Thu-Tow: Thurston through Townsley

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.


THURSTON, Ariel, lawyer, jurist.

(Gates, 2013, Volume 6, p. 588)


THURSTON, Daniel, Winthrop, Maine, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


THURSTON, David, Winthrop, Maine, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1833-40.


TIBBLES, Thomas Henry (May 22, 1838-May 14, 1928), journalist, social reformer. In 1856 he appears to have been a member of John Brown's company in Kansas.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 522-523:

TIBBLES, THOMAS HENRY (May 22, 1838-May 14, 1928), journalist, social reformer, was the son of William and Martha (Cooley) Tibbles and was born in Washington County, Ohio. It is said that he ran away from home at the age of six and that he was picked up by a party of emigrants who took him to we stern Missouri. In 1856 he appears to have been a member of John Brown's company in Kansas. According to the legend he was once captured by Quantrill's men and hanged, though friends arrived in time to save his life. He returned to Ohio and for a time attended Mount Union College at Alliance. In 1861, at Freedom, Pennsylvania, he married Amelia Owen. During the Civil War he served on the plains as a guide and scout, and had some employment as a newspaper correspondent. After the war he became an itinerant Methodist preacher, though later he joined the Presbyterians and still later the Unitarians. In 1873-74 he was employed as a reporter on the Omaha Daily Bee and in 1876-79 on the Omaha Daily Herald (subsequently the Morning World-Herald). It was while engaged with the latter paper that he took part in an episode that brought him into general notice. A party of thirty-four homesick Poncas, led by their chief, Standing Bear, had left their new reservation in the present Oklahoma and after a terrible mid-winter journey had arrived among the friendly Omahas late in March 1879. They were arrested by the military, under orders to return them to the reservation. Tibbles, with a fellow reporter, enlisted the help of two attorneys, and on April 30, after a trial in the Federal District Court, the Poncas were freed (United States ex rel. Standing Bear vs. Crook, 25 Federal Cases, 695). Tibbles, arranging with Standing Bear and with Francis La Flesche and his sister Susette, or Bright Eyes [q.v.], of the Omahas to plead the cause of the Indians before the people, conducted a speaking tour which inspired a nation-wide movement in their behalf. His first wife had died in 1879. In 1881, on the Omaha reservation, he married Bright Eyes.

Tibbles was, from their beginning, a zealous supporter of the National Farmers' Alliance and the People's (Populist) party. In 1895, at Lincoln, he took charge of the Independent, a weekly organ of the movement, which became nationally influential. In 1904 he was the party's candidate for vice-president. From 1905 to 1910 he edited a weekly newspaper, the Investigator, and then returned to the World-Herald, where his last newspaper work was done. His wife died on May 26, 1903. At Ute, Iowa, February 24, 1907, he was married to Ida Belle Riddle, who, with two daughters, survived him. He died at his home in Omaha.

Tibbles was an indefatigable writer and besides his newspaper work published three books -Ponca Chiefs (1880); Hidden Power (1881), and The American Peasant (1892). He was active also as a stump speaker for the People's party, and as a lecturer on social questions and Indian welfare. He was a large man, somewhat expansive in manner, who made many friends, and who was highly respected for his integrity and for his courageous espousal of unpopular causes.

[Who's Who in America, 1920-21; C. Q. De France, in Nebraska Historical Magazine, October-December 1932; obituaries in New York Times, Morning World-Herald (Omaha), and Nebr. State Journal (Lincoln), May 15, 1928; information from Ida B. Riddle Tibbles.]

W. J. G.


TIERNAN, Luke, Baltimore, Maryland.  Original founder and leader 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, p. 192; Who's Who in America, 1920-21; C. Q. De France, in Nebraska Historical Magazine, October-December 1932; obituaries in New York Times)


TIFFLIN, Edward, 1766-1829, Ohio, statesman, clergyman, Governor of Ohio.  Strong supporter of the American Colonization Society and colonization. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 114; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 535; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 138)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 114:

TIFFIN, Edward, statesman, born in Carlisle, England, 19 June, 1766; died in Chillicothe, Ohio, 9 August, 1829. After receiving an ordinary English education, he began the study of medicine, and continued it after his removal to Charlestown, Virginia, in 1784, receiving his degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789. In the same year he married Mary, sister of Governor Thomas Worthington. In 1790 he united with the Methodist church, and soon afterward he became a local preacher, being ordained deacon, by Bishop Asbury, 19 November, 1792. In 1796 he removed to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he continued both to preach and to practise medicine. At Deer Creek, twelve miles distant, he organized a flourishing congregation, long before that part of the country was visited by travelling preachers. In 1799 he was chosen to the legislature of the Northwest territory, of which he was elected speaker, and in 1802 he was president of the convention that formed the constitution of the state of Ohio. He was elected the first governor of the state in 1803, and re-elected two years later. During his second term he arrested the expedition of Aaron Burr, near Marietta, Ohio. After the expiration of his service he was chosen U. S. senator, to succeed his brother-in-law, Thomas Worthington, and took his seat in December, 1807, but early in the following year his wife died, and on 3 March, 1809, he resigned from the senate and retired to private life. Shortly afterward he married again, and was elected to the legislature, serving two terms as speaker. In the autumn of 1810 he resumed the practice of medicine at Chillicothe, and in 1812, on the creation by act of congress of a commissionership of the general land-office, he was appointed by President Madison as its first incumbent. He removed to Washington, organized the system that has continued in the land-office till the present time, and in 1814 was active in the removal of his papers to Virginia, whereby the entire contents of his office were saved from destruction by the British. Wishing to return to the west, he proposed to Josiah Meigs, surveyor-general of public lands northwest of Ohio river, that they should exchange offices, which was done, after the consent of the president and senate had been obtained. This post he held till 1 July, 1829, when he received, on his death-bed, an order from President Jackson to deliver the office to a successor. Dr. Tiffin continued to preach occasionally in his later years. Three of his sermons were published in the “Ohio Conference Offering” in 1851. In a letter of introduction to General Arthur St. Clair, General Washington speaks of Dr. Tiffin as being “very familiar with law.” Appletons’ Cylocpædia of American Biography, 1888.


TILDEN, William P., Concord, New Hampshire, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1843-48, Manager, 1848-53.


