Ven-Vro: Venard through Vroom

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.


VENARD, Stephan, 1823-1891, Lebanon, Ohio, abolitionist.  Active in the Underground Railroad in Indiana.


VESEY, Denmark, c. 1767-1822, African American abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 339). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 258-259:

VESEY, DENMARK (c. 1767-July 2, 1822), mulatto rebel, because of his intelligence and beauty became at the age of fourteen the protege of one Captain Vesey, a slaver of Charleston, South Carolina, trading from St. Thomas to Santo Domingo. The name "Telemaque" that his owner gave him was corrupted to "Denmark." At Cap Francais (now Cape Haytien) the boy was sold to another, but later was returned as subject to epilepsy and for the next twenty years sailed with his master as a faithful slave. In 1800, having drawn $1,500 in the East Bay Street Lottery, Charleston, he purchased his freedom for $600 and set up for himself as a carpenter. Active and powerful, he accumulated a considerable estate, and was the reputed autocrat of several wives and a numerous progeny. Without particular grievances on his -own account, he resented his children's inheritance of slavery from their mothers, and, stimulated by events in Santo Domingo, he laid the foundation, 1818-22, for his uprising. Admitted to the Second Presbyterian Church in 1817, he joined the African Methodist congregation when they built their church, and acquired great influence through classes organized ostensibly for religious instruction. He was literate and quoted Scripture with powerful effect, identifying the negroes with the Israelites; and he interpreted the debate on the Missouri Compromise to mean that negroes were held by their masters in defiance of law. Exempt from slave restrictions, he carried his message to the plantations from the Santee to the Euhaws, a belt of more than a hundred miles. Meetings were held at Vesey's house, 20 Bull Street, where contributions were taken for arms; a blacksmith was set to making daggers, pikes, and bayonets, and a white barber to fashioning wigs and whiskers of European hair. The plans of the conspirators are not clear, but probably after taking the city they would have been guided by circumstances. Betrayed by a negro, they advanced the date for the uprising to Sunday night, June 16, but such effective precautions had been taken that the conspiracy collapsed.

Next day a court of two magistrates and five freeholders, customary in South Carolina since colonial times in cases involving slaves or persons of color, convened as both judge and jury, and, having laid down the customary rule of evidence that testimony of two should establish guilt, proceeded to the trial of the suspects. Carefully chosen men of integrity comprised the court, but when the Charleston Courier (June 21, 1822) published a communication on the "Melancholy Effect of Popular Excitement," citing the death of an innocent negro some years earlier as the result of a joke, the court protested against the insinuation of disrespect and drew a rebuke from Judge William Johnson - [q.v.], apparently the author of the original communication (Charleston Courier, June 29, 1822). After a three days' search Vesey was taken on the night of June 22 at the house of one of his wives. He had counsel and ably defended himself cross-examining witnesses with skill, but on, the testimony of informers, some of whom thus saved themselves, he was condemned to be hanged (notice of execution, Ibid., July 3, 1822). Of the negroes brought to trial, thirty-five were hanged, thirty-four were sent out of the state, and sixty-one were acquitted. Four whites, at least three of whom were foreign-born, were tried in the court of sessions for misdemeanor, and fined and imprisoned.

The true extent of the conspiracy will never be known, for Vesey and his aides died without making revelations. In the face of the intense excitement that prevailed, it was considered remarkable that the customary machinery of the law functioned and that no unusual punishments were inflicted. The local newspapers kept quiet about the insurrection and referred only briefly to the trials.

[A summary is in W. G. Simms, The History of South Carolina (1840), appendix; a sketch of Vesey is in An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection among a Portion of the Blacks of this City,. Published by the Authority of the Corporation of Charleston (1822); the same sketch is repeated in An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina (1822), by L. H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker; see also Achates (Thomas Pinckney?), Reflections, Occasioned by the Late Disturbances in Charleston (1822); T. W. Higginson, "Denmark Vesey," Atlantic Monthly, June 1861; A. H. Grimke, Right on the Scaffold, or, The Martyrs of 1822 (1901).]

