Rob-Ror: Roberts through Rorer

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H. E. S.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W.J.K.


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

J. P.N.


ROBERTS, JOSEPH JENKINS (March 15, 1809-February 24, 1876), first president of Liberia, West Africa. African American organizer for the American Colonization Society. (H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I)

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

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

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

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

W. E. B. D-B.


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

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 58; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 283; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 34; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 641). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. H. S-n.


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

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

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

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

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

G. V. B.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W.R.W.


ROBINSON, Marius, 1806-1876, abolitionist.  Alumnus of Lane University.  Editor of The Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1849-18??.  The newspaper was the official organ of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.  Worked with Augustus Wattles to set up schools for free Blacks.  Worked with abolitionist James G. Birney in editing Philanthropist.  Antislavery agent. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 160, 164, 174, 185, 220, 264). 


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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

W.R.W.


RODNEY, Caesar Augustus, 1772-1824, Delaware, statesman, lawyer, diplomat.  U.S. Congressman, 1803-1805.  Later, Attorney General of the United States under Presidents Jefferson and Madison.  Rodney wrote:  “When we shall proclaim to every stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot on American earth, the ground on which he stands is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation.  No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of America, the altar and the god shall sink together in the dust; his soul shall walk abroad in her own majesty; his body shall swell beyond the measure of his chains, which burst from around him, and he shall stand redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the great genius of universal emancipation.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 300; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 82; Dumond, 1961, pp. 83-84; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 735). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 82-83:

RODNEY, CAESAR AUGUSTUS (January 4, 1772-June 10, 1824), lawyer, statesman, and diplomat, was born in Dover, Delaware, the son of Thomas Rodney [q.v.] and Elizabeth (Fisher) Rodney. He was the nephew of Caesar Rodney [q.v.], who, having never married, took a particular interest in the boy and not only assisted in his education but bequeathed to him most of his real estate. After living for two years in Philadelphia, and then again in Dover, the family settled in 1780 in Wilmington, Delaware, where for upwards of two years Thomas Rodney was engaged in the flour exporting business. In 1786 Caesar Augustus matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania. Upon his graduation in 1789 he commenced the study of law under Joseph B. McKean [q.v.] in Philadelphia. He was admitted to the bar in 1793 and began practice in Wilmington and New Castle. In 1796 he entered the Delaware House of Representatives as a member from New Castle County and continued a member of that body until the year 1802. A stanch supporter of Jefferson, he was prevailed upon to run for Congress in that year against the Federalist candidate, James A. Bayard [q.v.]. With Jefferson's backing, he succeeded in defeating Bayard and served as a member of the House of Representatives for two years. During this term he proved himself a firm supporter of the administration relative to the Louisiana Purchase treaty and of the Twelfth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

In January 1804 Rodney was chosen one of the House managers to conduct the impeachment proceedings against John Pickering, judge of the United States district court for New Hampshire, and in December of the same year he was appointed one of the House managers to conduct the impeachment proceedings against Justice Samuel Chase. On January 20, 1807, he became Jefferson's attorney-general, continuing in this post in Madison's administration as well until he resigned on December 5, 1811. In the War of 1812 he served actively in the defense of his state. Commissioned on April 7, 1813, as captain of the 2nd Company of artillery attached to the 1st Brigade of the militia, he was promoted major of a battalion of artillery after the close of the war on March 15, 1815 In the meantime, he had been elected a member of the state Senate and served in the sessions beginning January 3, 1815, January 2, 1816, and November 11, 1816. In 1817 he was appointed by President Monroe a member of a special commission to South America for the purpose of ascertaining the political status of newly established republics in that continent. His fellow commissioners were Theodorick Bland and John Graham. Proceeding directly to Buenos Aires, the commission remained there from February 1818 until the last of April. Rodney and Graham then returned to the United States while Bland proceeded to Chile. Reports by the commissioners were transmitted to Congress on November 17, 1818 (House Document 2, 15 Congress, 2 Session).

