19th Century Reformers
By: Emily Pfitzner
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Neal Dow
Neal Dow was active in the cause of abolition of Negro slavery. At the age of 57, he raised and commanded the Thirteenth Maine Regiment of Volunteers for service in the Civil War.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a known for being a American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Horance Mann
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Robert Owen
Robert instituted a minimum age limit of 10 for children working in the mill. He reduced the working day from 14 to 10 hours. He built new housing, created sick pay and established a school for his workers’ children at a time when most working class children received little or no educatio.
Elihu Burritt
Dorothea Dix
Dr. Sylvester Graham
Best known today for his invention of Graham crackers, was from a line of clergymen-physicians and was born in West Suffield in 1794, the 17th child of the 72-year old Reverend John Graham, Jr. Graham decided to prepare for the ministry also, and studied languages at Amherst College briefly in 1823. Following a long illness, he began preaching for the Presbyterian Church in New Jersey, and in 1830 was made general agent for the Pennsylvania Temperance Society.