Gri-Gut: Griffin through Guthrie

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


GRIFFIN, Edwin Dorr, Reverend, 1770-1837, New York, co-founder and officer in the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  Secretary of the African Education Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 764; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 619; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 17, 40)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 764:

GRIFFIN, Edward Dorr, clergyman, born in East Haddam, Connecticut, 6 January, 1770; died in Newark, New Jersey, 8 November, 1837. He was graduated at Yale in 1790, and studied theology under Jonathan Edwards, of New Haven, who was subsequently president of Union college. He was licensed as a preacher in October, 1792, and in January, 1793, began his ministerial work at New Salem, Connecticut. In June, 1795, Mr. Griffin was ordained pastor of the Congregational church at New Hartford, and afterward held pastorates at Newark, New Jersey, and Boston, Massachusetts. Union college gave him the degree of D. D. in 1808, and he became professor of rhetoric in the recently established Andover theological seminary, 21 June, 1809, which chair he filled until 1811. In 1821 he was chosen president of Williams, and remained there till 1836. He was an eloquent and popular preacher, and published “Lectures delivered in Park Street Church, Boston” (Boston, 1813), and “Sixty Sermons on Practical Subjects” (New York, 1844). A selection from his works, with a memoir of the author by Reverend William B. Sprague, D. D., was published after his death (2 vols., 1839). See also “Recollections of Reverend E. D. Griffin,” by Parsons Cooke (1856). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GRIFFING, Charles Stockman Spooner, abolitionist leader, member Western Anti-Slavery Society.  Active in the Underground Railroad in Ohio.  Husband of Josephine Sophia White Griffing.

(American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376)


GRIFFING, Josephine Sophia White, 1814-1872, Connecticut, abolitionist leader, women’s rights leader, active in Underground Railroad in Ohio, wife of Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, also a strong abolitionist, member and agent for the Western Anti-Slavery Society, major writer for abolitionist paper The Anti-Slavery Bugle.  The Griffing home was a station on the Underground Railroad in Ohio.  Active in Women’s National Loyal League, which tried to outlaw slavery.  Agent for the National Freedman’s Relief Association of the District of Columbia. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936. Volume 4 pt. 1 pp. 622-623; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 574)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936. Volume 4 pt. 1 pp. 622-623:

GRIFFING, JOSEPHINE SOPHIE WHITE (December 18, 1814-February 18, 1872), social reformer, born in Hebron, Connecticut, was the daughter of Joseph White, farmer, and maker of axes, a descendant of Peregrine White [q.v.], born on the Mayflower off Cape Cod. Her mother, Sophie White, was a sister of Samuel Lovett Waldo [q.v.], the artist, and a descendant of Peter Waldo, the founder of the English sect of the Waldenses. In her twenty-second year Josephine married at Hebron, Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, a mechanic, and in 1842 they moved to Ohio. Interested in the problem of negro slavery and sympathetic with the work of the anti-slavery societies, she and her husband became active in the movement, lecturing and organizing in the West. Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada. Hearing the pioneer lecturers on woman's suffrage, in 1848 she became an advocate of this new cause which seemed to her another important step toward freedom for the human race. Working incessantly for this double goal, she was frequently in danger of physical violence. Parker Pillsbury wrote that she "performed labor, made sacrifices, encountered sufferings at the west, not known, probably never will be known to the world" (Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, 1884, p. 487). Her work was particularly valuable because of her practical ability and imperturbable calm. Accompanied by her younger sister who gave a musical program, she coated her unpleasant doctrines with entertainment that made them more palatable to her backwoods audiences. It is in line with her character that when the Civil War came she should have been one of the earliest workers in the Loyal League and in the sanitary units, and one of the first, also, to recognize the dimensions of the problems presented by the freed slaves. In 1863 she went to Washington to urge federal aid for these people, advocating a most modern program of education for self-support, colonization on deserted plantations, and emergency relief- with temporary work to avoid pauperization. She labored unceasingly with members of the cabinet and of Congress for the establishment of a bureau to organize and direct her projects. With her daughter she served as a paid agent of the National Freedman's Relief Association of the District of Columbia, after it was organized in March 1863, distributing supplies, establishing industrial training centers, and convoying refugees North for employment. She was also an assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau, for the establishment of which, in 1865, she had labored zealously. After the war, leaders of the woman's suffrage movement declared it unthinkable that the illiterate male negro should be enfranchised and not the intelligent white woman, and in 1867 Mrs. Griffing helped organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District of Columbia and became its president. She was also corresponding secretary of the National Woman's Suffrage Association and her sane work in Washington was most valuable in inspiring respect for her cause.

[Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family (1902); E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (3 volumes, 1881-87); I. H. Harper, Life of Susan B. Anthony (volumes I, II, 1899, Volume III, 1908); Evening Star (Washington), February 19, 1872; information from a nephew, Chas. J. Douglas, Boston.]

K. H. A.


GRIFFITTS, Samuel Powel, born 1759, Pennsylvania, physician, director of U.S. Mint, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), founded 1775, Committee of Twenty-Four.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 223, 239n13; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 129)


GRIMES, James Wilson, 1816-1872, statesman, lawyer, governor of Iowa.  U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Governor of Iowa, 1854-1858.  Supported by Whigs and Free Soil Democrats.  Elected as Republican Senator in 1859.  Re-elected 1865. He upheld the inviolability of the Missouri Compromise; and in his inaugural address on December 9, 1854, made it plain that he would do everything in his power to combat the further spread of slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 767; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 630; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 617; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 630:

GRIMES, JAMES WILSON (October 20, 1816- February 7, 1872), lawyer, legislator, governor of Iowa, and United States senator, was born at Deering, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, the youngest of eight children. His parents, John and Elizabeth (Wilson) Grimes, were intelligent, independent farmers of Scotch-Irish stock. He entered Dartmouth College in August 1832, at the age of sixteen, but left at the close of the first term of  his junior year, in February 1835. In 1845 he was awarded the degree of A.B. as of the class of 1836. After leaving college, he read law in the office of James Walker at Peterborough, New Hampshire, but shortly set forth to seek his fortune in the West. On May 15, 1836, he became a resident of Burlington, Iowa. Here he entered the profession of the law at the age of nineteen and soon became active in public life. In September of that year he acted as secretary of the commission which made two important treaties witl1 the Sac and Fox Indians. The following year he was appointed city solicitor. Elected in 1838 to the first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa, he served as chairman of the committee on judiciary. He served again in 1843 as a member of the sixth Legislative Assembly, and in 1852 as a member of the fourth General Assembly of the state, where he was a leader in the promotion of railroads. At this time he was listed as a farmer, being interested in stock-breeding and agriculture. He was a charter member of the Southern Iowa Horticultural Society, and for a time served as editor on the staff of the Iowa Farmer and Horticulturist. On November 9, 1846, he had married Elizabeth Sarah Nealley. In the practise of law he was associated with Henry W. Starr.