As a result of his vigorous stand in opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories, Rodney was elected to Congress in 1820. He took his seat in December 1821 but in the following January he was elected by the Delaware legislature to fill a vacancy in the Senate. He resigned from the House on January 24, 1822, and qualified as a member of the Senate the same day. A year later he resigned to accept an appointment by Monroe as the first United States minister plenipotentiary to the Argentine Republic. He arrived in Buenos Aires on November 14, 1823, a few days before the President promulgated the Monroe Doctrine. The appointment was very acceptable to the Argentinians but Rodney's career as a minister proved to be a short one. Falling dangerously ill on November 23, he recovered sufficiently to speak at a public dinner held in his honor on May 27, 1824, but died, following a relapse, on June 10. His remains were interred in the English churchyard in Buenos Aires. When not in the public service of the United States, Rodney maintained with his large family a lovely home in Wilmington, Delaware, named "Cool Spring." His wife was Susan Hunn, daughter of Captain John Hunn of Philadelphia. By her he had fifteen children, ten daughters and five sons.

[Sources include: W. T. Read, Biographical Sketch of Caesar Augustus Rodney (1853); Delaware Archives, volumes IV and V (1916); W. R. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence of the U. S. Concerning the Independence of the Latin-American Nations (1925), volume I, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law (1906), volume I; Letters to and from Caesar Rodney, I756-84 (1933), ed. by George H. Ryden; Governors' Register State of Delaware, volume I (1926); J. T. Scharf, History of Delaware (1888), volume I; J. M. McCarter and B. F. Jackson, Historical and Biographical Encyclopedia of Delaware (1882); Henry C. Conrad, History of the State of Delaware, volume III (1908).]

G.H.R.


ROGERS, John Almanza Rowley (November 12, 1828-July 22, 1906), Congregational clergyman, educator, co-founder of Berea College in Kentucky. The spirit and ideals of antislavery Oberlin College had made a deep impression upon him, and he felt that nothing could help Kentucky so much as starting a similar Christian college.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 103-104:

ROGERS, JOHN ALMANZA ROWLEY (November 12, 1828-July 22, 1906), Congregational clergyman, educator, was born in Cromwell, Conn., the son of John C. and Elizabeth (Hamlin) Rogers. He attended Williams Academy, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, until his parents moved to Ohio, and then entered Oberlin College. After receiving the degree of A.B. in 1851, he prepared for the ministry in Oberlin Theological Seminary, supporting himself by teaching in Oberlin Academy and, during the long vacations, in New York City. He graduated in 1855 and the following year married Elizabeth Lewis Embree of Philadelphia; a Quaker girl.

On his wedding trip he was asked to take a group of orphans to Roseville, Illinois. After preaching in the Congregational church of that town, he was invited to become its pastor and was there ordained. He remained in Roseville for about two years, and then, hearing that a friend had given up missionary work in Kentucky because of hardship and danger, he felt impelled to go there himself. The spirit and ideals of antislavery Oberlin had made a deep impression upon him, and he felt that nothing could help Kentucky so much as a similar Christian college. A few years before, John Gregg Fee [q.v.] had established an anti-slavery church in what came to be known as Berea, Madison County, Kentucky, and in 1855 had opened a school. Rogers chose this place for his labors and in April 1858 moved to Berea with the indorsement and financial support of the American Missionary Association. Here he and his wife began teaching fifteen pupils in a room the sides and roof of which were of split clapboards. Rogers made desks, maps, and charts, and introduced such startling innovations as music, pictures, and lectures. The school proved popular, and before the close of the term its enrollment had greatly increased. The following term two additional teachers were employed. Rogers was one of the little group which drew up a constitution for a college, completed and signed in July 1859, a stipulation of which was that the college should be "under an influence strictly Christian, and, as such, opposed to sectarianism, slaveholding, caste, and every other wrong institution or practice." John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry inflamed the whole South and in December 1859 Rogers and ten others were ordered by an armed mob to leave the state. They appealed to Governor Magoffin, who answered that he could not protect them. They then left the state, but continued to. make payments on land they had bought for the site of the college.

After serving for a time as traveling secretary of the American Missionary Association, in New York and New England, Rogers became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Decatur, Ohio, with the understanding that he might leave at a month's notice and return to Kentucky. In 1865 the exiles went back to Berea and reopened the school. Rogers conducted it and was also associated with Fee in the pastorate of the church. A college charter was obtained and the institution grew rapidly. Rogers was instrumental, in 1868, in having the trustees call Edward H. Fairchild, then head of the preparatory department at Oberlin, to the presidency, but remained as professor of Greek until 1878, and served as trustee up to the time of his death. After resigning his professorship, he was pastor of a church in Shawano, Wis., for five years. He then retired to Hartford, Conn. His death occurred at the home of a daughter-in-law in Woodstock, Illinois. John Raphael Rogers [q.v.] was his son.

[J. A. R. Rogers, Birth of Berea College (1903); Berea College (1883); Oberlin College: The Alumni Catalog of 1926 (1927); Berea Quart., October 1926; Chicago Tribune and Courier-Journal (Louisville), July 24, 1906.]  

J. W. R.


ROGERS, Moses, New York, abolitionist, member of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded 1785 (Basker, 2005, p. 223). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 106-107:

ROGERS, MOSES (c. 1779-October 15, 1821), early steamboat captain, was born in New London, Conn., the eldest of seven children of Amos and Sarah (Phillips) Rogers. The family, which included among its members many mariners and fishermen, traced its American ancestry to James Rogers who was living in New London as early as 1660. Moses learned to manage a sailboat in boyhood and by 1800 was in command of a sailing vessel on Long Island Sound. On February 18, 1804, he married Adelia Smith, by whom he had three sons and two daughters. He became greatly interested in steamboat experiments, especially those of John Stevens [q.v.], in some of which he may have had a part. It is frequently stated that he commanded Fulton's Clermont, but no original record has come to light which proves this assertion. In any event, he could have commanded it for only a few trips in the fall of 1807 before he was selected by John and Robert L. Stevens [q.v.] to command their steamer, the Phoenix. The monopoly of Hudson steam navigation granted to the Fulton Livingston interests made it necessary to send the Phoenix, in 1809, by Sandy Hook and Cape May to the Delaware River for service, and Rogers was captain on this, the earliest ocean voyage of a steam vessel. He continued as captain while the Phoenix plied between Philadelphia and Bordentown, New Jersey, the first steamer on the Delaware and the western link of a stagecoach- steamboat route from New York to Philadelphia. In 1815 he commanded the Eagle on the first voyage made by steamer from New York to Baltimore, and later  he became part owner of a bi-weekly line between these ports. He also took out patents in 1814 and 1815 for a horse-power ferry-boat which was adopted on several ferry-lines in New York harbor and evidently used in other places.

In 1818, seeing the future Savannah under construction in New York, Rogers persuaded Scarborough & Isaacs, a Savannah shipping firm, to purchase it, fit it with engines, and experiment in the use of steam on the ocean. Rogers superintended the building of the engines, paddle wheels, and accompanying machinery. The paddle wheels he constructed so that they could be quickly taken from the water and placed on board in case it was desired to use only sail, an innovation dictated by his experience on the maiden trip of the Phoenix when the paddle wheels were badly damaged by storm. After having made the journey from New York to Savannah, Rogers left the latter city on May 22, 1819, for Liverpool. With him on this voyage, as navigator, went Stevens Rogers (February 13, 1789-November 30, 1882), also of New London, designer of the Savannah's rigging, who had been associated with him in the Phoenix and the Eagle and later became his brother-in-law. This first voyage of a steamship across the Atlantic can scarcely be called the first crossing of the ocean by steam, since the passage consumed twenty-nine days and eleven hours, of which time sails were used for twenty-six days and three hours. The voyage was continued to Stockholm and St. Petersburg, where the Savannah was visited by many of the nobility, including the Prince of Sweden and the Emperor of Russia. On the stormy voyage home sails were used until the ship was in the Savannah River. The owners were forced to sell the Savanah, and Rogers formed new connections with a company about to operate steamers on the Great Peedee River between Georgetown and Cheraw, S. C. He superintended the construction of the Peedee in 1820, and while in command of it the following year was stricken with malarial fever. He died and was buried in Georgetown. Though his Savannah undertaking did not bear immediate fruit in promoting transatlantic steamship service, Rogers deserves credit for mechanical ingenuity and courageous seamanship.

[The best source of information is J. E. Watkins, "The Log of the Savannah," in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, I890 (1891), based on the original logbook, preserved in that institution, and on contemporary newspaper references; obituary notice reprinted from the Georgetown Intelligencer shows 1821 rather than 1822 to be the correct date of Rogers' death. See also J. S. Rogers, James Rogers of New London, Ct., and His Descendants (1902), and A. D. Turnbull, John Stevens, An American Record (1928).]

O. W. H.


ROGERS, Nathaniel, 1794-1846, newspaper publisher, editor, abolitionist.  Established early anti-slavery newspaper, Herald of Freedom, in Concord, New Hampshire.  Participated in the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote anti-slavery articles.  His articles were reprinted in the New York Tribune under the pen name Old Man of the Mountain.  Supported the women’s rights movement. 

(The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 320)


ROLLINS, Edward Henry, 1824-1889.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire.  He performed important services in the merger of Know-Nothings, Free Soilers, Whigs, and anti-slavery Democrats into a coherent and enthusiastic party. The even balance of party strength and the fact that New Hampshire elections came in the spring made the state a pivotal one in national affairs and the work of Rollins attracted much attention. He was chairman of the Republican state committee from 1856 to 1861, resigning in the latter year because of his election to Congress.
Served in Congress July 1861-March 1867.  U.S. Senator 1877-1883.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 312-313; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 120; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 787; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 120:

ROLLINS, EDWARD HENRY (October 3, 1824-July 31, 1889), politician, legislator, railroad financier, was born at Rollinsford, New Hampshire, eldest of the six children of Daniel and Mary (Plumer) Rollins. On both sides of the family he was of good colonial stock, his father being a descendant of James Rawlins who called to New England in 1632, and settled at Ipswich, Massachusetts. Edward spent his youth on his father's farm and once declared that no one knew better "the sorrows of hill-farm husbandry than I did until my twenty-first year." His early education was scanty, and while he began preparation for Dartmouth, lack of means obliged him to relinquish his ambition for a college education. He was an omnivorous reader, however, and overcame many of his early handicaps, writing and speaking with facility and vigor. After leaving home he spent several years as clerk in a Concord drug store, school-teacher, and employee of a wholesale drug firm in Boston. In 1847 he bought a drug business in Concord, N. H, with which he was associated until 1861. On February 13, 1849, he married Ellen Elizabeth West.

His business prospered, his store became a rendezvous for local politicians and party workers, and the proprietor, an anti-slavery Whig, was soon a rising politician. He was a state committeeman for the Whig party in its moribund years, 1850-53, and passed via the Know-Nothing route into the new Republican organization. He was elected to the lower house of the legislature in 1855 and became speaker a year later. He performed important services in the merger of Know-Nothings, Free Soilers, Whigs, and anti-slavery Democrats into a coherent and enthusiastic party. The even balance of party strength and the fact that New Hampshire elections came in the spring made the state a pivotal one in national affairs and the work of Rollins attracted much attention. He was chairman of the Republican state committee from 1856 to 1861, resigning in the latter year because of his election to Congress.