A.K.G.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 283-284:

VESEY, Denmark, conspirator, born about 1767; died in Charleston, South Carolina, 2 July, 1822. He was an African of great physical strength and energy, who had been purchased in St. Thomas, when fourteen years old, by a sea-captain of Charleston, South Carolina, whom he accompanied in his voyages for twenty years, learning various languages. He purchased his freedom in 1800, and from that time worked as a carpenter in Charleston, exercising a strong influence over the negroes. For four years he taught the slaves that it would be right to strike a blow for their liberty, comparing their situation to that of the Israelites in bondage, and repeating the arguments against slavery that were made in congress by speakers on the Missouri compromise bill. In conjunction with a negro named Peter Poyas, he organized a plot for a general insurrection of slaves in and about Charleston, which was disclosed by a negro whom one of the conspirators approached on 25 May, 1822. Several thousand slaves from neighboring islands, organized in military formations and provided with pikes and daggers, were to arrive in canoes, as many were accustomed to do on Sunday, and with one stroke take possession of the city, the forts, and the shipping in the harbor. Nearly all the slaves of Charleston and its vicinity, many from remoter plantations, and a large number of whites, were in the plot. The leaders that were first arrested maintained such secrecy and composure that they were discharged from custody, and proceeded to develop their plans. An attempt was made to carry them out on 16 June, but the insurrection was promptly suppressed. At length, on the evidence of informers, the chief conspirators were arrested and arraigned for trial on 19 June. The two courts were organized under a colonial law, and consisted each of two lawyers and five freeholders, among whom were William Drayton, Robert Y. Hayne, Joel R. Poinsett, and Nathaniel Hayward. Denmark Vesey showed much dialectic skill in cross-examining witnesses by counsel and in his final plea. He and five of the ringleaders were hanged first, and twenty-nine others on later dates, all save one keeping up to the end their calm demeanor and absolute reticence, even under torture. On the day of Vesey's execution a second effort was made to rouse the blades, but two brigades of troops, on guard day and night, were sufficient to deter them from action. The slaves were ready, however, to embrace the first opportunity, and re-enforcements of United States troops were sent in August to guard against a renewal of the insurrection.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


VILLARD, Fanny Garrison [See VILLARD, Helen Frances Garrison, 1844-1928].


VILLARD,  Helen Frances Garrison (December 16, 1844-July 5, 1928), reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth child of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and Helen Eliza (Benson) Garrison.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 272-273:

VILLARD,  HELEN FRANCES GARRISON (December 16, 1844-July 5, 1928), reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth child of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and Helen Eliza (Benson) Garrison. "We shall demand for her the rights of a human being, though she be a female," wrote her militant father some weeks later. Named for her mother and paternal grandmother, Fanny (as she was always called) grew up a healthy, beautiful child, in a home surcharged with the exciting atmosphere of the greatest reform movement in American history. Educated in the Winthrop School, Boston, she spent her early years in close contact with the abolition struggle. After the Civil War, on January 3, 1866, she married Henry Villard [q.v.], Washington correspondent of the Chicago Daily Tribune. After an extended visit to Europe (July 1866-June 1, 1868), the young couple settled in Boston, where a daughter was born to them in 1868, and a son in 1870. During another visit to Germany in 1872 a second son was born. In 1876 the Villards established their home in New York, and in 1879 acquired a summer estate at Dobbs Ferry, New York, where their fourth child, a son, was born and died. During all these years Mrs. Villard's life was centered in her family and in the career of her husband, which involved much travel in the United States and abroad and another prolonged visit to Germany (1883-86).

