Charles Osborn

Background

Charles Osborn was born on August 21, 1775, in Guilford County, North Carolina, the grandson of Matthew Osborn who emigrated from England probably to Delaware, and the son of David and Margaret (Stout) Osborn.

Career

About 1794 Charles Osborn removed to Knox County, Tennessee, where he became a Quaker preacher. As an active minister from 1806 to 1840 he traveled thousands of miles visiting and preaching in nearly every Quaker meeting throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. He lived in Jefferson County, Tennessee, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and from 1819 to 1842 in Wayne County, Indiana, excepting the years from 1827 to 1830 that he spent in Warren and Clinton counties, Ohio. In 1842 he removed to Cass County, Michigan, and in 1848 to Porter County, Indiana, where he died.

Endowed by his Quaker environment with a reforming spirit and influenced by the privations of a semi-pioneer life, he maintained with courage and ability his moral, religious, and antislavery convictions. In December 1814, at the house of his father-in-law, Elihu Swain, he began his career as an anti-slavery leader by laying the foundations for the Tennessee Manumission Society, whose organization he did not, however, complete until the next February at Lostcreek Meeting House. In 1816 he founded similar societies in Guilford County, North Carolina. While at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, he published the Philanthropist, from August 29, 1817, to October 8, 1818, a paper partially devoted to anti-slavery agitation. It has been asserted that he himself, and, through him, the manumission societies and Philanthropist were the earliest advocates of immediate emancipation. This assertion cannot be substantiated. The societies definitely advocated gradual emancipation. His own strong moral and religious convictions did not include demands for immediate emancipation until his affiliation with Garrisonian abolition about 1832. Through the Philanthropist he denounced the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States, afterward the American Colonization Society, as a specious device of slaveholders to protect slavery, expatriate free negroes, and thwart other emancipation schemes.

Following Quaker tradition Osborn long opposed the use of products of slave labor, considering them stolen goods because slaves' labor was stolen by their masters. His exhortations resulted in the formation on January 22, 1842, of the Free Produce Association of Wayne County, Indiana, and the establishment of a propagandist newspaper, the Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Chronicle. When the conservatives, who, only mildly abolitionist, believed in confining anti-slavery activity to their own religious organization, gained control over the Indiana Yearly Meeting, which before 1842 was dominated by the active abolitionist radicals, they removed him and others from the Meeting for Sufferings, a governing committee of the Church, on which he had served for years. This was a severe and unexpected blow to him. Bitterly lamenting the conservatives' position, he participated prominently in the secession of 2, 000 radicals who formed the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends in February 1843. He continued his interest in the later activities of the seceders and died condemning the Fugitive-slave Law. After his death, in 1854 the Church published The Journal of that Faithful Servant of Christ, Charles Osborn.

Achievements

• Osborn published the Philanthropist (1817-1818), a paper partially devoted to anti-slavery agitation, and in 1842 he established a propagandist newspaper, the Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Chronicle.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Journal of That Faithful Servant of Christ: Charles Osborn, Containing an Account of Many of His Travels and Labors in the Work of the Ministry, and ... the Defense of the Truth, As It Is in Jesus

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Membership

Charles Osborn was a founding member of the Tennessee Manumission Society (1814) and the Free Produce Association (1842).

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• William Lloyd Garrison called Charles Osborn "the Father of all us Abolitionists. "

Connections

On January 11, 1798, Charles Osborn married Sarah Newman, who died on August 10, 1812, leaving seven children, and on September 26, 1813, he married Hannah Swain, who bore him nine children.

Father:

David Osborn

Mother:

Margaret (Stout) Osborn

father-in-law:

Elihu Swain

Wife:

Sarah (Newman) Osborn

Wife:

Hannah (Swain) Osborn

Grandfather:

Matthew Osborn

Daughter:

Cynthia (Osborn) Sigerfoos

Daughter:

Sarah S. (Osborn) Bonine

Daughter:

Elijah Osborn

Daughter:

Anna B. (Osborn) East

Son:

Jordon P. Osborn

Son:

Gideon S. Osborn

Son:

Josiah Osborn

Son:

John Osborn

Son:

Benjamin W. Osborn

Son:

Charles N. Osborn