He served three consecutive terms in the House and proved himself a conscientious committeeman, a stalwart supporter of war measures, and an indefatigable worker for the interests of his state and constituents. After the expiration of his third term he was again elected chairman of the state committee, serving from 1868 to 1872, and exercising a great influence on campaigns and policies when no longer a member. A textbook on party methods and practices could be written from his experiences in keeping New Hampshire in the Republican column. A profound believer in Republican principles, opposed to conciliation with the South, a conservative with scant tolerance for reform in any guise, but personally honest and fearless, he was distinctly a product of the era. He was a skilful manager of caucuses and conventions, an adept distributor of patronage and spoils, but emerged unsmirched from the political scandals of the period.

In 1869, through the influence of Oakes Ames [q.v.], a personal friend, he became assistant treasurer of the Union Pacific Railroad and secretary of its board of directors; two years later he was promoted to the post of treasurer. He had no connection with the Credit Mobilier organization but his relationship to the railroad company caused increasing opposition to his candidacy for the United States Senate, and after his election for the term 1877-83 he deemed it advisable to sever it. In the Senate he followed much the same course he had pursued earlier in the House. His failure to secure a reelection, due to the popularity of the doctrine of rotation which he had clone much to foster and to the increasing restiveness of other leaders under the dominance of the Rollins machine, was a severe disappointment and led to his gradual retirement from active politics.

On his return to Concord he became increasingly active in New Hampshire business affairs, heading the banking firm of E. H. Rollins & Sons. From 1886 to 1889 he was president of the Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad. A paralytic stroke from which he never recovered was probably the result of severe work over a long period of years. He retained an interest in farming, was a breeder of choice live stock, and did much for the agricultural improvement of the state. He died at Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire, survived by four children, one of them being Frank West Rollins [q.v.].

[J. O. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (1906), based on Rollins' correspondence and other papers; J. R. Rollins, Records of Families of the Name Rawlins or Rollins, in the U.S. (1874); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Granite Monthly, September 1877; Concord Evening Monitor, August 2, 1889; Independent Statesman (Concord), August 1, 8, 1889.]

W.A. R.


ROLLINS, James Sidney, 1812-1888, lawyer, soldier.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri.  After Mexican War (1846), opposed extension of slavery into the new territories.  Served as Congressman July 1861-March 1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume, V, p. 313; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 121; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 788; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 121-122.

ROLLINS, JAMES SIDNEY (April 19, 1812-January 9, 1888), congressman, was born at Richmond, Kentucky, the son of Anthony Wayne Rollins, a native of Pennsylvania and prominent physician, and Sallie (Rodes) Rollins. His grandfather, Henry Rollins, was a native of Ireland. James Sidney attended Richmond Academy, spent two years at Washington College; and graduated in 1830 with highest honor s from the Indiana University. Rejoining his family in Columbia, Missouri, he read law for a time in the offices of Abiel Leonard, then served in the Black Hawk War. In 1834 he completed his legal education at Transylvania University. He develop ed a large practice, but the routine and delay of the law irked him, and as early as 1836 he turned to public affairs. By inheritance and by conviction a Whig, he edited the Columbia Patriot and in 1838 was elected to the legislature from a strongly Whig county. As a legislator he achieved marked distinction in the decade 1838-48. His lifelong interests were education and public improvements. He sponsored in 1839 legislation which gave form and substance to the state university, while his effective and eloquent leadership of the cause of hi g her education resulted in public grants and in private donations which secured the location of the institution at Columbia. Through successive sessions he urged upon politically hostile and indifferent colleagues the desirability of internal improvements, of wider educational opportunities, and of social legislation. He was an ardent supporter of Clay, and by 1848 he had become the recognized leader of the Missouri Whigs, the minority party in the state. As candidate for governor in 1848 he secured the largest vote ever cast for a Whig. He echoed no popular slogans and had no effective political organization, but his eloquence and presentation of issues attracted many followers.

