Hoa-Hor: Hoar through Horton

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.


HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood (February 21, 1816-January 31, 1895), lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery conscience Whig and Free-Soil member. U.S. congressman. Hoar was opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories. U.S. attorney-general.

(Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar (1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 volumes, 1903); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, IX (1895); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 86-87:

HOAR, EBENEZER ROCKWOOD (February 21, 1816-January 31, 1895), jurist, congressman, attorney-general, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel Hoar and brother of George Frisbie Hoar [qq.v.]. His mother was Sarah, daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.]. He graduated from Harvard College in 1835, taught a year, began to read law in his father's office, and continued in the Harvard Law School, where he received the degree of LL.B. in 1839. He rapidly rose to eminence in practice, being associated in various cases with Choate and with Webster. He entered politics in 1840 as a delegate to the Whig young men's convention for Middlesex County. Five years later he was one of the organizers of an anti-annexation meeting at which was adopted a pledge written by himself and Henry Wilson to "use all practicable means for the extinction of slavery on the American Continent." A few months later as an anti-slavery Whig he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, where his declaration that he would rather be a "Conscience Whig" than a "Cotton Whig" gave the slogan to the anti-slavery movement, of which he became a leader. His call to the people of Massachusetts in protest against the nomination of Taylor for president led to the Free Soil convention at Worcester on June 28, l848.

In 1849 he was appointed a judge of the court of common pleas. One of the notable features of his service on the bench was his charge to the grand jury in the trial of the men who attempted to free the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns [q.v.]. In 1855 he resigned to resume practice but in 1859 he became an associate justice of the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, a position which he held for a decade. Then called by President Grant to the post of attorney-general, he proved one of the most effective department heads. He exerted his influence against the recognition of the Cuban insurgents as belligerents. When nine new circuit judgeships were created, Hoar's sturdy insistence that these positions be filled by men of high character and fitness was keenly resented by many senators who wished to treat them as patronage. Accordingly, a few months later when the President nominated him for a seat upon the supreme bench, the Senate rejected the nomination, ostensibly because he did not live in the district to which he was to be assigned. "What could you expect from a man who had snubbed seventy Senators!" said Simon Cameron (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, post, p. 304). The charge that Grant and Hoar connived to pack the Supreme Court so as to obtain a reversal of its stand upon the legal-tender issue has been conclusively refuted (G. F. Hoar, The Charge against President Grant and Attorney General Hoar of Packing the Supreme Court, 1896; Storey and Emerson, post, pp. 199-202). In 1870, with dignified loyalty to his chief, he retired from the cabinet when Grant sought to secure the support of some Southern senators who were demanding that the Attorney-General be displaced by a man from the South; but the next year he yielded to Grant's request to serve as a member of the joint high commission which framed the Treaty of Washington to settle the Alabama claims. He served a single term in Congress (1873-75), where his brother, George F. Hoar, was one of his colleagues. Here he opposed the Sherman Resumption Bill and the Force Bill. He was a valuable member of the committee to which was referred the revision of the United States statutes and he served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. At the end of his term he returned to Concord. In 1876 he was induced to enter the campaign as a candidate for Congress against Benjamin F. Butler [q.v.], to whose influence in national and in state politics he had for many years been the most vigorous opponent, but he was heavily defeated by that astute politician. As a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1876, he supported Bristow till the last ballot, when he voted for Hayes. In 1884 he supported Blaine. In his later years he declined to reenter public service though urged to be a member of the commission to investigate governmental conditions in Louisiana and to act as counsel for the United States before the fishery commission.

He was a devoted son of Harvard College, serving for nearly thirty years either as overseer or as member of the corporation. In the American Unitarian Association he was a dominant force. At the bar he was noted for the closeness of his reasoning and the keenness of his wit. He was a brilliant conversationalist and for nearly forty years was a member of the Saturday Club, which numbered many of the brightest intellects in New England. On November 20, 1840, he married Caroline Downes Brooks. Of their seven children, the youngest, Sherman Hoar, was elected as representative to Congress in 1890, third of the family in direct descent to hold that position.

Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar (1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 volumes, 1903); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, IX (1895); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Boston Transcript, February 1, 1895.]

G. H. H.


HOAR, George Frisbie (August 29, 1826- September 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, senator. Helped organize the Free-Soil Party in Massachusetts. Brother of Samuel and E. Rockwood Hoar.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 87-88:

HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE (August 29, 1826- September 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, senator, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of Sarah (Sherman) and Samuel Hoar [q.v.] and the brother of E. Rockwood Hoar [q.v.]. He was educated in the academy at Concord, Harvard College (B.A. 1846), and the Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1849). In 1849 he began the practice of law in Worcester, where he continued to make his home for the rest of his life. His beginning in politics was in folding and directing the call, prepared by his father and brother, for the convention which launched the Free Soil party in Massachusetts.

He was intimately associated with the planning and the early organization of the Republican party in the state and, for half a century, he gave to it service in many responsible positions without, apparently, appreciating those social and economic developments which had changed the party of Abraham Lincoln to that of Mark Hanna and William McKinley. He presided over the Republican state convention in 1871, 1877, 1882, and 1885. He was a delegate to its national convention from 1876 to 1888, and chairman of the one which nominated Garfield. In 1852 he was elected to the state House of Representatives and five years later he served a term in the Senate. In 1869, during his absence in England, he was elected as a Republican to Congress, and served in the House till 1877, when he was elected by the legislature to the Senate. Reelected four times, he continued to represent Massachusetts in the Senate until his death.

During his seven years in the House his most congenial work was on the committee on the judiciary. He was one of the managers of the House in the impeachment of William Belknap [q.v.] and presented a vigorous argument for his conviction despite the plea that the Senate had no jurisdiction because the defendant was no longer in office as secretary of war. He was a member of the electoral commission which determined the outcome of the Hayes-Tilden controversy in 1877. In 1873 he was chairman of the special committee which investigated governmental conditions in Louisiana.

In the Senate his most effective work was done upon measures of a professional or an administrative character, rather than upon more popular political measures. In his own opinion his most important service to the country was on the committee on claims, where he exercised great influence in determining the doctrines which guided the Senate's action on civil war claims of individuals, corporate bodies, and states. For more than twenty-five years he served continuously on the committee on privileges and elections, and his opinions are cited as authoritative. For twenty years he was a member of the committee on the judiciary and during much of the time its chairman. At the request of this committee he waited upon President McKinley [q.v.] to protest against his practice of appointing senators upon commissions whose work was later to come before the Senate for approval. In character, in speech, and in bearing he upheld the highest traditions of the Senate and was the author of two of its rules demanding decorum in debate. His speeches in opposition to the election of senators by popular vote were among the weightiest arguments on that side of the question. He was the author of the law of 1887 which repealed the portion of the tenure-of-office act then in force, and of the presidential succession act of 1886, and he had a large part in framing bankruptcy and anti-trust legislation.