TILTON, abolitionist leader, New York, originally supported gradual emancipation and African colonization. Later supported militant abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy and called for immediate abolition.  Worked as tireless anti-slavery leader through mid-1840s. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume 1, pp. 218-219)


TILTON, David, Edgartown, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


TILTON, Theodore, 1835-1907, editor, abolitionist.  Encouraged Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the American Equal Rights Association, 1866.  Ardent, impressionable, devoted to evangelical Christianity, abolition, and other reform causes. Originally supported gradual emancipation and African colonization. Later supported militant abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy and called for immediate abolition.  In 1856  he quarreled with the Observer for its lukewarm attitude toward slavery, and owing in part to the good offices of the Reverend George B. Cheever [q.v.], a leader of the religious anti-slavery party in New York, became managing editor of the Independent, the Congregationalist journal of Henry C. Bowen [q.v.].

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 170; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 120; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 551-553; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 681). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 551-553:

TILTON, THEODORE (October 2, 1835-May 25, 1907), editor, was born in New York City, the son of Silas and Eusebia (Tilton) Tilton. His father kept a store. Both his parents were strict Advent Baptists, and brought the boy up in a religious atmosphere. From the public schools he went to the Free Academy (later the College of the City of New York), where he was a student from 1850 to 1853. He gained some newspaper experience reporting for the New York Tribune, and came under the notice and influence of Greeley himself. Ardent, impressionable, devoted to evangelical Christianity, abolition, and other causes, and fluent of speech and pen, he attracted attention both by his tall handsome figure and his impetuous energy. Immediately after leaving school he declined a place on the New York Herald because it involved Sunday work, and joined the New York Observer, a Presbyterian weekly, instead. One of his regular assignments was to take down in shorthand the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher [q.v.]; and on October 2, 1855, he married Elizabeth Richards, a Sunday school teacher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Beecher performing the ceremony. In the following year he quarreled with the Observer for its lukewarm attitude toward slavery, and owing in part to the good offices of the Reverend George B. Cheever [q.v.], a leader of the religious anti-slavery party in New York, became managing editor of the Independent, the Congregationalist journal of Henry C. Bowen [q.v.].

In this post he at once made a notable reputation. It is little exaggeration to say that, taking more and more of the control from Bowen and his aide Joshua Leavitt; he temporarily "developed into one of the really great editors of the country" (Hibben, post, p. 170). The Independent had been distinctly sectarian, its chief contributors clergymen; Tilton made it a journal of broad appeal, numbering Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Whittier, Lowell, Garrison, Seward, and Kossuth among its writers. Losses were converted into profits. He also arranged for the regular publication of Beecher's sermons, thus increasing the preacher's audience and income. The association between the two men became closer than ever. Tilton acted as superintendent of Plymouth Sunday School, and he, Bowen, and Beecher were called "the Trinity of Plymouth Churr'1." When the Civil War fell with ruinous effect on Bowen's mercantile business, Beecher came to his aid late in 1861 by assuming the editorship of the Independent, while Tilton remained in his old place. The two used the journal aggressively in the fight for emancipation and a more vigorous prosecution of hostilities; but the arrangement lasted only a year, and when Beecher went to England to-plead the Northern cause, Tilton succeeded him as editor-in- chief, holding the place until 1871. He not only kept the Independent a successful family magazine but made it an organ of political power, taking a "radical" stand throughout the war and Reconstruction; its circulation increased so remarkably that in 1865 Bowen offered him a partnership. To his house in Livingston Street, Brooklyn, frequently came such famous figures as Greeley, Wendell Phillips, Sumner, Henry Wilson, and Gerrit Smith. Immediately after the close of the war he became one of the most popular figures on the lyceum platform, while he also blossomed out as a writer of musical but unoriginal verse, The King's Ring and The Sexton's Tale, and Other Poems appearing in 1867. He attracted much attention when he went to Washington to labor for Johnson's impeachment, and when he threw himself into the woman's suffrage cause. His wife for a time edited Revolution, a suffragist journal, and both were prominent in the Equal Rights Association. In 1870 he assumed an additional burden in the editorship of the Brooklyn Union. also owned by Bowen. He was a national figure.

But this promising career was totally disrupted by the great Beecher scandal. In the summe1 of 1870 Elizabeth Tilton confessed to her husband intimate relations with the pastor of Plymouth Church. The exact degree of intimacy was disputable, Tilton and his friends being convinced of adultery while Beecher first believed himself accused merely of "making improper solicitations" (Tilton vs. Beecher, post, III, 50). At first Tilton resolved to shield his wife and keep the matter secret; but unfortunately neither could forget. In a short time several members of the woman's rights group, including Victoria Woodhull [q.v.], of whom Tilton had become a blind admirer, knew all about it; so did others in Plymouth Church who did everything in their power to keep the peace and suppress the scandal. Henry Bowen in alarm decided to dismiss Tilton from the Independent and the Brooklyn Union; he had just described him in a signed article in the Independent as "bold, uncompromising, a master among men" (December 22, 1870), but now declared him guilty of moral lapses and unsafe in judgment (Hibben, post, p. 248). Beecher acquiesced in this proceeding while asking through an intermediary for Tilton's forgiveness and writing: "I humble myself before him as I do before my God" (Ibid., p. 257). Tilton's friend Frank Moulton came to the rescue by enabling him to start a new magazine, the Golden Age, but it proved weak. In April 1872 he sued Bowen for breach of contract. Meanwhile, his charge against Beecher, though not openly pressed, was the subject of smouldering gossip.

Full publicity was ultimately inevitable. On November 2, 1872, Woodhill and Claflin’s Weekly printed the charges in full. Beecher, unable longer to maintain a dignified silence and forced to try to clear his name, appointed a committee of members and stockholders of Plymouth Church to investigate. It completely exonerated him, as later did a group of Congregational ministers. Under Frank Moulton's restraining hand Tilton had played a longsuffering role, trying to shield Beecher while assailed by Beecher's friends; but now his patience was exhausted. On July 20, 1874, he appeared before Plymouth Church and formally lodged a charge of adultery against Beecher. In this crisis the distracted Elizabeth Tilton decided to leave her husband and children and stand by her pastor. Tilton, deserted by his emotional wife, condemned by thousands of Beecher's admirers as a slanderer, charged by Beecher himself with blackmail, found his position desperate. The result was his suit against Beecher for criminal conversation, with damages of $100,000 demanded. Hearings began January II, 1875. in Brooklyn City Court, lasted 112 trial days, and resulted in a hung jury and a division of public opinion that still persists.