After several years of successful practice, Rollins returned in 1854 to the legislature, when the issue of slavery in the territories was a threat to the maintenance and integrity of his party. Although a slave-owner, he believed and maintained that it was the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories He was again a candidate for governor in 1857, receiving the support of former Whigs, Native Americans, and many Benton Democrats (Weekly Jefferson Inquirer, May 2, 1857). His defeat by 230 votes ended a brilliant but futile party leadership of twelve years. As the crisis of 1860 approached, he supported the Bell-Everett ticket and became a candidate for Congress. As a border-state moderate in a slave-owning constituency he was willing fully to recognize the complaints of the South but refused to sanction secession. Both he and John B. Henderson, his opponent, emphatically disavowed any antislavery sentiment, and Rollins won. He was reelected easily in 1862, as a Conservative-Unionist. Primarily concerned with preserving the Union, with or without slavery, he had the confidence of Lincoln and gave the government loyal and courageous support. He opposed confiscation, the Emancipation Proclamation, military government, and had grave doubt of the compensated emancipation plan for loyal slaveowners in Missouri. "I am for the Constitution and the Union as our fathers made them-I want no change" (Congressional Globe, Appendix, 37 Congress, 3 Session, p. 106). By 1865, however, he realized that slavery must be abolished, and he supported the resolution submitting the Thirteenth Amendment. Singularly free from the intolerance and fanaticism of some border state politicians, he opposed the proscriptive and punitive spirit and measures both in Missouri and in the nation.

In 1866 a crisis in the affairs of the University induced Rollins to reenter the legislature where he remained until 1872. The institution was in a dismal plight. The Republican majority was hostile toward it; the resources were almost exhausted, and public opinion generally indifferent. He met the difficult situation with tact and enthusiasm, and, by judicious concessions, was instrumental in securing the enactment of five significant statutes, 1867-72, relating to the University and to the newly created College of Agriculture. By these measures the institution was placed upon a solid and permanent foundation. Opposed to radical Republicanism, he aided in the restoration of the state Democracy in 1867-68, although he was never in complete accord with the Democratic party. His conciliatory policy, wisely dictated in behalf of educational legislation, was unpopular with many. With Carl Schurz and B. Gratz Brown he was a leader in the Liberal Republican movement. His lifelong ambition to be governor was finally frustrated in 1872 when the former Confederate element defeated him in the Democratic state convention. He retired from active politics in that year. Of tall and commanding presence, with resonant voice and facile rhetoric, he captivated his audiences and was easily one of the first citizens of the state for half a century. He died after a lingering illness, survived by his wife, Mary E. Hickman, whom he had married on June 6, 1837, and by seven of their eleven children.

[Sources include: W. B. Smith, las. Sidney Rollins Memoir (I89I), containing selections from his speeches and letters; History of Boone County, Missouri (1882); W. E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (2 volumes, 1933); Missouri Republican, January 10, 1888; Rollins Papers in' the possession of Rollins' son, C. B. Rollins, Columbia, Missouri]

 T. S. B.


ROOT, David, 1790-1873, clergyman 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 319). 


ROOT, Joseph M., 1807-1879, Brutus, New York, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, Mayor of Sandusky, Ohio. Whig Congressman and later Free Soil Member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Thirty-First Congress.

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


ROOT, Joseph Pomeroy (April 23, 1826-July 20, 1885), physician, diplomatist, “he was chairman of the Free-State Executive Committee, and in August 1857 was elected to the Kansas Senate under the Topeka constitution.”