Moral issues won his prompt and tireless support. In the House he opposed the "salary grab" of 1873 and he turned over every pen ny of back pay which that brought to him to found a scholarship in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In the Senate he was the chief sponsor for laws to curb lotteries. His contempt for the bigotry of the "A. P. A." nativist movement led him, against the advice of his friends, to write a scathing letter which helped bury that movement "in the 'cellar' in which it was born" (Dresser, post, p. 7). Reckless of the possible political effect upon his future, he fought most strenuously against the Republican administration's Philippine policy. Although his stand upon this question was disapproved in Massachusetts, yet so great was the admiration for his sincerity that he was reelected in 1901 by a very large majority. Devotion to the country's service in the House and Senate involved not only the renunciation of a rapidly increasing legal practice but also the declining of other high honors. Twice he was offered an appointment to the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts. Hayes and McKinley each offered to send him to represent the United States in England, where his friendships among judges and scholars and statesmen would have made his position exceptionally congenial, but his modest means did not permit him to accept.

His counsel was sought in behalf of many educational and literary institution s. For twelve years he was an overseer of Harvard College. He helped establish in his home city the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Clark University and was an influential trustee of both these institutions from their organization until his death. He served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and as president of the American Antiquarian Society and of the American Historical Association. He was ever a student, accumulated for himself a choice library in history and in English and classical literature, and took an active interest in the development of the Library of Congress. He was instrumental in obtaining the return to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of the manuscript of Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth plantation. He was a formidable debater, quick in repartee and in sustaining his arguments by legal and historical precedents. He was often invited to address literary and historical associations. Though he had neither a pleasing voice nor a graceful presence, he was an effective speaker possessed of a noble and dignified style. The stern  puritanism to which he had been accustomed in childhood was mollified in his later years. He was a liberal Unitarian, scrupulous in the support of his church and tolerant of the views of others. He delighted in the associations of the Saturday Club and in loyalty to his friends.

He was twice married: to Mary Louisa Spurr in 1853, and to Ruth Ann Miller in 1862. He was survived by the two children of his first wife.

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 volumes, 1903); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, XVIII-XIX (1905-06); a critical estimate by T. W. Higginson in Proceedings Academy of Arts and Science, Volume XL (1905); F. F. Dresser, G. F. Hoar: Reprint from Reminiscences and Biographical Notices of Past Members of the Worcester Fire Society 1917 (1917); eulogy in Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, volumes XVI-XVII (1905-07); G. F. Hoar, Memorial Addresses Delivered in the Sen. and H. of R. (1905); Talcot Williams, in Review of Review (New York), November 1904; M. A. De W. Howe, Later Years of the Saturday Club (1927); Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation ... With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of the MS. to Massachusetts (1899); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Records of the Trustees of Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Boston Transcript, September 30, 1904; Springfield Daily Republican, September 30, 1904.]

G. H. H.


HOAR, Samuel (May 18, 1778-Novovember 2, 1856), lawyer, U.S. congressman, founding member of the Massachusetts Free-Soil Party, founding member of the Massachusetts Republican Party. Anti-slavery political leader.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 89-90); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 89-90:

HOAR, SAMUEL (May 18, 1778-November 2, 1856), lawyer, congressman, was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the son of Susanna (Pierce) and Samuel Hoar, a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, later a magistrate and member of the Massachusetts House and Senate. He was a descendant of John, one of the brothers of Leonard Hoar [q. v.]. He was prepared for college by the Reverend Charles Stearns of Lincoln and was graduated from Harvard College (B.A.) in 1802. The next two years he spent as tutor in a private family in Virginia, where he developed a life-long abhorrence of domestic slavery. He studied law in the office of Artemas Ward [q.v.] and in 1805 began practice in Concord. He rose rapidly in his profession and for forty years was one of the eminent lawyers in the state, ranking in court practice with Webster and Choate. He was a conservative in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820, served several terms in the state Senate, and at seventy-two was elected to the House of Representatives, where he was successful in defeating an attempt to abolish the corporation of Harvard College and to substitute a board to be chosen by the legislature. Harvard's president declared: "Other men have served the College; Samuel Hoar saved it" (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography, I, 29).

In politics he was first a Federalist, then a Whig. He was a representative in Congress, 1835-37, and vigorously upheld the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and opposed the recognition of the independence of Texas. He was a delegate to the convention which nominated Harrison for president. In 1848, believing that the nomination of Taylor marked the Whig party's abandonment of its opposition to the spread of slavery, he at once exerted himself to bring about united political action by men of all parties opposed to the nominations of Cass or Taylor. He was the first to sign the call written by his son, E. Rockwood Hoar [q.v.], for the convention, over which he presided, at Worcester on June 28, 1848, and in the ensuing campaign his name headed the electoral ticket of the Free Soil party in Massachusetts. In 1854 he led in the movement which, at the Worcester convention in September, first placed "Republican" candidates in  nomination for state  offices. The following year he was chairman of the committee which called the convention that formally organized the Republican party in Massachusetts.

In 1844 the governor, as authorized by the legislature, employed him to test the constitutionality of certain South Carolina laws under which many Massachusetts colored citizens, seamen on vessels touching at South Carolina ports, were seized on arrival, put in jail, and kept imprisoned till their vessel s ailed or, if their jail fees were not then paid, sold as slaves. On the day of Hoar's arrival in Charleston the legislature, only one member dissenting, by resolution requested the Governor to expel "the Northern emissary" from the state. Warned by the mayor and the sheriff that his life was in danger and urged to depart, he replied that he was too old to run and that he could not return to Massachusetts without an effort to perform the duty assigned him. Under threat of violence from the mob that surrounded his hotel, at the earnest request of a committee of seventy leading citizens, he consented to walk instead of being dragged-to the carriage waiting to convey him to the boat. The indignity to which this venerable citizen of Massachusetts had been subjected produced hot indignation throughout the North.

After he had retired from active practice of the law, for nearly twenty years he devoted his energies to the service of the church, of temperance, and of various organizations for the promotion of peace, colonization, and education. He was an overseer of Harvard College but not less interested and conscientious in his duties a s a member of the Concord school committee. He was a Unitarian, strict in observance of the Sabbath, and for many years teacher and superintendent in the local Sunday school, He was of imposing appearance, of great courtesy especially to women and little children, and tender to all who were the victims of injustice. He married (October 13, 1812) Sarah, daughter of Roger Sherman [q. v.] of Connecticut. Six children were born to them. Four of his descendants followed him in service in the national House of Representatives: his sons, E. Rockwood and George F. Hoar [q.v.]; and two grandsons, Sherman and Rockwood Hoar.

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903), Volume I; G. F. Hoar, in Memorial Biographies New England Historical Genealogical Society, Volume III (1883); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1 series, Volume V (1862); Barzillai Frost, A Sermon Preached in Concord (1856); Joseph Palmer, Necrology of Alumni of Harvard College (1864); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); R. W. Emerson, in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, December 1856; Boston Transcript, November 3, 1856.)

