OHIO ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

To George BradburnBradburn, George

Son of a woolens manufacturer in Attleboro, Massachusetts. George Bradburn (1806-80) trained for the Unitarian ministry, but subsequently devoted his energies to championing numerous secular reforms. Bradburn also acted as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. He was not a strict Garrisonian however, opposing all propositions in favor of dissolving the Union and favoring political means to accomplish the abolition of slavery. Bradburn represented Nantucket as a Whig in the state legislature (1839- 42), where he led the successful effort to repeal Massachusetts's antimiscegenation law. In the 1840s he lectured for the (Garrisonians and traveled with Douglass on many occasions. He later joined the Free Soil party and edited two Free Soil newspapers, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom and the True Democrat. In addition to abolitionism. Bradburn supported women 's rights, temperance, pacifism, and an end to capital punishment. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Eleventh Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society by its Board of Directors (Boston, 1843 ), 44, 90-91; idem. Twelfth Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (Boston. 1844), 34; George Bradburn, A Memorial of George Bradburn, comp. Frances H. Bradburn (Boston, 1883). , Abby KelleyFoster, Abigail Kelley

Abby Kelley (1811-87) was born in Pelham village, Worcester County, Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley, a farmer, and Diana Daniels, his second wife. Kelley was heavily influenced by her Quaker upbringing, but she later broke from the church because of its relative conservatism. Although her early schooling was scanty and deficient, Kelley saved and borrowed money in order to attend the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. At age nineteen she returned home and then began a career of teaching in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she became an abolitionist through the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838 Kelley spoke at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia as it was being attacked by an angry protesting mob. In the same year she joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, previously a male-only organization. She began a career as a lecturer, at both women's and men's gatherings, especially in conservative Connecticut. Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster, another radical abolitionist, on 21 December 1845. Traveling together on the reform circuit, they were among the most prominent antislavery lecturers in the 1840s and 1850s. Sterling, Ahead of Her Time; EAAH, 2:39-40. Perhaps the best known female American abolitionist. Abigail Kelley Foster (1810-87) was born in Pelham, Massachusetts. She was educated at the Friends School, Providence, Rhode Island, and later taught at a similar establishment in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1837 she joined the antislavery movement and two years later, following the path blazed by Angelina Grimké, embarked on a career as an abolitionist lecturer. Her talents led Garrisonian abolitionists to choose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking antifeminist abolitionists to bolt the organization. She continued to lecture and raise funds for the Garrisonians and in 1845 married Stephen S. Foster. another prominent abolitionist lecturer. In the 1850s both Fosters became outspoken advocates for women's rights in addition to abolition. Quarrels with Garrison over political action led Abby Foster and her husband to become inactive in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the late 1850s. Ill health forced her to be less active as a reformer after the Civil War, but in 1873 she attracted considerable publicity for woman suffrage by refusing to pay taxes on the family farm in protest against her disenfranchisement. The Fosters and Douglass had lectured together in Rhode Island in November and December 1841. Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform" (PhD. diss., Univ. of Rochester, 1969); C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 30: 391-92 (1921); DAB, 6: 542-43. , Charles L. RemondRemond, Charles Lenox

Charles Lenox Remond (1810-73), the first black lecturer hired by any antislavery society, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to the daughter of a black hero of the American Revolution and a former slave from Curaçao. In his youth, he learned about the horrors of slavery from his father and experienced the segregation and discrimination practiced by Northern whites. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Remond read David Walker’s Appeal and became acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison, which led him to dedicate his life to abolitionism. Remond became active in reform movements at an early age. A member of the Colored Association of Massachusetts when it merged with the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, he became an officer in the latter organization. He became an agent for the Liberator and joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society shortly thereafter. In 1838 he began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Both his color and his ability made him a very popular speaker in both the United States and Great Britain, where he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention as a delegate in 1840 in London. Remond was the sole black lecturer for antislavery societies until Frederick Douglass began speaking in 1842. For a time, Remond and Douglass worked the lecture circuit together. Douglass admired Remond, the more experienced speaker, and named a son for him. Remond traveled and lectured in the British Isles for some sixteen months. Upon his return, Remond was employed as a lecture agent by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Through the 1840s, however, Remond remained a steadfast Garrisonian while Douglass began to favor political action to end slavery, and their friendship suffered. Their close association was troubled as a rift between Douglass and Garrison threatened, and in 1852 Remond announced his intention to cancel his subscription to Frederick Douglass' Paper in protest against Douglass's adoption of non-Garrisonian views of the U.S. Constitution. Their goals, however, remained the same, and like Douglass, Remond recruited black soldiers for the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. After the war, just before his death, Remond urged abolitionists to continue their fight by combatting the racial prejudice that persisted in both the North and South after the end of slavery. Illness curtailed his reform activities after the war. Les Wallace, "Charles Lenox Remond: The Lost Prince of Abolitionism," NHB, 40:696-701 (May-June 1977); William E. Ward, "Charles Lenox Remond: Black Abolitionist, 1838-1873" (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1977); FDP, 20 May 1852; New York Daily Times, 26 December 1873; NNE, 8 January 1874; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 46; NCAB, 2:303; DAB, 15:499-500. , and Frederic[k] Douglas:

DEAR FRIENDS—The Executive Committee of the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society desire, if suitable arrangements can be made, to hold a series of county conventions in this State, the ensuing summer, and to wind up with several general meetings in the fall. The plan would be, to have two series of county conventions to be going on at the same time. Not knowing your Post-office address, this method is taken to inquire of you whether your services can be secured for a three month's tour of duty, to begin in June or July. Will you please, each of you, write to A. Brooke, Oakland Post-Office, Clinton county, Ohio, informing us if you can come, and the conditions upon which you will engage?

A. BROOKEBrooke, Abram

Abram Brooke (1806-67) was the U.S. postmaster of Oakland in Clinton County, Ohio. Brooke, with Joseph Dugdale, a Hicksite Quaker, led the secession from the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1842. Brooke, Dugdale, and their supporters were frustrated by the society's refusal to align with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society. They objected to the group's increasing emphasis on politics, preferring the primacy of moral suasion as an instrument of social change. Based in Salem, Ohio, the group changed its name to the Western Anti-Slavery Society in 1846. The group was strongly disunionist and beginning with Brooke's leadership included women on its executive committee. Brooke also participated in the Underground Railroad and built a structure on his property with the function of housing antislavery meetings. Douglas A. Gamble, "Garrisonian Abolitionists in the West: Some Suggestions for Study," CWH, 23:52-68 (March 1977); Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422. , Cor. Sec'y O. A. A. S. S.

Feb. 17th 1843.