African-American Allies and Associates of the Burleigh Siblings

Known African-American Allies of the Burleigh siblings

To be included on this list, there had to be at least one instance when one of the Burleigh siblings traveled, shared a podium, or worked on the same Abolitionist committee with the person in question.

Samuel Cornish

Frederick Douglass

Jehiel Beman

Amos Beman

Theodore S. Wright

Charles Lenox Remond

Stephen Gloucester

Sojourner Truth

William Cooper Nell

John Hilton

William Anderson

Frederick Olney

James W. C. Pennington

Susan Paul

Robert Purvis

Charles Burleigh Purvis (namesake)

James Forten

William Still

Robert Douglass Jr.

John Vashon

Henry Bibb

John Mercer Langston

Charles Lewis Mitchell

Canterbury Female Academy students who studied with William Burleigh and Mary Burleigh

For this second list - the students who attended the Canterbury Female Academy - all of them would have had William and Mary Burleigh as co-teachers with Prudence and Almira Crandall. We know that after Canterbury, the students remained active in Abolitionist and civil rights concerns, and could very well have crossed paths with the Burleighs again in this manner.

(married names given)

Sarah Harris Fayerweather

Mary Harris Williams

Julia Williams Garnet

Mary Miles Bibb

Henrietta Bolt Vidal

Elizabeth Douglass Bustill

Eliza Glasko Peterson

Miranda Glasko Overbaugh

Elizabeth Brown Smith

Amey Fenner Parker

Ann Eliza Hammond

Sarah Hammond

Jerusha Congdon

Gloria Catherine Marshall

Elizabeth Henley

Elizabeth Susan Webb

Ann Peterson

Harriet Lanson

Theodocia DeGrasse Vogelsang

Julia (a.k.a. Maria) Tucker (a.k.a. Goary) Finnemore

Virginia Tucker (a.k.a. Goary) Johnson

Eliza Welty

F. E. of Hartford

Mary Jane Benson

M.E. Carter

Polly Freeman

Catharine Ann Weldon

Ann Elizabeth (a.k.a. Amilia) Wilder

Emila Wilson

Charles Lewis Mitchell is a great American whose accomplishments should be better known. Born in Hartford in 1829, he worked under William Henry Burleigh at the offices of The Charter Oak, before moving to Boston in the early 1850s. Once there, he started working with William Lloyd Garrison at The Liberator. When the Civil War call went out for Black volunteers, Charles Lewis Mitchell joined the famed Massachusetts 55th. He was wounded in 1864, and lost a foot as a result. But many years later, when the famed St. Gaudens relief sculpture of the 55th was unveiled on Boston Common, he was present to witness it. After returning from the war, in 1866, Mitchell was one of the first two African-Americans to be elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature. He also obtained a post at the Customs House in Boston. He was one of the pallbearers for William Lloyd Garrison's funeral. His wife, Nellie Brown Mitchell, was a renowned opera singer of her day.

William H. Burleigh played a small role in starting this remarkable career and life. Anti-racist actions create real change.

Sources

“The Colored Legislators of Massachusetts,” Semi-Weekly Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), November 17, 1866, p. 1

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