Grimes was a man of commanding presence. "Careless of appearance, and somewhat rough and ungainly in early life, he grew with years in suavity, and grace, and dignity of bearing." Always, "he abhorred pretension and indirection" (Salter, post, p. 390). He had been reared a Whig and later adhered to that party both from preference and from conviction. Nominated for the office of governor by the Whigs, he was elected on August 3, 1854, after an energetic and fatiguing campaign. He stood for the revision of the state constitution and the establishment of banks and advocated better schools, internal improvements, and the enactment of homestead laws which would give to foreign-born settlers the same rights as were granted to native-born. He upheld the inviolability of the Missouri Compromise; and in his inaugural address on December 9, 1854, made it plain that he would do everything in his power to combat the further spread of slavery. Placing "business above politics, and the state above his party," Grimes, with a sense of institutional values, helped to remake Iowa. While he was in office the constitution of the state was revised and the capital removed from Iowa City to Des Moines; the State University was located permanently at Iowa City; schools free to all children were placed on a public-tax basis; a prohibitory liquor law was enacted; a State Historical Society was established; and institutions were created for the care of the insane, the deaf and dumb, and the blind. By the year 1856 he regarded the old parties and old issues as dead; and in that year spoke with force and deep conviction in behalf of the new Republican party, declaring that the great issue before the country was the extension or non-extension of slavery into the territories. It has been said that he, more than any one else, "made Iowa Republican, and allied it with the loyal States" (Salte, post, p. II6).

On March 4, 1859, he first took his seat in the United States Senate. He was appointed to the committee on pensions and private land claims; and on January 24, 1861, became a member of the committee on naval affairs, of which he was chairman from December 8, 1864, until the end of his senatorial career. He was instrumental in keeping the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was one of the first to recognize the necessity of an adequate fleet and the advantages of iron-clad ships. He was also chairman of the committee on the District of Columbia; and in the latter part of his senatorial career served on the committees on patents and the Patent Office, public buildings and grounds, and appropriations. He was associated with a group of men who during the Civil War created a detective service to sift out disloyal persons in the public service and elsewhere.

During the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868, Grimes displayed an integrity which cost him his political power and probably hastened his death. Though he considered many of the President's acts as highly deplorable, he did not believe that they constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors" and he seriously doubted the wisdom of a policy of impeachment. The strain of the trial brought on a stroke of paralysis, and when the time came for voting on the impeachment he had to be carried into the Senate chamber. He voted "Not guilty," while James Harlan [1820-1899, q.v.], the other senator from Iowa, voted "Guilty." One ballot the other way would have given a two-thirds majority, and the President would have been retired from office. A storm of political abuse broke upon Grimes; even the town of Burlington viewed his conduct with disfavor.

He returned to Congress when it reassembled in December 1868, but his spirit and strength were gone. In April 1869 he was ordered to Europe for a rest. There he suffered another stroke, and on August 11, sent to the governor of Iowa his resignation as senator, to take effect December 6. When he returned to America in September 1871, he found public sentiment once more in his favor. He died a few months later at his home in Burlington.

[B. F. Shambaugh, The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of Iowa (7 volumes, 1903-05). II, 3-112; collection of pamphlets from Grimes's library, in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; Wm. Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes (1876); Eli C. Christoferson, "The Life of James W. Grimes," MS. in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; G. T. Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College (1867); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); Sioux City Daily Journal, February 9, 1872.

J B.F.S.  

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, p. 767:

GRIMES, James Wilson, statesman, born in Deering, Hillsborough county, New Hampshire, 20 October, 1816; died in Burlington, Iowa, 7 February, 1872. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1836, and in the same year went west and began to practise law in Burlington, Iowa, then in what was known as the “Black Hawk Purchase,” in the territory of Michigan. From 4 July, 1836, till 12 June, 1838, it was part of Wisconsin territory, and in 1837-'8 Mr. Grimes was assistant librarian of the territorial library. After the formation of Iowa territory he was a delegate to its assembly in 1838 and 1843, and in 1852, after its admission to the Union, was a member of the legislature. He was governor of the state in 1854-'8, having been elected by Whigs and Free-soil Democrats, and while holding the office did much to foster Free-soil sentiment in his state. On 28 August, 1856, he wrote an official letter to President Pierce protesting against the treatment of Iowa settlers in Kansas. He was elected to the U. S. senate as a Republican in 1859, and re-elected in 1865., His first speech, delivered on 30 January, 1860, was a reply to Robert Toombs, who had accused Iowa of passing laws in violation of the rights of sister states, and after this he spoke frequently, and was known as a hard-working member of the senate. In 1861 he was a delegate to the peace convention. He was a member of the committee on naval affairs from 24 January, 1861, till the end of his service, and was its chairman from December, 1864. He strongly advocated the building of iron-clads, and the abandonment of stone fortifications for harbor defence. Mr. Grimes was noted for his independence of character, which frequently brought him into conflict with his party associates in the senate. Thus, although he favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, he considered President Lincoln's enlargement of the regular army in 1861 a dangerous precedent, and later he opposed a high protective tariff. In the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Mr. Grimes was one of the few Republican senators who voted “not guilty,” and this act brought upon him a storm of condemnation which lasted but a short time, owing to the evident fact, that his vote had been strictly in accordance with what he considered his duty. Mr. Grimes had a stroke of paralysis in 1869, and in April of that year went abroad, resigning his seat in the senate on 6 December He returned in September, 1871, apparently improved, but died soon afterward of heart disease. Mr. Grimes founded a professorship at Iowa college, at Grinnell, and gave money for scholarships there and at Dartmouth, receiving the degree of LL. D. from both colleges. He also established a free public library in Burlington, Iowa. See “Life of James W. Grimes,” by William Salter (New York, 1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 767.


GRIMES, John,  abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40.


GRIMES, Leonard A., 1815?-1873, African American, clergyman, abolitionist. 

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 234)


GRIMES, William W., 1824-1891, African American, clergyman, abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 238).


