Fulton 16th. Sept. 1849

Wm. HallowellHallowell, William R.

Arriving in Rochester in 1841, William R. Hallowell (1816-82) ran a woolen mill and leather business. The husband of Mary Hallowell, he was a member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and of the board of education in Rochester. William F. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York, New York, 2 vols., 2:1243-44; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61. :

My Dear Friend: It was my full intention before leaving Rochester on my present Antislavery tour, to have made you a formall and definite request to become a member of a committee which should take the financial management of the North Star newspaper, of which I am at present the editor and proprietor. Failing to perform this duty then.

I write now to urgently solicit you, as a personal favor to me and as a help to the cause of the slave,—to be, and to act, as a member of a committee—which shall Superintend the financial and economical concerns of the above named paper. The said committee to have the full rights to examine into the affairs of the paper—to see that all contracts are faithfully performed on the part of those in my employment—to see that the accounts are honestly and accurately kept—and to advise with me on all matters connected with the financial and economical concerns of the paper.

[illegible] compliance with the above request will greatly assist me—and perhaps restore confidence in quarters where there may be distrust.

I am most sincerely yours,

Frederick Douglass

The committee to be [illegible] composed of the following gentlemen, Wm. HallowellHallowell, William R.

Arriving in Rochester in 1841, William R. Hallowell (1816-82) ran a woolen mill and leather business. The husband of Mary Hallowell, he was a member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and of the board of education in Rochester. William F. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York, New York, 2 vols., 2:1243-44; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61. , E. WillisWillis, Edmund P.

, A. AnthonyAnthony, Asa

Asa Anthony (1800-72) married Huldah Griffin (c. 1808-90) in 1830. They lived in Greenfield, New York, until 1842, when the Quaker couple settled on a farm outside Rochester, New York, which became a stop along the Underground Railroad. The Anthonys later left the Society of Friends because of their antislavery views. Asa Anthony was a distant cousin of Susan B. Anthony. Like her husband, Huldah Anthony was an antislavery activist; she served as the president pro-tem of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and on its executive committee. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 117; The Rochester Directory Containing a General Directory of the Citizens, a Business Directory, and the City and County Register for the Year Beginning July 1, 1891 (Rochester, 1891), 58; Lib., 5 January 1844; NNE, 23 May 1872; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, ed. Ann D. Gordon, 4 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997-2006), 2:495. —

Isaac PostPost, Isaac

The Posts, Isaac (1798-1872) and Amy Kirby (1802-89), were prominent abolitionists who spent their most active years in Rochester, New York. Isaac was born on Long Island but moved to Scipio, New York, in 1823 with his first wife Hannah Kirby. After Hannah's death in 1827, he married her younger sister, Amy, a native of Jericho, New York. In 1836 the Posts moved to Rochester, where they became involved with Garrisonian abolitionism. The Posts often hid fugitive slaves, and Amy acted as vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1850s and 1860s. In addition to abolitionism, Amy was active in the women's movement, including the seminal 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, a meeting that she helped to organize. In 1848 the Posts also numbered among the first converts to spiritualism in Rochester, and Isaac soon attracted fame as a writing medium. Douglass first met the couple in 1842 when he stayed at their home during a lecture tour, and their friendship influenced his choice of Rochester as the base for his newspaper, the North Star. Hewitt, Women's Activism and Social Change, 61, 93, 107, 118, 131-34, 142-43, 169; Blake McKelvey, "Civic Medal Awarded Posthumously," RH, 22:10-11 (April 1960); DAB, 15:117.