Tod-Tys: Tod through Tyson

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


TOD, DAVID (February 21, 1805-November 13, 1868), governor of Ohio, diplomat, and capitalist  Appointed as minister fo Brazil in 1847, he remained there until 1851. His tact and good sense soon cleared away the misunderstandings with that government; but his efforts to stop the African slave trade to Brazil, largely in the hands of Americans, ended in failure because the U. S.  government would take no action.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 567-568:

TOD, DAVID (February 21, 1805-November 13, 1868), governor of Ohio, diplomat, and capitalist, was born near Youngstown in Trumbull, later Mahoning, County, Ohio, the son of George Tod [q.v.] and Sarah (Isaacs) Tod. Reared on his father's farm, " Brier Hill" he went to the neighborhood schools and later to Burton Academy in Geauga County. He read law in the office of Powell Stone of Warren and was admitted to the bar in 1827. From 1830 to 1838 he was Democratic postmaster at Warren, though his father was affiliated with the Whig party. For one term, 1838-40, he represented in the state Senate a district normally Whig. He became the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor in 1844 and again in 1846. Accepting an appointment as minister fo Brazil in 1847, he remained there until 1851. His tact and good sense soon cleared away the misunderstandings with that government; but his efforts to stop the African slave trade to Brazil, largely in the hands of Americans, ended in failure because his own government would take no action, Amassing a fortune in the coal and iron business, he was an important figure in the business affairs of Youngstown; and business interests, rather than politics, occupied his attention through the 1850's. He began to ship coal to Cleveland by canal from his "Brier Hill" mines in 1841 after having personally convinced steamboat owners of its value as fuel. He soon became interested in iron manufacturing and was one of the founders of Youngstown's great iron industry. He was also one of a group of six promoters who built the Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railroad, and he served as president of the road from 1859 to his death.  

In the Democratic convention of 1860 he appeared as a Douglas delegate, was elected first vice-president of the convention, and after Caleb Cushing [q.v.] withdrew assumed the chair. When the Civil War began, his active espousal of the Union cause led to his nomination for the governorship by the Union party, and he was easily elected. He had to deal with such matters as draft evasion and resistance, the activities of the Peace Democrats, the excitement over the Vallandigham arrest, the defense of Cincinnati against Kirby-Smith's threatened invasion in September 1862, and the raid of John H. Morgan across the Ohio in July 1863. His vigorous actions and forceful utterances gave offense in some quarters but stamped him as an executive of energy and decision. He was especially watchful over the welfare of the disabled and wounded soldiers, but in making promotions of officers he incurred some criticism. However, the system, rather than the governor, was principally at fault. When he was defeated for renomination by John Brough, he supported the ticket, though deeply disappointed at the result. He was inclined to blame the national administration for his defeat, and perhaps this was a consideration in causing him to refuse Lincoln's offer of the secretaryship of the treasury in 1864 after Chase's resignation, though he gave the condition of his health and his business affairs as reasons. He was chosen as one of the Republican presidential electors in 1868 but died soon after the election from a stroke of apoplexy. He was survived by his widow, Maria (Smith) Tod, to whom he had been married on June 4, 1832, and by six of his seven children.

[Letters and papers in archives of department of state, in Ohio Archeology and Historical Society Library, Columbus, Western Reserve Historical Society" Library, Cleveland, and in Library of Congress; G. B. Wright, Hon, David Tod (1900) and in Ohio Archeology and Historical Publications, volume VIII (1900); Samuel Galloway, Eulogy on Ex-Governor David Tod (1869); J. G. Butler, History of Youngstown (1921), volumes, I, III; E, H. Roseboom, "Ohio in the 1850's," thesis in Widener Lib,, Harvard Univ,; E. A. Holt, Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850 (1931) and in Ohio Archeology and Historical Quarterly, July 1929; G. H. Porter, Ohio Politics During the Civil War (19II): L, F. Hill, Diplomatic Relations between the U. S. and Brazil (1932); Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War (1868), volume I; Herald (Cleveland), November 16, 1868.)

E. H. R.


TODD, John, 1750-1782, soldier.  Member of the Virginia legislature.  Introduced bill for African American emancipation. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 126)


TOMKINS, Daniel D., 1774-1825, statesman.  Vice President of the United States.  Advocate for the abolishment of slavery in the United States. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 130; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 738; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt 2, pp. 583-584). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 583-584:

TOMPKINS, DANIEL D. (June 21, 1774- June 11, 1825), governor of New York, vice-president of the United States, was born at Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York, the son of a Revolutionary patriot, Jonathan G. Tompkins, and of Sarah (Hyatt), and a descendant of John Tompkins who settled at Concord, Massachusetts, in 1640. Named simply Daniel, he is said to have adopted the middle initial "D" to distinguish himself from a schoolmate of the same name. Tompkins was graduated from Columbia College in 1795. He took up the practice of law in New York City and entered politics as a Republican, was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1801 and of the Assembly in 1803, and was elected to Congress in 1804 but resigned to accept appointment as an associate justice of the New York supreme court. This office gave him a wide acquaintance in the state, and his gracious manner, affability, and broad human sympathy made him a popular favorite. He was spoken of affectionately for years as the "farmer's boy." About 1797 he married Hannah Minthorne, by whom he had seven children; this marriage may have aided him politically, for his wife's father, Mangle Minthorne, was a prominent Republican of New York City.

In 1807 Tompkins was selected by the Clinton faction as their candidate for governor to oppose the incumbent, Morgan Lewis [q.v.]. He was elected in that year and reelected in 1810, 1813, and 1816, serving continuously for almost ten years. Though he had won the governorship with the support of DeWitt Clinton [q.v. ], he soon became Clinton's most able antagonist in state politics. His administration was marked by loyalty to the measures of the government in Washington, including the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, and by liberal reform measures in the interest of the common people of the state. With varying success he urged improvements in the state's school system, liberalization of its criminal code, more humane treatment of negroes and Indians, the complete abolition of slavery, and a reform in the militia system designed to make wealth bear a larger share in the burden of defense. A militia law such as he desired was passed late in 1814, over the bitter protests of the propertied classes (Van Buren, post, pp. 55-57), but too late to be of service in the War of 1812. A law which extinguished slavery in the state on July 4, 1827, was passed at his request in 1817. His democratic attitude is suggested by his remark, in a message opposing the multiplication of banks, that "the less wealthy part of the community ... are generally the most moral, upright and useful members there of" (State of New York: Messages from the Governors, 1909, U, 698). In the spring of 1812 he took the extraordinary step of proroguing the legislature in a vain effort to block the chartering of the Bank of North America.

Tompkins' powers were strained to the utmost during the War of 1812, when, as commander-in- chief of the New York militia, it fell to him not only to supply troops and equipment for the defense of the New York frontiers, but to perform many duties which should have devolved upon officers of the United States. Handicapped by an inadequate staff, a vicious militia system, insufficient funds, a hostile Assembly (till the fall of 1814), and the incompetence of the United States army officers, he probably handled the tasks of war in his area as successfully as any man could have done. Declining an appointment as secretary of state in the fall of 1814, he accepted instead command of the Third Military District, embracing southern New York and eastern New Jersey. New York City was in a panic at the prospect of a British attack. Tompkins succeeded in putting some 25,000 troops in the field about New York City alone and in borrowing, partly on his personal credit, large sums of money for the pay of New York and New Jersey troops and even for the defense of New England and the maintenance of the Military Academy at West Point. For these services he was ill requited. It is not surprising that in the press of his business vouchers had been lost and accounts had fallen into confusion. At the close. of the war he was unable to account for all the money that had passed through his hands, and though his integrity was unquestioned and the value of his service recognized, he was technically in default to both New York and the United States. Charges were made against him (Archi~ bald McIntyre, A Letter ... to Daniel D. Tompkins, 1819) against which he published a defense (A Letters to Archibald M'Intyre, 1819). Event usually the New York legislature balanced his accounts (1820) and Congress, upon President Monroe's recommendation, authorized the payment to him (1823-24) of over $95,000 for losses which he had incurred in the public service (Annals of Congress, 18 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 788, 828, 1906, 2697, and passim), but unfortunately, before these settlements were made, the question of his accounts had been dragged into politics when Tompkins ran again (unsuccessfully) for the governorship in 1820. These financial trouble darkened his last years. He impressed contemporaries as a man broken in health and prematurely aged by overwork and worry, grieving his friends by his intemperance. He served as vice-president of the United States from 1817 to 1825, but was absent much of the time from his post; in 1821 he presided over the state constitutional convention. He died at his home on Staten Island in his fifty-first year.