GRIMKE, Archibald Henry (August 17, 1849-February 25, 1930), negro lawyer, author, publicist,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1 pp. 632-633:

GRIMKE, ARCHIBALD HENRY (August 17, 1849-February 25, 1930), negro lawyer, author, publicist, son of Henry Grimke of South Carolina and Nancy Weston, a beautiful family slave, was born near Charleston. When his father died, the child was entrusted to the guardianship of his white half-brother. After the Civil War, young Grimke, a boy of sixteen, went North and partly through his own efforts, partly with the help of friends, entered Lincoln University, receiving the degree of B.A. in 1870 and M.A. in 1872. With the aid of his aunt, Sarah Moore Grimke [q.v.], he then entered the Harvard Law School and took the LL.B. degree in 1874. The following year he was established in Boston and beginning to practise law. He very soon became a prominent figure in negro affairs, being made president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and later vice-president of the entire organization. On April 19, 1879, he married Sarah E. Stanley of Boston and, once fairly settled, began to develop his natural talent for writing and to contribute articles to the periodical press in the interests of the negro race. From 1883 to 1885 he was the editor of the Hub, a Boston paper devoted to colored welfare. This post offered him his opportunity to begin his lifelong crusade against race prejudice, race discrimination, and the double standard of sex morality, of which he himself had been a victim. In the early nineties he published the two biographies for which he is best known in the literary field: The Life of William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist (i891), and The Life of Charles Sumner, the Scholar in Politics (1892). In connection with these works he produced numerous pamphlets on the history of the anti-slavery movement and a series of special articles for the Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, and for the Atlantic Monthly. At the same time he became increasingly active as a member of the American Negro Academy, under whose auspices most of his pamphlets and lectures were published, in agitating for a fully operative negro franchise.

In 1894 Grimke was appointed by President Cleveland American consul to Santo Domingo where he served until 1898. Upon his retirement,  in Boston, he turned with fresh zest to the question of the negro vote. In 1899 he addressed an open letter to President McKinley in which he stated the negro point of view with admirable clearness on behalf of the Colored National League. From this time forward, he devoted his best energies to writing and lecturing on the problems of the, negro race in connection with his work for the American Negro Academy, of which he was president from 1903 to 1916. In 1919, as a testimonial to his efforts in behalf of negro advancement, he received the Spingarn medal, the highest honor annually bestowed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People upon an American citizen of African descent. The body of Grimke's writings is considerable, typical of which are: Right on the Scaffold, or, The Martyrs of 1822 (1901), a sympathetic life of Telemaque (Denmark) Vesey, leader of the Charleston slave rising of 1822; The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments (1913), a protest against race-discrimination at the polls; "The Sex Question and Race Segregation," Papers of the American Negro Academy, 1915 (1916), an indictment of the double standard; The Ultimate Criminal (1915), a suggestive tractate on the influence of race discrimination upon negro crime; and The Shame of America, or, The Negro's Case Against the Republic (1924). In addition to his lifelong crusade on behalf of his race, Grimke found time for other and varied activities. He was trustee of the Estate of Emmeline Cushing for Negro Education, president of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, treasurer of the Committee of Twelve for Negro Advancement, member of the Authors' Club, London, and member of the American Social Science Association. He died at his home in Washington, where he had lived and worked since 1905.

["A Biographical Sketch of Archibald Grimke," by his daughter, Angelina W. Grimke, in Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life (New York), February 1925; Archibald H. Grimke (1930), by his brother, Francis J. Grimke; Atlantic Monthly, July 1904; Who's Who in America, 1924- 25; Who's Who of the Colored Race, 1915; Who's Who in Colored America, 1928--29; Journal of Negro History, April 1930; Washington Herald, February 27, 28, 1930; Washington Tribune, August 23, 1929, February 28, 1930.

J. E. M. H.


GRIMKÉ, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) (Mrs. Theodore Weld), Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist leader, feminist, author, orator; wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, member Anti-Slavery Society of New York.  Sister of abolitionist leader Sarah Moore Grimké.  Married to noted abolitionist Theodore Weld.  [See GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE, 1792- 1873-]

(Barnes & Dumond, 1934; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 157-158, 173n; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 185, 190-193, 195-196, 278-279; Lerner, 1967; Lumkin, 1974; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 13, 28, 35, 36, 93, 129, 140, 188, 190, 191, 194, 213, 241, 266, 347, 348, 358, 376; Perry, 2001; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 173-174, 199, 289, 290, 308, 321-322, 416, 465, 511; Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers & Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 634; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 621; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Volumes 1934.)


GRIMKÉ, Charlotte Forten “Lottie,” 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual.  She was a member of the prominent African American Forten family.  They were active abolitionists and members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.  Her mother and aunts were founding members and leaders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Charlotte was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society and was active early in the African American civil rights movement.  She wrote anti-slavery poetry for the abolitionist movement.  During the Civil War, she worked for the former slave community in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Port Royal Experiment.

(Billington, 1953; Mabee, 1970, pp. 105, 161, 162, 308; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 289, 410, 416, 482; Stevenson, 1988; Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 69, 94, 98-99, 116, 116n, 164).


GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873, Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist, feminist, orator, author, women’s rights advocate, political activist.  Wrote, An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836.  Member of the Anti-Slavery Society of New York.  Sister of abolitionist leader Angelina Emily Grimké. 

(Birney, 1885; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 157-158; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 190, 275; Lerner, 1967; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 47, 92, 129, 141, 194, 266, 342; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 199, 290, 308, 322-323, 362, 416, 433, 465, 519; Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers & Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 635; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 627; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Volumes 1934)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 635:

GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE (November 26, 1792- December 23, 1873) and her sister, ANGELINA EMILY (February 20, 1805-October 26, 1879), anti-slavery crusaders and advocates of woman's rights, were born in Charleston, South Carolina. Their parents, Judge John Faucheraud Grimke [q.v.] and Mary Smith Grimke, were wealthy, aristocratic, and conservative; but Sarah and Angelina early showed signs of dissatisfaction with their environment. Neither social gaiety nor the formalism of the Episcopal Church met their needs; and their tender, reflective natures made them question the institution of slavery. Sarah, the elder sister, greatly influenced Angelina in this revolt, though at the age of thirty Angelina was in advance of her more conservative sister. As a girl Sarah regretted the fact that her sex made it impossible for her to study the law. Contact with her father and her older brother, Thomas [q.v.], sharpened her mind and displeased her conscience. But it was her association with Quakers, met on a trip to Philadelphia when she was twenty-seven, that crystallized her discontent with her home. After many trying spiritual experiences, she returned North and became a Friend. Angelina, having experimented with Presbyterianism, followed her sister. Both, however, chafed under the discipline of the orthodox Philadelphia Friends, and Angelina, the more expansive and self-reliant, came especially to resent in them what seemed to her an equivocal attitude on slavery and Abolition. A life of modesty, economy, and charity seemed hollow when she longed for an opportunity to serve humanity. Nor did Sarah find peace; her sensitiveness and Jack of self-confidence made her life among the Quakers one of almost intolerable conflict and suffering.

