Mas-May: Mash through Maynard

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.


MASH, Joseph, Sandwich, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-1840.


MASLIN, James, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Chester-Town Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1791. 

(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. 224, 241n24)


MASON, Charles (October 24, 1804-February 25, 1882), jurist. Among his notable decisions was the one relating to the legal status of the negro, Ralph (Iowa Reports, 1). His view in this case was that a slave going into a free territory by the consent of his master was thereafter to be treated not as a fugitive and chattel but as a free man-a theory in conflict with a later pronouncement of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 357-358:

MASON, CHARLES (October 24, 1804-February 25, 1882), jurist, was born in Pompey, Onondaga County, New York, the son of Chauncey and Esther (Dodge) Mason. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825 and was graduated in 1829 at the head of his class, with Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee as classmates. For the next two years he was assistant professor of engineering at West Point. His interest in law, already manifest at West Point, led him to devote his whole time to its study. He read law in New York City, was admitted to the bar in June 1832, and began practice at Newburgh, New York. Within two years he returned to New York City, where he contributed to the Evening Post and during the temporary absence of its regular editor, William Cullen Bryant, served for a short period as acting editor. In 1836 he went West on a tour of observation and in April 1837, was appointed by Governor Henry Dodge as an aide and as public prosecutor of Des Moines County in Wisconsin Territory. On August 1, he was married to Angelica Gear, of Berkshire, Massachusetts, the aunt of John Henry Gear [q.v.], and in November he established himself in Burlington.

When the new Territory of Iowa was organized in 1838, he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court. He was twice reappointed to this position and retained his seat for several months after the organization of the state of Iowa in December 1846. Among his notable decisions was the one relating to the legal status of the negro, Ralph (I Iowa Reports, 1). His view in this case was that a slave going into a free territory by the consent of his master was thereafter to be treated not as a fugitive and chattel but as a free man-a theory in conflict with a later pronouncement of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott. In 1847 he was attorney for Iowa in the Iowa Missouri dispute that was submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States and decided in favor of Iowa (Annals of Iowa, October 1866-January 1867). As a member of the commission to draft the first code of the state, The Code of Iowa ... 1851 (1851), he exercised a marked influence on the laws of the state and subsequently on the codes of other states. In the interval between his work on the Iowa code commission and his election, in 1851, to the position of county judge of Des Moines County, he was in law partnership with Samuel R. Curtis and John W. Rankin at Keokuk. Appointed federal commissioner of patents in 1853, he laid down certain precedents that are followed by the agriculture department to the present time. He resigned this office in 1857 and became a member of the first Iowa state board of education. Two years thereafter he was legal adviser to Munn & Company in their pa tent agency, effecting, among other things, the extension of the Morse telegraph patent in the face of vigorous opposition.

Later he went to Washington, D. C., where he engaged in the practice of patent law. He was active in efforts to provide for the city of Washington a more efficient system of drainage and was able to draw upon his own knowledge of engineering for the plans. He declined the Democratic nomination for the governorship of Iowa in 1861, was defeated in 1863 for a position on the supreme court of Iowa, and in 1867 was defeated for the governorship. In 1864 he was chairman of the national central committee of his party and was a delegate to the nominating conventions of 1868 and 1872. He wrote various pamphlets on financial subjects, drainage, and sanitation. Among these were: Articles on the Currency (1858), A Plan for Specie Resumption (1874), and What Shall Be Done with the Surplus Funds of the Patent Office! (1870). The last years of his life were spent partly in Washington and partly in Iowa, where he continued his connections with the financial and industrial interests of the community. One of his three daughters, the wife of George Collier Remey [q.v.], survived him.

[Diaries in the possession of the historical department of Iowa; information from his grandson, Charles Mason Remey, Washington, D. C.; letter from Mason in E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers (1916); Iowa Historical Record, October 1893; Annals of Iowa, July-October 1864, July-October 1895, October 1896, January 1901, January 1902, April, October 1926, April 1929; J. C. Parish, Robert Lucas (1907); Walter Geer, The Geer Genealogy (1923); Iowa Journal of History and Politics, January 1914.]

B. F. S.


MASON, George, 1725-1792, statesman.  Virginia Constitutionalist.  Slaveholder who himself opposed slavery on moral grounds.  Authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights.  Opposed the U.S. Constitution because of the stand on the issue of slavery.  Mason wrote: “Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.  They [slaves] prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country.  They produce a pernicious effect on manners.  Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.  They bring the judgment of heaven on a country.”  Mason did not sign the U.S. Constitution and stated during the Virginia Ratifying Convention debate: “Under the royal government, this evil was looked upon as a great oppression, and was one of the great causes of our separation from Great Britain.  Its exclusion has been a principal object of this state and most of the states in the Union.  The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind… As much as I value a union of all the states, I would not admit the Southern States into the Union unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness, and not strength, to the Union.”

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 241-242, 721-722; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 361-364; 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. 389, 522-523; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 24, 28, 41; 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. 89f, 90n, 93; Mason, 2006, pp. 33-34, 250n140, 293-294n157; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 14)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 361-364:

MASON, GEORGE (1725-October 7, 1792), planter, Revolutionary statesman, constitutionalist, was the fourth of his name and line in Virginia. The first American George Mason [q.v.], who probably emigrated from England soon after the battle of Worcester, settled in the Northern Neck on 900 acres near Pasbytanzy; he and his descendants added to this original grant so that when the fourth George Mason came of age and settled at Dogue's Neck, on the Potomac below Alexandria, he controlled some 5,000 acres in the region. Because of the death of his father, the third George Mason, when he was ten, the boy grew up under the guardianship of his mother, Ann (Thomson) Mason, and his uncle by marriage, John Mercer of "Marlborough," an exceptionally able lawyer. Mrs. Mason's account books show payments to private tutors during the years 1736-39, but Mason found his education in Mercer's library. It numbered upwards of 1,500 volumes, a third of them on law, and at the time of his guardianship Mercer was at work among them. This association accounts for the fact that while Mason was never licensed as an attorney he was called in as a notably competent counsel on questions of public law throughout his later life. On April 4, 1750, he married Anne Eilbeck of "Mattawoman," Charles County, Maryland; soon afterward, their portraits were painted by John Hesselius. In 1758 their new home, “Gunston Hall," begun in 1755, was completed; its architect was William Buckland, a skilled craftsman from Oxford whom Mason's younger brother Thomson brought back with him under indenture in 1754. In the course of the twenty years after their marriage, five sons and four daughters were born.