The case left Tilton completely ruined in fortune and reputation. He had sold his share of the Golden Age in 1874, and lived by writing and lecturing. In 1883 he left the country never to return, traveling in England and Germany and finally settling in Paris. Books and articles brought him small sums, and he long lived on a pittance on the lie St. Louis, writing poetry and playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence. Though four years after the trial his wife recanted and declared her husband's charges true (New York Times, April 16, 1878), he was never reconciled with her. Among his later books were a wildly improbable romance, Tempest Tossed (1874); ballads called Swabian Stories (1882); Great Tom, or the Curfew Bell of Oxford (1885); Heart's Ease (1894); and Sonnet s to the Memory of Frederick Douglass (1895). Tilton's death in Paris resulted from pneumonia; four children lived to maturity.

[Paxton Hibben, Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait (1927); Lyman Abbott and S. B. Halliday, Life of Henry Ward Beecher (1887); Emanie Sachs, The Terrible Siren (1929); Theodore Tilton vs. Henry Ward Beecher (1874); The Great Brooklyn Romance; All the Documents in th e Famous Beecher-Tilton Case, Unabridged (1874); L. P. Brockett, Men of Our Day (1868); Evening Post (New York), May 25, 1907; New York Tribune and- New York Herald, May 26, 1907; J. E. Stillwell, History and Genealogy Miscellany, volume V (1932).

A.N.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 120:

TILTON, Theodore, journalist, born in New York city, 2 October, 1835. He was graduated at the College of the city of New York in 1855, was employed for a year on the New York “Observer,” and then became an editor of the “Independent,” continuing on the staff from 1856 till 1871, the latter part of the time as editor-in-chief. He edited also, about six months of the last year, the Brooklyn “Union.” He then established the “Golden Age,” an independent political and literary weekly, but retired from it at the end of two years. In 1874 he charged Henry Ward Beecher with criminal intimacy with his wife (see BEECHER), and the case, tried by Plymouth church and the public courts, attracted wide attention. Mr. Tilton has written many political and reformatory articles, which have been reprinted in pamphlets. He has gained much reputation as an orator, being a constant and eloquent speaker in behalf of woman's rights, and, before the civil war, in opposition to slavery. For twenty years he was a lyceum lecturer, speaking in nearly every northern state and territory. He went abroad in 1883, and has since remained there. Among his works are “The Sexton's Tale, and other Poems” (New York, 1867); “Sancta Sanctorum, or Proof-Sheets from an Editor's Table” (1869); “Tempest Tossed,” a romance (1873; republished in 1883); “Thou and I,” poems (1880); and “Suabian Stories,” ballads (1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 120. 


TINGLEY, C. T., Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1838-40.


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

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

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

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

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

E. H. R.


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

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

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 126:

TODD, John, soldier, born in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, in 1750; died at the Blue Licks, Kentucky, 19 August, 1782. He took part in the battle of Point Pleasant, Virginia, in 1774, as adjutant-general to General Andrew Lewis. He settled as a lawyer in Fincastle, Virginia, but, with his brothers, emigrated to Fayette county, Kentucky, in 1775, took part in the organization of the Transylvania colonial legislature that year with Daniel Boone, and penetrated southwest as far as Bowling Green, Kentucky. In 1776 he settled near Lexington and was elected a burgess to the Virginia legislature, being one of the first two representatives from Kentucky county, where he served as county lieutenant and colonel of militia. He accompanied General George Rogers Clark to Vincennes and Kaskaskia, and succeeded him in command of the latter place. In 1777 he was commissioned by Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, to be colonel and commandant of Illinois county, and served two years. He organized the civil government of this county, which afterward became the state of Illinois. Colonel Todd went to Virginia in 1779, and was a member of the legislature in 1780, where he procured land-grants for public schools, and introduced a bill for negro emancipation. Afterward he returned to his family in Kentucky. While there he, as senior colonel, commanded the forces against the Indians in the battle of Blue Licks, where he was killed.—LEVI, brother of John, was a lieutenant under George Rogers Clark in the expedition of 1778, and one of the few survivors of the Blue Licks; and Levi's son, ROBERT S., was the father of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.   Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 126.


TODD, John, abolitionist leader, founding member, Electing Committee, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Education, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787.

(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. 92, 102; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 129; Nathan, 1991)


TODD, John, 1818-1894, Wets Hanover, Pennsylvania, clergyman, abolitionist, temperance activist, station master on the Underground Railroad.  Supporter of radical militant abolitionist John Brown.  Co-founder of Tabor College in Tabor, Iowa. 

(Morgan, James Patrick, John Todd and the Underground Railroad: Biography of an Iowa Abolitionist, McFarland, 2006)


TODD, John D., founding charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in December 1816. 

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


TOMLINSON, Gideon, 1780-1854, Connecticut, politician, lawyer, U.S. Senator, Congressman, Governor of Connecticut.  Member of the Connecticut Society of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 129; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 126)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 129:

TOMLINSON, Gideon, senator, born in Stratford, Connecticut, 31 December, 1780; died in Fairfield, Connecticut, 8 October, 1854. His grandfather was an officer at the capture of Ticonderoga. He was graduated at Yale in 1802, became a lawyer, and practised at Fairfield. He was elected a member of congress in 1818, serving from 1819 till 1827. He was chosen governor of Connecticut in that year, and continued in this office till 1831, when he resigned and was elected U. S. senator, serving till 1837. Appletons’ Cylocpædia of American Biography, 1888.


TOMPKINS, Daniel D., 1774-1825, statesman. Governor of New York.  Vice President of the United States.  Advocate for the abolishment of slavery in the United States.  While he was Governor of New York and before he took the office of Vice President, he sent a message to the New York State legislature on January 28, 1817, with a recommendation that a date be set for the abolition of slavery in the state of New York.  On his recommendation, the Assembly decreed that all slaves in the state should be freed on or after July 4, 1827.  Tompkins was reelected Vice President in 1820. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 130; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 738; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt 2, pp. 583-584; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839; Sinha, 2016, p. 83;) 