G. H. H.


HODGE, Charles, 1797-1878, Princeton, New Jersey, professor, theologian.  Officer, New Jersey auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 117; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 223; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 98; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 85)


HODGE, Charles E., abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1856-60.


HODGSON, Joseph, abolitionist, Delaware, member and delegate of the Delaware Abolition Society, founded 1788

(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, p. 224)


HOFFMANN, Francis Arnold (June 5, 1822-January 23, 1903), clergyman, lieutenant-governor of Illinois, agricultural writer under the name Hans Buschbauer. He proved a strong factor in winning an Anti-Nebraska majority in the Illinois legislature which elected Lyman Trumbull to the United States Senate in 1855. A friend of Lincoln, he was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Illinois.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 118-119:

HOFFMANN, FRANCIS ARNOLD (June 5, 1822-January 23, 1903), clergyman, lieutenant-governor of Illinois, agricultural writer under the name Hans Buschbauer, was born at Herford, Westphalia, the son of Frederick William and Wilhelmina (Groppe) Hoffmann. After attending the schools of Herford, he fled to America to escape conscription. Reaching Chicago in 1840, he served for a time as a hotel bootblack; then became the teacher of the pastorless Lutheran church at Dunkley's Grove (now Addison), III. The following year he studied for the ministry in Michigan. Returning after ordination, he was given charge of the Lutherans of northeastern Illinois. On February 22, 1844, he married Cynthia Gilbert, an American of English ancestry. While zealously ministering to his scattered flock and insisting on the exclusive use of German in his home, he soon mastered the English language and became active in public affairs as town clerk, postmaster, member of the school board, and contributor to the Chicago Democrat and the Prairie Farmer. In 1847 he was elected representative from Du Page County to the River and Harbor Convention held in Chicago. The same year he became pastor of the church at Schaumberg, Illinois. In 1851 he quit the ministry, moved to Chicago, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He also engaged successfully in the real-estate and insurance business and was the first editor of the Illinois Staats Zeitung. In 1852 he was elected to the city council. By organized efforts he attracted German immigrants to Chicago and Illinois, and, being entrusted with their money, as well as with capital from abroad for investment, he started a bank in 1854 with immediate success. He was appointed consul for several German states and in recognition of the services rendered his countrymen he was decorated by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha.

When Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill made the extension of slavery the dominant issue in politics, Hoffmann and his countrymen, theretofore Democrats, immediately protested. This was followed by an immense demonstration, February 8, 1854, at which he took the leading part, his sensational speech predicting the defection of the Germans should the measure pass. When the bill became a law, he proved a strong factor in winning an Anti-Nebraska majority in the legislature which elected Lyman Trumbull to the United States Senate in 1855. A friend of Lincoln, he was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Illinois and in 1856 was unanimously nominated for lieutenant-governor, but he proved ineligible because not yet of constitutional age. He spoke and wrote effectively, both in English and German, in 1856, 1858, and in 1860, when he was again nominated for lieutenant-governor and duly elected, serving with credit for four years. After the outbreak of the Civil War his bank failed owing to the repudiation of the bonds of the Southern states. Later, when he became commissioner of the Foreign Land Department of the Illinois Central Railroad, settling thousands of persons on their grants in the state, he used his large earnings mainly to liquidate obligations incident to the bank failure. In 1866 he established the International Bank, which soon took a leading place in business affairs. After the great fire of 1871, Hoffmann was chairman of the committee of bankers through whose efforts the banks were promptly reopened, thereby averting a panic. He was likewise prominently active in restoring Chicago's necessary business establishments.

His health failing, Hoffmann retired in 1875 to his estate on Rock River near Jefferson, Wisconsin. He had been an assiduous student of agriculture and horticulture since boyhood, and he devoted the rest of his life to the instruction of his countrymen in farm economy. He became editor of Der Haus und Bauernfreund, an agricultural supplement to Die Germania of Milwaukee; Die Deutsche Warte of Chicago; and the Deutsches Volksblatt of Buffalo. He assumed the pen name of Hans Buschbauer for these papers and for the books he wrote on agricultural subjects. Attaining great popularity and influence in his new field, he was urged to reenter politics but declined, continuing his literary activities and idyllic life at his home, "Tusculum," until his death.

[J. H. A. Lacher, "Francis Arnold Hoffmann of III. and Hans Buschbauer of Wisconsin," Wisconsin Magazine of History, June 1930; Wisconsin Farmer, December 29, 1893; F. I. Herriot, "The Germans of Chicago and Stephen A. Douglas in 1854," Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsbliitter. Jahrbuch der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Historischen Gesellschaft von Illinois Jahrgang I9I2, Volume XII (1913); D. I. Nelke, ed., The Columbian Biographical Directory ... of the Representative Men of the U.S., Wisconsin Volume (1895), pp. 540-48; The Bench and Bar of Chicago (n.d.), pp. 465- 69; Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Milwaukee Journal, January 23, 1903; Milwaukee Sentinel, January 24, 1903.]

J. H.A.L.


HOFFMAN, George, Maryland, railroad organizer.  First president of the Maryland State Colonization society, 1831. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 19, 38, 192)


HOFFMAN, Jacob.  Founding officer and manager of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, December 1816. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258n14)


HOFFMAN, John, Baltimore, Maryland.  Original co-founder and officer of the Maryland State Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 20, 192-193)


HOFFMAN, Peter, Baltimore, Maryland.  Leader and original co-founder of the Maryland State Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 20, 192)


HOLCOMB, Jedadiah, abolitionist, Brandon, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1841-45.


HOLLEN, Samuel, New York, American Abolition. Society

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855).


HOLLEY, Myron, 1779-1841, Rochester, New York, abolitionist leader, political leader, reformer. Founder of the Liberty Party. The formation of the Liberty party in April 1840 at Albany was in a large measure his achievement, for he had succeeded in transforming the moral and religious indignation of the Abolitionists into effective political action. Published the anti-slavery newspaper, Rochester Freeman.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 20, 23, 25, 26; Chadwick, 1899; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 295-296, 404n16; Goodell, 1852, pp. 470, 474, 556; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 16-17, 21; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 107-109, 112, 180, 305-306n17; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971; Wright, 1882; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 236; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 150-151; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 62)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 150-151:

