Benjamin Lundy (1789 - 1839)

Born 4 Jan 1789 in Sussex County, New Jersey, USA [uncertain]

Ancestors

Husband of Esther (Lewis) Lundy — married 13 Feb 1815 (to 4 Apr 1826) in Mt. Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, USA

Descendants

Died 22 Aug 1839 at age 50 in Lowell, LaSalle County, Illinois, USA

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Benjamin Lundy was a part of the Abolitionist Movement.

Biography

Benjamin was a Friend (Quaker)

Abolitionist, editor of The Genius of Universal Emancipation

Benjamin's mother died when he was only 4 years old but he became close to his stepmother, Mary Titus Lundy. He worked on his father's farm as a boy and became increasingly disturbed by the plight of slaves. In 1808 he apprenticed to a saddler in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). This location was an important transit point of the interstate slave trade because of the Ohio River. Many would be marched through town then shipped down river to Kentucky or on to other states down the Mississippi River. He witnessed the use of horsewhips and bludgeons forcing barefoot slaves to walk through the mud and snow. He became acquainted with another local Quaker family, the Stantons, who lived about 12 miles away in Mt. Pleasant. Ohio didn't permit slaves and Benjamin Stanton became a US Congressman. 20 years after Benjamin Lundy's death, Stanton's brother, Edwin became the Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln.

In December of 1814 Benjamin declared his intent to marry Esther Lewis at the Friends meeting and wed February 13, 1815. His brother William married Lydia Stanton, sister of David, Edwin Stanton's father. The family settled in Saint Clairsville, Ohio where Benjamin built a profitable saddle business along what became Interstate 70. He, with 5 others organized an anti-slavery association known as the Union Humane Society and grew to over 500 members in just a few months, including James Wilson, grandfather of President of Woodrow Wilson. A fellow Quaker, Charles Osborn, editor of the Philanthropist, showed him the basics of journalism and printing. He soon liquidated his saddle business in favor of publishing. He moved to St. Louis, MO with three apprentices because it was the center of a national slavery controversy. But, Missouri was admitted as a slave state with the Missouri Compromise of 1820. He lost his goods then returned back to St. Clairville, to find that Osborne had sold his printing business and didn't need help. So, he established his own anti-slavery paper called the Genius of Universal Emancipation, published at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, the first issue dated January 1821. He often published on the road while on lecturing tours.

He decided to re-establish his business in Baltimore and moved his family from Tennessee to Maryland in October 1825. The following year a slave owner offered to free 12 slaves if he would accompany them to Haiti. He did so but returned to find his wife had died giving birth to twins, his children placed with various friends.

In January the following year, he was assaulted by Austin Woolfolk, a slave-trader whom Benjamin had been investigation and severely criticized. Being of slight build, he took a severe beating and was confined to bed for several days. Woolfolk plead guilty to assault but the judge agreed with his lawyers that Benjamin provoked by his criticizing Woolfolk's lawful occupation. He sentenced the slave trader to a $1 find and court costs then urged him to bring criminal libel charges against Benjamin Lundy. The grand jury refused to indict him.

Benjamin's partner, William Lloyd Garrison wasn't as careful avoiding libel charges as he was and while traveling to Mexico, Garrison was convicted of libel in February 1830 in Maryland, which caused circulation to be greatly reduced while he was in jail so they dissolved the partnership.

He eventually purchased a farm near the Clear Creek Meeting House, which was the most western establishment of the Hicksite Friends, near the new village of Lowell. He re-established the Genius on a borrowed press.