Mason persisted in regarding himself as a private gentleman, even during his most intensive periods of public service. Without the aid of a steward, he personally managed his large and practically self- sufficient plantation. He served a s trustee of the recently founded town of Alexandria from 1754 until its incorporation in 1779; Alexandria was also the seat of Fairfax County, and he was one of the gentlemen justices of the county court from his early manhood until his resignation in 1789. Parallel to the jurisdiction of the county ran that of the parish, which under the Establishment was vested with governmental duties in respect of the moral and charitable obligations of the community; Mason was a vestryman of Truro Parish from 1748 until 1785, serving as one of the overseers of the poor after relief became a lay function. As the executor of Daniel French, the original contractor, he supervise d the building of Pohick Church, some of whose details repeat the carvings at "Gunston." This triple experience in local government formed an important part of his political apprenticeship.

Complementary to Mason's familiarity with the tidewater section of the colony was his association with the problems of the West. He became a member of the Ohio Company in 1752, and served as its treasurer until 1773. His initial interest in it was merely as a speculation, but as the company changed from a private economic venture into the lever which upset the political balance, first between French and British forces in the New World, and then, after the Peace of Paris, between Crown and Colony across the Alleghanies, the constitutional aspect of Virginia's claims to the Northwest Territory engaged his attention; when the Crown, in 1773, abrogated the Ohio Company's rights and regranted the area they covered to the Grand Company organized by a group of Pennsylvanians, Mason produced his first major state paper, Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them (1773, reprinted in Rowland, I, 393-414).

Prior to midsummer, 1775, Mason's part in the Revolution was in the wings of the public stage. Various reasons have been adduced for his reluctance to accept office; on the one hand his chronic ill-health, on the other the death of his wife early in 1773, leaving him, as he wrote in I775, with a sense of "the duty I owe to a poor little helpless family of orphans to whom I must now act the part of Father and Mother both" (Ibid., I, 198). It is true that after his marriage, on April II, 1780, to Sarah Brent he accepted a seat in the Federal Convention in Philadelphia (1787), but by far the most probable cause of his persistent refusals to serve was the low rating which he put upon human nature in committee; In 1759 he and Washington had served together in the House of Burgesses; at the end of his first term he withdrew with an opinion of that body which did not change when he went to take the place of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief in the July convention of 1775. Writing Washington on October 14, 1775, in regard to the session he said: "I never was in so disagreeable a situation and almost despaired of a cause which I saw so ill conducted ...Mere vexation and disgust threw me into such an ill state of health, that before the Convention rose, I was sometimes near fainting in the House. However, after some weeks the babblers were pretty well silenced, a few weighty members began to take the lead, several wholesome regulations were made" (Ibid., I, 210-11). Off-stage, however, Mason had played a highly important part ever since 1765, when, at the instance of - Washington and G. W. Fairfax, he contrived a method of replevying goods under distress for rent without the use of stamped paper. His open letter of June 6, 1766, to a committee of London merchants (Ibid., I, 381-89) tersely summarized the mood of the colonists in its balanced profession of loyalty and independence: they were ready wholeheartedly to welcome the repeal of the Stamp Act as an act of justice; that repeal was a favor they would never admit. When the Townshend duties revived the trade dispute, Mason prepared the resolutions which Washington presented to the dissolved House of Burgesses and which, adopted by them as a non-importation association, were passed on for subsequent approval by the Continental Congress. After the Boston Port Act brought matters to a head, he wrote the Fairfax Resolves of July 18, 1774 (Ibid., I, 418-27), stating a version of the constitutional position of the colonies visa- vis the Crown which was successively accepted by the county court in Fairfax, the Virginia convention in Williamsburg, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; some weeks later his plan for the organization of troops led to the creation of the Fairfax Independent Company of volunteers,

During the period in which he was writing these important papers, Mason was exerting a parallel influence on the consolidation of public opinion by word of mouth. Philip Mazzei, in his memoirs, and Edmund Randolph, in his manuscript history of Virginia, both emphasize this aspect of his effectiveness. Randolph said: "Among the numbers who in their small circles were propagating with activity the American doctrines, was George Mason in the shade of retirement. He extended their grasp upon the opinions and affections of those with whom he conversed. . . . He was behind none of the sons of Virginia in knowledge of her history and interest. At a glance he saw to the bottom of every proposition which affected her" (Quoted, Ibid., I, 178). Washington's diary bears witness to the frequency of his collaboration with Mason in the years before his departure to lead the army, and the letters o-f the three younger colleagues who succeeded him as the Virginia dynasty all testify specifically to the influence upon them of conversations at "Gunston Hall."