HOLLEY, MYRON (April 29, 1779-March 4, 1841), Abolitionist, born at Salisbury, Connecticut, was the son of Luther and Sarah (Dakin) Holley and by family tradition a direct descendant of Edmund Halley, the English astronomer. Horace Holley [q.v.] was his younger brother. In 1799 he graduated from Williams College and began the study of law in the office of Judge Kent at Cooperstown, New York. In 1802 he practised law at Salisbury, and in the following year he moved to Canandaigua in New York. There he abandoned the law, and having purchased the stock of Bemis, a local merchant, he became the bookseller for the village and the surrounding country. In 1804 he married Sallie House who bore him six daughters. Elected in 1816 to represent Canandaigua in the General Assembly, he became deeply interested in the projected Erie Canal and was appointed one of the canal commissioners. He acted as treasurer of the commission and expended more than $2,500,000 for the state. Because of the method of the disbursements and his carelessness in safeguarding his own interests he was unable to produce vouchers for $30,000 of the total, and in order to make up the deficiency, he surrendered his small estate. An investigating committee exonerated him of all charges of misappropriation, but, although the state later returned his property, he was never adequately compensated for his great services. He had retired and was devoting himself to horticulture when he was again brought into public affairs by the abduction and murder of William Morgan followed by the anti-Masonic movement which swept New York state and culminated in a convention at Albany. He drafted the address of that convention to the people of the state and was one of the New York delegates to the National Anti-Masonic Convention which assembled in Philadelphia in 1830. The Address ... to the People of the United States (1830), eloquently demonstrating that Masonic societies were inimical to the principles of a free, republican government, was the work of Holley as the committee chairman. In 1831 he became editor of the Lyons Countryman and for the next three years waged a vigorous campaign against Freemasonry. In 1834 he went to Hartford to edit the Free Elector for the Anti-Masons of Connecticut, but after a year he returned to New York and settled near Rochester.

Holley first began to take a practical interest in the slavery question in the winter of 1837 and was soon convinced of the necessity of organized political action. At the anti-slavery convention held in Cleveland in 1839 he moved that a nomination of candidates for president and vice-president be made, but the motion was badly defeated. He returned to New York and secured the passage of a resolution by the Monroe County antislavery convention in favor of a distinct nomination, and a few days later he was again successful at a larger convention held at Warsaw, which convention nominated James G. Birney as its candidate. The formation of the Liberty party in April 1840 at Albany was thus in a large measure his achievement, for he had succeeded in transforming the moral and religious indignation of the Abolitionists into effective political action. On June 12, 1839, Holley issued the first number of the Rochester Freeman which he edited until it failed shortly before his death.

[Elizur Wright, Myron Holley; and What He Did for Liberty and True Religion, (1882); A Life for Liberty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley (1899), ed. by J. W. Chadwick; Wm. L. Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, Volume II (1885); The Rochester Historical Society Publication Fund Ser., volumes I-III (1922-24); W. F. Peck, Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester (1884); History Collections Relating to the Town of Salisbury, Connecticut, Volume II (1916); the Nation, March 9, 1882; files of the Rochester Freeman in the library of the Buffalo Historical Society; and manuscript letters in the Holley collection, New York Historical Society]

F. M-n.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 236;

HOLLEY, Myron, reformer, born in Salisbury, Connecticut, 29 April, 1779; died in Rochester, New York, 4 March, 1841. He was graduated at Williams in 1799, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He began practice in Salisbury, but in 1803 settled in Canandaigua, New York Finding the law uncongenial, he purchased the stock of a local bookseller and became the literary purveyor of the town. In 1810-'14 he was county-clerk, and in 1816 was sent to Albany as an assemblyman. The project of the Erie canal was at that time the great subject of interest, and through the efforts of Mr. Holley a board of commissioners was appointed, of whom he was one. His work thenceforth, until its completion, was on the Erie canal. For eight years his practical wisdom, energy, and self-sacrifice made him the executive power, without which this great enterprise would probably have been a failure. On the expiration of his term of office, in 1824, as canal-commissioner and treasurer of the board, he retired to Lyons, where with his family he had previously removed. The anti-Masonic excitement of western New York, arising from the abduction of William Morgan, soon drove Mr. Holley into prominence again. This movement culminated in a national convention being held in Philadelphia in 1830, where Henry D. Ward, Francis Granger, William H. Seward, and Myron Holley were the representatives from New York. An “Address to the People of the United States,” written by Holley, was adopted and signed by 112 delegates. The anti-Masonic adherents presented a candidate in the next gubernatorial canvass of New York, and continued to do so for several years, until the Whigs, appreciating the advantages of their support, nominated candidates that were not Masons. This action resulted, in 1838, in the election of William H. Seward. Meanwhile, in 1831, Mr. Holley became editor of the Lyons “Countryman,” a journal devoted to the opposition and suppression of Masonry; but after three years, this enterprise not having been successful, he went to Hartford, and there conducted the “Free Elector” for one year. He then returned to Lyons, but soon disposed of his property and settled near Rochester, where for a time he lived in quiet, devoting his attention to horticulture. When the anti-slavery feeling began to manifest itself Mr. Holley became one of its adherents. At this time he was offered a nomination to congress by the Whig party, provided he would not agitate this question; but this proposition he declined. He participated in the meeting of the anti-slavery convention held in Cleveland in 1839, and was prominent in the call for a national convention to meet in Albany, to take into consideration the formation of a Liberty party. At this gathering the nomination of James G. Birney was made, and during the subsequent canvass Mr. Holley was active in support of the candidate, both by continual speaking and by his incessant labors as editor of the Rochester “Freeman.” Mr. Holley's remains rest in Mount Hope cemetery, at Rochester, and the grave is marked by an obelisk, with a fine medallion portrait in white marble, the whole having been paid for in one-cent contributions by members of the Liberty party, at the suggestion of Gerrit Smith. See “Myron Holley; and What he did for Liberty and True Religion,” by Elizur Wright (Boston, 1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 236.


HOLLEY, Sallie, born 1818, New York, abolitionist, women’s rights leader, orator, lecturer, graduate of Oberlin College.  She attended a lecture by abolitionist Abbey Kelly and joined the abolitionist cause.  Holley became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.  She lectured against slavery in Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.  Caroline Putnam went with her on the lecture circuit.  Holley also wrote for Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator.  During the Civil War, continued to work for African Americans, collecting clothes and supplies.  After the war, she and Putnam volunteered to educate freed slaves.  They established a school in the South in Lottsburg, Virginia.

(Chadwick, 1899; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 281, 402n40, 402n41; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 53, 219-220)


HOLLINGSWORTH, Jesse, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others, Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1789. 

(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, p. 224)


HOLLISTER, David S., abolitionist, Wisconsin, Territory, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-40.


HOLMES, James H., abolitionist.  Husband of abolitionist Julia A. Holms.


HOLMES, Julia Archibald, 1838-1887, Lawrence, Kansas, abolitionist.


HOLMES, Oliver, Jr., dentist.  Colonial agent and leader of expedition to Africa for the Maryland State Colonization Society in February 1836. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 87, 89,90, 91-92, 119, 127)


HOLTON, Edward D., abolitionist.


HOLYOKE, William, Hamilton County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-37.