The death of her husband in November 1900 marked the beginning of her public career. Possessed of wealth and leisure and her father's crusading spirit, she found she could make an excellent platform appearance and command a loyal following. With intense and widely extended activity, she now gave herself to philanthropy and social reform. In the great tradition of her father, she participated in the militant work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, serving as a member of its advisory committee. Always a woman suffragist, she labored indefatigably until victory came with the pas sage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. For many years (1897-1922) she headed the Diet Kitchen Association, which under her leadership first established public milk stations for infants and children in New York City. In her la st years, she devoted her best energies to the cause of peace, which she interpreted, as did her father, in terms of absolute non-resistance. At the close of the World War she gathered about her a determined group of pacifists and in October 1919 founded the Women's Peace Society, which she led as president until her death. In 1921, at the Conference of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, in Vienna, she presented resolutions calling for "non-resistance under all circumstances ... immediate, universal, and complete disarmament, ... absolute freedom of trade the world over" (Report of the 3rd International Congress of Women, 1921, p. 150). She died in her eighty-fourth year and was buried at her home at Dobbs Ferry.

Fanny Garrison Villard was a woman of infinite charm and grace. Her inward serenity of mind and sweetness of temper matched the outward beauty of her person. Her exquisite refinement was salted by a high sense of humor and an intense absorption in current affairs. Her gentleness and culture as wife and mother revealed themselves in later years as the adornments of a courage and rock-like resolution which were the central elements of her character. Her father lived in her again. No one who saw the spectacle will forget her marching up Fifth A venue in her old age at the head of the women's peace parade, her white head, crowned with its little black bonnet, nodding its defiance at the hostile but admiring crowds. A lady in personal bearing and social caste, she was democratic to the core, an ardent lover of mankind, and a passionate and valiant idealist.

[W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 volumes, 1904); Luncheon Given by Women's Peace Society in Celebration of Mrs. Henry Villard's 80th Birthday (1924), pamphlet, with addresses; personal statement, with data, by Oswald Garrison Villard, New York Times, July 6, 1928.]

J.H.H.


VILLARD, Henry (April 10, 1835-November 12, 1900), journalist, railway promoter, financier,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 273-275:

VILLARD, HENRY (April 10, 1835-November 12, 1900), journalist, railway promoter, financier, whose name was originally Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard, was born in Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria, the son of Gustav Leonhard Hilgard and Katharina Antonia Elisabeth (Pfeiffer) Hilgard. He came from an important family, his father being a jurist who rose to the supreme court of Bavaria, while two of his uncles were leaders in the revolution of 1848 in Rhenish Bavaria. Young Heinrich's sympathy with their republican sentiments estranged him from his father and the boy was sent for a time to a military school at Phalsbourg in Lorraine. He graduated from the Gymnasium in Speyer, and attended the universities of Munich and Wurzburg for a time, but disagreed again with his father and emigrated to America. Fearing that his father would have him returned to Germany and placed in the army, he adopted the name Villard, which had been borne by one of his schoolmates at Phalsbourg. Upon landing at New York in October 1853, he proceeded to the West by easy stages, spent some time in Cincinnati and Chicago, and eventually arrived at the home of relatives in Belleville, Illinois. During the year 1855-56 he successively read law, peddled books, sold real estate, and edited a small-town newspaper, but made little progress along any line except the mastery of the English language.

Increasing facility in the use of his adopted tongue served to equip him for the field of journalism which was to occupy his attention largely for the next decade. In 1858 he served as a special correspondent for the Staats-Zeitung of New York, observed and reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for that paper, began a personal friendship with Lincoln, and collected his Lincoln stories, which have since been widely quoted. Service with this German-American paper, however, he regarded merely as preliminary to his real objective-a regular berth with the English language press. Late in 1858 reports of the discovery of gold in the Pike's Peak country so aroused his adventurous spirit that he conceived a plan for a journey to the Rocky Mountains in the role of a correspondent, made a connection with the Cincinnati Commercial, and in the spring of 1859 set out across the Plains. His sojourn of some months in the mining camps not only enabled him to make the acquaintance of several noteworthy men, including Horace Greeley, but provided him with the materials for a guidebook for immigrants which he published in 1860 under the title The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions, a very accurate account of the natural resources of Colorado and a rather extraordinary achievement for a young man of twenty-five who seven years before had not known a word of English.

As correspondent for the Commercial he covered the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1860, and he served in a similar capacity for that paper, as well as for the Daily Missouri Democrat of St. Louis and the New York Tribune during the ensuing campaign. With the election of Lincoln, he was selected by the New York Herald as its correspondent at Springfield, Illinois Here he remained until the departure of Lincoln for Washington, supplying his paper with regular dispatches, which the Herald was forced to share with other members of the New York Associated Press. Since at the same time Villard corresponded freely with Western papers, a considerable portion of the political news which the country read during those memorable weeks was supplied by the young immigrant who had not yet turned his twenty-sixth birthday.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, he supported the Union cause and became a war correspondent, first for the New York Herald, and later for the New York Tribune, accompanying the Union armies in Virginia and the West until late in November 1863, when ill health forced him to abandon field work for a time. The following year, in conjunction with the Washington representative of the Chicago Daily Tribune, he organized a news agency to compete with the New York Associated Press, and represented his agency with the Army of the Potomac in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. Upon the conclusion of the war, he served as a correspondent in the United States and Europe until the autumn of 1868, when he became secretary of the American Social Science Association, with headquarters in Boston. This work, in addition to bringing him into the movement for civil service reform, enabled him to study and investigate public and corporate financing, including that of railways and banks, and thus indirectly prepared him for the most notable phase of his career-that of railway promoter and financier.

In 1871, to restore his failing health, he went to Germany and then to Switzerland. In Germany again, in the winter of 1873, he was brought into contact with a protective committee for the bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad Company. He became a member of the committee, and the following year was sent to Oregon as their representative, to investigate and recommend as to the future policy to be employed by the bondholders. He perfected a plan for the harmonious operation of the Oregon & California Railroad, the Oregon Central Railroad, and the Oregon Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco; in 1876 he became president of the first and last named companies. Meanwhile he had joined a committee for the protection of the bondholders of the Kansas Pacific, Railway, and when in 1876 this company became financially embarrassed he was named a receiver for the road, a position which forced him to match his wits with such redoubtable foes as Jay Gould and Sidney Dillon [qq.v.] of the Union Pacific. It was in connection with this company that he achieved his first important financial success and laid the foundation of his later fortune.

Villard's real love, however, was the Oregon country. On his first visit to the region he had been very favorably impressed with its possibilities and there gradually developed in his mind the idea of building a railway empire in the Far Northwest. Perceiving the great strategic value of the south bank of the Columbia River as a railway route, he purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation Company from Simeon Gannett Reed [ q.v.] and his associates in 1879, organized the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, and proceeded to construct a railway eastward from Portland along that route. His plan was to make this line the Pacific Coast outlet for any northern transcontinental railway which might be built, and to concentrate the trade of the Northwest in Portland. As he progressed with his plans, however, he clashed with the Northern Pacific, then recovering from the financial disasters of the seventies, whose objective was Puget Sound. Appreciating the great advantage which the superior harbor of the Sound would give the Northern Pacific over his own road with terminus at Portland, Villard resolved to prevent the completion of the rival road. When his offer of running rights over his line to tidewater was refused, he decided to purchase a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific. After quietly buying the stock of the Company to the limit of his resources (December 1880-January 1881), he appealed to his friends and supporters for assistance. Issuing a confidential circular to about fifty persons, he asked them to subscribe toward a fund of eight million dollars, the precise purpose of which was not then revealed. It is eloquent testimony to the confidence which he inspired in men that, besides the sum first requested, an additional twelve million dollars was eventually subscribed. This transaction, commonly known as the " Blind Pool," remains one of the notable achievements in the annals of railway finance.

With the means thus secured he established his control of the Northern Pacific; he organized a holding company-the Oregon & Transcontinental-to harmonize the interests of his various railway properties; on September 15, 1881, he became president of the Northern Pacific, and completed the line in 1883. Since he also controlled the Oregon & California Railroad, and had recently organized the Oregon Improvement Company for the development of the natural resources of the region, he now dominated every important agency of transportation in that part of the country. His triumph, however, was of short duration. Because of a combination of circumstances, including faulty estimates of construction costs, the Northern Pacific upon its completion, was confronted with a huge deficit which forced the resignation of Villard from the presidency early in 1884. From 1884 to 1886 he was in Germany, recovering from a nervous breakdown; in the latter year he returned to New York as agent of the Deutsche Bank. With the aid of German capital he saved the Oregon & Transcontinental in September 1887, and reentered the board of the Northern Pacific in 1888, where, for the next two years, he strove earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to effect an adjustment of the clashing interests of the various cities and transportation companies of the Pacific Northwest. His failure in this effort was attended by his retirement from the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, though after a brief interval he continued as chairman of the board of the Northern Pacific until 1893, when his railway career came to an end.