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

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

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

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

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

J. W. P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography 1888, Volume VI, p. 130:

TOMPKINS, Daniel D., vice-president of the United States, born in Fox Meadows (now Scarsdale), Westchester county, New York, 21 June, 1774; died on Staten island, New York, 11 June, 1825. His father was Jonathan G. Tompkins, a farmer, who performed services useful to his country during the Revolutionary conflict. The son was graduated at Columbia in 1795, studied law, was admitted to the bar in New York city in 1797, gained rapid success in his profession, and soon began to take part in politics, being elected to the State constitutional convention of 1801, and in the same year to the assembly. He was a leader of the Republican party in his state, and in 1804 was elected to the National house of representatives, but resigned on 2 July, before the meeting of congress, in order to take his seat on the bench of the supreme court of New York, having been nominated an associate justice on the promotion of James Kent to the chief justiceship. On 9 June, 1807, he resigned in order to become the candidate for governor of the Democratic wing of his party in opposition to Morgan Lewis. He was elected by a majority of 4,000 votes, and found himself in accord with the legislature in his support of the foreign policy of the Jefferson administration. He was continued in the office by the reunited Republican factions at the elections of 1809 and 1811. In 1812, in order to prevent the establishment of the Bank of North America in New York city as the successor to the defunct United States bank of Philadelphia, he resorted to the extraordinary power of proroguing the legislature that the constitution then gave him, which no governor ever used except himself in this instance. The charter of the bank had been approved by the house, a part of the Republicans voting with the Federalists, and when the legislature reassembled it was at once passed. In the election of 1813 his majority was reduced from 10,000 to 4,000, and there was a hostile lower house in the next legislature. Nevertheless, his bold act made him very popular with the common people, and his active patriotism during the war with Great Britain increased their admiration. He placed the militia in the field, and did more than the Federal government for the success of the operations on the Canadian border, pledging his personal and official credit when the New York banks refused to lend money on the security of the U. S. treasury notes without his indorsement. He advanced the means to maintain the military school at West Point, to continue the recruiting service in Connecticut, and to pay the workmen that were employed in the manufactory of arms at Springfield. He bought the weapons of private citizens that were delivered at the arsenal in New York city, and in a short time 40,000 militia were mustered and equipped for the defence of New York, Plattsburg, Sackett's Harbor, and Buffalo. When General John Armstrong retired from the secretaryship of war after the sacking of Washington, President Madison invited Tompkins to enter the cabinet as secretary of state in the place of James Monroe, who assumed charge of the war department; but he declined on the ground that he could be of more service to the country as governor of New York. He was reelected in 1815, and in April, 1816, was nominated for the vice-presidency of the United States. His talents and public services were more conspicuous than those of James Monroe, but the northern Democrats were not strong enough to command the first place on the ticket. Before resigning the governorship and entering on the office of vice-president, to which he was elected by 183 out of 217 votes, he sent a message to the legislature, dated 28 January, 1817, recommending that a day be fixed for the abolition of slavery within the bounds of the state, and the assembly, acting on his suggestion, decreed that all slaves should be free on and after 4 July, 1827. He was re-elected vice-president by 215 of the 228 votes that were cast in 1820, and in the same year was proposed by his friends as a candidate for governor; but his popularity had diminished, and charges of dishonesty were made in connection with his large disbursements during the war with Great Britain. He was a delegate to the State constitutional convention of 1821. The suspicion of embezzlement, which were due to a confusion in his accounts, unbalanced his mind and brought on a melancholy from which he sought escape in intoxicating drinks, thereby shortening his life. He was one of the founders of the New York historical society, one of the corporators of the city schools, and a regent of the State university. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 130.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

IT is a pleasing task to sketch the life of such a man as Daniel D. Tompkins, and a proud one to a citizen of the great state which had the honor of giving him birth. It may be compared to a landscape, such as the eye delights to rest upon; not one of abrupt transitions from mountain to ravine, from "antres vast" to "deserts idle," but an open, expanded, and unbroken scene of refreshing-arid unfading verdure. And if the pleasure of contemplating it be not unmingled, it is because the somber clouds of adversity began at length to hover round and darken its brilliant horizon.

Governor Tompkins seemed to embody within himself the peculiar characteristics of the citizens of his native state: activity, energy, and perseverance; and his talents, as constantly and variously as they were tried, were always found equal to any emergency. At the bar in the city of New York, during the early period of his life, he sustained an honorable rank; on the bench of 'the supreme court of the state, amid the bright constellation of judicial 'talent, learning, and eloquence, which then adorned it, he was conspicuously distinguished, white yet in comparative youth; and we venture to say, that no judge, since the formation of our government, ever presided at nisi prius, or travelled the circuit with more popularity. Dignified in his person, graceful and conciliating in his address, and thoroughly amiable in his character, he won the respect and confidence of the bar, and the admiration of the public. He was not one of those-for such have been-who "bullied at the bar, and dogmatized on the bench;" he was a man of warm and kindly feelings, and disdained to avail himself of the accident of official station, to browbeat or insult his inferiors.

The distinction which he gained in his judicial capacity, soon elevated him to a different theatre of action, the gubernatorial chair of his native state. He was put forward as a candidate by the most influential of the republicans of that day; and in the mode in which he administered the government, he did not disappoint their choice. 

Those were turbulent times in politics; but, like a skilful pilot, he safely and triumphantly weathered the storm---not only that which was raging within our own bounds and among ourselves, but a more fearful one which was pouring in upon us from a foreign foe. By his unwearied efforts, in repeatedly pressing the subject upon the attention of the legislature, slavery was finally abolished in the state of New York. In a message addressed to the legislature in 1812, he says, "The revision of our code of laws will furnish you with opportunities of making many beneficial improvements,-to devise the means for the gradual and ultimate extermination from among us of slavery, that reproach of a free people, is a work worthy of the representatives of a polished and enlightened nation;" and in 1817, he again submitted to the legislature, "whether the dictates of humanity, the reputation of the state, and a just sense of gratitude to THE ALMIGHTY for the many favors -he has conferred on us as a nation, do not demand that the reproach of slavery be expunged from our statute-book."

The subject of public education and morals was always near his heart; and thus he invites to it the attention of the legislature, in one of his messages : "As the guardians of the prosperity, liber .ty, and morals of the state, we are bound by every injunction of patriotism and wisdom, to endow to the utmost of our resources, schools and seminaries of learning, to patronize public improvements, and to cherish all institutions for the diffusion of religious knowledge, and for the promotion of virtue and piety." How noble are such sentiments, and how different from the maxims of despots, who for the most part govern the world! Here is not recommended endowments for splendid seats of learning, for the instruction of a privileged class; to propagate and maintain an exclusive creed, or to uphold some corrupt establishment to make the rich richer and more powerful, and the poor poorer and more debased; to use the mind, the immortal part of our nature, as an instrument to be moulded and fashioned so as to subserve the selfish purposes of a lordly few; but, with a philanthropy without limit, it is pressed upon the legislature to cherish and promote all institutions for the diffusion of knowledge, virtue, and piety. When a chief magistrate speaks thus to his people, be they his masters or his servants, we may consider that governments are not always. given to us as a "curse for our vices."