Benjamin kept a travelogue in 1821 of his journeys from southern Michigan through Ohio, and westward along the Ohio River from Wheeling, to Cincinnati, up through Indiana, and down through Dayton back to Cincinnati. Lundy gives date numbers but no month names in his travel journal entries, but his descriptions show that he is travelling in the dead of winter. His entries detail travelling conditions in Michigan and Ohio during the 1820s, and pay special attention to the difficulties of travelling across the swampy landscape of southern Michigan in freezing weather. Later portions of the travelogue detail Lundy's experiences on a variety of boats on the Ohio River, including coal ships and steam boats, and his thoughts on the bigotry of two fellow passengers praising the institution of slavery. Comments at the close of this particular travelogue indicate that one of the purposes of Lundy's travel was to gain more subscribers to his serial anti-slavery publication, the Genius of Universal Emancipation; Lundy's comments indicate that this particular journey through Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana garnered the publication an additional 200 subscribers. Cities and towns Lundy visits on the leg of the journey described here include (in Lundy's chronological order): Detroit, Michigan; Tecumseh, Michigan; Ypsilanti, Michigan; Clinton, Michigan; Saline, Michigan; Blissfield, Michigan; Sandusky, Ohio; Tiffin, Ohio; McCutchenville, Ohio; Zanesfield, Ohio; Bellefontaine, Ohio; Milford, Ohio; Dublin, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Newark, Ohio; Lancaster, Ohio; Zanesville, Ohio; St. Clairesville, Ohio; Wheeling, West Virginia; Marietta, Ohio; Gallipolis, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; Carthage, Ohio; Reading, Ohio; Hamilton, Ohio; Middletown, Ohio; Milton, Indiana; Centerville, Indiana; Richmond, Indiana; Eaton, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; and a return to Cincinnati, Ohio. Benjamin Lundy (1789-1839) was a prominent Quaker abolitionist best known for his development of abolitionist periodicals. His Genius of Universal Emancipation was first published in 1821 from his home in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, and enjoyed a wide circulation across the antebellum United States. In the 1820s, the young William Lloyd Garrison came to work for The Genius. Benjamin Lundy travelled widely seeking subscriptions to The Genius, giving talks about the anti-slavery movement, and observing and documenting the conditions of enslaved people across the Americas. He was also involved in the establishment of freed slave colonies in Mexico. The journal is not without some humorous accounts. He mentions hot travelling in pitch pine timbered country, a good road, 24 miles from where he lodged the night before and went ahead another 2 miles. He encamped with some wagon travellers and wrote a "shower creep under wagon ...large dog dispute the occupancy of that place with me! ... kept my ground, tho !!"

His talent for writing is evident in a letter he wrote to a friend in Chester Co., PA, Nov. 11, 1838 from Putnam County, IL where he lived at the time. "According to my fancy, the scenery of this country is beautiful — very beautiful. Extensive undulating plains, clothed in the richest verdure, and variegated with myriads of flowers, dazzle in all the brightness of prismatic splendor, almost everywhere greet the eye of the traveler. In some parts, those delightful plains exhibit a picturesque and enchanting landscape, bounded only by the horizon: — and it reminds one of a view at sea, when the billows are hushed in silence, and the heaving oceans presents its broad undulating surface to the vision of the mariner.

And though we have not, here, the wild and romantic aspect of the mountain regions, where the poetical fancy loves to rove, and the soaring imagination delights to stray, — yet we are cheered with many charming and soul-soothing prospects, sufficiently alluring and captivating to the quiet and contemplative mind."

Benjamin Lundy died after a fever and brief illness at his home in Lowell. He was buried in the Friends cemetery in Putnam Co., IL. His home in Mount Pleasant is a National Historic Landmark. This excerpt from one of his anti-slavery tracts state his beliefs well. "If then my kind friends believe that I have accomplished anything useful, let them bear in mind, that I was acting only as an instrument in the hand of an All-wise Power; and not to me, but unto Him, belongs the praise." A plaque was placed at his grave site which reads,

"It was his lot to struggle, for years almost alone, a solitary voice crying in the wilderness, and, amidst all, faithful to his one great purpose, the emancipation of the slaves."

Children

Wikipedia Family life section listed these children of Benjamin and Esther

On November 18, 1815 they had their first child, Susan Maria Lundy Wierman (d. 1899). Note the Find A Grave Source. In the following decades, Esther bore two more sons, Charles Tallmadge Lundy (1821-1870) and Benjamin Clarkson Lundy (1826-1861), and two additional daughters, Elizabeth (1818-1879) and Esther (1826-1917)

Sources

• The Lundy Family and Their Descendants of Whatsoever Surname, With a Biographical Sketch of Benjamin Lundy, by William Clinton Armstrong, A.M. (1902)

• http://www2.gol.com/users/quakers/Benjamin_Lundy.htm (dead link)

• Wikipedia article on Benjamin Lundy

• Find a Grave, database and images accessed 21 September 2022, memorial page for Susan Maria Lundy Wierman (18 Nov 1815–22 Jan 1899), Find A Grave: Memorial #36893243, citing Friends Cemetery, McNabb, Putnam County, Illinois, USA.

• Trails of our fathers : some descendants of the American Schooley family and related families

by Schooley, James B. (James Bertram), 1917-; Schooley, Thomas Henry Silliman, 1860-1946; 1899 Jefferson, Maine, Pgs 183-185

• Encyclopedia Britannica

• Benjamin Lundy Papers, Travelogue

• Letter to a friend Nov. 11, 1838

See Also

• Landon, Fred. "Benjamin Lundy, Abolitionist". The Dalhousie Review, July 1927, pp 189-197 FamilySearch Unindexed Documents (Images 868-876 of 1606).