[Edward Tompkins, Jr., A Record of the Ancestry and Kindred of the Children of Edward Tompkins, Sr. (1893); Public Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins (3 volumes, 1898-1902), ed. by Hugh Hastings; State of New York: Messages from the Governors (1909), volume II; J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (2 volumes, 1842); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume I (1906); "The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren," ed. by J. C. Fitzpatrick, Annual Report of the American Historical Association .. 1918, volume II (1920); P. J. Van Pelt, An Oration, Containing Sketches of the Life, Character, and Services of the Late Daniel D. Tompkins (1843); J. L. Jenkins, Lives of the Governors of ... New York (1851); Robert Bolton, The History .... of the County of Westchester (2nd ed., 1881), II, 223; Columbia University Quarterly, December 1906; New York Evening Post, June 13, 1825.]

J. W. P.


TORREY, Charles Turner, 1813-1846, Massachusetts, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist leader.  Wrote Memoir of the Martyr.  Leader, the National Convention of Friends of Immediate Emancipation, Albany, New York, 1840. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 285; Mabee, 1970, pp. 266, 268; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1850; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 595; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 757). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 595-596:

TORREY, CHARLES TURNER (November 21, 1813-May 9, 1846), abolitionist, was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, where his ancestor, James Torrey, had settled soon after 1640. His parents, Charles Turner Torrey and Hannah Tolman (Turner), were first cousins, grandchildren of the Reverend Charles Turner; they both died of tuberculosis in their son's infancy, and he was brought up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Charles Turner, Jr., a substantial citizen and sometime member of Congress. Torrey was prepared for college at Phillips Academy, graduated at Yale (A.B., 1833), and after a few months of teaching entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1834. Here he became an abolitionist and organized a students' antislavery society, but because of failing health withdrew from the seminary and completed his theological training at West Medway under the Reverend Jacob Ide, whose daughter, Mary, he married on March 29, 1837. Two children were born of this union.

Torrey was licensed to preach by the Mendon Association; October 25, 1836, and on March 22 following was ordained and installed as pastor of the Richmond Street Congregational Church of Providence, Rhode Island, but was not successful as a minister either here or at the Harvard Street Congregational Church in Salem, where he served from January 1838 to July 1839. His interest in anti-slavery politics soon encroached upon his pastoral duties. Sharing in the rising irritation against William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and his heresies regarding Sabbath observance, civil government, and the rights of women, Torrey organized the conservative abolitionists of Massachusetts in a revolt against Garrison's leadership. In the fall of 1838, the conservatives founded the Massachusetts Abolitionist, with Torrey as editor, and a few months later they seceded from Garrison's society, organized the Massachusetts Abolition Society, and appointed Torrey as their agent. In this capacity ne was not successful. "It was exceedingly difficult for him to labor with others, either as a pastor, a lecturer, or an editor," remarked a colleague (Lovejoy, post, p. 87). He shortly resigned, and in 1841 went to Washington as freelance correspondent.

While reporting the notorious "Convention of Slaveholders" at Annapolis, Maryland, in January 1842, Torrey was identified as an abolitionist and on January 14 arrested. The case immediately attracted national interest. The anti-slavery congressmen employed a Boston lawyer to be his counsel, and two Maryland lawyers, T. S. Alexander and Joseph M. Palmer, acted for him without compensation. After four days of widely publicized proceedings, Torrey was freed (January 19). Made momentarily famous by this episode, he was appointed editor of the Tocsin of Liberty, later the Albany Patriot, but was unsuccessful in this position and after a few months relinquished its editorial care.

"An exceedingly vain, trifling man, with no wisdom or stability," as a fellow abolitionist characterized him (T. D. Weld to his wife, January 18, 1842; Letters, post, II, 896), Torrey was unable to sustain these recurrent stresses of notoriety and failure. Moving to Baltimore, he made grandiose plans to engage in business, and at the same time he helped escaping slaves from Virginia and Maryland across the border. Inevitably he was arrested, and once more figured in a notorious trial (November 29-December 1, 1844). This time; however, although defended by the distinguished Reverdy Johnson [q.v.], he was convicted and sentenced to six years at hard labor in the Maryland state penitentiary. Once in the jail, his mind gave way, and tuberculosis, long latent in his constitution, caused his death little more than a year after his imprisonment. His body was removed to Boston, and at a great public funeral he was honored as a martyr to the anti-slavery cause.

[J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of Reverend Charles T. Torrey (1847), by a brother of Elijah P. Lovejoy [q.v.], the first anti-slavery martyr; New York Evangelist, January, February 1842; Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (2 volumes, 1934), ed. by G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Massachusetts Abolitionist, volume I; Biographical Notices Graduates Yale College (1913); F. C. Torrey, The Torrey Families, volume I (1924); Jacob Turner, Genealogy of the Descendants of Humphrey Turner (1852); The Sun (Baltimore), May II, 1846.]

G. H. B.


TOUSEY, Sinclair (July 18, 1815-June 16, 1887), head of the American News Company. Tousey joined the Republican party at its inception and took an active part in the anti-slavery agitation. During the draft riots in New York City in the Summer of 1864 he had fences and sidewalks placarded with posters bearing the words, "Don't Unchain the Tiger," by which he hoped to warn the rioters against an aroused public opinion.  Served as Union Soldier.

(T. C. Rose, The Tousey Family in America (1916); intro. to Tousey's Life in the Union Army (1864); Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, February 24, 1866; obituaries in Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia, 1888, New York Times, New York Tribune, and New York Herald, June 17, 1887)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 606-607:

TOUSEY, SINCLAIR (July 18, 1815-June 16, 1887), head of the American News Company, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Zerah and Nerissa (Crane) Tousey, and a descendant of Richard Tousey who settled in Saybrook in 1679. Having lost his parents in early childhood, he had very limited schooling and at the age of ten years went to work in a cotton factory in central New York. Later he was bound out to a farmer in the same section. Becoming dissatisfied, he walked back to Connecticut, and worked first as a farm hand and then as an apprentice to a carpenter. Afterwards he sought to make a fortune by going to New York City, where he, began as a grocery clerk. After working as a carrier boy for the New York Herald, he became a news agent in New Haven for the New York Transcript, and then circulation promoter in Philadelphia for the New York Sun. When the opportunities in this field seemed to him still too limited, he went to the Middle West as an agent for a patent medicine company; in 1836 he appears in Louisville, Kentucky, city directory in that capacity. He is said to have established in Louisville a short-lived penny daily newspaper, the Daily Times (Appletons' Annual and Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, post), the first of its kind west of the Alleghanies. From 1840 to 1853 he operated a farm in New York but in 1853 he entered the firm of Ross, Jones, and Tousey, wholesale news agents and booksellers, in New York City. Seven years later, through the retirement first of one and then of the other of his partners, he became the sole proprietor of the business, which had grown in volume until it amounted, it is said, to a million dollars a year. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the 14th New York Regiment of Volunteer Engineers and served until 1863. In 1864 he published Life in the Union Army, an account in verse of the difficulties and hardships of the soldiers, which, together with a long introduction in prose, was frankly critical of army officers and of the War Department. Early in 1864 his business was combined with that of some other companies engaged in the same field to form the American News Company, of which he became president, a position that he continued to fill until his death twenty-three years later.

Tousey joined the Republican party at its inception and took an active part in the anti-slavery agitation. During the draft riots in New York City he had fences and sidewalks placarded with posters bearing the words, "Don't Unchain the Tiger," by which he hoped to warn the rioters against an aroused public opinion. Besides his activities against slavery, his humanitarian interests included membership in the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and children, and the chairmanship of the executive committee of the Prison Association, to which he devoted much time and effort. Letters he wrote to his family and friends during a six-months' tour through Europe in 1867-68 were published as Papers from over the Water (1869). His letters to newspapers and his articles in magazines he published privately in 1871 under the title Indices of Public Opinion, 1860-1870. He was married first to Mary Ann Goddard, second to Amanda Fay. He died in New York, survived by his second wife and four sons of his first marriage.

[T. C. Rose, The Tousey Family in America (1916); intro. to Tousey's Life in the Union Army (1864); Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, February 24, 1866; obituaries in Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia, 1888, New York Times, New York Tribune, and New York Herald, June 17, 1887; information from Tousey' s grandson, Sinclair Tousey, E sq., of Garden City, L. I.]