In 1775 Mason emerged from retirement as a member of the July convention, and served on the committee of safety which took over the executive powers vacated by the flight of Governor Dunmore. In 1776, as a member of the May convention, he achieved his outstanding contribution as a constitutionalist by framing the Declaration of Rights (reprint of original draft, Ibid., I, 433-36) and the major part of the constitution of Virginia. The former was drawn upon by Jefferson in the first part of the Declaration of Independence, was widely copied in the other colonies, became the basis for the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and had a considerable influence in France at the time of the French Revolution. The latter was notable as a pioneer, written "constitution," prepared with a view to permanence, and used by a commonwealth over a period of years. The years 1776-80 were occupied in implementing the various provisions of the two documents, with Mason in the forefront of legislative activity, closely collaborating with such men as Jefferson, Henry, and Wythe. He was a member of the committee of five entrusted with the revision of the laws, and while he resigned after the general plan had been agreed on, he continued to contribute his share of the new drafts, particularly those relating to the western lands. He was among the liberal churchmen who effected disestablishment. He was active in the organization of military affairs, particularly in the West. Mason's connection with the Northwest Territory is worthy of special note. His relation to George Rogers Clark was as close as that of father to son; he was one of Governor Henry's secret committee that authorized Clark's conquest, and it was to him that Clark sent his full account of the campaign. Since it was his Extracts from the Virginia Charters that had convinced Virginians of the western extent of their sovereignty, he was in some measure responsible for the fixing of the British-American boundary, in the treaty of 1783, at the Great Lakes rather than the Ohio, and it was he who sketched the plan out of which grew the cession by Virginia of her western lands to the United States, and Jefferson's ordinance for their government (Letter to Joseph Jones, July 27, 1780, Rowland, I, 360-67).

During the early eighties Mason was among those whom disgust at the conduct of public affairs drove into retirement; not until 1786 could he be again prevailed upon to go to the Assembly. His return to active life was motivated by his desire to prevent Virginia from indulging in a further orgy of inflation, and his growing conviction, in spite of his lifelong attachment to doctrine of state rights, that the Articles of Confederation were an inadequate basis for the central government. He was an active member of the Virginia delegation at the Mount Vernon meeting of 1785; he was appointed to but did not attend the Annapolis meeting of 1786 which grew out of it; in the debates at Philadelphia he was one of the five most frequent speakers. An examination of Madison's notes on the Federal Convention shows the extent of the constructive influence which Mason exerted on the Constitution. His decision not to sign the document was made during the last two weeks; until the final days of the convention he struggled for the inclusion of certain clauses and the exclusion of others which he regarded as respectively essential and iniquitous. In several instances his "Objections to the Federal Constitution" (reprinted in P. L. Ford, Pamphlets on the Constitution, 1888), on the basis of which he conducted his campaign against ratification in the Virginia convention of 1788, though negative in their immediate application, proved in the long run to have been well-founded. In two cases, his justification is written into the Constitution. His insistence on the necessity of a Bill of Rights bore fruit in the first ten amendments. The eleventh amendment, in 1798, testified to the correctness of his strictures on one part of the judiciary article, when his prophecy that suits would be brought against states was ridiculed by a young lawyer named John Marshall. In a third case his justification is written into general American history. Mason's outstanding reason for refusing to sign the Constitution was that it incorporated the compromise between the New England states and those of the extreme South on the tariff and the slave trade. His opposition to the institution of slavery was perhaps the most consistent feature of his public career. His first political paper opens with a paragraph on the advantage of settling land with free as contrasted with slave labor; his final speeches in the Richmond convention reiterate his opinion that "such a trade [in slaves] is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind."

Mason's constructive proposals for the situation in which a century and a half of slave owning had left his community, proposals which run curiously parallel to the solution of the problem effected by the British Parliament in 1833, can be taken as illustrative of his general philosophical attitude. More than perhaps any other American statesman of the period, he represented the rationalist spirit, the Enlightenment in its American manifestation. He believed in the existence of a rule of right reason, and in the possibility of giving it concretion in terms of the problem at hand. He believed life, liberty, and the use of property to be central human rights. Applying those criteria to slavery, he favored manumission, so that one man's life should not be at the mercy of another, preceded by education, so that liberty might be given a positive content; at the same time he desired recognition of the property rights of the owner, so that the termination of an undesirable economy might take place without the confiscation of a large part of the community's capital. His conclusions were thorough, impersonal, convinced. They may stand as indicative of the mental fiber of Mason the gentleman, the representative of the Enlightenment, and the statesman.

[MS. materials include the George Mason Papers and other collections, and the Truro Parish Book in the Library of Congress; Mason letters in the Emmet Collection, New York Public Library; Minute Book of the Alexandria Trustees, City Hall, Alexandria, Virginia; Fairfax court records, Courthouse, Fairfax, Virginia K. M. Rowland, The Life of George Mason, 1725-1792 (2 volumes, 1892), reprints valuable correspondence, writings, and speeches. See also H. B. Grigsby, The Virginia Convention of 1776 (1855), and The History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788 (2 volumes, 1890-91); James Madison, reporter, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (1920), ed. by Gaillard Hunt and J. B. Scott; H. R. Connor, Gunston Hall, Fairfax County, Virginia (1930), the Monograph Series, No. 3, volume XVI; R. W. Moore, "George Mason, the Statesman," William and Mary College Quarterly, January 1933. Other items in Virginia publications may be located through the checklist prepared by E. G. Swem. A biography by Helen Hill is in manuscript.]

H.H.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 241-242:

MASON, George, statesman, born in Doeg's (afterward Mason's) Neck, Stafford (now Fairfax) county, Virginia, in 1725; died there, 7 October, 1792, after his marriage built Gunston Hall, on the Potomac, which continued in the family until after the civil war. It is situated in Truro parish, which includes Mount Vernon. There he resided until his death. (See accompanying illustration.) In 1769 he drew up the non-importation resolutions which were presented by Washington in the Virginia assembly, and unanimously adopted. One of these pledged the Virginia planters to purchase no slaves that should be brought into the country after 1 November of that year. In support of the political rights of his native state, Mason printed a pamphlet entitled “Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them,” and at a meeting of the people of Fairfax, 18 July, 1774, he presented a series of twenty-four resolutions reviewing the whole ground of controversy between Great Britain and the colonies, recommending a congress, and urging non-intercourse with the mother-country. These were sanctioned by the Virginia convention in the following August, and substantially reaffirmed by the Continental congress in October of the same year. In 1775 the convention of Virginia desired to elect him as a delegate to congress, but he declined for family reasons. He was made a member of the committee of safety, which was charged with the executive government of the colony, and in 1776 he drafted the declaration of rights and the constitution of Virginia, which were unanimously adopted. James Madison pronounced Mason to be the ablest debater he had ever known. His talents in this direction were displayed in the first legislature that was held under the new constitution of Virginia, when he brought forward a measure that provided for the repeal of all the old disabling acts, the legalizing of all forms of worship, and the releasing of dissenters from the payment of parish rates. In 1777 he was elected to the Continental congress, but declined to serve. Ten years later he was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of the United States. He took an active part in its debates, always being found on the liberal side. In the discussion on the question whether the house of representatives should be chosen directly by the people, he maintained that no republican government could stand without popular confidence, and that confidence could only be secured by giving to the people the selection of one branch of the legislature. He also favored the election of the president by the people for a term of seven years with ineligibility afterward. Propositions to make slaves equal to freemen as a basis of representation and to require a property qualification from voters, met with his strong disapproval. He also spoke with great energy against the clause that prohibited the abolition of the slave-trade till 1808, declaring that, as slavery was a source of national weakness and demoralization, the general government should have power to prevent its increase. In some of his attempts to render the constitution more democratic, Mr. Mason was defeated in the convention, and when the instrument was completed he declined to sign it. He was especially dissatisfied with the extended and indefinite powers that were conferred on congress and the executive. On his return to Virginia he was chosen a member of the convention to which the constitution was referred for ratification or rejection, and, with Patrick Henry, led the opposition to its adoption, insisting on certain amendments. These comprised a bill of rights and about twenty alterations in the body of the measure, several of which were afterward adopted. He was elected the first U. S. senator from Virginia, but declined, and retired to Gunston Hall, where he resided until his death. Mr. Mason is referred to by Thomas Jefferson as “a man of the first order of wisdom, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former constitution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic principles.” He is described, when fifty years of age, as of commanding presence and lofty bearing, of an athletic and robust frame, a swarthy complexion, with black hair sprinkled with gray, a grave face, and dark, radiant eyes. His statue stands, with those of Jefferson, Henry, and other illustrious Virginians, at the base of Crawford's colossal statue of Washington in front of the capitol at Richmond.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 241-242.


MASON, John, General, Georgetown, DC, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-1840. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 30, 51)


MASON, Samson, Springfield, Ohio, American Colonization Society, Director, 1839-1841. 

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


MASTERS, Zerah, New York, American Abolition Society.

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


MATLACK, Timothy, 1736-1829, Quaker Revolutionary War era leader, Delegate to the Second Continental Congress, in 1780.  Pennsylvania State leader.  Opposed to slavery.  Helped pass “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” in 1780. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 410)


MATLACK, White, 1745-1824, New Jersey, New York, businessman, New York Quaker, abolitionist.  Member of the New York Manumission Society.


MATTHEWS, Phoebe, wife of abolitionist Edward Weed.  Helped him on lecture tours in Ohio.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 280)


MATTHEWS, Stanley, 1824-1889, lawyer, jurist, newspaper editor, anti-slavery activist, soldier and U.S. Senator.  Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1881-1889.  Assistant editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, the Cincinnati Morning Herald, the first abolitionist paper there.  Served in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Colonel, commanding both a regiment and a brigade. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 262; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 418)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 262:

MATTHEWS, Stanley, jurist, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 21 July, 1824. He was graduated at Kenyon college in 1840, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, settling in Maury county, Tennessee. He shortly afterward returned to Cincinnati, early engaged in anti-slavery movements, and in 1846-'9 was an assistant editor of the “Cincinnati Herald” the first daily anti-slavery newspaper in that city. He became judge of the court of common pleas of Hanover county in 1851, was state senator in 1855, and in 1858-'61 was U. S. attorney for the southern district of Ohio. In March, of the last-named year, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 23d Ohio regiment, and served in West Virginia, participating in the battles of Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry. In October, 1861, he became colonel of the 57th Ohio regiment, and in that capacity commanded a brigade in the Army of the Cumberland, and was engaged at Dobb's Ferry. Murfreesborough, Chickamauga, and Lookout Mountain. He resigned from the army in 1863, to become judge of the superior court of Cincinnati, and was a presidential elector on the Lincoln and Johnson ticket in 1864, and on the Grant and Colfax ticket in 1868. In 1864 he was a delegate from the presbytery of Cincinnati to the General assembly of the Presbyterian church in Newark, New Jersey, and as one of the committee on bills and overtures reported the resolutions that were adopted by the assembly on the subject of slavery. He was defeated as Republican candidate for congress in 1876, and in the next year was one of the counsel before the electoral commission, opening the argument in behalf of the Republican electors in the Florida case, and making the principal argument in the Oregon case. In March he was elected U. S. senator in place of John Sherman, who had resigned. In 1881 he was appointed associate justice of the U. S. supreme court.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MATTISON, Hiram, 1811-1868, Norway, Herkimer County, New York, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist.  Sought to exclude slaveholders from church membership in Methodist denomination. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 262; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 423)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 423:

MATTISON, HIRAM (February 8, 1811-November 24, 1868), Methodist Episcopal clergyman and reformer, was born at Norway, Herkimer County, New York, one of the twelve children of Solomon and Lydia W. Mattison. His parents, natives of New England, were poor, high-minded, and devoted Methodists. In his infancy the family removed to a wilderness farm near th e site of Oswego, New York. The boy's education was derived chiefly from his mother. He was of a serious and reflective temperament and displayed much mechanical ingenuity. At the age of twenty-four, after a transforming religious experience, he left the farm to become a Methodist minister in the Black River Conference (1836), although the weakness of his lungs several times interrupted his pastoral work. In 1840-41 he represented the American Bible Society in New Jersey, showing notable gifts as a preacher, but soon returned to northern New York, where he preached and edited an outspoken paper, the Primitive Christian (at first called Tracts for the Times, and later The Conservative). From 1846 to 1852 he was again disabled, but found congenial occupation in the study of astronomy, writing lectures and a school textbook, Elementary Astronomy (1847), revised as A High School Astronomy (1853), which achieved wide popularity. In 1850-51 he taught the subject in Falley Seminary, Fulton, New York. From 1852 to 1858 he served New York City churches (John Street and Trinity) as a supply pastor.

