETON, James Madison (November 20, 1811-March 4, 1891), Baptist minister and educator. He thus supported the proposals of Henry Clay, for gradual emancipation of the slaves, a project which did not meet with general approval in Kentucky.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 241-242:

PENDLETON, JAMES MADISON (November 20, 1811-March 4, 1891), Baptist minister and educator, was born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, the son of John and Frances J. (Thompson) Pendleton. He could not trace his ancestry beyond his grandfather, Henry Pendleton, Jr., of Culpeper County, who served in the Revolution. When James was about a year old, the family moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where, on a farm near Pembroke, he lived until he was twenty. He attended the local schools, and from 1833 to 1836 an academy at Hopkinsville. At seventeen he had joined the church; he began to preach at nineteen, and was licensed by the Bethel Baptist Church in 1831. For the next two years he preached, taught school, and studied, and on November 2, 1833, he was ordained at Hopkinsville. After some local preaching during the continuation of his studies, he became in 1837 pastor of the Baptist Church at Bowling Green, and the following year, March 13, 1838, he married Catherine Stockton Garnett of Glasgow, Kentucky. To them four children, were born. His twenty-year pastorate at Bowling Green fell during a period when no one could exert an influence in the spiritual and moral life of the community without showing his political proclivities, and Pendleton's development was increasingly adverse to slavery and concerned for the preservation of the Union. He thus supported the proposals of Henry Clay, including that for gradual emancipation of the slaves, a project which did not meet with general approval in Kentucky.

In 1857 Pendleton accepted the chair of theology in Union University at Murfreesboro, Tenn. Here he studied and taught church history as well as Biblical and historical theology, and also served as pastor of the local Baptist Church. At the outbreak of the Civil War his attachment to the Union cause virtually forced him to leave Tennessee, and from 1862 to 1865 he served as pastor at Hamilton, Ohio. A son who had enlisted in the Confederate army was soon killed by accident; but the grief of the father was assuaged by the thought that his son "had never fired a gun at a Union soldier." In 1865 he accepted a call to the Baptist Church at Upland, Pennsylvania, where he became one of the original trustees of Crozer Theological Seminary, established three years later. He resigned the Upland pastorate in 1883 and spent the following years with one or another of his children, in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas. He died at Bowling Green.

Pendleton won a reputation as a preacher and writer of superior intellectual power, especially during his career at Murfreesboro, when from 1855 to 1861 he was one of the editors of the Southern Baptist Review Eclectic. His articles and review s show a wide range of reading and acute logical powers, based upon certain presuppositions which he never questioned. His later revisions of his early works show little change from his fundamental position (strictly orthodox and essentially "Landmarker"), although in the later works some of his conclusions were not so obtrusively asserted. Among his published works are Three Reasons Why I am a Baptist (1853), revised as Distinctive Principles of Baptists (1882); Church Manual (copyright 1867); A Treatise on the Atonement of Christ (1869, revised in 1885); and Christian Doctrines (1878), the last two being revisions of articles first published in the Review and Eclectic. His autobiography, Reminiscences of a Long Life (1891), was published after his death.

[J. M. Pendleton, Reminiscences (1891); Wm. Cathcart, The Bapt. Encyc. (1881); Semi-Centennial of Upland Baptist Church, 1852-1902 (n.d.), containing an interpretation by a son, Garnett Pendleton; J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists (1886), II, 523-25; Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), March 5, 1891.]

W.H.A.


PENNINGTON, James William Charles, 1807-1870, African American, American Missionary Association, fugitive slave, abolitionist, orator, clergyman.  Published The Fugitive Blacksmith in London in 1844.  One of the first African American students to attend Yale University. Served as a delegate to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London.  Active in the Amistad slave case.  Recruited African American troops for the Union Army. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 330-334; Mabee, 1970, pp. 65, 100, 101, 140, 194, 203, 269, 338, 339, 413n1; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 52, 73, 166, 413-414; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 441-442; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 300). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 441-442:

PENNINGTON, JAMES W. C. (1809-0ctober 1870), teacher, preacher, and author, was born in slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. While he was a slave he was known as Jim Pembroke. In his own story of his early life he recalls the desolate, terrifying days of his childhood, deprived of parental care, lacking education, and shrinking from the tyranny of his master's children and the brutality of the overseers. When he was four years old he was given, with his mother, to his first master's son, Frisbie Tilghman of Hagerstown, and was taken to live in Washington County. At nine he was hired out to a stone mason. Returning two years later to the home plantation, he was trained as a blacksmith and followed that trade until he was about twenty-one, when he decided to run away. After experiencing hunger, exhaustion, and escape from capture, he was welcomed one morning by a Pennsylvania Quaker with the friendly greeting, "Come in and take thy breakfast, and get warm" (The Fugitive Blacksmith, post, p. 41). He spent six months in this home, and under the guidance of his Quaker teacher, laid the foundation of an extensive education. Some months later he found work on western Long Island, near New York City; he attended evening school, and was privately tutored. Five years after his escape he qualified to teach in colored schools, first at Newtown, L. I., then at New Haven, Connecticut. While at New Haven he studied theology, and pastorates in African Congregational churches at Newtown, L. I. (1838-40) and at Hartford, Connecticut (1840-47) followed. His scholarship and pulpit eloquence attracted favorable attention in Hartford, and he served twice as president of the Hartford Central Association of Congregational Ministers, the membership being all white except himself. During this time he examined two candidates (one a Kentuckian) for their licenses to preach. Closely identified with measures to help his race, he was five times elected a member of the General Convention for the Improvement of Free People of Colour, and in 1843 was sent to represent Connecticut at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London. He was also the delegate of the American Peace Convention to the World's Peace Society meeting in London the same year. While in Europe he lectured or preached in London, Paris, and Brussels.

Until a short time before the passage of the "Fugitive Slave Law" (1850) he kept secret, even from his wife, the fact that he was a runaway slave. Fearing recapture, he appealed to John Hooker, of Hartford, to negotiate for his freedom and went abroad until his status should be determined. After many discouragements, a payment of $150 to the estate of his one-time master brought a bill of sale, and a deed of manumission was recorded in the town records of Hartford, June 5, 1851. In the meantime Pennington had become the first pastor of the First (Shiloh) Presbyterian Church on Prince Street in New York City. This pulpit he occupied for eight years (1847-55). During this time his story of his early life, The Fugitive Blacksmith (preface dated 1849; 3rd ed., 1850) was published in London, the proceeds of the sa le of the same being intended to aid in financing the new church. He had previously published Text Book of the Origin and History, &c, &c of the Colored People (1841). A few of his sermons and addresses survive, including Covenants Involving Moral Wrong Are Not Obligatory upon Man: A Sermon (1842), and The Reasonableness of the Abolition of Slavery (1856). In 1859 he contributed to the Anglo-African Magazine several articles on the capabilities of his race. After 1855 he is listed in the Minutes of the Presbyterian General Assembly as a member of the Third New York Presbytery, without a pastorate, his address appearing as New York, Hartford, occasionally Maine. During his last years his usefulness was much impaired by the excessive use of intoxicants (Brown, post). In 1869 or early in 1870 he went to Florida, hoping to benefit his health, and at Jacksonville he gathered together a colored Presbyterian church, but he died there soon after.

[In addition to The Fugitive Blacksmith, see John Hooker, Reminiscences of a Long Life (1899); Wilson Armistead, A Tribute for the Negro (1848), containing an autographed portrait; W. W. Brown, The Rising Son; or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored R ace (1874); W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887); Hartford (1843-49) and New York City (1848- 68) directories; Hartford Town Records; references in the Tappan Papers, Journal of Negro History, Apr. July 1927; Minutes of the General Assembly, Presbyt. Church in the U. S. A., 1871, p. 601, which gives date of death as October 20; New York Observer, November 10, 1870, which gives date of death as October 22.]