W. G. B.  


TOWNSEND, Mira Sharpless (September 26, 1798-November 20, 1859), philanthropist, reformer, anti- slavery activist.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 619-620:

TOWNSEND, MIRA SHARPLESS (September 26, 1798-November 20, 1859), philanthropist, the daughter of Jesse and Joanna (Townsend) Sharpless, both descendants of early Pennsylvania settlers, was born in Philadelphia and educated at the Select School. A talent for writing became evident in her youth. Her poems were published in contemporary newspapers and magazines; letters written in h er early twenties to her cousin, Edward Darlington, showed shrewd observation and a sense of humor; while the journal kept in her later years is a valuable commentary on the experiences of a public-spirited woman in the middle of the nineteenth century.

On January 23, 1828, Mira Sharpless married Samuel Townsend, a prosperous and philanthropic merchant of Philadelphia. They had six children, of whom four di ed in infancy. Though a Friend all her life, she did not wear plain dress. Doubtless the dignity and distinction of her personality were enhanced by the hand some silks and fine laces in which her taste found expression. For some years she devoted herself to her family and her hospitable home where, during Yearly Meeting Week, as many as fifty Friends would be entertained. As time passed, however, she developed a strong sense of duty toward the unfortunate and the friendless. In 1847 she helped promote a public meeting of women to consider the abolition of capital punishment. At a later meeting of this group, she proposed a plan that led to the formation of the Rosine Association, which founded the Rosine Home, a place. for the reformation, employment, and instruction "of unfortunate women who had led immoral lives" (Public Ledger, Philadelphia, May 10, 1931). This is said to have been the first institution of the kind run entirely by women (Ibid.). The project attracted wide attention and soon led to the establishment of similar homes in other cities. As she came to believe that this charity was more than local in its character, she took the extreme step of going to Harrisburg in 1854 with a friend, Mrs. Sophia Lewis, and petitioning the legislature for an appropriation of $3,000 for the aid of the Rosine Association.  The charm of manner of the two women and their sincere devotion to their cause impressed the legislators so favorably that the bill was easily passed. Until her death Mira Townsend remained treasurer of the Rosine Home and a member of its board of managers. A result of her experiences was a volume entitled Reports and Realities from the Sketch Book of a Manager (privately printed, 1855). She served as vice-president of the American Female Guardian Society of New York and some of her verse appeared in its semi-monthly publication,  the Advocate and Family Guardian.

Together with her sister, Eliza Parker, she founded the Temporary Home, still  (1936) in existence, of which she became secretary and a manager. This was " a transient boarding house for respectable women out of employment . . . and where also destitute children can be taken care of until suitable homes can be procured." She was instrumental in bringing the House of the Good Shepherd to Philadelphia, for she believed that Catholic girls could be better cared for by their own church. Among other movements that enlisted her sympathies were those concerned with inebriety and slavery. A room in her home was set aside for those whose friendlessness seemed to require her hospitality, while girls needing such encouragement were employed in her service. She seems to have been indefatigable in her care for the wretched, whether these were suffering from misfortune, oppression, or moral unfitness. "The prison and alms houses," she wrote, ''houses of ill-fame and the Rosine and Temporary Homes are my familiar haunts." She died at Philadelphia and was buried in Fair Hill Cemetery.

[Joseph Sharpless, Family Record of the Sharples Family (1816); Gilbert Cope, Genealogy of the Sharpless Family (1887); J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884). volume II: Troth Papers. volume I, and Cope Collection, Family Data, volumes LXXII and LXXXI, in Genealogical Society of Philadelphia; Chester Co11nty Times, November 1859; Public Ledger (Phila.), May 10, 1931; Philadelphia Daily News, November 22, 1859; family papers.]

A. L. L.


TOWNSLEY, Theodore, radical abolitionist, follower of abolitionist John Brown (see entry for John Brown.)

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 206).  Dictionary of American


TRACY, Benjamin Franklin (April 26, 1830-August 6, 1915), lawyer, soldier, secretary of the navy. In 1854 he organized the Republican party in the county. He was reelected district attorney in 1856. As an assemblyman, in 1862, he urged full support of the national government in the Civil War.

Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 622-623:

TRACY, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (April 26, 1830-August 6, 1915), lawyer, soldier, secretary of the navy, was born near Owego, New York, of Irish descent. His grandfather, Thomas Tracy, after living in Vermont and Massachusetts, became one of the first settlers in the southern tier of counties of New York. Benjamin was r eared on a farm and was educated at Owego Academy, where Thomas C. Platt [q.v.] was a fellow student. After studying in the office of N. W. Davis of Owego, Tracy was admitted to the bar in 1851. Two years later he was elected district attorney of Tioga County as a Whig. In 1854 he organized the Republican party in the county. He was reelected district attorney in 1856. As an assemblyman, in 1862, he urged full support of the national government in the Civil War.

In the summer of 1862 he recruited two regiments and became colonel of the 109th New York Volunteers. In the Wilderness campaign, though ordered to the rear on account of physical exhaustion, he continued to lead his regiment until the condition of his health forced him to relinquish his command. His gallantry earned for him the brevet rank of brigadier-general and years afterward the Congressional Medal of Honor. During the last months of the war he was colonel of the 127th Regiment (colored troops) and commander of the military prison and recruiting camp at Elmira, New York.

In 1866 President Johnson appointed him district attorney for the eastern district of New York, whereby a series of able prosecutions he broke up illicit distilling. He drafted the safeguarding provisions of the internal revenue act of 1868, under which federal collections were increased fourfold. In 1873 he resumed his private practice in Brooklyn; he defended Henry Ward Beecher [q.v. J in the suit brought against him by Theodore Tilton [q.v.] and was unusually successful in cases involving the law of public officers. As a judge of the court of appeals, 1881- 82, he rendered decisions on the validity of marriages contracted in other states (90 New York Reports, 603) and on the liability of elevated railroad companies for damages for the stoppage of light and air (90 New York Reports, 122) which still (1936) stand.

In 1889 he received from President Harris on the appointment as secretary of the navy, which has usually been interpreted a s a sop to Thomas C. Platt, though Tracy ha d the indorsement of both the principal factions of the Republican party of New York. He entered at once on a program for the building of a powerful navy, and during his administration the Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Brooklyn were completed or authorized. He organized the naval militia, created the board of construction to correlate the work of various bureaus, and did much to abolish political corruption in appointments and the purchase of supplies at the navy yards. In the cabinet he was responsible for several official interpretations of international law, including the right of asylum in the Barrundia case (see J.B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, 1906, II, 851), neutral rights and duties in the Chilean revolution (Ibid., II, no. 7-08), and the right of property in seals which became the basis of one of the questions put up for arbitration by the United States in the Bering Sea controversy (see Tracy, in North American Review, May 1893).

After his retirement he was counsel for Venezuela in the boundary arbitration with Great Britain. He was chairman of the commission of 1896 which formulated the charter of Greater New York. At Flatt's insistence, he became the regular Republican nominee for mayor in 1897, but was defeated by a large majority. His principal avocation was the breeding of trotting horses on his Tioga County farm. In person he was unusually handsome. He had keen powers of analysis, good judgment, and great executive ability. In 1851 he married Delinda E. Catlin; she and their younger daughter lost their lives in the burning of their Washington home in February 1890; a son and a daughter survived him.

[Who's Who in America, 1914-15; The New International Yearbook, I9I5 (1916); W. B. Gay, Historical Gazetteer of Tioga County, New York (n.d.); L. W. Kingman, Our Country and Its People (n.d.) : H. R. Stiles, The Civil . . . Historical and ... Industrial Record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn (copyright 1884); G. O. Seilhamer, History of the Republican Party (n.d.); New York Times and New York Tribune, August 7, 1915; J. D. Long, The New American Navy (1903); D. S. Alexander, Four Famous New Yorkers (1923); The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (1910); H.F. Gosnell, Boss Platt and His New York Machine (copyright 1924); History of the Bench and Bar of New York, volume II (1897); Bench and Bar, January 1915.]

E. C. S.


TRACY, John, d. 1844, Ohio, antislavery lecturer and activist, aided fugitive slaves.  Husband of abolitionist and women’s rights leader Hannah Tracy Cutler.


TRACY, Joseph, November 3, 1793-March 24, 1874, Congregational clergyman, editor, author.  Appointed Secretary of the Massachusetts Colonization Society in 1842.  Director of the American Colonization Society in 1853.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 623-624: 

TRACY, JOSEPH (November 3, 1793-March 24, 1874), Congregational clergyman, editor, author, was born in Hartford, Vermont, the son of Joseph and Ruth (Carter) Tracy, and a descendant of Stephen Tracy who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1623. After graduation at Dartmouth in 1814 and a period of teaching at Albany, New York, and Royalton, Vermont, he began the study of the law. When nearly ready for admission to the bar, he changed his life-purpose and turned to the study of theology, with Asa Burton [q.v.] of Thetford, Vermont, as his preceptor. Ordained June 26, 1821, he assumed the double pastorate of Post Mills and West Fairlee, Vermont. In 1829 he became editor of the Vermont Chronicle, which immediately took rank as one of the ably edited journals of the country. In 1834 he became editor of the Boston Recorder, and the following year, of the New York Observer. Appointed secretary of the Massachusetts Colonization Society in 1842, he continued in this office for the remainder of his life, becoming, also, in 1858, director of the American Colonization Society. The outstanding work of his career was in connection with the colonization movement, the object of which was a Christian republic of colonized Africans in Africa. He was active in founding the Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia, and was chosen as secretary at its first meeting, January 15, 1851. To his energetic measures is largely due the founding of Liberia College, the first missionary college in Africa. For many years he wrote the annual reports of the Massachusetts and American colonization societies, and he also prepared the Memorial of the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the American Colonization Society (1867), containing a comprehensive account of the rise and progress of the colonization movement.

His principal published works are History of American Missions to the Heathen (1840); The Great Awakening; a History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (1842); Colonization and Missions; a Historical Examination of the State of Society in Western Africa (1844). In addition, he published several missionary maps and occasional sermons and was a frequent contributor to the press.

Tracy had a clear and logical mind, an unusual memory, and a vast store of knowledge. His literary style was crisp and incisive and he had no superior as a controversialist; yet he was modest and unpretending, with a native delicacy of feeling that kept him from giving offense. While conservative in his theological positions, he was always charitable toward those of opposed beliefs. On June 9, 1819, he married Eleanor, daughter of Reverend Azel Washburn of Royalton, Vermont, who died February 14, 1836. Of their eight children, seven survived their parents. His second wife, whom he married June 3, 1845, was Sarah C. Prince of Beverly, Massachusetts, who survived him. He died in Beverly.

[E. E. Tracy, Tracy Genealogy (1898); Vital Records of Beverly, Massachusetts, to ... 1849 (1907); G. T. Chapman. Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College (1867); Congregationalist, April 2, 1874; Boston Traveller, March 25, 1874; E. A. Lawrence, Address at the Funeral of Dr. Joseph Tracy (1874); Fifty-Eighth Annual Report to the American Colonization Society (1875); E. M. W. Lovejoy, History of Royalton, Vermont (1911), pp. 321, 330, 1015; Boston Transcript, March 26, 1874.]

F. T. J.


TRACY, Uriah, 1755-1807, abolitionist, lawyer, political leader, general.  U.S. House of Representatives, Connecticut.  U.S. Senator.  Member of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, founded c. 1790. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 153; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 624-625; Basker, 2005, pp. 223-224, 238-239; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 798). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 624-625:

TRACY, URIAH (February 2, 1755-July 19, 1807), representative and senator from Connecticut, was born in that part of Norwich which is now Franklin, Connecticut, the son of Eliphalet and Lucy, or Sarah (Manning), Tracy. He was the descendant of Thomas Tracy who emigrated from England to Massachusetts and in 1660 was one of the proprietors of Norwich. After graduation from Yale College in 1778, Uriah read Jaw with Tapping Reeve [q.v.], was admitted to the bar in 1781, and began to practise in Litchfield, Connecticut. A man of sober carriage, a devout Christian, and a stout Federalist, he won reputation as one of the state's most eminent and success ful lawyers. A clever politician with a keen knowledge of men, an attractive speaker gifted with satire and humor, and an impetuous debater, he was honored by his community with an appointment as state's attorney for Litchfield County election to the General Assembly, 1788-1793, and promotion in the militia to the rank of major-general. Meanwhile, he made a good marriage to Susan, or Susannah, the daughter of Isaac and Eunice (Gillett) Bull of Hartford, by whom he had a son and four daughters. He became the father-in-law of James Gould, Samuel Howe, and Theron Metcalf [qq.v.].

He was elected a representative to Congress, where he served from March 4, 1793, until he was elected to the Senate in October 1796 as the successor of Jonathan Trumbull. An as sociate and confidant of the outstanding Federalists, Hamilton, Ames, Morris, Rufus King, and Adams, he was a man of influence in the party's counsels and one of its shrewdest politicians. He attracted attention in a speech against the resolution for an amendment of the machinery for the election of the president and vice-president (Mr. Tracy's Speech in the Senate ... December 2, 1803, 1803; reprinted in Williston, post, and Moore, post). His brochure, Reflections on Monroe's View of the Conduct of the Executive as Published in the Gazette of the United States under the Signature of Scipio (1798), once ascribed to Hamilton, was an able, cynical, partisan criticism that had force as a campaign document. Long an ill man, he died of dropsy in Washington.

[Letters and photostats in Library of Congress; letters in George Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administration of Washington and John Adams (2 volumes, 1846) and in The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, volume IV (1897), ed. by C. R. King; speeches in Frank Moore, American Eloquence, volume I (1857), and E. B. Williston, Eloquence of the U.S. (1827), volume II; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume IV (1907); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography (1917), volume I; P. K. Kilbourne, Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut (1859); G. H. Hollister, The History of Connecticut (1855), volume II; E. E. Tracy, Tracy Genealogy (1898); Connecticut Journal (New Haven), July 29, August 5, 12, 1807; Connecticut Courant (Hartford), July 29, 1807.]

R.J.P.


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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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


TRUE, Charles Kittridge, 1809-1878, abolitionist, educator, Methodist clergyman, author, censured for abolitionist views

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 115-166; Sernett, 2002, p. 81). 


TRUMBULL, Henry Clay (June 8, 1830--December 8, 1903), Sunday-school missionary, editor, and author, prominent in the state campaigns of the newly organized Republican party.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 8-9:

TRUMBULL, HENRY CLAY (June 8, 1830--December 8, 1903), Sunday-school missionary, editor, and author, was born in Stonington, Connecticut, the sixth child of Gurdon and Sarah Ann (Swan) Trumbull, and a younger brother of James Hammond Trumbull [q.v.]. He was of Puritan stock, a descendant of John Trumbull, mariner, who settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, about 1636, and of William Cheseborough and Walter Palmer, earliest settlers of Stonington. The boy's father was a man of varied business interests-whaling and sealing, the New York and Stonington Railroad, and the local banks who served at different times as postmaster, representative and senator in the General Assembly of Connecticut, and commissioner of the state school fund. Henry attended Stonington Academy and Williston Seminary, but because of ill health had little formal education after the age of fourteen, being employed in later youth as a clerk in the Stonington bank. Beset by lung trouble, he gave up thought of a college education and at twenty-one removed to Hartford, where he became a clerk in the offices of the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill Railroad.

Under the influence of revival meetings conducted by Charles G. Finney [q.v.], he became superintendent of a mission Sunday-school in April 1852, and on June I united with the historic First (Center) Church in Hartford. Common interest in the revival and the Sunday-school brought him into intimacy with the family of Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet [q.v.], whose daughter Alice Cogswell he married on May 23, 1854. From 1856 to 1858 he was an apothecary, an editor, and a cotton and wool broker successively; he was also prominent in the state campaigns of the newly organized Republican party. As secretary of the first Connecticut Sunday-school Convention, 1857, he prepared so thorough and pointed a report that plans were made, with the cooperation of the American Sunday School Union, to employ a state Sunday-school missionary, and he was offered and accepted the post, giving full time to its duties after September I, 1858. On September 10, 1862, he was ordained in order that he might qualify for the chaplaincy of the 10th Connecticut Regiment, then stationed at New Bern, North Carolina, where he joined it. He was captured by Confederates while ministering to the wounded after the assault on Fort Wagner in July 1863, and was held prisoner, suspected as a spy, for four months. After exchange, he was in active service on the Virginia front until the end of the war, being mustered out with his regiment, August 25, 1865.  

Refusing attractive offers in various editorial, educational, and business relationships, he resumed his work for the Sunday-schools, becoming secretary for New England of the American Sunday School union. As chairman of the executive committee of the National Sunday School Convention, he issued the call for the meeting of 1872 which initiated the International Uniform Sunday School Lessons. In 1875 he became editor and part owner of the Sunday School Times, and removed with his family to Philadelphia, which was henceforth his home. Through this periodical, he contributed powerfully to the development of the Sunday-school movement in the United States and throughout the world, and gave stimulus and guidance to the spread of Bible study under the regimentation of the uniform lesson system. In 1888 he delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, which were published under the title The Sunday School, Its Origin, Mission, Methods and Auxiliaries (1888). Visiting Palestine in 1881, he succeeded in identifying the site of Kadesh-Barnea, and his book entitled Kadesh-Barnea, published in 1884 after two years of further study and research, remains the most important work on this subject. From 1886 to 1897, he served as chaplain-in-chief of the Loyal Legion.

Trumbull was an effective speaker and a stimulating and resourceful writer. He was, in the best sense of the term, a nineteenth-century Puritan. He wrote thirty-three books, notable among which, besides the two already mentioned, are : Teaching and Teachers (1884), The Blood Covenant (1885), Hints on Child-Training (1891), Friendship the Master-Passion (1892), A Lie Never Justifiable (1893), War Memories of an Army Chaplain (1898), Border Lines in the Field of Doubtful Practices (1899), Illustrative Answers to Prayer (1900), Individual Work for Individuals (1901), How to Deal with Doubts and Doubters (1903). At his death he was survived by six of his eight children.

[J. H. Lea, Contributions to a Turnbull Genealogy (1895); P E. Howard, The Life Story of Henry Clay Trumbull (1905); Congregationalist, November 7, December 19, 1903; Sunday School Times, December 12, 19, 1903; The Congregational Year-Book, 1904 (1904); Public Ledger (Philadelphia) and Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 1903.]

L.A.W.


TRUMBULL, Lyman, 1813-1896,  lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 19-20; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 877; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 19-20:

TRUMBULL, LYMAN (October 12, 1813-June 25, 1896), jurist, United States senator,. was born in Colchester, Connecticut, the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Mather) Trumbull, and a grandson of Benjamin Trumbull [q.v.]. He attended Bacon Academy in his native town, and when twenty years old went to Greenville, Georgia, where he taught school for three years. In the meantime he read law and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. The following year he began practice in Belleville, Illinois, and soon entered politics. He was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat in 1840, but resigned in 1841 to accept appointment as secretary of state, in which capacity he served until removed by the governor in 1843. He then practised law and was a candidate for various offices until 1848, when he was elected justice of the state supreme court; in 1852 he was reelected for a term of nine years.

He had served but two years of this term, however, when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives as an anti-Nebraska Democrat, but before taking his seat a three-cornered legislative contest, in which Lincoln, in order to elect a Free-Soiler, threw his Whig support to Trumbull, resulted in his being sent to the Senate. The three terms that he served (1855-73) were marked by the bitter struggle over slavery and reconstruction, during which he was first a Democrat, next a leading Republican, and ultimately a supporter of the ill-starred Liberal Republican movement. The failure of this movement left him no haven but the long-deserted Democratic fold. This pilgrimage appears opportunistic, but it was fundamentally dictated by convictions determined by considerations of law as well as of politics.

In the Kansas controversy Trumbull and his colleague, Stephen A. Douglas [q.v.], were diametrically opposed in matters of principle. Countering Douglas' proposal to admit Kansas (1856), Trumbull presented a bill uniting Kansas and Nebraska (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, I Session, p. 1369). Both senators opposed the Lecompton constitution, but on differing grounds. Douglas would have the people settle the question of slavery by vote; Trumbull, now a full-fledged Republican, asserted plenary congressional jurisdiction. When secession became an issue, he opposed the Crittenden compromise and supported a resolution declaring that the Constitution was ample in its scope and needed to be obeyed rather than amended-an earnest of his later war-time defense of that much transgressed document.

During the war he was at once Lincoln's able helper and stanch opponent, his attitude being determined by that of the executive toward the Constitution. An authoritative spokesman of the administration, he often tried to school his master in matters of executive propriety. He opposed legalizing Lincoln's extraordinary acts performed while Congress was in recess, saying: "I am disposed to give the necessary power to the Administration to suppress this rebellion; but [ am not disposed to say that the Administration has unlimited power and can do what it pleases, after Congress meets" (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, I Session, p. 392). In introducing his radical confiscation bill (December 1861) he declared that he wanted "no other authority for putting down even this gigantic rebellion than such as may be derived from the Constitution properly interpreted." He would suppress the "monstrous rebellion according to law, and in no other way" (Ibid., 2 Session, p. 18). He censured the method, but not the motive, of Lincoln's arbitrary arrests and led the movement which, while indemnifying the President for previous suspensions of the writ of habeas corp1is, regulated further suspensions. In 1864, as chairman of the judiciary committee, he introduced the resolution which became the basis of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. When the first state sought admission under Lincolnian reconstruction he was the President's agent, but was foiled by Sumner and the Democrats.

Trumbull's powerful personal and committee influence aided the Radicals in the early stages of the fight with Johnson. His bill to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau failed to pass over the veto. The veto of his civil rights bill, designed to give effect to the thirteenth amendment, alienated him from the Administration after a period of patient tolerance and dignified expostulation. He urged its repassage to offset the actions of the executive, and spoke of "the spirit of this message, of the dangerous doctrines it promulgates, of the inconsistencies and contradictions of its author, of his encroachments upon the constitutional rights of Congress, of his assumption of unwarranted powers, which, if persevered in and not checked by the people, must eventually lead to subversion of the Government and the destruction of liberty" (Ibid., 39 Congress, r Session, p. 1760). These episodes mark an opposition which lasted until the impeachment furor. They also presage his departure from the leadership of radicalism. His decreasing activity in the Stevens-Sumner program was followed, as this group insisted on more and more humble submission of the rebel states, by participation with the moderates who attempted rather ineffectually to check the Radicals. Again, his was a legal criterion; he was one who was "willing to be radical lawfully" rather than one "who would rather be radical than right" (Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1870). This viewpoint drove him to oppose the impeachment proceedings and he was one of the famous seven who saved Johnson from conviction. This heresy, together with his reconstruction attitude, lost him Republican leadership. The excesses of the Grant administration drove him into the Liberal Republican movement. He was among those suggested for the presidential nomination, but loyally stumped several states for Greeley. After the movement collapsed he finished his senatorial term and then retired to Chicago, where he practised law.

His appearance as counsel for the Tilden side in the disputed election of 1876 marked his return to the Democratic fold and he was that party's unsuccessful candidate for the governorship of Illinois in 1880. His last political excursion found him skirting the edges of Populism; in 1894 he drafted a platform which Chicago Populists took to a national conference in St. Louis. His death removed one of the able statesmen of his generation, an unpretentious, scholarly constitutionalist, who failed to scale political heights because of a conscience and a lack of popular appeal. The conscience drove him from party to party seeking a place where he could abide, and his colorless public personality denied him the kind of support on which spectacular careers are built. He was twice married: first, June 21, 1843, to Julia Maria Jayne, who died in August 1868; and second, November 3, 1877, to Mary Ingraham; three sons by his first wife survived him.

[Trumbull Papers, Library of Congress; H race White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (1913); A. H. Robertson, " The Political Career of Lyman Trumbull" (1910), M. A. thesis, University of Chicago; L. E. Ellis, " A History of the Chicago Delegation in Congress, 1843-1925," Transactions Illinois State Historical Society, 1930; E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919); Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1896. ]

L. E. E.


TRUTH, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree), 1797?-1883, African American, anti-slave activist, abolitionist, women’s rights activist.  Wrote; The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, 1850.  Recruited African American soldiers for the Union Army. 

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 83-85, 145, 270, 337, 342; Mabee, 1993; Painter, 1996; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 481-482; Stetson, 1994; Yellin, 1994, pp. 30, 139-158; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 814-816; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 880; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 236)


TUBMAN, Harriet, 1822-1913, African American, abolitionist, member Underground Railroad, orator.  She became one of the most conspicuous figures in the work of the "Underground Railroad," winning the appellation "Moses" by leading, in all, more than three hundred slaves from bondage to freedom in the North and Canada.

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 284, 321; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 37, 52, 307, 482-483, 489; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 172; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 27; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 816-817; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 888; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 238).

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

TUBMAN, HARRIET (c. 1821-March 10, 1913), fugitive slave, abolitionist, was born in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the daughter of Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, both slaves. She was first named Araminta, but early assumed the name Harriet. In childhood she received a head injury to which have been attributed spells of somnolence which overtook her without warning at intervals during the rest of her life. From her early teens she worked as a field hand-plowing, loading and unloading wood-an activity which developed in her great strength and remarkable powers of endurance. In 1844, her master forced her to marry a man named John Tubman who was unfaithful to her. Much later she married a man named Nelson Davis. About 1849 she made her escape from slavery, guided in her flight only by the north star. It was not long afterwards that she became one of the most conspicuous figures in the work of the "Underground Railroad," winning the appellation "Moses" by leading, in all, more than three hundred slaves from bondage to freedom in the North and Canada.

