History of South Canaan, (Litchfield County) Connecticut United States of America

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Biographies:

Elizur Wrihgt, abolitionist, was born in South Canaan, Conn., Feb. 19, 1804; son of Elizur Wright (1762-1845). His father, Yale, A.B., 1781, A.M., 1783, removed to Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1810, where he conducted an academy, which Elizur, Jr., attended until he entered Yale, from which he was graduated, A.B., 1826. He taught in Lawrence academy, Groton, Mass., 1826-28; was married in 1829, and was professor of mathematics and physics in Western Reserve college, Hudson, Ohio, 1829-33. He removed to New York city in 1833, where he edited the Emancipator, Human Rights, 1834-35, and the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, 1835-38, also serving as secretary and as a member of the executive committee of the American Anti-slavery society, of which he was a founder in 1833. As a result of his determined opposition to the institution of slavery, his house in Brooklyn, N.Y., was mobbed, and in 1838 he took refuge in Boston, Mass., where he edited the Massachusetts Abolitionist and The Free American, 1841, and in 1846, with Samuel G. Howe and Frank W. Bird, established the Chronotype, which materially aided the antislavery cause, and was succeeded by the Commonwealth in 1850, with which Mr. Wright continued as editor for a short time. He edited the Railroad Times, 1853-58; was insurance commissioner of Massachusetts, 1858-66, and was subsequently actively interested in all important national questions, economic, industrial and political. He was influential in founding the Liberty party in 1840, and in securing the passage of the Massachusetts non-forfeiture act of 1861, and its successor, 1880; an organizer of the National Liberal league in 1876, serving three times as its president; a member of the Forestry association, the passage of the state forestry act being largely due to his efforts, and devoted much time to mechanical inventions, patenting a water-faucet and an improvement in pipe-coupling, and also an "arithmeter" in 1869. He translated La Fontaine's "Fables" (2 vols., 1841; 2d ed., 1859); and is the author of: A Curiosity of Law (1866); Savings Bank Life Insurance, with Illustrative Tables (1872); The Politics and Mysteries of Life Insurances (1873), and Myron Holley (1882); also numerous pamphlets and reports. He died in Medford, Mass., Nov. 22, 1885.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Mary Hannah Hanchett Hunt, reformer, was born in South Canaan, Litchfield county, or in Litchfield, Conn., July 4, 1831; daughter of Ephraim and Nancy (Thacher) Hanchett, and a descendant of Governor Winslow, of the Plymouth colony, 1633, and of the Rev. Thomas Thacher, first pastor of the Old South church, Boston, Mass. Her father was an iron manufacturer, an anti-slavery agitator and an advocate of total abstinence, being vice-president of the first temperance society organized in the United States. She was graduated from Patapsco institute near Baltimore, Md., and was teacher of chemistry there until 1852, when she became the wife of Leander B. Hunt, of East Douglas, Mass. She began in 1870 the scientific study of the effects of alcohol on the human body. In order to reach the legislature and in this way the public schools by making temperance education compulsory, she laid her plan before the National Woman's Christian Temperance union, which body, in 1880, created an educational department, of which she became the national superintendent. The legislature of Vermont was the first to make temperance education a part of the course in the public schools, and in 1896 all the states, with the exception of four out of the forty-five, had passed the law in their legislatures. Her appeal to the American Medical association at their annual national meeting in 1882 secured resolutions pointing out the evil effects of alcoholic drinks. Congress also enacted a law for the military, naval, territorial and other schools under government control. In 1890 she began to extend this reform to foreign lands and was made the national superintendent for the Woman's Christian Temperance union of the world. In 1892 she secured recognition in the provinces in Canada and Australia and in Sweden, and promises of success in England, France, Germany, Norway, India and other parts of the civilized world. She attended the International Anti-Alcoholic congress held at Brussels under the auspices of the king of Belgium in 1897. Nearly thirty text-books on the topic of temperance were issued under her auspices for all grades of schools.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor