*Gerrit Smith was born on this date in 1797. He was a White American abolitionist. From Utica, New York, in 1806 he came with his parents to Peterboro, New York, in Madison County.
learn more*Jonathan Walker’s birth is celebrated on this date, c. 1799. He was a white-American reformer and abolitionist. Jonathan Walker was born in Harwich, Massachusetts. During his youth, he learned to sail and became captain of a fishing vessel. In early 1837, he went to Florida and became a railroad contractor. The condition of the Black […]
learn more*Abraham Schadd was born on this date in 1801. He was a Black Abolitionist, Businessman, and Community Organizer He was one of Delaware’s most significant Black leaders of the 19th century. Abraham Doras Schadd was born in Mill Creek Hundred and the father of 13 children. He earned a successful living as a shoemaker, a trade he learned from his father. He acquired property in Wilmington.
learn more*This date, 1801, is celebrated as the birth date of Hezekiah Grice, a Black abolitionist, machinist, and businessman. Grice was born in rural Calvert County, Maryland. Despite Maryland’s status as a slave state, Grice received some formal education and became a machinist. Grice migrated to Baltimore, where he became a mathematician and inventor through formal […]
learn more*Nathan M. Thomas was born on this date in 1803. He was a white-American doctor and abolitionist. He was born in Mount Pleasant, Jefferson Co., Ohio, the son of Jesse and Avis (Stanton) Thomas, both devout Quakers. He studied medicine with local practitioners and at the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. In June 1830, […]
learn moreWilliam Whipper, a Black businessman and abolitionist was born on this date in 1804.
Born in Lancaster, PA, he later lived in Columbia, SC, and Philadelphia. Whipper was the Black son of a White Pennsylvania businessman and a Black woman who was his servant. He inherited his father’s lumber business, and, with another free Black business partner, Stephen Smith, they created one of the state’s leading lumberyards where Whipper made a sizable fortune through joint ventures.
learn more*Angelina Emily Grimké was born on this date in 1805. She was a white-American political activist, women’s rights advocate, and supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. She and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, became abolitionists. While raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Angelina and her sister spent their entire adult lives in the North. Between 1835, Angelina Grimke’s greatest fame worked with William Lloyd Garrison, who published […]
learn moreWilliam Lloyd Garrison was born this date in 1805. He was a White American abolitionist and newspaper publisher.
The son of a seaman from Newburyport, MA., Garrison was indentured at the age of 14 to the owner of the Newburyport Herald where he became an expert printer. The struggles of all oppressed peoples for freedom built his kind character as a youth. He expressed this in articles he wrote anonymously or under the pseudonym Airsides, in the Herald and other newspapers. He tried to awaken Northerners from their apathy over the question of slavery in America.
learn more*The birth of William Goodridge is celebrated on this date in 1805. He was a Black businessman and abolitionist.
learn more*Charlotta Gordon Pyles was born on this date in 1806. She was a Black abolitionist and lecturer. Born into slavery in Tennessee, Pyles also lived on Hugh Gordon’s plantation near Bardstown, Kentucky, along with her children. After Gordon’s death, his daughter Frances inherited the Pyles family and moved from Kentucky to Iowa, where she freed Charlotta and some of […]
learn more*Charles B. Ray was born on Christmas Day in 1807. He was a Black minister, journalist, and abolitionist. Born a free man in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Charles Bennett Ray was the son of mail carrier Joseph Aspinwall Ray and his wife, Annis Harrington. He attended Wesleyan Seminary in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, studying theology, and then in 1832, enrolled as the first Black student at Wesleyan […]
learn more*Stephen Foster was born on this date in 1809. He was a white-American abolitionist. Stephen Symonds Foster was born in Canterbury, New Hampshire. His parents, Sarah and Asa Foster, had twelve children; Stephen was the ninth. The family attended the local Congregational church and participated in Canterbury’s anti-slavery society. Foster apprenticed to a carpenter but left at age 22 to […]
learn moreFrances “Fanny” Kemble was born on this date in 1809. She was a White British actress, author, and abolitionist.
Frances Anne Kemble was a member of the famous Kemble theatrical family, and the oldest daughter of actor Charles Kemble and his actress wife Maria Theresa De Camp, and the niece of noted tragedienne Sarah Siddons. Fanny was born in London, and educated chiefly in France.
learn more*Clarina Nichols was born on this date in 1810. She was a white-American journalist, lobbyist, and public speaker involved in temperance, abolition, and the women’s movement. Born in West Townshend, Vermont, into a prosperous New England family, Clarina Irene Howard fell on hard times after a disastrous early marriage. Supporting herself and her children on […]
learn more*On this date in 1810, Charles Lenox Remond was born. He was a Black abolitionist.
From Salem, Massachusetts, he was the son of free Blacks, John and Nancy Remond. He joined the Anti-Slavery Society and in 1838 became its first African American lecturer. An outstanding orator, Remond spoke at public meetings in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New York and Pennsylvania. In 1840 Remond went on a lecture tour of Europe and while in England attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
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