Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend area in the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.
Godfrey is a village in Madison County, Illinois, United States. The population was 17,825 at the 2020 census. Godfrey is located within the River Bend portion of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist. After his murder by a mob, he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause opposing slavery in the United States. He was also hailed as a defender of free speech and freedom of the press.
Owen Lovejoy was an American lawyer, Congregational minister, abolitionist, and Republican congressman from Illinois. He was also a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. After his brother Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in November 1837 by pro-slavery forces, Owen, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, became a leader of abolitionists in Illinois, condemning slavery and assisting runaway slaves in escaping to freedom.
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher.
Thomas Galt was an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist who organized two Presbyterian churches in Sangamon County, Illinois. He was vice-president of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society and a conductor of the Underground Railroad.
Winthrop Sargent Gilman was head of the banking house of Gilman, Son & Co. in New York City. Born and raised in Ohio, he had parents and ancestors from New England. Part of the family had already established the banking business in New York. Gilman developed as a businessman in the northwest region with wide interests.
The Alton Observer (1837) was an abolitionist newspaper established in Alton, Illinois, by the journalist and newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy after he was forced to flee St. Louis, Missouri. Lovejoy left St. Louis, where he edited the St. Louis Observer, after his printing press was destroyed for the third time.
The Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument, also known as the Elijah Lovejoy Monument, Elijah Parrish Lovejoy Shaft, Lovejoy Monument, and Lovejoy State Memorial, is a memorial in Alton, Illinois to Elijah P. Lovejoy, an advocate of free speech and the abolition of slavery.
The lynching of Francis McIntosh was the killing of a free Black man, a boatman, by a white mob after he was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 28, 1836. He had fatally stabbed one policeman and injured a second.
Usher Ferguson Linder served as Illinois Attorney General from 1837 until 1839. He was also a private-sector attorney in practice during the early statehood years of Illinois. In several of his cases, he practiced in affiliation with the Springfield, Illinois firm of Lincoln and Herndon and with its circuit partner, Abraham Lincoln.
John Glanville Gill was an American Unitarian minister, scholar in history, and civil rights activist. While working on research for his dissertation about Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an editor and abolitionist, he lived and worked in Alton, Illinois in the mid-1940s. There he worked with other ministers to try to integrate public schools, raise awareness about racial discrimination, and end segregation practices.
Monticello Seminary, founded in 1835, was an American seminary, junior college and academy in Godfrey, Illinois. The 215 acres (87 ha) campus was the oldest female seminary in the west, before it closed in 1971. The buildings are now part of Lewis and Clark Community College.
Benjamin Ives Gilman was a pioneer of the U.S. state of Ohio. He was a shipbuilder on the Ohio River and an extensive landholder. He was a delegate to the convention that wrote a constitution for the new state.
Harriet Newell Haskell was an American educator and school administrator from the U.S. state of Maine. She taught from 1855 to 1860 in Waldoboro, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1868, she was a teacher and principal at Castleton Collegiate Seminary, Vermont. Thereafter, for 39 years, she served as principal at Monticello Seminary of Godfrey, Illinois.
David Nelson was an American Presbyterian minister, physician, and antislavery activist who founded Marion College and served as its first president. Marion College, a Protestant manual labor college, was the first institution of higher learning chartered in the state of Missouri. Born in Tennessee, Dr. Nelson had once been a slaveholder but became an "incandescent" abolitionist after hearing a speech by Theodore D. Weld. Unpopular with proslavery groups in northeastern Missouri, Nelson stepped down as president of Marion College in 1835. In 1836, Nelson fled Missouri for Quincy, Illinois, after slaveowner Dr. John Bosely was stabbed at one of his sermons. Nelson then remained in Quincy, where he founded the Mission Institute to educate young missionaries. Openly abolitionist, two Mission Institute sites became well known stations on the Underground Railroad, helping African Americans escape to Canada to be free from slavery.
Emily Gillmore Alden was an American author and educator. For forty years, Alden was a member of the faculty of Monticello Seminary, and for nearly fifty years, the poet of the school. Alden wrote the commencement day poems for Monticello every year since she entered the institution. Harriet Newell Haskell : a span of sunshine gold was published in 1908 and Poems by Emily Gillmore Alden was published in 1909.
Thomas Dimmock (1830-1909) was an American journalist, editorial writer, book reviewer, critic and lecturer. He was responsible for restoring the Alton, Illinois, grave of free-press martyr Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who was shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob in 1837.
Francis Butter Murdoch was an American attorney and newspaper publisher. As a lawyer, he practiced law in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri, and initiated freedom suits for Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott in 1846. Between 1840 and 1847, Murdoch filed nearly one-third of all freedom suits in St. Louis, and secured freedom for many of his clients who had been enslaved, including Polly Berry and her daughter, Lucy A. Delaney. Before that, Murdoch was the city attorney in Alton, Illinois, where he unsuccessfully prosecuted rioters who killed Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an anti-slavery newspaper publisher, in 1837.
John R. Anderson, also known as J. Richard Anderson, was an American minister from St. Louis, Missouri, who fought against slavery and for education for African Americans. As a boy, he was an indentured servant, who attained his freedom at the age of 12. Anderson worked as a typesetter for the Missouri Republican and for Elijah Parish Lovejoy's anti-slavery newspaper, the Alton Observer. He founded the Antioch Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Illinois and then returned to St. Louis where he was a co-founder and the second pastor of the Central Baptist Church. He served the church until his death in 1863.