HOOPER, Samuel, 1808-1875, merchant.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts.  Elected in 1860, served until his death in 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 252; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 203-204; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 144; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 252;

HOOPER, Samuel, merchant, born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 3 February, 1808; died in Washington, D. C., 13 February, 1875. After receiving a common-school education he entered at an early age the counting-house of his father, who was engaged in European and West Indian trade. As agent of this enterprise the son visited Russia, Spain, and the West Indies. About 1832 he became junior partner in the mercantile house of Bryant, Sturgis, and Co., in Boston, where he remained for ten years, and then was a member of the firm of William Appleton and Co., who were engaged in the China trade. He was much interested in the iron business and its relation to questions of political economy, and possessed shares in the mines and furnaces near Port Henry, Lake Champlain, and in the Bay-State rolling-mills, South Boston. In 1851 He was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives, where he served three years, declining a re-election, and in 1857 became state senator, but refused a renomination on account of his business enterprises. In 1860 he was elected to congress, as a Republican, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William Appleton, and was re-elected at each successive biennial election until his death. He served on the committees on ways and means, on banking and currency, and on the war debts of the loyal states. The success of the national loan of April, 1861, was greatly due to his efforts. In 1869 Chief-Justice Chase wrote a letter attributing the success of the bill that provided for the national banking system to the “good judgment, persevering exertions, and disinterested patriotism of Mr. Hooper.” In 1866 he was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' convention. He presented $50,000 to Harvard, in 1866, to found a school of mining and practical geology in close connection with the Lawrence scientific school, and in that year received the degree of M. A. from the university. He wrote two pamphlets on currency, which became well known for their broad and comprehensive treatment of this subject. His house in Washington, which was noted for its hospitality, was the headquarters of General George B. McClellan in 1861-'2. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 252.


HOPKINS, Augustus, Stark County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Recording Secretary, 1837-39.


HOPKINS, John, 1795-1873, abolitionist, entrepreneur, philanthropist.  His family were Quakers and freed their slaves in 1807.  Worked with prominent abolitionists Myrtilla Miner and Henry Ward Beecher.  Strong supporter of Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War.  Supported African American institutions.  After the war, founder of John Hopkins Institutes in Baltimore, Maryland. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 213-217.)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 256:

HOPKINS, Johns, philanthropist, born in Anne Arundel county, Maryland, 19 May, 1795; died in Baltimore. 24 December, 1873. His parents were Quakers, and their son was trained to a farming life, but received a fair education. At seventeen years of age he went to Baltimore, became a clerk in his uncle's wholesale grocery-store, and in a few years accumulated sufficient capital to establish himself in the grocery trade with a partner. Three years later, in 1822, he founded, with his two brothers, the house of Hopkins and Brothers. He rapidly added to his fortune until he had amassed large wealth. Retiring from business as a grocer in 1847, he engaged in banking and railroad enterprises, became a director in the Baltimore and Ohio railroad company, and, in 1855, chairman of its finance committee. Two years afterward, when the company was seriously embarrassed, he volunteered to endorse its notes, and risked his private fortune in its extrication. He was one of the projectors of a line of iron steamships between Baltimore and Bremen, and built many warehouses in the city. In March, 1873, be gave property valued at $4,500,000 to found a hospital which, by its charter, is free to all, regardless of race or color, presented the city of Baltimore with a public park, and gave $3,500,000 to found the Johns Hopkins university, which was first proposed by him in 1867, and was opened in 1876. It embraces schools of law, medicine, science, and agriculture, and publishes the results of researches of professors and students. At his death he left a fortune of $10,000,000, including the sums set apart for the endowment of the university and hospital, which were devised to the trustees in his will. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HOPKINS, Reverend Dr. Samuel, 1721-1803, Newport, Rhode Island, theologian, opponent of slavery. Pastor of the First Congregational Church of New port, Rhode Island.  Wrote A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of Africans, 1776.  Called slavery a “scene of inhumanity, oppression and cruelty, exceeding everything of the kind that has ever been perpetrated by the sons of men.” 

(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, p. 136; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 290, 293, 340, 397, 457, 492; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 85, 88, 97-99, 123; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 22-23; Goodell, 1852, pp. 28, 41, 76, 92, 109, 114, 120-122, 127; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 40, 55, 58, 60, 64, 65, 86, 90, 103n, 187, 192; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 20, 22-23, 331; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 107, 118-119, 121, 153, 154, 156-157; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 217-218; Dark, “Memoir of Samuel Hopkins,” in Hopkins’ Works, Volume I, pp. 116, 140, 160; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 186)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 217-218:

HOPKINS, SAMUEL (September 17, 1721-December 20, 1803), theologian, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of Timothy and Mary (Judd) Hopkins. He was a descendant of John Hopkins who emigrated from England and settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1634, removing to Hartford, Connecticut, two years later. Timothy Hopkins was an influential person in his community and was many times sent to the General Court. Reared on a farm, Samuel fitted for college with the Reverend John Graham of the adjoining town of Woodbury, and graduated from Yale in 1741. After receiving licensure as a Congregational minister from the Fairfield East Association on April 29, 1742, he returned to the family of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, Massachusetts, where he had spent the previous winter, and remained in its stimulating mental and spiritual atmosphere until December. About a year later, December 28, 1743, he was settled over a church of five members in a parish of about thirty families, now known as Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Here on January 13, 1748, he married a member of his parish, Joanna Ingersol, and here his five sons and three daughters were born. The severity of the preacher's logic and his dullness as a sermonizer finally alienated his people and he was dismissed from his charge on January 18, 1769. The most important fact of this pastorate from the point of view of Hopkins' subsequent career was the seven years of intimate association with Jonathan Edwards, who in 1751 was appointed over the church in the adjoining town of Stockbridge. This close connection between two such strong and kindred minds greatly influenced the thinking of both. Obliged to seek a new settlement, Hopkins was installed as minister of the First Congregational Church of Newport, Rhode Island, on April 11, 1770, in which office he was continued until his death thirty-three years later. In 1776 Newport was occupied by the British who held it for more than three years, and Hopkins was compelled to seek refuge in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Canterbury, Connecticut, and Stamford, Connecticut. In 1780 he returned to find his parsonage burned, the church edifice nearly ruined, and his people impoverished. Refusing an attractive call to Middleboro, Massachusetts, he decided to remain in Newport, living on such weekly contributions as his people chose to give a sum which seldom exceeded $200 a year. His congregations were small, for few had a "high relish for truth" so profound and subtle, uttered in a manner without animation and heavy. In the pews, however, sat a superior youth, William Ellery Channing, whose spiritual nature was sensibly moulded by what he heard. While declaring "he was the very ideal of bad delivery" and that "such tones never came from any human voice within my hearing," Channing adds, "he lived in a world of thought above all earthly passions ... the sight of such (men) h.is done me more good, has spoken more to my head and heart, than many sermons and volumes" (The Works of W. E. Channing, Volume IV, 1841, pp. 348-53). He was an indefatigable student, spending some fourteen hours a day in his study, taking no exercise, living abstemiously; yet the interests of this recluse were broader than those of most of his contemporaries. His is the distinction of being one of the first Congregational ministers to denounce slavery; an act requiring unusual heroism, for Newport at the time was one of the centers of the slave-holding interests, and many of his congregation were slave-owners and financially identified with the trade. He also raised money to free a number of slaves in the neighborhood, and in 1773 joined with a ministerial friend, Ezra Stiles [q.v.], in an appeal for funds to train colored missionaries for Africa; he even perfected a plan, which he was prevented from carrying out, of establishing colonies of negroes in that continent.