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 150; Topeka Capital, July 22, 1885; Weekly Commonwealth (Topeka), July 23, 1885; The U.S. Biographical Directory, Kansas Volume (1879); J. P. Root, Root Genealogical Records (1870)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 150:

ROOT, JOSEPH POMEROY (April 23, 1826-July 20, 1885), physician, diplomatist, son of John and Lucy (Reynolds) Root, was born in Greenwich, Massachusetts. His father was descended from John Roote who settled in Farmington, Connecticut, about 1640. After his early schooling was completed; he attended the Berkshire Medical College; Pittsfield, Massachusetts, graduating in 1850. The following year he moved to New Hartford, Connecticut, and in September married Frances Evaline Alden, by whom he had five sons. He joined the practice of politics to that of medicine, and was elected as a Whig to the Connecticut legislature in 1855. Moved by his social and political convictions to throw himself into the anti-slavery movement, he joined a company of emigrants (the Beecher Bible and Rifle colony) starting for Kansas in March 1856. He settled at Wyandotte, and at once began an active part in the affairs of the distracted territory. He was chairman of the Free-State Executive Committee, and in August 1857 was elected to the Kansas Senate under the Topeka constitution. He was one of the pioneer corps who located the public road from Topeka to Nebraska City, and he was sent East as an agent to obtain arms and aid for the free-soilers.

He contributed editorially to the Wyandotte papers, the Register (1857) and the Gazette (1858). In December 1859 he was elected lieutenant- governor of the new state on the Republican ticket. In 1861 he was chosen one of the officers of the first annual meeting of the Kansas State Temperance Society. During the Civil War he was surgeon of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry (as it was finally designated) and was medical director of the Army of the Frontier. In 1866 he presided over the Republican state convention. On September 15, 1870, President Grant appointed him minister to Chile, an act which recognized his services and at the same time eliminated him from active participation in state politics. He presented his credentials on December 2, 1870, and since diplomatic duties were not pressing, he gave much time to a general interest in Chilean affairs. He traveled extensively. Once he crossed the Andes into Argentina and reported the trip to the Department of State in the form of a treatise on the cause of earthquakes. Later he accompanied the minister of foreign affairs to southern Chile to investigate the Indians. Improvements in transportation fascinated him; he was enthusiastically in favor of an intercontinental railroad, he urged subsidies by the United States to West-Coast steamship lines, and he undertook on his own account to have Chile establish a system of towboats in the Straits of Magellan.

Root won great popularity with the Chileans for his efforts during a frightful smallpox epidemic in 1872. He served on the Santiago Board of Health and contributed his services to hospitals and private patients, laboring to improve the sanitary treatment of the disease. In recognition of his work a street in Santiago, the "Calle de Root," was named for him. He was recalled in June 1873 to make a place for Cornelius Logan [q.v.]. In 1874 he was elected a vice-president of the Temperance Convention which forced the Republican convention to adopt an anti-liquor plank. Governor St. John appointed him surgeon-general of Kansas. In 1876 he published Catechism of Money, advocating green-backism; in this same year he was named a member of the Chilean Centennial Commission. In 1884 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Except for two years. (1877-79) when he was on the staff of a sanitarium at Clifton Springs, New York, he lived at Wyandotte until his death. He took a lively interest in the Kansas Historical Society and contributed several manuscript writings to its archives, among them a memoir of his experiences in Kansas in 1856.

[Topeka Capital, July 22, 1885; Weekly Commonwealth (Topeka), July 23, 1885; The U.S. Biographical Directory, Kansas Volume (1879); J. P. Root, Root Genealogical Records (1870); H. C. Evans, Chile and Its Relations with the U.S. (1927), p. 96, where Root's given name appears incorrectly as Thomas; Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, 1901-02 (1902); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1871-73; Root's dispatches (3 volumes) in the Archives of the Dept. of State.]