As a member of the General Conference in 1848, 1852, and 1856, he displayed power in debate. In the General Conference of 1856 he ardently but unsuccessfully advocated the exclusion of slave-holders from church membership. Transferring to a pastorate in Adams and Syracuse, New York, he continued to agitate the question of slave-holding, and, though defeated for membership in the General Conference of 1860, bombarded that body with petitions signed by 100,000 Methodists of Central New York and Great Britain praying the church to sever all connection with slavery. When that prayer was disregarded, he lost hope for his denomination, resigned from the Conference, and founded St. John's Independent Methodist Church in New York City. This body was denounced as a nest of abolitionists; his house was ransacked and his life threatened by the draft rioters in 1863. In 1864, however, when the Methodist Episcopal Church tardily took the action for which he had fought, he was welcomed back to its ministry, entering as a local preacher in August 1865 and being assigned to a Jersey City pastorate. Later he was admitted to Newark Conference. In Jersey City he became involved in a vigorous controversy with one Father Smarius, a Jesuit missioner, which led to his employment by the American and Foreign Christian Union (1868), to which he devoted the last of his failing energy, speaking, writing, and printing against "Romanism." His endeavor to rescue Mary Ann Smith, a convert alleged to have been abducted by Catholics to save her from Protestantism, used up his strength, and he died of pneumonia in Jersey City at the age of fifty-seven.

Mattison was by nature controversial, and he fought slavery, intemperance, and pernicious amusements as fiercely as he did "Romish superstitions and idolatries" and doctrines which he believed to be erroneous or heretical. He was twice married. His first wife, Melinda Griswold, died young, leaving four children. By his second wife, Elizabeth S. Morrison, who survived him, he had five children. Throughout his career he wrote much for publication in books, pamphlets, and church periodicals. Among his works were A Scriptural Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity; or A Check to Modern Arianism (1846); Spirit Rappings Unveiled (1853); The Resurrection of the Dead (1864); Popular Amusements (1867); The Abduction of Mary Ann Smith (1868).

[Nicholas Vansant, Work Here, Rest Hereafter; or the Life and Character of Reverend Hiram Mattison (1870); Minutes of Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869; Christian Advocate (New York), May 1856, May 1860, December 3, 1868; I, S. Bingham, "History of Black River Conference," in Minutes of Northern New York Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1878; L. C. Matlack, Anti-Slavery Struggle and Triumph in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1881); Daily Evening Times (Jersey City), November 25, 1868.]

J.R.J.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 262:

MATTISON, Hiram, clergyman, born in Norway, New York, 11 February, 1811; died in Jersey City, N.J., 24 November, 1868. He entered the Methodist ministry in 1835, was appointed agent of the American Bible society for the state of New Jersey in 1841, and, resuming pastoral work the next year, was successively stationed in Watertown and Rome, New York. From 1846 till 1860 he was largely employed in the preparation of works on astronomy and in lecturing. In 1856-'7 he was pastor of churches in Adams and Syracuse, New York, and took an active part in anti-slavery movements. By correspondence with the Methodists of Great Britain in 1859, he obtained the names of about 85,000 petitioners to the general conference of 1860, praying that body to extirpate slavery from the Methodist Episcopal church, and a like paper from 45,000 petitioners in central New York was largely due to his efforts. In November, 1861, he withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal church, because, as he affirmed, of its toleration of slave-holding, soon afterward becoming pastor of St. John's independent Methodist church of New York city. He returned to his former connection in 1865, and was stationed in Jersey City, where he vehemently opposed the claims of the Roman Catholic church, and published a tract on the case of Mary Anne Smith, a Methodist, whose father, a Roman Catholic, he alleged, had unjustly caused her arrest and detention in a Magdalen asylum, in New York city. His controversies with the Roman Catholics led to his appointment in 1868 as district secretary to the American and foreign Christian union. His numerous works include “The Trinity and Modern Arianism” (New York, 1843); “Tracts for the Times” (1843); “Elementary Astronomy, accompanied by Maps” (1846); Burritt's “Geography of the Heavens,” edited and revised (1850); “High-School Astronomy” (1853); “Spirit-Rapping Unveiled” (1854); “Sacred Melodies” (1859); “Impending Crisis” (1859); “Immortality of the Soul” (1866); “Resurrection of the Body” (1866); “Defence of American Methodism” (1866); and “Popular Amusements” (1867). See “Work Here, and Rest Hereafter, a Life of Reverend Hiram Mattison,” by Reverend Nicholas Vansant, with an introduction by Reverend Edward Thomson (New York, 1870). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 262.


MATTOCKS, John (March 4, 1777-August 14, 1847), U. S. congressman and governor.  In 1820, he was elected to the national House of Representatives, and later served for two other terms-in 1825-27 and 1841-43. He was a vigorous opponent of negro slavery, and his most noteworthy appearance in debate was in a speech on the presentation of a petition for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 423-424)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 423-424:

MATTOCKS, JOHN (March 4, 1777-August 14, 1847), congressman and governor, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the youngest son of Samuel Mattocks. Originally a farmer, the father moved in 1778 to Tinmouth, Vermont, where he served in the state legislature, became a judge and chief justice of the Rutland county court, and was long state treasurer (1786-1801). At the age of fifteen, his son went to live with a married sister, Rebecca Miller, in Middlebury. Largely self-educated, he studied law first with Samuel Miller and later at Fairfield, with Judge Bates Turner, 'and was admitted to the bar in February 1797. In the same year, he opened an office at Danville, Caledonia County, Vermont, but moved three years later to Peacham, in the same county, where he was soon engrossed in politics.

In 1807 he was sent to the legislature, where, in all, he sat five terms-1807, 1815, 1816, 1823, and 1824. In 1820, he was elected to the national House of Representatives, and later served for two other terms-in 1825-27 and 1841-43. He was a vigorous opponent of negro slavery, and his most noteworthy appearance in debate was in a speech on the presentation of a petition for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. He was chosen in 1832 as judge of the supreme court of Vermont, but resigned within a year. In 1843, running as a Whig, he was elected governor of Vermont, but declined a reelection. He was proud of the fact that he was never defeated for any office for which he was a candidate. While governor, he made an unsuccessful effort to establish Thanksgiving on December 25. The people at large objected to having New England Thanksgiving "disgraced by ... Popish nonsense," and Churchmen objected to Christmas being merged into a "Pumpkin pie Holiday" (Chandler, post, p. 37).

In 1806 he was made a director of the Vermont State Bank. During the War of 1812 he was a brigadier-general in the Vermont militia. He married, September 4, 1810, Esther Newell, of Peacham, who died, July 21, 1844, leaving three sons and one daughter. Of the sons, one became a clergyman, one an attorney, and one a physician.

Mattocks was perhaps best known as a lawyer. During nearly fifty years of practice, he became the most important figure at the Vermont bar. It was said that he was frequently engaged in every jury trial at a session of the county court and won every case. He adopted an easy, conversational manner, with no rhetorical flourishes, making his appeal mainly on the basis of common sense. He was a large and robust man, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and of a sanguine temperament. To his younger colleagues at the bar he was exceedingly kind and helpful. In his own time he was notorious, like Rufus Choate, for his crabbed and illegible handwriting. His witty stories and clever repartee were frequently quoted. He was an orthodox Congregationalist, of firm religious principles.

[W. H. Crockett, Vermont (1921), volume III; A. M. Hemenway, The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume I (1868); J. G. Ullery, Men of Vermont (1894); 0. P. Chandler, in Vermont Bar Assn. Constitution, Proceedings, Papers, and Addresses, 1886, volume II (1887); Vermont Patriot (Montpelier), August 26, 1847.]

C.M.F.


MAXCY, Virgil, 1785-1844, Baltimore, Maryland, lawyer, state lawmaker, diplomat.  Original founding member of the American Colonization Society (ACS).  Protégé of ACS leader Robert G. Harper. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 267; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 434; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 110-111, 258n14)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 267:

MAXEY, Virgil, lawyer, born in Attleborough, Massachusetts, about 1785; died on Potomac river, 28 February, 1844, studied law with Robert Goodloe Harper, of Maryland, and settled in the practice of his profession in that state, where he soon became eminent as an advocate. He also took an interest in politics, was a member of the Maryland legislature, serving at different times in both houses, became solicitor to the U. S. treasury, and afterward was chargé d’affaires in Belgium from 1837 till 1842. He was one of the victims of the explosion of a heavy gun on board the steamer “Princeton” during a visit to the ship of President John Tyler and his party. (See TYLER.) Mr. Maxey's publications include a valuable “Compilation of the Laws of Maryland from 1692 to 1809” (4 vols., Annapolis, 1809), and an “Oration” before the Phi Beta Kappa society (1833).  Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MAXON, D. E., New York, American Abolition Society.

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


MAXWELL, William (February 27, 1784-January 10, 1857), lawyer, college president, he was an active member of the Virginia Colonization Society.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 272; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 445; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 107)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 444-445:

MAXWELL, WILLIAM (February 27, 1784-January 10, 1857), lawyer, college president, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of James and Helen (Calvert) Maxwell, natives of Scotland. The father was "general superintendent" of the Virginia fleet. William prepared for college chiefly under the tutorship of Reverend Israel B. Woodward of Wolcott, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale in 1802 at the age of eighteen. He studied law in Richmond, Virginia, and in 1808 was admitted to practice at the Norfolk bar. His brilliant talents soon gave him a leading position among the attorneys of Virginia and a reputation beyond the borders of the state. He was noted also for his keen wit and oratorical abilities. His readiness was remarkable; his addresses were never written; and if he was "knocked up at midnight and requested to speak, he would make a finer speech than anyone else could have done after deliberate preparation" (Grigsby, post, p. 39). Having literary tendencies, he published in 1812 a small volume entitled Poems. Although attributed to Maxwell, Letters from Virginia, a translation from the French issued anonymously in 1816, was probably the work of George Tucker. In 1827 Maxwell was elected editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, but he retained his home in Norfolk, and held th e position for only about a year. In 1828 he presented to his native town a lyceum for lectures and scientific experiments.

From 1830 to 1832 he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Elected to the state Senate for an unexpired term, he was returned for the following term, serving in all from 1832 to 1838. During this period, 1835, he published his most ambitious library work, A Memoir of Reverend John H. Rice, D.D., valuable not only as a biography but also as a sidelight on Presbyterian history. In 1836 Hampden-Sidney College conferred on him the degree of LL.D., the third it had awarded in a period of more than sixty years. He was at the same time elected a trustee and in 1838, president of the college, a position which he held until 1844. While president he married Mary Robertson.

Upon his resignation he removed to Richmond where he practised and taught law. He was an active member of the Virginia Colonization Society and of the Virginia Bible Society. With others he reestablished the Virginia Historical Society, and from 1848 to 1853 was editor of the Virginia Historical Register. Of his many addresses, only one was published, An Oration on the Improvement of the People, a plea for better education in Virginia, delivered at the anniversary of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden-Sidney, September 1826. An unpublished manuscript of his, now in the Virginia State Library, Richmond, "My Mother's  Memoirs," which records events of Revolutionary days, is of historical value. He died near Williamsburg, Virginia, and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.

[F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume V (1911); H. B. Grigsby, in Bulletin of Hampden Sidney College, January 1913; W. H. T. Squires, William. Maxwell, A Virginian of Ante-Bellum Days (n.d.), and article in Union Seminary Review, October 1918, supplemented and corrected by J. D. Eggleston, Ibid., January 1919; Southern Argus (Norfolk), January 15, 1857; Richmond Enquirer, January 16, 1857.]