From the time of her escape until the beginning of the Civil War she was busy making journeys into the South to lead out slaves. An important "station" on one of her routes was the home of the Quaker Thomas Garrett [q.v.] of Wilmington, Delaware, who gave her all the help within his power. Between her journeys she worked as a cook in order to raise the money she needed to aid the fugitives. In 1857 she rescued her own parents, who were very old, and settled them in Auburn, New York, on a little tract of land purchased from William H. Seward. Although she could neither read nor write, her shrewdness in planning hazardous enterprises and skill in avoiding arrest were phenomenal. When rescuing a group of slaves, she enforced a rule which she herself had laid down, threatening with death any passenger who thought of surrender or attempted to return. She seemed absolutely fearless and was willing to endure any hardship. To a remarkable degree she was guided in her work by visions and sustained by her faith in God. John Brown, who met her in Canada and subsequently referred to her as "General" Tubman, confided in her and relied on her for assistance in his campaign against slavery in Virginia. She was well known in the office of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York and in abolition circles in Boston and from time to time was presented as a speaker at anti-slavery meetings. After the outbreak of the Civil War she was sent to General David Hunter in South Carolina with a letter from Governor Andrew of Massachusetts and attached herself to the Union army, working as cook, laundress, and nurse; frequently acting as guide in scouting parties and raids; and rendering noteworthy service as a spy within the Confederate lines.

After the war Harriet continued to labor for her people. For a time she was concerned with an attempt to establish schools for freedmen in North Carolina. She was able to finish paying for her home in Auburn with the proceeds of a little book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869), written for her benefit by Mrs. Sarah Hopkins Bradford and published through the generosity of Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips [qq.v.], and certain Auburn neighbors. Here in her own home she supported several children and penniless old people, being further aided by the proceeds of a revised edition of Mrs. Bradford's book, Harriet the Moses of Her People (1886). The Harriet Tubman Home for indigent aged negroes continued to exist for a number of years after her death, and the citizens of Auburn erected a shaft in her memory.

[S. H. Bradford, Harriet the Moses of Her People, which was reprinted in 1901, contains reminiscences and testimonials from all the prominent Abolitionists mentioned above, a number of the Union officers under whom Harriet served, and others. See also P. E. Hopkins, "Harriet Tubman (Moses)," Colored American Magazine, January-February 1902; Freedmen's Record, March 1865; Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Harriet Tubman," New England Magazine, March 1896; American Magazine, August 1912; W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1898); H. H. Swift, The Railroad to Freedom (1932); Albany Evening Star, March 11, 1913; New York Times, March 14, 1913.]

D. B.P.


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

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 27; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 27-28; Autobiography Memoir of A. Tuck (privately printed, 1902); C.R. Corning, Ames Tuck (1902); J. W. Dearborn, Sketch of the Life and Character of Hon. Amos Tuck (n.d.,) 1889 Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe.) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 27-28:

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

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

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

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

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

W. A. R.


TUCKER, Judge, St. George, 1752-1827, Williamsburg, Virginia, jurist, professor of law at William and Mary University, opponent of slavery, slaveholder.  Author of five-volume edition, Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803), and Dissertation on Slavery (1796).  Advocate for gradual abolition of slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 174-175; Cullen, 1987; Dumond, 1961, pp. 28, 77-79; Hammond, 2011, pp. 123, 126; Locke, 1901, pp. 91, 129f, 184, 194; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 38-39; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 895). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 38-39:

TUCKER, ST. GEORGE (June 29, 1752 o.s. November 10, 1827), jurist, was born at Port Royal, Bermuda, the son of Henry and Anne (Butterfield) Tucker. He was distantly related to George Tucker [q.v.]. In his late teens he emigrated to Virginia. He enrolled as a student in the College of William and Mary and graduated in 1772. He was admitted to the bar and began the practice of his chosen profess ion in Williamsburg. His career as a lawyer was interrupted by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, into which he threw himself on behalf of the struggling colonies. At the battle of Guilford Court House he distinguished himself by his bravery and military skill as a colonel of the Chesterfield County militia. Later he became lieutenant-colonel of a troop of horse and took part in the siege of Yorktown, where he was wounded. On September 23, 1778, he married Frances (Bland) Randolph, the widow of John Randolph of "Matoax," Chesterfield County, and mother of John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 [q.v.]. Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, 1784-1851, and Henry St. George Tucker, 1780-1848, were their sons, John Randolph Tucker, 1823-1897 and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, 1820-1890, grandsons, and Henry St. George Tucker, 1853-1932 [qq.v.], a great-grandson. She died in 1788. His letters to her while he was in the Revolutionary Army bear testimony of his devotion as a husband. They are, at the same time, historical documents of no mean importance ("Southern Campaign, 1781," in Magazine of American History, July, September 1881). On October 8, 1791, he married Lelia (Skipwith) Carter, the daughter of Sir Peyton Skipwith.

In public office he spent virtually the whole remainder of his life. In 1786 he became one of the commissioners at the Annapolis convention. His judicial career, in which he was to attain distinguished eminence, began when he became judge of the general court of Virginia in 1788. In 1800 he became professor of law in the College of William and Mary. In 1803 he was elected to the supreme court of appeals of Virginia as the successor of Edmund Pendleton [q.v.]. He sat for eight years, adding no little to his own growing fame and enhancing the reputation of the court. He resigned from this court in 1811, but in 1813 he was appointed by President Madison judge of the district court for the district of Virginia. For nearly fifteen years he continued as a federal judge before failure in health prompted his resignation. He then retired to the home of Joseph C. Cabell [q.v.] in Nelson County, Virginia, where he died. His grandson, John Randolph Tucker, 1823-1897 [q.v.], many years later cited his opinion in Kamper vs. Hawkins (1 Virginia Reports, 20), in the general court, that the state constitution of 1776 was a sovereign act of the people of Virginia and therefore the supreme law, and that any act of the legislature or the government in conflict with it was null and void. Among his other important opinions are his dissenting opinion in Woodson vs. Randolph, also in the general court, holding that it was a violation of the federal Constitution for Congress to undertake to change the rules of evidence with reference to a state contract sued upon in a state court (1 Brockenbrough and Holmes Reports, 128) and his opinion, in the supreme court of appeals of Virginia, in Turpin vs. Locket (6 Call Reports, 113) sustaining the constitutionality of the act of 1802 by which the glebes of the Episcopal Church were to be applied to the relief of poor of each parish (for discussion see Call, post, and Hardy, post, p. 58).

His reputation rests in no small part on his juridical writings. His pamphlet Dissertation on Slavery: with a Proposal for its Gradual Abolition in Virginia (1796 and reprinted in Philadelphia 1861), advocating the emancipation of children born to slave mothers, was widely read and acclaimed. His annotated edition of Blackstone's Commentaries (5 volumes; 1803) was one of the most important law books of its day. In an appendix he discussed the principles of government as related to the nature and interpretation of the federal Constitution. He also wrote minor poetry of some charm, as Liberty, a Poem on the Independence of America (1788) and The Probationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar (2 pts. 1796), originally published in the National Gazette and often erroneously attributed to Philip M. Freneau.

[Daniel Call, "Memoir," 4 Call Report (Virginia), p. xxvi; J. R. Tucker, "The Judges Tucker of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.:' Virginia Law Register, March 1896; S. S. P. Patteson, "The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia," Green Bag, July 1893; S. E. M. Hardy, "Some Virginia Lawyers, " Ibid., January 1898; H. St. George Tucker, "Patrick Henry and St. George Tucker," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January 1919; W. C. Bruce, Life of John Randolph of Roanoke (2 volumes, 1922); S. N. Hurst and R. M. Brown, A Complete Alphabetical, Chronological Annotated Digest of All the Reported Decisions of ... Virginia, volume I (1897); Colonial Families of the U.S., volume V (1915), ed. by G. N. Mackenzie; T. A. Emmett, An Account of the Tucker Family of Bermuda (1898); Gentleman' s Magazine, November 1828.]