Meanwhile Villard was displaying his versatility by activities along other lines. His early realization of the possibilities of the electrical industry prompted him to extend financial assistance to Thomas A. Edison and to found the Edison General Electric Company in 1889. In 1881 he inaugurated, under the direction of Raphael Pumpelly [q.v.], the Northern Transcontinental Survey, an examination of the Northern Pacific land grant of genuine scientific value. Nor had his activity as a financier dulled his earlier interest in journalism. When, through his financial successes with the Kansas Pacific and the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, he became a man of wealth, his thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of controlling a journal of independence and fearlessness, and of such high editorial standards as to compel attention from the entire country. Accordingly, in 1881, he acquired a controlling interest in the New York Evening Post, placed Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz [qq.v.] in charge of the editorial department, and, as a guarantee of independence on the part of the paper, promptly abdicated the right of influencing its editorial policy.

During the years 1879 to 1883 Villard was probably the most important railway promoter in the United States. In those years he was frankly aiming at a monopoly of transportation facilities in the Pacific Northwest; yet he showed no disposition to take unfair advantage of such a position, or to victimize the people of the region. Although alert to the protection of his interests against rival companies, he displayed fairness, moderation, and breadth of view in dealing with the cities on the Coast. On January 3, 1866, Villard married the only daughter of William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.]. In 1879 he established a home at Dobbs Ferry, New York, where in his sixty-sixth year he died. He was survived by his wife, Helen Frances Garrison Villard [q.v.], with a daughter and two sons.

[Villard MSS., Widener Library, Harvard University; Heinrich Hilgard Villard: Jugend Erinnerungen, 1835- 1853 (1902); Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 volumes, 1904); Villard's The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions (1860), reproduced (1932) with introduction and notes by Le Roy R. Hafen; E. V. Smalley, History of the Northern Pacific R.R. (1883); Allan Nevins, The Evening Post (1922); J.B. Hedges, Henry Villard and the Railways of the Northwest (1930); New York Times, November 13, 1900.]

J.B. H.


VINTON, Samuel Finley (September 25, 1792-May 11, 1862), lawyer and congressman.  He opposed the annexation of Texas, and opposed a direct tax for the prosecution of the war with Mexico. Vinton was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for election as governor of Ohio in 1851. In April 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln as one of three commissioners to appraise emancipated slaves within the District, but he died less than a month later.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 303; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 284)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 284-285:

VINTON, SAMUEL FINLEY (September 25, 1792-May 11, 1862), lawyer and congressman, a descendant of John Vinton whose name appears in the records of Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1648, and the eldest of seven children of Abiathar and Sarah (Day) Vinton, was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts. His father was a farmer; his grandfather, also named Abiathar, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Young Vinton prepared for college with the aid of his local pastor, entered Williams in 1808, taught school at intervals to meet expenses, and graduated with the class of 1814. He read law under the direction of Stephen Titus Hosmer, subsequently chief justice of the supreme court of Connecticut, was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1816, and a few months later commenced practice in Gallipolis, Ohio, a village of French emigres. Here, in 1824, he married Romaine Madeleine Bureau, who died in 1831, having borne him two children. He rose rapidly in public esteem as an advocate. In 1822 he was elected to Congress and continued to serve until March 3, 1837. At this time he had declined to be a candidate for reelection, but in 1842 he yielded to the demands of the Whigs, and served again as congressman from 1843 to 1851. He was at various times a member of the committees on public lands, roads and canals, and the judiciary; he was made chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means during the war with Mexico, after he had declined the nomination for speaker of the House.