In 1835 Angelina, after much reflection, determined to express her growing sympathy with Abolition and wrote to Garrison, encouraging him in his work. The letter, to her surprise, was published in the Liberator (September 19, 1835). Although Sarah and the Philadelphia Friends disapproved, Angelina, having turned the corner, could not go back. Eager to make a more positive contribution to the cause increasingly close to her heart, she wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). In this thirty-six-page pamphlet she urged Southern women to speak and act against slavery, which she endeavored to prove contrary not only to the first charter of human rights given to Adam, but opposed to the Declaration of Independence, "The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong," she wrote, urging them to use moral suasion in the cause of humanity and freedom. Anti-slavery agitators eagerly seized this eloquent and forceful appeal, enhanced in value by the fact that it came from the pen of one who knew the slave system intimately. In South Carolina, on the other hand, copies of the Appeal were publicly burned by postmasters, and its author was officially threatened with imprisonment if she returned to her native city.

After pondering for months, this shy, blue-eyed young woman, courteous and gentle in beating, took what seemed to her a momentous step. She decided to accept an invitation from the American Antislavery Society to address small groups of women in private parlors. After an inward struggle Sarah also determined to risk the disapprobation of the Friends, and henceforth the sisters were on intimate terms with Abolitionists and aided former slaves. Sarah, on her part, wrote an Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836). Two years later Angelina, in her Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism Addressed to A. E. Grimke (1838), denounced gradualism. It was at this time that the sisters persuaded their mother to apportion slaves to them as their share of the family estate, and these slaves they at once freed.

From addressing small groups of women it was a natural step to the lecture platform. At first the sisters, timid and self-conscious, spoke only to audiences of women, but as their reputation for earnestness and eloquence grew, it was impossible to keep men away. Their lectures in New England aroused great enthusiasm. The prejudice against the appearance of women on the lecture platform found many expressions; one was the famous "Pastoral Letter" issued by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, a tirade against women-preachers and women-reformers (Liberator, August 11, 1837). Whittier, though he defended "Carolina's high-souled daughters," at the same time urged them to confine their arguments to immediate emancipation (John Albree, ed., Whittier Correspondence, 1911, p. 265).

So great was the opposition to their speaking in public that the sisters felt compelled to defend woman's rights as well as Abolition, for in their minds the two causes were vitally connected. Not only the efforts made to suppress their testimony against slavery, but their belief that slavery weighed especially heavily on both the colored and white women of the South, led them openly to champion the cause of their sex. Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838) maintained that "the page of history 'teems with woman's wrongs" and that "it is wet with woman's tears." She indicted the unrighteous dominion exercised over women in the name of protection; she entreated women to "arise in all the majesty of moral power ... and plant themselves, side by side, on the platform of human rights, with man, to whom they were designed to be companions, equals and helpers in every good word and work" (p. 45). Angelina, in her Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837), strongly insisted on women's equal responsibilities for the nation's guilt and shame and on their interest in the public weal. Gradually many of, the opponents of slavery were won over to the cause of woman's rights, and the introduction of the question into the anti-slavery agitation by the Grimkes was an important factor in the development of both causes.

On May 14, 1838, Angelina married the Abolitionist, Theodore Dwight Weld. They had one child, Charles Stuart. Since she suffered from ill health after marriage, which made the strain of public lectures seem unwise, she and her sister aided Mr. Weld in conducting a liberal school at Belleville, New Jersey. Later the family removed to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where both the sisters died. The latter part of their lives was marked by devotion to their work of teaching and by an indomitable interest in the causes to which both had contributed.

[Catherine H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); Theodore D. Weld, In Memory: Angelina Grimke Weld (1880), containing sketch of Sarah Moore Grimke; South Carolina. History and Genealogical Magazine, January 1906; E. C. Stanton and others, History of Woman Suffrage, volume I (1881); F. J. and W. P. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885-89); Woman's Journal, January 3, 1874, November 1, 1879; Boston Transcript, October 28, 1879; Garrison MSS. in the Boston Public Library.]

M.E.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 768:

GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, reformer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 6 November, 1792; died in Hyde Park, New York, 23 December, 1873. After the death of her father, she and her sister Angelina, afterward Mrs. Theodore D. Weld (q. v.), having long been convinced of the evils of slavery, emancipated their negroes and left their home. In her own account of the event, Miss Grimké says: “As I left my native state on account of slavery, deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the driver's lash and the shrieks of the tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollections of those scenes with which I have been familiar. But it may not, can not be; they come over my memory like gory spectres, and implore me with resistless power in the name of humanity, for the sake of the slave-holder as well as the slave, to bear witness to the horrors of the southern prison-house.” Miss Grimké went to Philadelphia in 1821, and became one of the most active members of the Anti-slavery society, also advocating women's rights. She lectured in New England, and afterward made her home with the Weld family, teaching in their school, which was established in Belleville, New Jersey, in 1840. She published in 1827 an “Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States”—an effective anti-slavery document—and afterward wrote “Letters on the Condition of Woman and the Equality of the Sexes” (Boston, 1838). She also translated Lamartine's “Joan of Arc” (1867). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 768.




GRIMKE, Thomas Smith (September 26, 1786-October 12, 1834), educator, reformer, brother of Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimke.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1 pp. 635-636:

GRIMKE, THOMAS SMITH (September 26, 1786-October 12, 1834), educator, reformer, brother of Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimke [qq.v.], was born in Charleston, South Carolina., where his father, John Faucheraud Grimke [q.v.], was a wealthy and influential lawyer. His mother, Mary Smith, was a great-grand-daughter of the second landgrave of South Carolina, and her Puritan background partly explains her son's deep religious bent. After studying in the South, Thomas entered Yale College in the fall of 1805 and graduated in 1807. Although he desired to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he yielded to his father's wishes and studied law in the office of Langdon Cheves. For a number of years his law partner was Robert Y. Hayne. He attained eminence at the bar and in politics, even though he often espoused unpopular causes. As a state senator (18 26-30), he supported the general government on the tariff question. During the nullification controversy he opposed, boldly and passionately, the state's preparations for military resistance and employed his logic and eloquence in behalf of the Union and of peace (To the People of the State of South-Carolina, 183 2). He was also a pioneer in the causes of temperance and world peace. In his Address on the Truth, Dignity, Power and Beauty of the Princip1es of Peace (1832), and in a series of vigorous articles in the Calumet, the organ ot the American Peace Society, he took issue with the advocates of peace who admitted the Scriptural legality of war.