The benevolent feelings of Governor Tompkins prompted him to call the attention of the legislature, on repeated occasions, to the abolition of corporeal and capital punishments; and he at length happily effected that of the former: the latter still remain.

So early as 1811, we find him raising his voice in favor of the encouragement of manufactures. "Let us extend to them," he says "the utmost encouragement and protection which our finances will admit, and we shall soon convince the belligerents of Europe, to whom we have been extensive and profitable customers, that their mad and unjust policy towards us will ultimately recoil upon themselves, by giving to our industry, our resources, and our policy a new direction, calculated to render us really independent." He makes the question one of love of country and honorable pride, and does not even hint at any sordid calculation of profit. If he erred as a political economist, and in this respect there are those who will doubt, he at least manifested the generous purpose of a patriot.

In this brief sketch, it is not to be expected that even all the most prominent measures of Governor Tompkins' administration can be noticed; but there is one which must not be passed over in silence-we mean his prorogation of the senate and assembly of the state in 1812, and in reference we will briefly remark, in the language of another, " The legislature had lent a favorable ear to the petitions of various banking companies for incorporation; and a system had been projected and fostered by bribery and corruption, which threatened irreparable evils to the community. In his communication to the legislature, the governor dwelt upon this subject with peculiar force, and clearly and ably pointed out the inexpediency and danger of multiplying banking institutions; but such had been the gigantic strides of corruption, that the pernicious law would have been enacted, had not the governor exerted his constitutional privilege of proroguing the legislature."

The anathemas of party animosity came thick and heavy upon him, in consequence of this measure, which, although strictly constitutional, was stigmatized as arbitrary and despotic; but he breasted himself to the shock, and triumphed in the support of public opinion. Here he displayed, in a conspicuous manner, that moral energy of character which we have attributed to him, and crushed the hydra of corruption, which was beginning to rear itself in the sacred halls of legislation. "The measure," says the writer above quoted, "excited the astonishment and admiration of the whole United States."
We come now to the part which he bore in our late war with Great Brita.in, which embraces a most interesting period of his life. Whenever the history of that war shall be written for posterity, his name will fill an ample space in it. As governor of the state of New York, he had the direction of all her energies; and many and arduous were the duties which he was called upon to perform. But those who were conversant with the scenes of that period, will recollect the universal confidence which he inspired in every lover of his country.

The following letter, dated a few days after the declaration of war, will show the perilous situation of the state of New York at that time, the condition of the army; and the responsibility he assumed to meet the exigency.

"Albany, June 28, 1812.
" To Major General Dearborn, "Sir, -Your letter of the 23d inst. has been received. I had anticipated your request, by ordering the detachments from Washington, Essex, Clinton, and Franklin counties into service, and have fixed the days and places of their rendezvous. Upon application to the quarter-master general, I find there are but 139 tents and 60 camp-kettles at this place, and even those I take by a kind of stealth. The deputy quarter-master general declines giving an order for their delivery, until he shall have a written order from the quarter-master general, and the latter is willing I shall take them, but will not give the deputy a written order for that purpose. Under such circumstances, I shall then avail myself of the rule of possession, and by virtue of the eleven points of the law, send them off to-morrow morning, without a written order from any one. You may remember, that when you were secretary of the war department>I invited you to forward and deposit in our frontier arsenals, arms, ammunition, and camp equipage, free of expense, to be ready for defend? in case of war; and the same invitation to the war department has been repeated four times since. The United States have now from five to six hundred regular troops at Plattsburgh, Rome, Canandaigua, &c., where those arsenals are; and yet those recruits are now, and must be for weeks to come, unarmed, and in every respect unequipped, although within musket shot of arsenals. The recruits at Plattsburgh are within fifty miles of two tribes of Canadian Indians. In case of an attack upon the frontiers, that portion of the United States army would be as inefficient, and as unable to defend the inhabitants, or themselves even, as so many women. As to cannon, muskets, and ammunition, I can find no one here who will exercise any authority over them, or deliver a single article upon my requisition. 

Neither can I find any officer of the army who feels himself authorized to exercise any authority, or do any act which will aid me in the all-important object of protecting the inhabitants of our extended frontier, exposed to the cruelties of savages and the depredation of the enemy. If I must rely upon the militia solely for such protection, I entreat you to give orders to your officers here to furnish upon my order, for the use of the militia detachments, all needful weapons and articles with which the United States are furnished, and of which we are destitute.

"You may rely upon all the assistance which my talents, influence, and authority can furnish, in the active prosecution of the just and necessary war which has been declared by the constituted authority. of our beloved country."

From the day of the declaration of war, the governor entered heart and soul into the prosecution of it, and so continued until its close. Most of the frontier troops, the first campaign, were militia, and many of them were marched several hundred miles. The quartermaster general of that day refused to make any advances to them. The governor was therefore placed in the dilemma of providing as well as he could for their expenses of every kind, or of permitting them to return home for the want of accommodation, disgusted both with the war and the government. He issued orders for raising a brigade of volunteers upon his own responsibility, which greatly distinguished itself on our Niagara frontier, and particularly at the memorable sortie from Fort Erie. The officers were all selected by Governor Tompkins, and their gallant conduct in the field showed his admirable discrimination in this respect. He had previously recommended to the legislature to raise volunteer regiments for the defence of our frontiers and the city of New York, but by a perversity which seems strange to us at the present day, his patriotic recommendation was rejected. A man of less firmness than Governor Tompkins would have quailed beneath the storm which was raised against him in Albany in the winter of 1813-14; and the consequence would probably have been, that the state would have been, overrun by the foe. Not only was the whole western frontier in danger of invasion, but Sackett's Harbor, Plattsburgh, and the city of New York. But, regardless of censure or disapprobation, he called into the field large bodies of militia, and organized a corps of sea fencibles for the protection of the city of New York, consisting of 1000 men. In September, 1814, the militia in service for the defence of the city amounted to 17,500 men. He was even ready to despatch a force, under the lamented Decatur, for the assistance of Baltimore, which was then menaced with an attack, and h5ld not the news of the enemy's retreat been received, the succor would have been upon their march to the relief of a sister state.