J. D.E.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 272:

MAXWELL, William, author, born in Norfolk, Virginia, 27 February, 1784; died near Williamsburg, Virginia, 9 June, 1857. He was graduated at Yale in 1802, studied law in Richmond, Virginia, was admitted to the Norfolk bar in 1808, and attained to eminence as a Constitutional lawyer. He edited the literary department of the “New York Journal of Commerce” in 1827, served in the Virginia legislature in 1830, and in the state senate in 1832-'8, and from November of the latter year till 1844 was president of Hampden Sidney college, Virginia. He then removed to Richmond, was engaged in reviving the Virginia historical and philosophical society, and in 1848 established the “Virginia Historical Register,” of which he edited six volumes (1848-'53). He was a member of the Bible and colonization societies, active in the cause of education, and in 1828 erected at his own expense in Norfolk, Virginia, a lyceum for the diffusion of useful knowledge by means of lectures and scientific experiments. Hampden Sidney gave him the degree of LL. D. He published a “Memoir of Reverend John H. Rice” (Philadelphia, 1835). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MAY, Abby, 1800-1877, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, temperance activist and women’s suffrage advocate.  Wife of abolitionist and transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott.  Mother of novelist Louisa May Alcott.


MAY, Samuel Joseph, Reverend, 1797-1871, Brooklyn, Connecticut, reformer, abolitionist leader, temperance advocate, clergyman, early advocate of women’s rights.  Unitarian minister.  Organized local auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  May was an advocate for immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves.  Vice president, 1848-1861, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Co-founder, lecturer and agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS).  He was an officer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  May was opposed to both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.  He adamantly opposed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and actively advocated resistance to it.  Active in Underground Railroad in Syracuse, New York.  In 1851, he helped rescue a fugitive slave, Jerry McHenry, from the federal government.  Early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison.  In 1856, he joined the anti-slavery Republican Party, supporting John Frémont for the presidency of the United States. 

(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, p. 456; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 176; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 182, 211-212, 273, 276; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 34, 44, 59, 65-66, 216; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 12, 13, 20, 22-24, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 43-48, 78-79, 93, 124, 132, 149, 156, 168-170, 232, 272, 287, 289, 296, 300, 307, 308, 310, 359, 360, 368; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 63, 102, 132, 134-144, 175, 176, 274-275, 312-313n39; Sinha, p. 222; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 273; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 447; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 585-586; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 313; May, Samuel Joseph. Memoir of Samuel Joseph May. Boston, 1873; May, Samuel Joseph, Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict. Boston, 1868; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 169.  Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 127)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 447-448:

MAY, SAMUEL JOSEPH (September 12, 1797- July 1, 1871), Unitarian clergyman and reformer, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Colonel Joseph May and Dorothy (Sewall) May, and brother of Abigail May who became the wife of Amos Bronson Alcott [q.v.]. His father was descended from John May of Mayfield, Sussex, who was admitted a freeman of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1641; his mother was a descendant of Judge Samuel Sewall [q.v.]. Their home was a place where cheerful and practical piety was much in evidence. The father stanchly supported the rational teachings of Dr. James Freeman of King's Chapel, and May himself never felt anything but horror for "the heart-withering theology of .. . Calvin" (Brief Account, p. 6). After graduating from Harvard in 1817 and teaching in small schools, he read divinity under Norton and Ware in Cambridge, gladly adopting the liberal doctrines now known as Unitarian. For some months he assisted Dr. William Ellery Channing at his Boston church. In 1822 he was ordained, and three years later, June 1, 1825, he married Lucretia Flagge Coffin.

May's energetic life was spent in pastoral duties and in humanitarian services. As a pastor, he served churches at Brooklyn, Connecticut, 1822- 36; South Scituate, Massachusetts, 1836--42; and Syracuse, New York, 1845-67. He had small interest in expounding systematic theology, but an unflagging ambition to convert men to the life of personal righteous ness, marked by "the spirit of true goodness, active benevolence, stern integrity, moral courage." His gentle and cheerful nature did much to disarm the hostility of his orthodox critics. As a humanitarian, he worked ardently in the service of many reforming causes. He was a disciple of the venerable Noah Worcester in the movement for universal peace, writing and speaking much in its favor. He organized the Windham County (Connecticut) Peace Society in 1826, and twelve years later called the convention of the American Peace Society which gave birth to the New England Non-Resistance Society. This association was too extreme for May to support, however, although he was always a friend of peace. When the Civil War began, he modified his views somewhat, but could not bring himself to urge men to enlist. As an advocate of temperance, he persuaded many retailers to cease selling liquor, converted scores of persons to abstinence, drilled youngsters in a Cold Water Army, and preached effectively on the theme for a generation. But he preferred the pledge system and individual self control to prohibitory laws. In vigorous fashion, he championed equal rights for women, and wrote and spoke much in defense of his position. He cooperated heartily with Lucretia Mott [q.v.] and gave the public sentiment of the times a rude shock by inviting Angelina Grimke to occupy his pulpit and address his congregation on abolitionism. In his widely circulated sermon pamphlet, The Rights and Condition of Women (1846), he asserted that "if the people have the right of self-government, then I am unable to see why a half of the people have a right to govern the whole." He played a part in promoting the cause of efficient popular education and while at Brooklyn called a convention (May 1827) to discuss the improvement of the common-schools in Connecticut; later, at Horace Mann's earnest request, he served from 1842 till 1844 as principal of the Normal School at Lexington, Massachusetts. At all times he did much to soften the asperities of American educational practice. May took great pride in his service as an abolitionist. He knew Garrison well, attended the Philadelphia Convention of 1833, acted as general agent and secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society for more than a year, gave substantial aid to Prudence Crandall [q.v.] in her time of need, counseled resistance to the Fugitive-slave Law, and in 1851 took part in the public rescue of a slave. He helped negroes to reach Ca11ada, his house being a station on the Underground Railroad. Kindly and brave, with a rich fund of sympathy, he gave of himself without stint to so many humanitarian tasks, great and small, that he thoroughly earned Bronson Alcott's epithet: "the Lord's chore boy."