A. M. D.


TURNER, Asa (June 11, 1799-December 13, 1885), Congregational clergyman, educator, brother of Jonathan Baldwin Turner [q.v.]. In the anti-slavery campaign in Iowa he took a vigorous part, expressing his views courageously at various political conventions. During the Civil War he supported the cause of abolition in his sermons and in articles published in Eastern religious journals. 

(Obituary Record Graduates Yale College (1886); T. O. Douglass, The Pilgrims of Iowa (1911); C. F. Magoun, Asa Turner, a Home Missionary Patriarch, and His Times (1889)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 57-59:

TURNER, ASA (June 11, 1799-December 13, 1885), Congregational clergyman, educator, brother of Jonathan Baldwin Turner [q.v.], was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, the son of Asa and Abigail (Baldwin) Turner, and a descendant of John Turner who emigrated from England in 1635 and settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, through his son John who was admitted freeman of Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1649. Asa attended a district school and later worked on his father's farm, teaching during the winter months. In the fall of 1821, having decided to become a minister, he entered Amherst Academy in order to prepare for college, and within two years was able to meet the requirements for admission to Yale. Graduating in 1827, he enrolled at the Yale Divinity School, where he was. soon recognized as a student of unusual ability. On September 6, 1830, he was ordained at New Haven by the New Haven West Association.

That same year he became one of a group of seven theological students, known as the "Yale Band." Formally organized as the "Illinois Association," these students signed a pledge, February 21, 1829, indorsed by the president of Yale College, expressing their willingness to go to Illinois for the purpose of establishing a seminary of learning, where some of them would teach, while the others occupied preaching stations in the surrounding country. Elected a trustee of the proposed educational institution December 18, 1829, a position in which he served until 1844, Turner took an active part in the campaign for endowment, soliciting funds in Andover, Boston, Troy, Albany, and New York City. The money was secured within a few months, and on January 4, 1830, Illinois College, at Jacksonville, was opened for instruction. On August 31, 1830, Turner married Martha Bull, daughter of Dr. Isaac Dickerman and Mary (Watson) Bull, of Hartford, Connecticut.

Having decided to establish himself in Quincy, Illinois, he set out on the westward journey, September 14, 1830. The spot which he had chosen for his labors was sadly in need of spiritual and intellectual cultivation; there were no schools or churches. Working against indifference and actual opposition, he established a Presbyterian Church in December 1830. Early in the following year he persuaded a schoolmaster to settle in the town and open a school. Turner soon became the leading spirit in the development of the civic and intellectual life of Quincy. In the winter of 1832, at the request of Illinois College, he went East to solicit additional funds and to assist in securing instructors. His mission for the college successfully fulfilled, he returned late in the spring of 1833 accompanied by twenty people pledged to help in the work of "colonizing and civilizing." Many others had been persuaded to follow as settlers. Once more he entered vigorously into his work as missionary and preacher. A Presbyterian when he first arrived in Quincy, he decided to become a Congregationalist, and on October 10, 1833, by unanimous vote, his church adopted the Congregational form of government, becoming the first of this order in Illinois. Turner traveled throughout the northern part of the state-visiting Iowa, also, in 1834 and 1836- promoting camp meetings and urging the erection of churches. Late in 1837, after having organized thirteen churches, he went again to New England.

After his return the following spring, he and the Reverend J. A. Reed, of Warsaw, Illinois, established at Denmark, Iowa, May 5, 1838, the first Congregationalist Church west of the Mississippi, and three months later Turner became its pastor. His ministry in Denmark, which began August 3, 1838, continued for thirty years. In July 1839 the American Home Missionary Society appointed him first missionary agent for Iowa. Within a few months he was exploring northern Iowa, which was then uninhabited. His letters to Eastern friends and societies induced many families to move thither. He pleaded with Eastern churches for missionaries, and by 1842 had persuaded twelve young ministers to join him in developing the frontier country. Before his active missionary work ceased, he had inspired more than one hundred others to follow their example. He was also responsible for the organization of the "Iowa Association," formed by seven Yale theological students in 1837, for the purpose of establishing an educational institution in Iowa. After much effort, he obtained from the Territorial Assembly, February 3, 1843, a charter for Denmark Academy, and later in the year he went East to raise money for its support. Instruction at the academy was begun in September 1845, and three years later, November 1, 1848, Iowa College was opened at Davenport For the, establishment of these pioneer institutions, Turner's labors were chiefly responsible, and he served as trustee of both until his death. He was also an active participant in the movement for the organization of a system of public schools. In the anti-slavery campaign in Iowa he took a vigorous part, expressing his views courageously at various political conventions. During the Civil War he supported the cause of abolition in his sermons and in articles published in Eastern religious journals. Failing in health in 1868, he withdrew from his pastorate and retired to Oskaloosa, where he died.

[Obituary Record Graduates Yale College (1886); T. O. Douglass, The Pilgrims of Iowa (1911); C. F. Magoun, Asa Turner, a Home Missionary Patriarch, and His Times (1889); Manual of the first Congregational Church of Quincy, lll. (1865); C H. Rammelkamp, Illinois College: 4 Centennial History, I829-I928 (1928); Iowa State Register (Des Moines), December 16, 1885.]

R. F. S.


TURNER, Jonathan Baldwin (December 7, 1805-January 10, 1899), educator, agriculturist. In 1847 he resigned his professorship because of ill health and disagreement with the college officials over slavery and denominational questions.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 68:

TURNER, JONATHAN BALDWIN (December 7, 1805-J an. 10, 1899), educator, agriculturist, was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, the son of Asa and Abigail (Baldwin) Turner, and a brother of Asa Turner [q.v.]. He obtained his early education in local district schools, in which he later became a teacher. When his brother Asa graduated from college in 1827, he persuaded his father to let Jonathan go to New Haven to prepare for Yale, and at the end of two years he was admitted to the college. Early in the spring of his senior year a call came to Yale from Illinois College, at Jacksonville, for an instructor in Latin and Greek. The president of Yale recommended Turner and offered to excuse him from final examinations and to forward his diploma if he would accept. As a result, in May 1833 he became a member of the Illinois faculty. The following year he was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres. He returned to the East in 1835 to marry, on October 22, Rhodolphia S. Kibbe of Somers, Connecticut. He early became a leader in the movement for public schools in Illinois, lecturing in its behalf throughout the central part of the state. One of the organizers of the Illinois State Teachers' Association in 1836, he enlisted the aid of teachers and parents in his campaign. He was successful as an instructor, but in 1843-44 he edited the Statesman, a local paper, and by his vigorous condemnation of slavery alienated the Southern students in the college and the slavery advocates in Jacksonville. In 1847 he resigned his professorship because of ill health and disagreement with the college officials over slavery and denominational questions.

He now devoted himself primarily to his gardens and orchards, which he had been developing since 1834, and to agricultural experiments. He made the O s age orange popular for farm hedges, and invented various implements for planting and cultivating crops. The preservation of game life and of national resources also engaged his attention. When the Illinoi s State Natural History Society was organized, June 30, 1858, he was elected president. In spite of these activities he found time to further various educational projects. The free school law of 1855 was largely the result of his untiring efforts, and his influence had much to do with the establishment of the first normal school in Illinois in 1857. His most notable contribution to education, however, was in connection with the campaign for land grant colleges. At a county institute of teachers held at Griggsville, May 13, 1850, he presented a plan for a state university for the industrial classes in each of the states of the Union. This he presented, also, to a convention of farmers which convened in Granville on November 18, 1851. The plan was approved by this convention, which also adopted certain resolutions including one which pledged the members to "take immediate steps for the establishment of a university in the State of Illinois." These resolutions and Turner's plan were printed and widely circulated. Other conventions were held later, and at one which met at Springfield, January 4, 1853, a petition was drawn up requesting the legislature to ask Congress to appropriate lands to each state for the establishment of industrial universities. Such a request, the first probably from any state, was made by the Illinois legislature in 1853 (Journal of the House of Representatives of ... Illinois, 1853). Through the Industrial League, organized to carry on propaganda in behalf of industrial education, of which he became principal director, Turner gave time and strength to the movement for years. Meanwhile, it was gathering strength in other parts of the country, and in 1857 Justin Morrill [q.v.], then a representative from Vermont, introduced a bill in Congress providing that public lands be donated to the states and territories to provide colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts. This failed to pass over a presidential veto, but a similar bill became a law in 1862. Shortly after its passage, the small colleges of Illinois united to secure the advantages of the land grant, but chiefly through Turner's activities the legislature of 1867 decided to establish "a single new industrial university" (now the University of Illinois), which was located at Urbana, Champaign County. After the university was incorporated, February 28, 1867, he devoted the remainder of his life to a study of the Bible and its teachings. His published works included Mormonism in All Ages (1842); The Three Great Races of Men (1861); Universal Law and Its Opposites (1892); and The Christ Word Versus the Church Word (1895). He died in Jacksonville, Illinois, survived by four of his seven children.