In 1814, from information received and corroborated by the movements of the enemy, there are sufficient grounds of belief that one great object of his campaign was to penetrate with his northern army by the waters of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, and by a simultaneous attack with his maritime forces on New York, to form a junction which should sever the communication of the states. The exigency of the time, while it subjected the executive to great responsibility, admitted of no delay. To defeat this arrogant design, and save the state from inroad, it was necessary immediately to exercise fuller powers and more ample resources than had been placed in his hands by the legislature. He proceeded, therefore, to make such dispositions as were deemed indispensable to secure the exposed points against menaced invasion. To effect these objects, he found it necessary to transcend the authority' and means vested in him by law, perfectly satisfied that the legislature would approve and sanction what he had done.

In October of this year, Governor Tompkins was appointed by the president to the command of the third military district. He acquitted himself of the command with great ability, and, on the disbanding of the troops, he received from every quarter letters of compliment and gratitude; and this was the only recompense for his services in this command which he ever obtained.
During the fall of this year, the general government was desirous -0f fitting out an -expedition to dislodge the enemy from Castine, in the then province of Maine. They had applied to the governor of Massachusetts to raise the necessary funds for this purpose, but without effect. In this dilemma, the situation of the general government was hinted to Governor Tompkins, who, with his individual credit, -and upon his own responsibility, immediately raised the sum of three hundred thousand dollars, which he placed at the orders of General Dearborn, then commanding in Massachusetts. This noble act of patriotism speaks for itself, and comment would be superfluous. In looking over his military correspondence, it is surprising to see how watchful he was to foster a delicate and punctilious regard to the relative rank of the officers of the militia, so as to preclude every cause of jealousy or complaint. The officers were appointed by, the council of appointment, which in the winter of 1813-14 was, together with one branch of the legislature, opposed to the administration of the general government and to the prosecution of the war; and it is evident, from his correspondence at this period, that attempts were constantly made to create discontents, by the recommending of persons for promotion over the heads of those who were entitled to it by their previous military rank; and in turning back to his private correspondence from 1808 to 1811, we are struck with the continual annoyance experienced by him from the intrigues and slanders of political opponents, and at the same time with the indefatigable industry and noble frankness with which he counteracted and exposed them.
In the fall of 1814, Mr. Monroe having just been appointed secretary of war, President Madison requested permission to name Governor Tompkins to the senate as his successor. This offer of what is considered the highest office in the gift of the president of the United States, was declined. In the spring of 1815, after peace had been proclaimed, he resigned the command of the third military district; and the president addressed to him a letter of thanks, for his "patriotic, active, and able support given to the government during the war."
In February 1817, having received official information of his election to the office of vice president of the United States, he surrendered that of chief magistrate of the state of New York.

Daniel D. Tompkins was born on the 21st of June, 1774, at Scarsdale, (Fox Meadows,) in the county of Westchester, New York. He was the seventh son of Jonathan G. Tompkins, one of the only three individuals of the town who advocated the cause of their country during the revolution. His ancestors had emigrated originally from the north of England during the time of religious persecution in that country, and landed at Plymouth, in the then colony of Massachusetts. After remaining there a short time, they purchased a tract of land in Westchester. county, where they permanently settled. The father of the governor was a member of the state convention which adopted the declaration of independence and the first constitution of the state. He was a member of the legislature during the whole period of the revolution, also for many years first judge of the court of common pleas for the county; and on the institution of the university of the state, was appointed one of the regents, which situation he held until his resignation of it in 1808. He died after seeing his son elevated to the second office in the gift of his country. 
Governor Tompkins was educated at Columbia college, in the city of New York, and received the first honors of his class. He was admitted to the bar in 1797; in 1801 was elected a representative of the city in the convention to revise the constitution of the state; in 1802 was chosen to the state legislature; and in 1804 was appointed a judge in the supreme court of the state, to supply the vacancy occasioned by the election of Chief Justice Lewis to the gubernatorial chair. In the same year he was elected a member of congress for the city, as a colleague of the late learned Dr. Mitchill. In 1807, when not thirty-three years of age, he was elevated to the chief magistracy of the state. He was also chancellor of the university; and in June 1820 was elected grand master of masons in the state of New York.

In 1821, he was chosen a delegate from the county of Richmond to the convention for framing a new constitution for the state; and he was afterwards appointed president of this body. This was the last public situation which he held.
We still fondly turn our recollections towards him, as one of the most amiable, benevolent, and true-hearted men that ever lived. He bore the stamp of this feeling of kindliness towards his fellow-men in his open and frank countenance, in his easy and unaffected address, in the very tones of his voice in his every-day intercourse with society. Upon every subject that comes home to "men's business and bosoms," his opinions were liberal and expanded; exclusiveness or dogmatism formed no part of his moral creed. He found, as all have found or will find who aspire to raise themselves above the level of their fellow-men, that envy tracked his footsteps, and calumny was always at hand to endeavor to throw a shade over his fame; and we regret to say that, during the close of his career, he suffered from pecuniary embarrassments, resulting from his multifarious services and expenditures, and assumed responsibilities, during the war, and from-what must not be disguised the tardy justice of the government. He came out of this ordeal, however, completely triumphant; but our limits forbid our entering into details.

We merely add the date of his decease, which melancholy event happened on the 11th of June, 1825, on Staten Island; but his remains are interred in the family vault, at St. Mark's church, in the city of New York.
Source: Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839


TON, John, 1826-1896, Akersloot, North Holland, abolitionist.  Active in the Underground Railroad, aiding fugitive slaves.  Worked with other abolitionists in the area, including Cornelius Kuyper, Charles Dyer, and Charles and Henry Dalton.