Grimke's educational theories were no less radical than his pacifism. He believed that education must "partake deeply and extensively of the vital spirit of American institutions." Though he was a distinguished classicist, mathematics and the classics found little place in his educational plan, which was essentially utilitarian and religious. As early as 1832 he advocated manual training in the schools and championed science because it promoted the substantial, practical improvement of the people. He also favored the higher education of women. Modern history and modern literature bulked large in his plans. He outlined and himself adopted a reformed orthography which omitted silent letters and emphasized consistency, justifying the system on the ground that it was appropriate for America and for democratic, mass education (Oration on American Education, 1835). His piety and his religious fervor were evidenced in his conviction that the Bible should be basic in every scheme of education, from the primary school to the university (An Essay on the Appropriate Use of the Bible, in Common Education, 1833). Grimke died while on his way to Columbus, Ohio, in the fall of 1834, and was buried in Columbus. He had married, on January 25, 1810, Sarah Daniel Drayton, by whom he had six sons. His family and friends were devoted to him because of his simplicity and gentleness of manner, his humility of heart, and his intellectual courage.

[In addition to the lectures and addresses mentioned, a small part of his total output, the volume entitled Reflections on the Character and Objects of all Science and Literature (1831) is representative. The best contemporary accounts of Grimke are to be found in the Calumet, January-February 1835, and in the American Annals of Educ. and Instruction, November 1835. The "Letter Book" of Wm. Watson, in the possession of Miss Elizabeth Dana, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, contains several important letters from Grimke. Consult also Catherine H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); C. B. Galbreath, "Thos. Smith Grimke," Ohio Archaeology and History Quarterly, July 1924; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume VI (1912); the South Carolina History and Genealogical Magazine, January 1903; Charleston Courier, October 24, 1834; Southern Patriot (Charleston), October 27, 1834.]

M. E. C.


GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, 1821-1891, New Haven, Vermont, abolitionist, Republican Party co-founder, theologian, lawyer.  Founded First Congregational Church, Washington, DC, in 1851.  Founded town of Grinnell, Iowa.  Iowa State Senator, 1856-1860.  Congressman 1863-1867.  Supported radical abolitionist John Brown.  Advocated for use of colored troops in the Union Army.  As Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 356; Payne, 1938; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 323-324; Schuchmann, 2003; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 1-2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 634; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 4:

GRINNELL, JOSIAH BUSHNELL (December 22, 1821-March 31, 1891), Congregational clergyman, Abolitionist, and commonwealth builder, once described himself as a "pioneer, farmer, and radical." He was born in New Haven, Vt. His father, Myron Grinnell, was a descendant of French Huguenot ancestors who settled in Rhode Island prior to 1640; his mother, Catherine Hastings, was a daughter of a Scotch immigrant. His early life in New England was typical in that it accustomed him to toil, hardship, and moral ideas. When he was sixteen he taught a country school; later he graduated from Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, New York During the summer and fall of 1844 he was agent of the American Tract Society in Wisconsin. Graduating from Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, New York, in 1847, he became pastor of the Congregational church in Union Village, New York, where he remained till 1850. In 1851 he started the First Congregational Church of Washington, D. C., and there he delivered what is said to have been the first sermon against slavery ever heard in that city. Compelled to leave because of his views, he took a pastorate in New York City. While there, February 5, 1852, he married Julia Ann Chapin of Springfield, Massachusetts, and also formed a life-long friendship with Horace Greeley [q. v.]. Loss of voice necessitated a change of occupation, and Greeley made to him the remark, "Go West, young man, go West," which has since become historic. He went to Iowa in 1854 and purchased six thousand acres in Poweshiek County. Here he and three others founded the town of Grinnell. A church was started with Grinnell as preacher and largely through his influence Grinnell University was planned. It was well under way when in 1859 Iowa College, founded in 1846 at Davenport by the "Iowa Band" of home missionaries, moved to Grinnell and absorbed it. The institution is now known as Grinnell College. The church and college attracted a high type of settler and the community took on a distinct New England atmosphere. It grew rapidly after 1863 when Grinnell used his influence as a director of the Rock Island Railroad to bring the road through the town.

As early as 1856 his interests and activities became state-wide. He attended the convention which organized the Republican party of Iowa and was chosen to write the address to the voters. The same year he was elected state senator on a platform of "No Liquor Shops; Free Schools for Iowa; No Nationalizing of Slavery" (Grinnell, post, p. 117). In the Senate he was chairman of the committee which secured the passage of the Free School Act of 1858 and was one of the sharpest critics of the doctrines involved in the Dred Scott Decision. He soon became known as perhaps the leading Abolitionist of the state, John Brown himself brought a band of escaped slaves to Grinnell's home in 1859, and there wrote part of his Virginia Proclamation. In 1860 Grinnell was a delegate to the convention which nominated Lincoln for president and two years later was himself elected congressman, serving from 1863 to 1867. A warm personal friend of Lincoln, he supported the Administration vigorously. In debate he was relentless toward the opposition, sparing neither sarcasm nor ridicule. He urged the use of colored soldiers in the war and was an ardent supporter of a high protective tariff. The war over, he opposed the readmission of the Southern states until they should give the vote to the black man. In 1867, he lost the Republican nomination for governor. Friendship for Greeley and a conviction of Grant's inadequacy led him to support the former for president in 1872. By so doing he put behind him promotion in his own party. He was a man of wide interests, however, and continued active in the life of his state. He had a pioneer's faith in its future and probably no one did more through speaking and writing to make Iowa known beyond its own borders.

He did much, also, for agricultural development. Wherever farmers were gathered, he urged higher standards in grain growing and stock breeding, and as a practical farmer he led the way by first introducing Devon cattle and Norman and Clydesdale horses into the state. These activities brought him recognition in many state organizations and the presidency of the American Agricultural Association (1885). He early recognized the significance of the railroad. As a builder, promoter, or director he was connected with a number of lines and acted as president and later receiver of the Central Railroad of Iowa. He always remained deeply interested in the church and in education. He served as trustee of Grinnell College for thirty years and was a liberal benefactor of the institution. When in 1882 the college and part of the town were destroyed by a tornado, he hurried East to raise funds. His energy, eloquence, and wide contact with public men never served him better, for he quickly raised forty thousand dollars. He died in 1891 just after having completed his autobiographical reminiscences.