[Obituary Record Graduates Yale University ... 1890-1900 (1900); M. T. Carriel, The Life of Jonathan Baldwin Turner (1911); J. W. Cook, Educational History of Illinois (1912); E. J. James, The Origin of the Land Grant Act of 1862 (1910); I. L. Kandel, Federal Aid for Vocational Education (1917); C.H. Rammelkamp, Illinois College, A Centennial History, 1829-1929 (1928); Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1899.]

R. F. S.


TURNER, Nat (October 2, 1800-November 11, 1831), leader of a major slave insurrection.  This caused a profound shock in the slaveholding states. Exaggeration magnified both the real and the false, and for weeks there was widespread terror. As a result almost every Southern state enacted new laws which greatly increased the severity of the slave codes. The insurrection dealt a death blow to the manumissions societies which had flourished in the South, and put an end there to the organized emancipation movement. 

(W. S. Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection (1900), S. B. Weeks, "The Slave Insurrection in Virginia, 1831," in Magazine of American History, June 1891; R.R. Howison, A History of Virginia, volume II (1848), pp. 439- 41; W. S. Forrest, History and Descriptive Sketches of Norfolk and Vicinity (1853); T. R. Gray, The Confession, Trial, and Execution of Nat Turner (1881), published earlier as The Confessions of Nat Turner ... to Thomas R. Gray (1832).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 69-70:

TURNER, NAT (October 2, 1800-November 11, 1831), leader of slave insurrection, the son of Nancy, a slave woman and native of Africa, was born on the plantation of her owner, Benjamin Turner, in Southampton County, Virginia. He successively became the property of Samuel Turner, Thomas Moore, and Putnam Moore, and in 1830 he was hired to Joseph Travis, whom Mrs. Thomas Moore had married. His mother was little removed from savagery at the time of his birth, and his father, whose name has not survived, ran away while Nat was a child. Nat, who was precocious, was given the rudiments of an education by one of his master's sons, and, early developing a religious fanaticism, under his mother's encouragement came to believe himself inspired. A fiery preacher, he soon acquired leadership among the negroes on the plantation and in the neighborhood. According to his sworn confession, he deliberately set about convincing them of his divine inspiration, and presently be believed himself chosen to lead them from bondage. He began to see signs in the heavens and on the leaves, and to hear voices directing him. An eclipse of the sun in 1831 convinced him that the time was near and caused him to enlist four other slaves, to whom he communicated his plans. They plotted an uprising for July 4, but abandoned it. After a new sign was seen in a peculiar solar phenomenon on August 13, they settled upon August 21 as the day of deliverance. With seven others Nat attacked the Travis family and murdered them all. Securing arms and horses, and enlisting other slaves, they ravaged the neighborhood. In one day and one night they butchered horribly and mangled the bodies of fifty-one white persons-thirteen men, eighteen women, and twenty-four children. With the blood of the victims Nat sprinkled his followers. At the first armed resistance the revolt collapsed and on August 25 Nat went into hiding in a dugout, less than two miles from the Travis farm, where he remained, successfully concealed in the daytime, for six weeks. Discovered by accident, he was at once tried, and after conviction was hanged at Jerusalem, the county seat. He faced his fate with calmness. Thomas R. Gray, who was assigned to defend him, said: " He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably" (Gray, post, p. 19). Of his sixty or seventy followers, twenty-eight were convicted and condemned; sixteen, including the one woman involved, were executed, and twelve were transported. The number that were killed in the suppression of the uprising has never been ascertained.

The revolt, following closely upon slave insurrections in Martinique, Antigua, Santiago, Caracas, and the Tortugas, caused a profound shock in the slaveholding states. Exaggeration magnified both the real and the false, and for weeks there was widespread terror. As a result almost every Southern state enacted new laws which greatly increased the severity of the slave codes, though, after a brief time, most of them were more honored in the breach than in the observance. The insurrection dealt a death blow to the manumissions
societies which had flourished in the South, and put an end there to the organized emancipation movement. Further, the blame for the uprising was placed upon the Garrisonian abolitionists, though not a scintilla of evidence ever connected them with it, and intensified the detestation and dread with which the South regarded them. Perhaps the most important result of all was that never again was the slaveholding South free from the fear, lurking most of the time, of a wholesale and successful slave uprising, a fact potent in the history of th e republic during the next thirty years.

[W. S. Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection (1900), S. B. Weeks, "The Slave Insurrection in Virginia, 1831," in Magazine of American History, June 1891; R.R. Howison, A History of Virginia, volume II (1848), pp. 439- 41; W. S. Forrest, History and Descriptive Sketches of Norfolk and Vicinity (1853); T. R. Gray, The Confession, Trial, and Execution of Nat Turner (1881), published earlier as The Confessions of Nat Turner ... to Thomas R. Gray (1832); Richmond Enquirer, August 26, 30; September 2, 6; November 15, 18, 1831.]

J.G.de R.H.


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R. W. I.


TYSON, Elisha, Baltimore, 1749-1824, Maryland, Acting Committee, Maryland Abolition Society, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, provided legal aid and care for fugitive slaves, active in helping between 1790-1824 

(Drake, 1950, pp. 118-121, 129; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 204).  


TYSON, Job Roberts (February 8, 1803-June 27, 1858), lawyer, congressman, historical writer.  Participating actively in the reforms of the thirties, he was a friend of temperance and a against lotteries. He hoped to solve the slavery problem by colonization, served in the ranks of the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, and drafted a report on the impropriety of capital punishment.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 103-104;

TYSON, JOB ROBERTS (February 8, 1803-June 27, 1858), lawyer, congressman, historical writer, was born in or near Philadelphia, the son of Joseph and Ann (Trump) Tyson and a descendant of Reynier Tyson who settled in what is now Germantown, Pa., in 1683. Joseph Tyson, a Philadelphia merchant, started his son on a business career, but the youth turned to school teaching and the study of law, and in 1827 was admitted to the bar. On October 4, 1832, he married Eleanor, daughter of Thomas P. Cope [q.v. ], a prominent Philadelphia merchant and philanthropist. He was vice-provost of the Philadelphia Law Academy, 1833-58; a solicitor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1847-55; an early director of the Philadelphia public schools; a member of the Select Council of Philadelphia, 1846--49; and a Whig congressman for one inconspicuous term, 1855-57. He was an effective writer and an excellent speaker; a score or more of his speeches were printed. Participating actively in the reforms of the thirties, he was a friend of temperance and a foe of lotteries. He hoped to solve the slavery problem by colonization, served in the ranks of the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, and drafted a report on the impropriety of capital punishment. He was a manager of the Apprentices' Library in Philadelphia, and a trustee of Girard College and of the Pennsylvania Female College. On January 15, 1836, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.

His greatest interest was history. One of the early members of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and an officer from 1829 to 1848, he was among the first to grasp the importance of intensive study of Pennsylvania history. The Indians, the Revolution, the social and intellectual state of Penn's colony, the life of William Penn, the history of art in America, were objects of his study. In his Discourse ... on the Colonial History of the Eastern and Some of the Southern States (1842), also published in Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (volume IV, pt. 2, 1850), he attacked New England historians for their claims, denying that enlarged social freedom owed its existence to the Puritans and maintaining rather that it triumphed in spite of their hostility, and that Penn's contribution to liberty was more significant. This paper marks him as a pioneer in readjusting the balance of historical interpretation. The most tangible results of his historical interest are the first volumes of the printed archives of Pennsylvania. As a member of a joint committee of the Philosophical and Historical societies he was instrumental in petitioning the legislature (1836) to provide for the printing of the archives, and his brother, J. Washington Tyson, as chairman of a committee of the legislature, reported favorably upon the project. Thus a beginning was made with three volumes (1838-40) containing the minutes of the Provincial Council, and the series has been continued intermittently ever since. Tyson planned to write a history of the state, but died before he could make systematic use of his collected material.

[F. W. Leach, "Old Philadelphia Families-The Tyson Family," North American (Philadelphia), July 21, 1912; H. L. Carson, "A History of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania" (MSS. in Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Free Library of Philadelphia); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Dollar Newspaper (Philadelphia), June 30, 1858; North American and United States Gazette (Philadelphia), June 28, 1858.]

R.F.N.



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