A. E. P.


PENNYPACKER, Elijah Funk, 1804-1888, reformer.  Both of his wives were members of the Society of Friends, which he joined in 1841, being drawn not only by such family ties but also by the anti-slavery sentiment that was a ruling factor in his life. In 1839, he joined the abolition movement, serving from time to time as president of the local society and also as head of the Chester County and the Pennsylvania state anti-slavery societies. His house near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, became one of the stations on the Underground Railroad, and his two horse wagon was a frequent carrier of black-skinned human freight that sought its way toward the North Star and to freedom.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 719; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 446). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 446:

PENNYPACKER, ELIJAH FUNK (November 29, 1804-January 4, 1888 ), reformer, was born in Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Funk) Pennypacker and the descendant of Heinrich (or Hendrick) Pannebacker, a Mennonite who ca me from the Low Countries to Pennsylvania before 1699. He was the uncle of Galusha Pennypacker [q. v.]. The family was prosperous, and he was educated at the boarding school of John Gummere [q.v.] of Burlington, New Jersey, where he followed the bent of his master toward mathematics, surveying, and such practical studies. He married, first, Sarah W. Coates in 1831 who had no children and who died ten years later. In 1843 he married Hannah Adams on, who bore him nine children. Both wives were members of the Society of Friends, which he too joined in 1841, being drawn not only by such family ties but also by the anti-slavery sentiment that was a ruling factor in his life. In his early life he taught for a few years, practised surveying, and devoted himself to farming. Between 1831 and 1836 he served several sessions in the state legislature, where his reputation for uprightness and ability attracted the attention of such men as Thaddeus Stevens and Joseph Ritner. His loyalty to what he thought right must have become irksome at times in legislative halls, for Stevens was once minded to tell him not "to be so damned honest" (Still, post, p. 689 ). While in the legislature he served ably in ma ny ways : as secretary to the board of canal commissioner s in 1836 and 1837 and a member of that board in 1838, as chairman of the committee on banks, as sponsor for the bill for incorporation of the Philadelphia Reading Railroad, and as collaborator with Thaddeus Stevens in the establishment of the common school system of Pennsylvania. A career in politics was undoubtedly open to him, but he declined to continue in this path, being unwilling, as one has said, "to hold office under a government that sanctioned human slavery" (Jordan, post, p. 492). After his retirement from public affairs, in 1839, he joined heartily in the abolition movement, serving from time to time as president of the local society and also as head of the Chester County and the Pennsylvania state anti-slavery societies. His house near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, became one of the stations on the Underground Railroad, and his two horse wagon was a frequent carrier of black-skinned human freight that sought its way toward the North Star and to freedom. Of the " Railroad" he said, whimsically, when the work was done, that its "stock was never reported in money circles, nor dividends declared, but means were ready as long as necessity required. The Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln dissolved the Corporation" (Jordan, post, p. 492 ). He was also prominent in the temperance movement and its candid ate for state treasurer in 1875. Woman's emancipation and her equal education also found in him a hearty supporter. His character did not fail to impress his fellow citizens. Whittier said of him, "In mind, body, and brave championship of the cause of freedom he was one of the most remarkable men I ever knew " (statement of Isaac R. Pennypacker in letter January 27, 1931); and another declared, "If that is not a good man, there is no use in the Lord writing His signature on human countenances " (Still, post, p. 688).

Wm. Still, The Underground Rail Road (1872); J. W. Jordan, Colonial Families of Philadelphia (1911), volume I; J. S. Futhey and Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania (1881 ); S. W. Pennypacker, Annals of Phoenixville (1872); Village Record and Local News of West Chester, Pennsylvania, both of Jan. 5, 1888; date of birth from Pennypacker's daughter.]

T. W.


PERHAM, Sidney, born 1819.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine.  Served in Congress 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Governor of Maine 1871-1874. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 727). 


PETTIGREW, RICHARD FRANKLIN (July 23, 1848-October 5, 1926), delegate from the Territory of Dakota, first senator from South Dakota,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 516-517:

PETTIGREW, RICHARD FRANKLIN (July 23, 1848-October 5, 1926), delegate from the Territory of Dakota, first senator from South Dakota, was born in Ludlow, Vermont, the son of Hannah B. (Sawtell) and Andrew Pettigrew, who was an abolitionist and maintained a station on the Underground Railroad. The boy's youth was spent on his father's farm in Evansville, Wisconsin, where he attended the public schools and local academy. He entered Beloit College but left in 1867. He studied law at the University of Wisconsin and with John C. Spooner [q.v.], and he settled in Sioux Falls in 1870.



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