[J. B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Y ears (1891); T. O. Douglass, "The Builders of a Commonwealth," Volume II (MS., copies in libraries of Grinnell College and Univ. of Chicago), and The Pilgrims of Iowa (1911); J. L. Hill, Yankees (1923); Annals of Iowa., January 1896, July 1897, April, October 1907; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), April 2, 3, 1891.

J. C.E.P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 1-2:

GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, congressman, born in New Haven, Vt., 22 December, 1821; died in Marshalltown, Ta., 31 March, 1891. He was graduated at Auburn theological seminary, entered the ministry of the Presbyterian church, and preached seven years in Union Village, New York, Washington, D. C., and New York city. He founded the Congregational church at Grinnell, Iowa, in 1854, and preached there gratuitously for several years, but afterward retired from the ministry and became an extensive wool-grower. He was a member of the state senate in 1856-'60, special agent of the post-office department in 1861-'3, and in 1863-'7 was a representative in congress, having been elected as a Republican. He was a special agent of the treasury department in 1868, and in 1884 was appointed commissioner of the U. S. bureau of animal industries. When in the Iowa senate Mr. Grinnell took an active part in the formation of the state free-school system, and was also the correspondent and confidant of John Brown, entertaining him and his company. “In my library,” says Mr. Grinnell in a recent letter, “secretly, in the gleam of bayonets, and near a miniature arsenal for the protection of a score of ex-slaves, he wrote a part of his Virginia proclamation.” Mr. Grinnell was active in aiding the escape of fugitive slaves, and at one time a reward was offered for his head. He was connected with the building of six railroads, and laid out five towns, including that of Grinnell, Iowa, which was named for him. He gave the proceeds of the sale of building-lots in that town to Grinnell university, now merged in Iowa college, and was for some time its president. He published “Home of the Badgers” (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1845); “Cattle Industries of the United States” (New York, 1884); and numerous valuable pamphlets and addresses. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 1-2.


GRISCOM, John, Dr., 1774-1852, New York, educator, reformer, activist.  Member of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. p. 7; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 40, 84)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 2:

GRISCOM, John, educator, born in Hancock’s Bridge, Salem county, New Jersey, 27 September, 1774; died in Burlington, New Jersey, 26 February, 1852. His education was acquired at the Friends’ academy in Philadelphia, and later he was given charge of the Friends’ monthly-meeting school, in Philadelphia, with which he continued for thirteen years. In 1806 he removed to New York, where he was actively engaged in teaching for twenty-five years. He was one of the first to teach chemistry, and gave public lectures on this subject to his classes early in 1806. When the medical department of Queen’s (now Rutgers) college was established in 1812, he was appointed to the chair of chemistry and natural history, which he held until 1828. His colleague, Dr. John W. Francis, said of him that “for thirty years Dr. Griscom was the acknowledged head of all teachers of chemistry among us” in New York. He was the projector of the New York high-school, an institution on the Lancaster or monitorial system of instruction, which had great success from 1825 till 1831, under his supervision. For many years Dr. Griscom’s lectures were given in the “New York Institution,” which had been built in 1795 for an almshouse. Halleck, in his “Fanny,” thus alludes to the building and its occupants:

“It remains
To bless the hour the Corporation took it
Into their heads to give the rich in brains
The worn-out mansion of the poor in pocket,
Once ‘the old almshouse,’ now a school of wisdom,
Sacred to Scudder's shells and Dr. Griscom.”

From 1832 till 1834 he had charge of a Friends’ boarding-school in Providence, Rhode Island, also lecturing in various places on chemistry and natural philosophy. Subsequently he resided in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and then in Burlington, New Jersey, where he was town superintendent and trustee of public schools, and also was associated in the reorganization of the common-school system of New Jersey. During his residence in New York he was instrumental in organizing the Society for the prevention of pauperism and crime, which was the parent of many important reform movements. For many years he contributed abstracts of chemical papers from the foreign journals to Silliman’s “Journal of Science.” He was also the author of “A Year in Europe” (New York, 1823), and “Monitorial Instruction” (1825). See a “Memoir of John Griscom,” by his son (New York, 1859). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GRIST, Samuel, Virginia, bought land, supplies, tools, and livestock for one thousands slaves in Brown County, Ohio. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 93)


GRISWOLD, Alexander Viets, (Bishop), 1766-1843, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman.  Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1840-41. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 7; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).


GRISWOLD, John Augustus, 1818-1872, manufacturer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.  Mayor of Troy, New York, 1850.  Raised regiment for Union Army.  Supervised building of U.S.S. Monitor, the first ironclad Union Navy ship.  Elected U.S. Congressman 1862, served 1863-1869.  Opposed the Fugitive-Slave Act and Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 3; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 4:

GRISWOLD, JOHN AUGUSTUS (November 11, 1818-October 31, 1872), manufacturer and congressman, the son of Chester and Abbey (Moulton) Griswold and a descendant of Edward Griswold who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1639, was born in Nassau, New York. His father was at one time a member of the New York Assembly. Young Griswold entered the hardware house of Hart, Lesley & Warren, of Troy, New York, when he was seventeen but left at the end of a year to accept a position as book-keeper for C. H. & J. J. Merritt, cotton manufacturers. After establishing a whole sale and retail drug business, he became an agent for the Rensselaer Iron Works and, later, head of the Bessemer Steel Works, the Rensselaer Iron Works, and other blast furnaces.

As a substantial citizen, well-established socially through his marriage, September 14, 1843, with Elizabeth Hart, daughter of Richard P. Hart, Griswold was elected mayor of Troy on the Democratic ticket in 1855. In 1860 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. Throughout his public career, he was an ardent supporter of the Union; after the fall of Fort Sumter he presided at a mass meeting to raise troops; and he later assisted in the organization of several regiments, one of which, the 21st New York, was known as the Griswold Light Cavalry. An early advocate of armored ships, he and John F. Winslow [q.v.] accepted a contract for a number of wooden vessels sheathed with metal. Griswold, with Winslow, and C. S. Bushnell, showed the Naval Board a model of Ericsson's Monitor, and, gaining the interest of President Lincoln, agreed to construct and deliver such a "floating battery" within one hundred days, on the understanding that they should assume the entire cost-approximately a quarter of a million dollars-in case the undertaking failed. The Monitor, begun in October 1861, was constructed at the plant of T. F. Howland, Greenpoint, Long Island, under Ericsson's direction, but the machinery, plates, and much of the other iron work were manufactured in Troy. The ship was launched on January 30, 1862. On March 9 it defeated the Merrimac. As a result of its success, Griswold and his associates built six more vessels of the same type. Their destructiveness affected materially the course of the war. On account of these patriotic activities, Griswold was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress as a War Democrat. Since he voted for the repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Act, he was returned to the Thirty-ninth Congress only by Republican support. As a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs during his first two terms, he defended the conduct of the war, and in a speech delivered February 4, 1865 (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 2 Session, p. 597), attacked the proposal to divide the responsibility of the Navy Department. Upon his reelection in 1866 he became a member of the committee on ways and means. In 1868 he was an unsuccessful candidate on the Republican ticket for the governorship of New York.