G. V. B.

RORER, David (May 12, 1806-July 7, 1884), lawyer, legal writer. Though reared as a slave owner, he early perceived the evils of negro bondage and manumitted his own slaves. He was associated with three notable fugitive slave cases. In the first trial before the Iowa territorial supreme court in 1839, his argument that Iowa was free territory according to the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise convinced the court that prohibition of slavery in a territory annihilated slave property. During the Civil War he was a strong supporter of the Union and advocated immediate emancipation of slaves.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 153-154:

RORER, DAVID (May 12, 1806-July 7, 1884), lawyer, legal writer, was the son of Abraham Rorer who lived on a farm in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. On the foundation of a country school education, he studied law in the office of Nathaniel H. Claiborne [q.v.] and was admitted to the Virginia bar before he was twenty years old. Accompanied by a slave, he set out on horseback in the fall of 1826 for Little Rock, Ark. In 1827 he married Martha (Daniel) Martin, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. On the western frontier he practised law, superintended the construction of a military highway, investigated the condition of the Indians, and dabbled in politics, eventually becoming prosecuting attorney. In the autumn of 1835 he resigned that office, went to St. Louis, and thence in the following spring to the pioneer settlement of Burlington on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Michigan Territory. At Burlington he made his home during the remainder of his life. There his first wife died in 1838, and in the following year he married Delia Maria Viele; two daughters by this marriage survived him. Within the first three years of his residence in Burlington, that town became successively the capital of Wisconsin Territory and of the Territory of Iowa. Rorer plotted the town, drafted the charter and some of the ordinances, contributed most generously toward the erection of a church, suggested the sobriquet "Hawkeyes" for the inhabitants of Iowa, participated in a convention to petition Congress for the creation of Iowa Territory, and ran as an independent Democrat for the office of delegate to Congress. As a consequence of the bitter partisanship of that candidacy he engaged in a street fight and fatally shot a newspaper editor who abused him (J. C. Parish, Robert Lucas, 1907, p. 181). That was the end of his political career, for which he had little talent or inclination.

For approximately four decades Rorer was one of the most active members of the Iowa bar. Colleagues and rivals knew him as a thorough scholar, a vigorous advocate, and a close reasoner who could on occasion be eloquent without oratorical vacuity. Though reared as a slave owner, he early perceived the evils of negro bondage and manumitted his own slaves. He was associated with three notable fugitive slave cases. In the first trial before the Iowa territorial supreme court in 1839, his argument that Iowa was free territory according to the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise convinced the court that prohibition of slavery in a territory annihilated slave property, and Ralph, by living in Iowa with the consent of his master, had become free (Iowa Reports, l Morris, 1)-a judgment contrary to the Dred Scott decision seventeen years later. In behalf of a Missouri slave owner, however, he won a verdict in 1850 for the recovery of several fugitive slaves "harbored and concealed" among the Quakers near Salem, Iowa (Ruel Daggs vs. Elihu Frazier et al.). Although Iowa was free soil, he maintained that the state was bound to respect federal law. Five years later he defended an alleged fugitive slave named Dick and won his release by lack of identification. During the Civil War he was energetic in support of the Union and advocated immediate emancipation as a salutary and effective measure.

Beginning in 1853, Rorer was continuously employed for the next quarter of a century as a railroad attorney, as solicitor, first, of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Company, which he had helped to organize in 1852, and in the same capacity after its consolidation with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, December 31, 1872. As a result of his extensive experience in railroad litigation and to gratify his taste for research, he wrote three exhaustive. works: A Treatise on the Law of Judicial and Execution Sales (1873), American, Inter-state Law (1879), and A Treatise on the Law of Railways (2 volumes, 1884). The scope and detail of these works indicate the author's grasp and accuracy; the publication of second editions of the first two is evidence of their popularity and usefulness to the legal profession.

[E. H. Stiles, in his Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Early Iowa (1916), and in Annals of Iowa, July 1907; accounts of the fugitive slave cases, Ibid., July 1899, April 1903; A. M. Antrobus, History of Des Moines County, Iowa (1915), I, 399; Biographical Review of Des Moines County, Iowa (1905); Weekly Hawkeye (Burlington), July 10, 1884.)

J.E.B.



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