TORREY, Charles Turner, Reverend, 1813-1846, Massachusetts, clergyman, reformer, abolitionist leader.  Wrote Memoir of the Martyr.  Co-founder of Boston Vigilance Committee, which aided and defended fugitive slaves.  Leader, the National Convention of Friends of Immediate Emancipation, Albany, New York, 1840.  Arrested, tried and convicted of aiding in escape of slaves.  He died in prison.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 285; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 266, 268; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1850; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 595; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 757). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

G. H. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138:

TORREY, Charles Turner, reformer, born in Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1813; died in Baltimore, Md., 9 May, 1846. His ancestor, James, was an early settler of Scituate. (See TORREY, WILLIAM.) Charles was graduated at Yale in 1830, studied theology, and occupied Congregational pastorates in Princeton, N.J., and Salem, Massachusetts, but soon relinquished his professional duties to devote himself to anti-slavery labors in Maryland. In 1843 he attended a slaveholders’ convention in Baltimore, reported its proceedings, and was arrested and put in jail. In 1844, having been detected in his attempt to aid in the escape of several slaves, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a long imprisonment in the state penitentiary, where he died of consumption that was brought on by ill usage. His body was taken to Boston, and his funeral attended from Tremont temple by an immense concourse of people. The story of his sufferings and death excited eager interest both in this country and in Europe, and “Torrey's blood crieth out” became a watch-word of the Abolition party, giving new impetus to the anti-slavery cause. He published a “Memoir of William R. Saxton” (Boston, 1838), and “Home, or the Pilgrim's Faith Revived,” a volume of sketches of life in Massachusetts, which he prepared in prison (1846). See “Memoir of the Martyr Torrey” (1847).   Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 138.

Chapter: “Underground Railroad. - Operations at the East and in the Middle States,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

The arrests, imprisonments, trials, and death of Charles T. Torrey in the Maryland penitentiary are among the more memorable examples and incidents connected with the working of the Underground Railroad. The wide notoriety of his acts, his position as a young clergyman, the great respectability of his connections, the high standing of those who sought his reprieve or some mitigation of his sentence, with the persistent .refusal of the authorities to grant it, challenged scrutiny, demanded investigation, and compelled thoughtful men to ask and show cause why such acts of neighborly kindness should be so severely punished.

Mr. Torrey was born near the spot where the Pilgrims landed, and of an ancestry distinguished for their piety and political standing. His parents dying in his early childhood, he was placed under the care of his grandparents. Quick and impulsive, he did not receive that thorough and careful restraint from these indulgent guardians which one of his mercurial temperament required. When, therefore, he went forth into the world, he had not gained all that caution, that calm and calculating self-control, which one differently constituted and differently trained might have exhibited in the peculiarly trying circumstances in which he was afterward placed. When he was brought into close contact with slavery, and became acquainted with the sad story of the slave's wrongs and wants, he was not so well prepared to listen to the, cool counsels of prudence, as he was prompt to reduce to practice, without much refining and weighing of consequences, that '' disinterested benevolence'' which was the great idea of his religious creed.

Graduating from Yale College in the year 1830, he was settled in 1837 as pastor of the Richmond Street Congregational Church in Providence. In the mean time he had married the second daughter of Dr. Ide of West Medway, Massachusetts, his theological teacher, and granddaughter of the late Dr. Emmons of Franklin, of the same State, a distinguished theologian of his day. By this marriage he became allied to prominent leaders in a school of theology whose distinguishing feature had ever been an inflexible adherence to the logical conclusions of the doctrines of its Creed, in their practical as well as their theoretical results, thus extorting the admission of a veteran antislavery writer that he had “never known a Hopkinsian clergyman who was not an Abolitionist.”  The great reforms, especially the antislavery, then at their spring-tide, and stirring the public mind deeply, would not permit him to enjoy the quietude of a pastor's life. Accordingly he relinquished his pastorate in the autumn of 1838, and engaged in delivering antislavery lectures.
In 1842, there was a slave-holders convention at Annapolis, Maryland, .at which, as if the laws of that State were not inhuman and-unchristian enough, it was proposed, even at that late date, to make them still more oppressive and wicked. Among other propositions, hardly less degrading and cruel, they proposed to the legislature to prevent the emancipation of slave by will or deed; to prevent free negroes from coming into the State; to sell free persons of color, convicted-of crime, into slavery out of the State; to repeal the act allowing manumitted negroes to remain in the State without a certificate; to require free negroes to give security for their good behavior; to forbid free negroes from holding real estate; and also to prohibit them from holding meetings after sundown. Mr. Torrey went to the convention in the capacity of a Washington correspondent of several Northern papers. Whether or not the members of the convention were made suspicious by the nefarious purposes of their meeting, it soon transpired that they suspected Mr. Torrey of being an Abolitionist, and a question arose whether he should be allowed to remain, either on the floor or in the galleries. While this was discussed in the convention, a great excitement was pervading Annapolis, and the mob was debating the question whether he should be taken out of town to be tarred and feathered, or hung. The conclusion, however, was to commit him to jail,--a building he pronounced to be “old and ruinous, without bed, or even straw, for a prisoner." He was allowed, however, such necessities, by furnishing them at private expense. He was gratuitously defended by two able lawyers of the State, Alexander, and Palmer. Several of the Massachusetts delegation in Congress and others proffered their kind sympathy and good offices. After several days incarceration, the judge decided that there was no cause for detention, though he put him under five hundred dollars bonds to keep the peace, his lawyers kindly becoming his sureties. This false imprisonment, these “bonds," and an expenditure which, as a poor man heavily in debt, he was ill able to bear, were the price he was obliged to pay for being an Abolitionist, --nothing else being laid to his charge.

In this jail he became acquainted with thirteen persons who had been manumitted by their owner, who afterward died insolvent. Being seized by the creditors of the estate, these unoffending men and women were twice tried before the courts, where it was proved that their late owner was not insolvent when he manumitted them. But these decisions having been reversed by the chancellor, they were in jail awaiting a new trial, with small probability of a favorable result. Mr. Torrey, very naturally, became deeply interested in their case, and resolved to help them, if he could. In a letter to the" New York Evangelist," written a few days after his release, there occurs this sentence:” I feel with more force than ever the injunction to ' remember them that are in bonds as bound with them '; and, after listening to the history of their career, I sat down and wrote and signed and prayed over a solemn reconsecration of myself to the work of freeing the slaves, until no slaves shall be found in the land. May God help me to be faithful to that pledge in Annapolis jail! In that cell, God helping me, if it stands, I will celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in Maryland before ten years roll away."