In 1864, in association with Erastus Corning, A. L. Holley [qq.v. ], Winslow, and Erastus Corning, Jr., Griswold secured control of the Bessemer patents in America. His firm, known after 1868 as John A. Griswold & Company, exerted a profound influence upon the development of the iron and steel industry in the United States. So general was the interest in the plants erected in Troy that the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science visited the city in 1870 to examine the works. After his defeat for the governorship and his withdrawal from public life, Griswold devoted himself to the proposition of his financial interests in Troy and to the cultural advancement of the city, in which his name has been perpetuated by various organizations.

[Invitation to the Members of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci. (n.d.); The Bessemer Steel Works and the Rensselaer Iron Works (1870), pub. by John A. Griswold & Company; The Navy in Congress (1865); F. B. Wheeler. John F. Winslow, LL.D., and the Monitor (1893); W. C. Church, The Life of John Ericsson (1890); J.M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages (1884); Biographical Dir. American Congress (1928); Monitor, September 1868; N. B. Sylvester, History of Rensselaer County, New York (1880); New York Tribune, November 1, 1872; Troy Times, November 1, 2, 4, 1872.]

R. P. B-r.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume III, p. 3;

GRISWOLD, John Augustus, manufacturer, born in Nassau, Rensselaer county, New York, 11 November, 1818; died in Troy, New York, 31 October, 1872. He went to Troy in 1839, and was for a time an inmate of the family of his uncle, General Wool. He became interested in the Rensselaer iron company, in which he was afterward the principal partner. He was mayor of Troy in 1850, and was an active supporter of the National government during the civil war, aiding in raising three regiments of infantry, as well as the “Black-horse cavalry,” and the 21st New York, or “Griswold light cavalry.” In 1861, in connection with C. S. Bushnell and John F. Winslow, he contracted to build Ericsson's “Monitor,” and it was mainly due to him that the vessel was completed in the hundred days allowed by the government for her construction. The “Monitor” was built at great pecuniary risk, as her price, $275,000, was not to be paid till it had been practically shown that she could withstand the enemy's fire at the shortest ranges. Mr. Griswold was elected to congress in 1862 as a war Democrat, but subsequently joined the Republicans, and was re-elected by them, serving altogether from 1863 till 1869. He was an efficient member of the committee on naval affairs, and effectively defended the policy of the government in the construction of monitors when it was attacked in the house. He also aided in building the monitor “Dictator.” In 1868 he was the Republican candidate for governor of New York, but was defeated, though his party claimed that he received a majority of the votes actually cast. Mr. Griswold did much to advance the prosperity of Troy, and contributed liberally to its charities. He was a trustee of Rensselaer polytechnic institute in 1860-'72. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 3.


GRISWOLD, Whiting, 1814-1874, lawyer, politician, abolitionist.  Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate.


GROSVENOR, Cyrus Pitt, 1792-1879, Salem, Massachusetts, clergyman, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery agent, anti-slavery Baptist minister, educator.  Lectured on anti-slavery.  American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1839-1840, 1840-1841. Founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS), 1832.  Member of the Liberty Party.  Leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  Co-founded the abolitionist Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America and the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 188, 285, 393n24; Putnam, 1893, p. 14, “Friend of Man,” October 6, 1836, May 10, 1837)


GRUBB, Edward Burd, Sr., 1810-1867, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Burlington, New Jersey, abolitionist, industrialist. 

(Grubb, David, 2008, The Grubb Family of Grubbs Landing, Delaware, Higginson Book Co.)


GRUBER, Reverend Jacob, clergyman.  Preached against slavery; called it a sin.  Gave sermon in Washington County, Maryland, on August 16, 1818.  He was indicted on grounds of sedition.  He was defended by attorney Rodger B. Tanney (later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court).  He was defended on the principle of free speech. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 142-147; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 35, 472)


GUE, Benjamin F. (December 25, 1828-June 1, 1904), lieutenant-governor of Iowa, journalist, historical writer. From his Quaker abolitionist parents he early acquired a deep interest in the antislavery movement. It was this interest that drew him into politics and led him to serve as a delegate to the convention that met in Iowa City in February 1856 to organize the Republican party in Iowa.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 33-34:

GUE, BENJAMIN F. (December 25, 1828-June 1, 1904), lieutenant-governor of Iowa, journalist, historical writer, the eldest son of John and Catherine (Gurney) Gue, was born in Greene County, New York. His father was of French and his mother of English descent. In 1834 his parents removed to a farm near Farmington, in Ontario County, where he grew to manhood. His higher education was limited to two terms in the Canandaigua and West Bloomfield academies. When the family left the farm and separated in 1851, Benjamin went back to his native county where he taught school for one term. Caught by the spirit of the westward movement, he decided to go to the new state of Iowa and after a journey of three weeks he arrived at Davenport, March 22, 1852. On a quarter section of land, in the northwest corner of Scott County, on Rock Creek, he and a younger brother began farming with a plow, a wagon, and a team of horses. They prospered, bought more land, and soon each possessed a farm of his own. On November 12, 1855, Benjamin was married to Elizabeth R. Parker, a young woman who had been teaching school in the vicinity.

Although his parents were Friends, Gue became an active Unitarian, helped to establish the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, and was one of the founders of the Iowa Unitarian Association. From his Quaker abolitionist parents he early acquired a deep interest in the antislavery movement. It was this interest that drew him into politics and led him to serve as a delegate to the convention that met in Iowa City in February 1856 to organize the Republican party in Iowa. In 1857 he was elected to a seat in the lower house of the General Assembly, to which position he was reelected in 1859. In the legislature he took a leading interest in legislation for the establishment and support of the Iowa State Agricultural College (now the State College of Agriculture). Later (1866) he served as president of the board of trustees of this institution, and in the face of considerable opposition he secured the admission of women on an equality with men. In 1861 he was elected to a seat in the Iowa Senate, which place he held through two regular sessions and one extra session. President Lincoln appointed him postmaster at Fort Dodge in 1864; and in 1865 he was elected to the office of lieutenant-governor.