Hopkins is chiefly remembered, however, for his profound influence on New England theology. The pupil and intimate friend of Jonathan Edwards, he carried the principles of the New Divinity to their logical conclusions. This he did in a fashion so complete and acceptable to large numbers of thinking men of his day that his school of thought was called "Hopkinsianism," and its philosophy, which quickened the spiritual life of New England, largely prevailed until different modes of thinking discredited its premises and antiquated its methods. He was the first of the New England theologians to form his teachings into a closely articulated scheme, and his System of Doctrines Contained in Divine Revelation, Explained and Defended (2 volumes, 1793) is the presentation of the matured thought which he had preached and written in pamphlets during his long life. He taught that a sovereign God does all things for his own glory and the greatest happiness of the whole; sin and evil are the occasion of great god as through his dealings with them the Deity displays his divine justice and mercy. Every one should gladly take his place in the divine plan, live for the good of the whole, and love God supremely without making any personal conditions whatever, even being willing to be among the reprobate, if such a fate would make for the glory of God. This "willing-to-be-damned" doctrine was not original with Hopkins, and Edwards had repudiated it, but critics seized upon it a s making too strenuous a demand upon frail human nature. Extreme and irrational though this feature was, the "system', as a whole, with its teaching of disinterested benevolence as the supreme motive of the individual, was of great ethical value, and its conception of a universe steadily set towards the greatest happiness of all had real spiritual grandeur. In power of comprehensive and thoroughgoing reasoning, in sustained elevation of tone, and in ability to bring ideas to bear persuasively upon the will it was a solid contribution to advancing ethical thought. The System of Doctrines had an unusual sale of twelve hundred copies and brought to the author the needed and substantial sum of nine hundred dollars. Hopkins was a voluminous and controversial writer, and among his other published works are: Sin, thro' Divine Interposition, an Advantage to the Universe (1759); An Enquiry Concerning the Promises of th e Gospel. Whether Any of Them Are Made to the Exercises and Doings of Persons in an Unregenerate State (1765); The True State and Character of the Unregenerate, Stripped of All Misrepresentation and Disguise (1769); Remarks on President Edwards' s Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True Virtue (1771); An Inquiry into the Nature of True Holiness (1773); A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans; Shewing It To Be the Duty and Interest of the A1nerican States to Emancipate all Their African Slav es (1776); A Discourse upon the Slave Trade and the Slavery of Africans (1793); A Treatise on the Millennium (1793), and The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Jonathan Edwards (1765). His first wife died in 1793, and in 1794, when he was seventy-three years of age, he married Elizabeth West, a member of his congregation, long a boarding school principal in Newport, and learned in theology.

[Memoir by E. A. Park, published as an introduction to The Works of Samuel Hopkins (3 volumes, 1852); Stephen West, Sketches of the Life of the Late Samuel Hopkins (1805), containing Hopkins' autobiography; John Ferguson, Memoir of the Life and Character of Reverend Samuel Hopkins, D.D. (1830); F. B. Deter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College 1701-45 (1885); Wm. A. Patten, Reminiscences of Samuel Hopkins Illustrative of his Character and Doctrines (1843); Williston Walker, Ten New England Leaders (1901); W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, Volume I (1857); F. H. Foster, A Genetic History of the New England Theology (1907); Early Religious Leaders of Newport (1918); Newport Mercury, December 24, 1803.]

C.A.D.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 257-258:

HOPKINS, Samuel, theologian, born in Waterbury, Connecticut, 17 September, 1721; died in Newport, Rhode Island, 20 December, 1803. He was brought up on a farm, graduated at Yale in 1741, and trained in theology by Jonathan Edwards. In 1743 he was ordained pastor of the church at Housatonnuc (afterward Great Barrington), Massachusetts, but in January, 1769, he was dismissed because his church was reduced in numbers. On 11 April, 1770, he was settled over a church in Newport, R I. In December, 1776, when the British took possession of Newport, he retired to Great Barrington. During the summer of 1777 he preached to a large congregation at Newburyport, Massachusetts, and subsequently at Canterbury and Stamford, Connecticut. In the spring of 1780, after the evacuation of Newport by the British, he returned, but found his congregation diminished and impoverished. For the remainder of his life he was obliged to depend on the weekly contributions of his hearers and the assistance of friends. In January, 1799, paralysis deprived him of the use of his limbs. He was an early advocate of the emancipation of negro slaves, freed his own, and originated the idea of sending the liberated slaves to Africa to act as agents of civilization. The agitation that was begun by him led to organized political action in Rhode Island and the passing of a law, in 1774, forbidding the importation of negroes into the colony, followed after the Revolution by an act of the legislature declaring all children of slaves that should be born subsequent to 1 March, 1785, to be free. He was the author of the modifications of the Calvinistic theology that came to be known as Hopkinsianism. He believed that the inability of the unregenerate is owing to moral and not to natural causes, and that sinners are free agents and deserving of punishment, though all acts, sinful as well as righteous, are the result of the decrees of providence. The essence of sin, he thought, consisted in the disposition and intention of the mind. Dr. Hopkins was an exceedingly modest and devout man, and exemplified the disposition of unselfishness and benevolence which he regarded as the basis of a Christian life. He was the original of one of the principal characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Minister's Wooing.” His theological theories, which created an epoch in the development of religious thought in New England, were first presented from the pulpit, and were developed, with some modifications, after his death, by his friends, Stephen West, Nathaniel Emmons, and Samuel Spring. Among his published sermons are “Sin, through Divine Interposition, an Advantage to the Universe; and yet this is no Excuse for Sin or Encouragement to it” (1759); “An Inquiry whether the Promises of the Gospel are made to the Exercises and Doings of Persons in the Unregenerate State” (1765); “The True State and Character of the Unregenerate” (1769); and “An Inquiry into the Nature of True Holiness” (1773). His “Dialogue Showing it to be the Duty and Interest of the American States to Emancipate all their African Slaves” appeared in 1776. His theological views were expounded in “A System of Doctrines Contained in Divine Revelation” (1793). He published a “Life of President Edwards” and lives of Susannah Anthony (1796), and Mrs. Osborn (1798). A dialogue on the nature and extent of true Christian submission, an address to professing Christians, and sketches of his own life were included in a collection of his works published by Dr. Stephen West (Stockbridge, 1805). A subsequent edition of his collected writings contains a memoir by Dr. Edwards A. Park (Boston, 1852). A “Treatise on the Millennium,” originally published with the “System of Divinity,” was reissued in 1854. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


HOPKINS, Stephen, 1707-1785, Rhode Island, founding father, political leader, signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Hopkins was a slaveholder.  He manumitted several of his slaves, but not all, during his lifetime.  In 1774, as a Rhode Island Assemblyman, he introduced a bill prohibiting importing slaves into the colony, which was passed.  This was one of the earliest anti-slavery laws enacted in the United States.  Hopkins was a practicing Quaker. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 259; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 219; Arnold, 1894; Austin, 1887)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 259:

HOPKINS, Stephen, signer of the Declaration of Independence, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 7 March, 1707; died there, 13 July, 1785. He was brought up as a farmer, and inherited an estate in Scituate. He was a member of the assembly in 1732-'3 and 1735-'8, and in 1736 was appointed a justice of the peace and one of the justices of the court of common pleas. He was the first town-clerk of Scituate. During his whole life he was largely employed as a land-surveyor. In 1741 he was again chosen to represent the town of Scituate in the assembly, and was elected speaker. In 1742 he sold his farm and removed to Providence, where he made a survey of the streets and lots, and afterward began business as a merchant and ship-builder. The same year he was sent to the assembly from Providence, and was again chosen speaker. In 1751 he was elected for the fourteenth time to the general assembly, and later in the year appointed chief justice of the superior court. He was a delegate from Rhode Island to the convention that met at Albany in 1754 for the purposes of concerting a plan of military and political union of the colonies and arranging an alliance with the Indians, in view of the impending war with France. He was one of the committee that drafted a plan of colonial union, which was accepted by the convention, but objected to in the various colonies and in Great Britain. In 1755 Mr. Hopkins was elected governor of the colony, and held that office, with the exception of two years, when he was defeated by his political rival, Samuel Ward, until 1764. After Ward had occupied the governor's chair for two years, Hopkins was again elected in 1767; but in October of that year he renounced further candidature for the sake of uniting the contending factious and putting an end to a party strife that distracted the colony. While he was governor, Hopkins had a controversy with William Pitt, prime minister of England, in relation to the contraband trade with the French colonies. He was one of the earliest and most strenuous champions of colonial rights against the encroachments of the English parliament. In 1765 he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Grievances of the American Colonies Candidly Examined,” which was printed by order of the general assembly, and reissued in London the next year. In 1765 he was elected chairman of a committee appointed at a special town-meeting held in Providence to draft instructions to the general assembly on the stamp-act. The resolutions reported and adopted were nearly identical with those that Patrick Henry introduced into the house of burgesses of Virginia. In 1770 he was again elected to the general assembly. He was appointed a member of the committee on correspondence the following year, and was successively re-elected to the assembly till 1775. While holding a seat in the assembly, and afterward in the Continental congress, he filled the office of chief justice of Rhode Island as well, being appointed for the second time to that station in 1770. In 1773 he emancipated his slaves, and in 1774 brought forward a bill in the assembly which prohibited the importation of negroes into the colony. He was elected, with Samuel Ward, to represent Rhode Island in the general congress in August, 1774, and was appointed on the first two committees. In the beginning of the Revolution he was one of the committee of safety of the town of Providence, and in May, 1775, was elected to the 2d congress. In the 3d congress he had William Ellery as his colleague. The signature of Hopkins to the Declaration of Independence is written with a trembling hand for the reason that he had suffered for several years from a paralytic affection which prevented him from writing except by guiding the right hand with the left, though in early life he had been famed for the elegance of his penmanship. He was a delegate from Rhode Island to the commission that was appointed by the New England states to consult on the defence of their borders and the promotion of the common cause, and presided over the meetings in Providence in 1776 and in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1777. He was not a member of the congress in 1777, but in the following year was a delegate for the last time. Mr. Hopkins was a powerful and lucid speaker, and used his influence in congress in favor of decisive measures. He worshipped with the Friends, but professed religious views so latitudinarian that he was called by his enemies an infidel. His knowledge of the business of shipping made him particularly useful in congress as a member of the naval committee in devising plans for fitting out armed vessels and furnishing the colonies with a naval armament, and in framing regulations for the navy. He was also a member of the committee that drafted the articles of confederation for the government of the states. In 1777 he was an active member of the general assembly of Rhode Island. He was a founder of the town library of Providence in 1750, which was burned in 1758, but re-established through his instrumentality. Besides the work already mentioned, he was the author of a “History of the Planting and Growth of Providence,” which appeared in the Providence “Gazette” in 1765. See “Stephen Hopkins, a Rhode Island Statesman,” by William E. Foster (Providence, 1884).  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HOPKINS, Timothy M., Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-36.


HOPKINS, William, abolitionist, Fremont, Indiana, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1856-64.


HOPPER, Anna, daughter of Lucretia Mott, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(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. 71, 75)


HOPPER, Isaac Tatem, 1771-1852, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, prison reformer, philanthropist, radical abolitionist leader, member Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Treasurer of the Anti-Slavery Society, operator of the Underground Railroad, helped 3,000 Black fugitive slaves to Canada. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 118, 148, 160, 162, 187; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 27, 29, 30, 100, 105, 111, 225, 273, 276, 277, 374; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 131; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 261; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 224-225; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 445-446; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 202)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 224-225:

HOPPER, ISAAC TATEM (December 3, 1771- May 7, 1852), humanitarian, abolitionist, was born in Deptford, Gloucester County, New Jersey, the son of Levi and Rachel (Tatem) Hopper. His father came of a Quaker family, his mother was a member of the Presbyterian Church. Isaac settled in Philadelphia in 1787 at the age of sixteen, served a period of apprenticeship as a tailor, and then opened a tailor-shop on his own account. He was profoundly influenced in his religious life by William Savery [q.v.], a prominent Philadelphia Quaker preacher of that period, and he joined the Society of Friends by his own request, at the age of twenty-two. On September 18, 1795, he married Sarah Tatum, a distant relative. He had imbibed in his early youth a strong sympathy for negro slaves and as a young man became a member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Before 1800 he had begun the work of assisting runaway slaves to escape. He became thoroughly familiar with the "underground" methods of procedure in Philadelphia and from 1800 until 1829, when he moved to New York, he was one of the foremost promoters of the secret transmission of slaves through the city on their way northward. He became an expert in all the intricacies of the laws affecting slaves and he handled many slave cases in the Philadelphia courts as voluntary advocate. He was tactful, quick in the discovery of expedients, devoid of fear, and he soon acquired unusual prestige as the defender of the friendless and oppressed.