There is a touching pathos in this incident in Mr. Torrey's life, which, had real chivalry, and not slavery, been the ruling spirit of the American people, would have rather endeared him to his countrymen than have consigned him to prison. Well born, with superior talents, education, and professional prospects, a charming home, cheered by the presence of a lovely wife and little ones, he sacrificed them, disregarded the popular sentiment of, the North, and braved the vengeance of the South, to aid the lowly and downtrodden. As the young reformer sits in the dreary and repulsive prison, surrounded by and listening to the story of the dusky victims of the same cruel power that had laid its ruthless hands on him, little aid from the imagination is required to suggest a picture worthy of the painter's art. It is easy now, as it was then, to criticize and charge him with imprudence, unfounded enthusiasm, and an improper estimate of 'the relative claims of his family and the slave. Doubtless he was imprudent. That he was too enthusiastic may be admitted, when his purpose is borne in mind to “celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in Maryland in ten years." That a cooler and more calculating judgment would have led him to hesitate before subjecting his family to the contingencies resulting from his decision is probable. But these were errors of judgment, "leaning to virtue's side." In the light of eternity, above the interests, the friendships, and 'conventionalisms of earth, at Heaven's chancery, when this act shall be tested by the standards of the great law of love, another estimate will be made. That solemn promise, then written down, will be deemed a worthier record than that of many a prudent man, who, at a safe distance, left the slave to suffer and perish, while he satisfied his conscience and sense of justice by discountenancing such rashness, such unlawful interference with the claims of the slave-master. The obloquy often cast, by those who heard the 'appeals 'of the fleeing fugitive only to disregard them, upon the few who, like Mr. Torrey, heard to heed, should be relieved by a recognition of the fact that seldom, if ever, were braver, more unselfish, and more chivalric deeds recorded on the page of history than were theirs. When, by reason of the unparalleled difficulties of the situation, all made mistakes, let not theirs alone be held up for public reprobation, which were made in the interests of humanity' and with such -sublime disregard of personal sacrifice and danger.

After his release, he went to Albany and became editor or a paper. While in that city, a slave, who had escaped to Canada, entreated him to go to Virginia and aid in the escape of his wife and little ones. To one with his feelings and convictions, with that vow on record, such an appeal could not come in vain. With the husband and father he started on 'his ill-fated errand of humanity' which proved not 'only unsuccessful 'in the immediate object for which it was undertaken, -but fatal to all like efforts on this part in behalf or the slave. He was again arrested, imprisoned, and placed on trial. He secured the services of Reverdy Johnson, but not until, with characteristic honesty, he had confessed that he had once aided one or that gentleman's slaves to escape. He experienced the annoyances and hardships that might be reasonably expected for such an offence in such a community. Through the kind offices of friends, however, they were much lessened and alleviated; and, like the Missouri prisoners, he at once entered upon his missionary efforts, conversing and praying with his fellow-prisoners. But, while laboring for their benefit, he did not forget the great cause of freedom, but wrote to friends, to bodies secular and ecclesiastical, and one long and able letter to the State of Maryland. After being in jail some three months, awaiting his trial, he, in company with others, made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. Being betrayed, they failed of carrying their purpose into effect, and, he writes, were heavily ironed, and placed in damp, low-arched cells, and treated worse than if we had been murderers. I was loaded with irons weighing, I fudge, twenty-five pounds, so twisted that 1 could neither stand up, lie down, nor sleep for seven days and nights he said he slept none, from, pain and the utter prostration of the nervous system. His trial came on, he was convicted, and, on the 30th of December, 1843, he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the penitentiary.

Strenuous efforts were .soon made for his release. Leading men, comprehending the essential wickedness of such a penalty for such an offence, signed memorials to the Governor of Maryland for pardon. Appeals, too, were made in person by several individuals. But the public sentiment of the State and of the South was too imbittered; and, though Governor Pratt expressed himself as personally favorable to the request, he did not deem it wise to brave the popular feeling against it. Some of the citizens of Baltimore approached Mr. Torrey with the idea of preparing the way for release by some seeming concession and the confession of doing wrong in violating slave laws. But he nobly adhered to his principles. In a letter dated 21st of December, 1844, he writes: "I cannot afford to concede any truth or principle to get out of prison. I am not rich enough." Indeed, it is doubtful whether any concession would have appeased the bloodthirsty appetite of the demon who now had him within his power. Though his health was failing, and it was evident he must soon succumb to the rigors of prison life, the governor remained inexorable. He died in prison, on the 9th of May, 1846.
But the most humiliating fact remains to be noted. After his death, his remains were taken to Boston; and Park Street Church, in which a-brother-in-law was a worshipper, was engaged for the funeral services. The permission was, however, revoked, the, house of another denomination procured, and Tremont Temple was thronged by the multitude, many of whom were hardly less indignant at the heartless intolerance of Boston than at the barbarism in Maryland. His body was followed by a long procession to Mount Auburn, where a fitting monument was afterward raised to his memory. There lies, in the words of Whittier, the young, the beautiful, the brave! He is safe now from the malice of his enemies. Nothing can harm him more. His work for the poor and helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of God's poor. He put his soul in their soul's stead; he gave his life for those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood."

On the evening of the day of his burial there was a large meeting in Faneuil Hall, at which addresses were made by General Fessenden of Maine, Henry B. Stanton, and Dr. Walter Channing, and a poem from James Russell Lowell was read. Referring to the acts for which: Mr. Torrey suffered, Mr. Stanton said: " Stripped of all extrinsic ornament, it was this, he aided oppressed men peaceably to cast away their chains; he gave liberty to men unjustly held .in bondage…He has done something for liberty, and his name deserves a place in the calendar of its martyrs. Now that he has been laid quietly and serenely in his grave, we may safely publish those acts to the world which, while he lived, could be safely known only to the few. In a letter addressed to me, while he was in prison awaiting his trial, he said: ' If I am a guilty man, I am a very guilty one; for I have aided nearly four hundred slaves to escape to freedom, the greater part of whom would probably but for my exertions have died in slavery.' “This statement was corroborated by the testimony of Jacob Gibbs, a colored man, who was Mr. Torrey's chief assistant in his efforts. The selection of Mr. Gibbs was not only an example of Mr. Torrey's shrewdness, but one instance, at least, in which the slave-masters overreached themselves, and where laws enacted in behalf of slavery, inured to the interests of freedom. For by the slave codes of all the slaveholding States the testimony of colored persons could not be received in court, so that Mr. Gibbs could never testify against his employer.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 74-80.


TORREY, Martin, Foxboro, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1842-, Executive Committee, 1843-45.


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

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

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

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

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

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

W. G. B.  


TOWNSEND, Jonas Holland, 1820-1872, African American, journalist, abolitionist leader, community activist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 216)


TOWNSEND, Joseph, 1739-1816, Methodist clergyman, 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, pp. 224-225, 238, 241)


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

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

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

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

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

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

A. L. L.


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

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 206,  Dictionary of American Biography)



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.