[May gave his collection of anti-slavery material to Cornell University. His literary remains consist of sermons, addresses, reports, etc., on humanitarian themes. Of special interest are his autobiographical discourse, A Brief Account of His Ministry (1867); and Some Recollections of Our Anti-slavery Conflict (1869). See also Samuel Joseph May (1871); Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (1873), prepared by G. B. Emerson, S. May, and T. J. Mumford; New-England Historical and Genealogy Registry, April 1873; Autobiography of Andrew, Dickson White (2 volumes, 1905); Christian Register, July 8, 15, 1871; New York Times, July 3, 1871.]

F.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 273:

MAY, Samuel Joseph, reformer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 12 September, 1797; died in Syracuse, New York, 1 July, 1871. He was graduated at Harvard in 1817, studied divinity at Cambridge, and in 1822 became pastor of a Unitarian church at Brooklyn, New York. He was early interested in the anti-slavery cause, wrote and preached on the subject, and in 1830 was mobbed and burned in effigy at Syracuse for advocating immediate emancipation. He was a member of the first New England anti-slavery society m 1832, and, when Prudence Crandall (q. v.) was proscribed and persecuted for admitting colored girls to her school in Canterbury, Connecticut, he was her ardent champion. He was also a member of the Philadelphia convention of 1833 that formed the American anti-slavery society, and signed the “Declaration of Sentiments,” of which William Lloyd Garrison was the author. In 1835 he became the general agent of the Massachusetts anti-slavery society, for which, by a union of gentleness and courage, he was peculiarly fitted, and in this capacity he lectured and travelled extensively. He was pastor of the Unitarian church at South Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1836-'42, and became at the latter date, at the solicitation of Horace Mann, principal of the Girls' normal school at Lexington, Massachusetts. He returned to the pulpit in 1845, and from that date till three years previous to his death was pastor of the Unitarian society in Syracuse, New York. Mr. May was active in all charitable and educational enterprises, and did much to increase the efficiency of the public-school system in Syracuse. He published “Education of the Faculties” (Boston, 1846); “Revival of Education” (Syracuse, New York, 1855); and “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict” (Boston, 1868). See “Memoir of Samuel Joseph May,” edited by George B. Emerson, Samuel May, and Thomas J. Mumford (Boston, 1873).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 273.


MAY, Samuel Jr., Leicester, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1849-1864, Corresponding Secretary, 1854-1860, Vice President, 1840-1848.  Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.


MAYLIN, Thomas, Cincinnati, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-38.


MAYNARD, Horace (August 30, 1814-May 3, 1882), U.S. Congressman and Unionist.  In 1857, he was elected as a candidate of the Whig and American parties and two years later was reelected. Fought against the withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 423-424)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 460-461:

MAYNARD, HORACE (August 30, 1814-May 3, 1882), congressman and Unionist, was the son of Ephraim and Diana Harriet (Cogswell) Maynard. Born in Westboro, Massachusetts, he was prepared for college at Millbury Academy and was graduated with high honors at Amherst College in 1838. He went immediately to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had been appointed tutor in the preparatory department of East Tennessee College (now the University of Tennessee), and where he made his home for the remainder of his life. He was soon advanced to a professorship of mathematics. On August 30, 1840, he was married to Laura Ann Washburn, the daughter of Azel Washburn of Royalton, Vermont. They had seven children. In 1844 he deserted teaching for the practice of law and entered political life as a Whig. More than six feet tall, thin, straight, with a swarthy complexion, dark and piercing eyes, and long, black hair that fell to his shoulders, he was popularly supposed to have Indian blood in his veins and was commonly referred to as "the Narragansett." In his political campaigns he displayed oratorical powers and made effective use of invective and sarcasm. He was able and successful, but he never was an idol of the people. One explanation for this can perhaps be found in the fact that as a university professor he wrote an article in which he characterized the masses as "the common herd," with whom he desired "no fellowship" (Temple, post, p. 147). Certainly this was used to defeat him in his first campaign for a seat in Congress in 1853. Four years later, however, he was elected as a candidate of the Whig and American parties and two years later was reelected.

In 1860 he campaigned for the Bell and Everett ticket in Massachusetts and in Tennessee. In the following year, when secession threatened, he joined forces with Andrew Johnson, Thomas, A. R. Nelson, Oliver P. Temple, and William G. Brownlow to fight bitterly against the withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union. His section of the state, the eastern, remained loyal to the Union, however, and he was returned in the August election to a third term in the federal Congress. In Washington he was an ardent but unsuccessful advocate of immediately sending a federal army to the relief of the Unionists of East Tennessee. In 1863 he became attorney general of Tennessee under the military governorship of Andrew Johnson and held this office, much to the dislike of conservative Unionists, until the reestablishment of civil rule ender Governor Brownlow. He was then reelected to Congress and took his seat in the House, on July 24, 1866, when Tennessee was readmitted to representation in that body. Here he broke with his fellow Unionist of Civil War days, President Johnson, and aligned himself with the radical Republicans. Consequently, he was thoroughly hated by the conservatives of his state, who took advantage of the first opportunity to gerrymander his di strict. He refused to retire to private life, however, and as a candidate for Congress from the state at large in 1872 defeated his two Democratic opponents, Andrew Johnson and Benjamin F. Cheatham [qq.v.]. Two years later he was the Republican party's unsuccessful candidate for the governorship. In 1875 his long and able services to his party were rewarded by President Grant, who appointed him minister to Turkey. After five years in Constantinople he returned to the United States to succeed David M. Key as postmaster-general in the cabinet of President Hayes. In the following year he retired to private life.

[Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts (1903); James Park, Life and Services of Horace Maynard (1903); Report of the Proc. of the Numismatic and Antiquaria1 Society of Philadelphia ... 1882 (1883); 0. P. Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee (1912); Amherst College Biographical Record of the Graduates and Non-Graduates (1927); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), series 1, volumes VII, XVI (pt. 2), XX (part 2), series 2, volumes I, IV (1882-99); Knoxville Daily Chronicle, May 4-6, 1882.]

P. M. H.



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.