Gue began his journalistic career in 1864 as editor and publisher of the Fort Dodge Republican which he soon rechristened the Iowa North West. Republicanism, temperance, and woman's suffrage were the outstanding policies of his paper. In 1871 he assumed editorial control of the Iowa Homestead at Des Moines, and for a few months he was chief editor of the Daily State Journal. At this point his newspaper work was interrupted by his appointment (December 1872) to the office of United States pension agent for Iowa by President Grant. Eight years later he and his son acquired the Iowa Homestead by purchase. During this period of his editorship of the paper he took part in the Greenback movement and in 1883 indorsed every plank in the party's platform except the one "arraigning the republican party" (Des Moines Iowa Tribune, July 18, 1883). The latter part of his life he devoted to the writing of biographical and historical sketches which were printed in the Annals of Iowa and in the year before his death he published in four volumes a History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, designed to be "a cyclopedia of general information pertaining to Iowa." He died at Des Moines in his seventy-sixth year.

[Gue's History of Iowa, Volume IV, pp. II 1-12; E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of  Iowa (1916); C.R. Tuttle and D.S. Durrie, An Illustrated History of the State of Iowa (1876); Johnson Brigham, article in the Annals of Iowa, July 1904; Pioneer Lawmakers' Association of Iowa. Reunion of 1904 (1904); Register and Leader (Des Moines), June 2, 1904, January 2, 1910. Gue had no middle name; he simply adopted an initial.]

B. F. S.

GUNN, John N., abolitionist, Washington, Connecticut, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-42, Vice-President, 1842-43.


GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, 1797-1872, clergyman. Secretary, American Colonization Society.  Agent for the ACS.  Served as administrator (Secretary), keeping records and writing the Annual Report.  Co-founder of Liberia.

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, pp. 16, 23-24, 64, 100; Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 9, 10, 48, 49, 53, 97, 112, 113, 138, 174; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 172, 199-200; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 163; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 30; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 13-14; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 56; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 731: Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 35, 76, 78-79, 94-103, 119-135, 171, 197-198, 202-204, 207-209, 213-214, 222-223, 237-239, 242, 307-308).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 56:

GURLEY, RALPH RANDOLPH (May 26, 1797-July 30, 1872), philanthropist, was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, fifth of the seven children of the Reverend John and Mary (Porter) Gurley. He entered Yale with the class of 1818 and before graduating was recognized among the first in his class. Upon leaving Yale he removed to Washington, D. C., where, in 1822, he became an agent of the American Colonization Society, and to this organization he devoted the rest of his life. He was successively agent, secretary, vice-president, and life director. His work as secretary was largely in Washington, where he looked after the correspondence, planned and outfitted the expeditions of the colonists, regulated the affairs of Liberia on the American side of the Atlantic, edited for twenty-five years the organ of the Society, the African Repository, and prepared for an even longer time its Annual Reports. Besides these duties he wrote for the press on colonization and lectured for the Society in North, West, and South. With the rise of the abolition movement his efforts in behalf of colonization increased, and he even invaded New England to debate publicly with several of the leading abolitionists. Later he crossed the Atlantic to urge the cause of colonization in England, where he engaged in spirited public debates at Egyptian Hall, London. His Mission to England (1841), published upon his return, "contains some of the best articles ever penned on the subject of African colonization" (African Repository, September 1872, p. 282). "During those years of bitter struggle, between 1830 and 1840, Gurley stands out as the great Colonizationist" (Fox, post, p. 74). He was "essentially a peacemaker and lover of the Union" (Ibid., p. 73); the more radical abolitionists considered him pro-slavery; but when the war came he sided with the North. His reputation as a controversialist was high, for he was "blessed with one of the mildest and gentlest of dispositions ... which was ... manifested in his placid smile, his mild, benevolent face and gentle manner, which charmed everyone" (African Repository, Zoe. cit.). In person he was tall, and, in the vigor of manhood, remarkably handsome. He thrice visited Liberia. In 1824 he was sent thither for the first time by the Society and the United States government to investigate charges made against Jehudi Ashmun [q.v.], who was unofficially acting as governor, and to straighten out existing difficulties in the colony. The latter task he performed satisfactorily, drawing up a "Plan for the Civil Government of Liberia" which was adopted by the people, accepted by the Society, and put into successful operation. His investigation completely vindicated Ashmun and contributed to Ashmun's first appointment as colonial agent for Liberia. Later Gurley became Ashmun's biographer, publishing Life of Jehudi Ashmun, Late Colonial Agent in Liberia, in 1835. In 1849 he again visited Liberia under instructions from the United States government, and upon his return made a report on the condition and prospects of the colony, which was printed. Upon the occasion of his final visit in 1867 he was warmly received by the people. Gurley was a licentiate of the Presbytery of the District of Columbia, and, although never ordained or installed over any church, preached widely, his services being eagerly sought for particularly among the colored churches. He also acted for a time as chaplain of the House of Representatives. Among the poor, and particularly among the negro poor, of Washington, his labors were abundant, and to save one negro family from separation he even sacrificed his own library and his home. He died in Washington only three months after the death of his wife, Eliza (McLellan) Gurley, who had come to that city as a bride nearly forty-five years before. Of their thirteen children but two survived their parents.

[Mason Noble, A Discourse Commemorative of the Life and Character of the Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley (1872); Memorial of the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the American Colonization Society (1867); E. L. Fox, The American Colonization Society, 1817-40 (1919); Fifty-sixth Annual Report, American Colonization Society (1873).]

W. R.W.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 13-14:

GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, clergyman, born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 26 May, 1797; died in Washington, D. C., 30 July, 1872. He was graduated at Yale in 1818, removed to Washington, D. C., and was licensed to preach as a Presbyterian, but was never ordained. From 1822 till 1872 he acted as the agent and secretary of the American colonization society, visited Africa three times in its interests, and was one of the founders of Liberia. He also went to England to solicit aid in the work of colonization. During the first ten years of his agency the annual income of the society increased from $778 to $40,000. He delivered addresses in its behalf in all parts of the country, edited “The African Repository,” and, besides many reports, wrote the “Life of Jehudi Ashmun” (New York, 1839); “Mission to England for the American Colonization Society” (1841); and “Life and Eloquence of Reverend Sylvester Larned” (New York, 1844). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 13-14.


GUTHRIE, Austin A., abolitionist, Putnam, Ohio, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-41.


GUTHRIE, Stephen, Morgan County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-39.



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

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.