Vinton's first speech in Congress, in May 1824, was on a resolution which he offered with a view to the protection of the lives of passengers on steamboats navigating the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As a remedy for the unprofitable management of the school lands in Ohio, he introduced and successfully promoted the passage of a bill to authorize that state to sell those lands and invest the proceeds in a trust fund, a precedent which was subsequently followed in other states. When in February 1828 a bill for the appropriation of funds for the Indian service, and particularly for the removal of Indians from lands east of the Mississippi to a reservation west of that river, was before Congress, Vinton, for the purpose of preventing any disadvantage to either slave states or free states, moved and made a memorable speech in support of an amendment which provided that no Indians living north of 36° 30' should be aided in removing south of that line, nor any Indians living south of it be aided in removing north of it. Vinton spoke frequently, but usually briefly and effectively, on such subjects as the survey and sale of public lands so as to prevent speculation, the Cumberland Road and other internal improvements, the tariff (favoring protection), and the apportionment of representatives. He opposed the annexation of Texas, and opposed a direct tax for the prosecution of the war with Mexico. On February 12, 1849, he reported from the Committee of Ways and Means the bill providing for the establishment of the Department of the Interior, which became a law nineteen days later. Vinton was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for election as governor of Ohio in 1851. He served for one year, 1853-54, as president of the Cleveland & Toledo Railroad, and then returned permanently to Washington, D. C. In April 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln as one of three commissioners to appraise emancipated slaves within the District, but he died less than a month later. Sarah Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren [q.v.] was his daughter.

[J. A. Vinton, The Vinton Memorial (1858); (S.) M. V. Dahlgren, "Samuel Finley Vinton, a Biographical Sketch," Ohio Archeology and Historical Society Publications, volume IV (1895); "Memoir of the Hon. Samuel F. Vinton," American Review, September 1848; Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals (1871); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), May 12, 1862.]

N.D.M.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 303:

VINTON, Samuel Finley, congressman, born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, 25 September, 1792; died in Washington, D. C., 11 May, 1862. He was graduated at Williams in 1814, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1816, and began to practise in Gallipolis, Ohio. He was chosen to congress as a Whig, serving from 1 December, 1823, till 3 March, 1837, was a presidential elector on the Harrison ticket, and served again in congress in 1843-'51. His last public service was in 1862, when he was appointed by President Lincoln to appraise the slaves that had been emancipated in the District of Columbia by act of congress. He published numerous congressional and other speeches, including “Argument for Defendants in the Case of Virginia vs. Garner and Others for an Alleged Abduction of Slaves” (1865). His daughter, Madeleine, married Admiral John A. Dahlgren.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


VOSE, Richard H., Augusta, Maine, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

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


VROOM, Peter Dumont, 1791-1873, Somerville, New Jersey, lawyer, state legislator, Governor of New Jersey, diplomat.  American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1838-1841. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 308; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 295; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 308:

VROOM, Peter Dumont, governor of New Jersey, born in Hillsborough township, New Jersey, 12 December, 1791; died in Trenton, New Jersey, 18 November, 1873. He was the son of Colonel Peter D. Vroom, a Revolutionary officer. He was graduated at Columbia in 1808, admitted to the bar in 1813, and practised in various counties of New Jersey. He was a member of the legislature in 1826-'9, and in the latter year was elected governor of New Jersey as a Jackson Democrat by joint ballot of the two houses, which was the method of election at that time. He was re-elected in 1830-'1 and 1833-'6, and in 1837 was appointed by President Van Buren a commissioner to adjust the claims of the Indians in Mississippi, was a member of congress in 1839-'41, having been chosen as a Democrat, and a member of the State constitutional convention in 1844. In 1852 he was a presidential elector, and in 1853-'7 was minister to Prussia. He was appointed reporter of the supreme court of New Jersey in 1865, and in 1868 was again a presidential elector. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by Columbia in 1837 and by Princeton in 1850. He published “Reports of the Supreme Court of New Jersey” (6 vols., Trenton, 1866-'73). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.



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.