In 1822 his wife, the mother of ten children, died. Two years later, in 1824, he married Hannah Attmore. When in 1827 the "Separation" occurred in the Society of Friends in Philadelphia, Hopper affiliated himself with the so-called "Hicksite" section and became one of the leaders of that branch. Moving to New York City in 1829, he became manager of a bookshop and transferred his anti-slavery activities to the New York center of operations. He often sent escaping slaves by water from New York to Providence and Boston. Both he and his son John were set upon by mobs, the father in New York, the son in Charleston, South Carolina, but they both escaped without serious injury. His daughter, Abigail Hopper Gibbons [q.v.] and his son-in-law, James Sloan Gibbons [q.v.] were also active in anti-slavery activities. In 1841, Hopper became associated with Lydia Maria Child [q.v.] in the editorship and management of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. His public work in connection with this extreme anti-slavery journal and his reputation in connection with the "Underground Railroad" aroused an opposition to him. A section in the Quaker Meeting (the "Hicksite Branch") led by a conservative minister of the Society disapproved of public reform work carried on by Friends. Furthermore, the press of the city and its churches generally, reflected the feeling of its merchants, who had a large and profitable Southern trade and did not wish that trade disturbed. The Society of Friends, which had, eighty years previous, disowned the last few of its members who would not manumit their slaves, was at this time, and for the next decade much influenced by the pervading pro-slavery sentiment. Hopper, his son-in-law Gibbons, and Charles Marriott were "disowned from membership" in 1841 by the New York Monthly Meeting. An appeal was made by these three Friends to the Quarterly Meeting and the Yearly Meeting, both of which narrowly sustained the action of the Monthly Meeting. Hopper continued throughout his life to wear the Quaker garb and to use the Quaker form of speech and he was always popularly known as "Friend Hopper.'' Work for prison reform paralleled his anti-slavery work and equally absorbed his attention. During his period of life in Philadelphia he had been an inspector of prisons and in the New York period he gave much time to the work of the prison association of the state. As he grew older and his anti-slavery work slackened, he became agent of the Prison Association of New York and gradually acquired the reputation of being one of the foremost experts in penology in the United States. His work fell into three parts: first, protecting and defending persons who were arrested and held without suitable legal counsel; second, advising and instructing convicts while in prison; and third, aiding discharged prisoners in their return to normal social and business relations. His work in this field was of a high order and entitles him to a place among the notable reformers of prison systems and prison methods. He had become everywhere recognized as the prisoner's friend and helper as he had been throughout his life the friend and helper of persons of color when he died in New York City.

[L. M. Child, Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life (1853); Sarah Hopper Emerson, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbon s (2 volumes, 1897); William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872); W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1898); R. P. Tatum, Tatum Narrative 1626-1925 (1925); Narrative of the Proceedings of the Monthly Meeting of New York, and Their Subsequent Confirmation by the Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, in the Case of Isaac T. Hopper (1843); files of the National Anti-Slavery Standard; obituaries in that journal, May 13, 1852, and in the New York Tribune, May 8, 1852.]

R.M.J.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 261:

HOPPER, Isaac Tatem, philanthropist, born in Deptford township, Gloucester county, New Jersey, 3 December, 1771; died in New York city, 7 May, 1852. He learned the tailor's trade of an uncle in Philadelphia. He early joined the Quakers, and afterward became a believer in the doctrines taught by Elias Hicks, whose followers were subsequently known as Hicksites. When he was young, Philadelphia was infested by slave kidnappers, who committed many outrages. Under these circumstances the Pennsylvania abolition society, of which Mr. Hopper became an active and leading member, was frequently called upon to protect the rights of colored people, and in time he became known to every one in Philadelphia as the friend and adviser of the oppressed race in all emergencies. He was one of the founders and the secretary of a society for the employment of the poor; overseer of the Benezet school for colored children; teacher, without recompense, in a free school for colored adults; inspector of the prison, without a salary; member of a fire company, and guardian of abused apprentices. When pestilence was raging, he was devoted to the sick, and the poor were continually calling upon him to plead with importunate landlords and creditors. He was not unfrequently employed to settle estates involved in difficulties, which others were disinclined to undertake, and he had occasional applications to exert his influence over the insane, for which he had a peculiar tact. Although he was a poor man with a large family, his house was for many years a home for impoverished Quakers, and he transacted much business for the Society of Friends. In 1829 he removed to New York to take charge of a book-store established by the Hicksite Quakers. In the autumn of 1830, being called to Ireland on business connected with his wife's estate, he availed himself of the opportunity to visit England. In both countries he was at first treated somewhat cavalierly by the orthodox Quakers, and pointed out as the one “who has given Friends so much trouble in America.” His candor and amiability, however, soon removed these unfavorable impressions, and he had no occasion ultimately to complain of his reception. On his return to New York, he threw himself heart and soul into the work of the Prison association, whose aims and plans of action were entirely in accordance with his views. To render such practical aid as would enable the repentant to return to society, by engaging in some honest calling, he devoted the greater part of his time and attention. No disposition was too perverse for his efforts at reform; no heart so hard that he did not try to soften; no relapses could exhaust his patience, which, without weak waste of means, continued “hoping all things” while even a dying spark of good feeling remained. In the spring of 1841, the demand for Hicksite books having greatly diminished, Friend Hopper became treasurer and book-agent for the Anti-slavery society. Although he had reached the age of seventy, he was as vigorous as a man of fifty. In 1845 he relinquished these offices, and devoted the rest of his life entirely to the work of the Prison association. In his labors he was greatly assisted by a married daughter, Abby H. Gibbons, who was as vigilant and active in behalf of women discharged from prison as was her father in behalf of men. Through her exertions, an asylum was founded for these unfortunates, which was called the “Isaac T. Hopper Home. The aged philanthropist frequently had occasion to visit Albany, New York, to represent the association and to address the legislature. Judge Edmonds thus refers to one of these occasions: “His eloquence was simple and direct, but most effective. If he was humorous, his audience were full of laughter; if solemn, a death-like stillness reigned; if pathetic, tears flowed all around him.” He had often to plead for the pardon of prisoners, and Governor John Young, of New York, once said to him: “Friend Hopper, I will pardon any convict whom you say you conscientiously believe I ought to pardon.” The career of this untiring benefactor is best summed up in the words of one of his own sect: “The Bible requires us to love our neighbors as well as ourselves; and Friend Hopper has loved them better!” His life was written by Lydia Maria Child (Boston, 1853).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 261.


HOPPER, Sarah, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III)


HORTON, George Firman, 1806-1886, physician, temperance activist, abolitionist.  Active member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 266).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 266:

HORTON, George Firman, physician. born in Terrytown, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, 2 January, 1806; died there, 20 December, 1886. He was educated at Rensselaer polytechnic institute, Troy, New York, and in the medical department of Rutgers college, and began practice in his; native town in 1829. He became an advocate of the temperance cause in 1830, and was a member of the American anti-slavery society almost from the time of its foundation till the extinction of slavery. He was for twelve years treasurer and town-clerk of his township, from 1830 till 1856 postmaster at Terrytown, and in 1872 was elected a delegate to the Constitutional convention of Pennsylvania for revising the state constitution. He was a skilful botanist and entomologist. He published reports of his cases in the “Transactions of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society”; “Reports on the Geology of Bradford County” (1858); and “The Horton Genealogy” (1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 266.


HORTON, George Moses, North Carolina slave, published book of poetry, The Hope of Liberty, 1824

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 20-21, 278; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 232)


HORTON, Jonathon, anti-slavery activist, Methodist.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 187)


HORTON, Jotham, anti-slavery advocate.  Helped found the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1843 with abolitionists Orange Scott and Le Roy Sunderland in 1843. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 187; Matlack, 1849, p. 162)



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.