A Thousand Witnesses

A leading American abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld was born November 23rd 1803.

Theodore Dwight Weld was born November 23rd 1803 in Hampton, Connecticut. He went to Phillips Andover Academy in 1820. His eyesight which was failing caused him to leave school in 1822. After several years he entered the Oneida Manual Labor Institute in Oneida New York, from here he moved to Hamilton College. Along the way Weld picked up the cause of Emancipation.

Weld would become in the 1830’s one of the leaders and founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, working along the side of the Grimke Sisters, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, James G Birney and Gamaliel Bailey. He married one of the Grimke sisters; Angelina on May 14th 1838. In 1839 Weld along with the sisters wrote the important book “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses”.

Weld launched a school in 1854 in Eagleswood, New Jersey, which accepted all students regardless of sex of race. He moved in 1864 to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where Weld opened another school with same ideology. He continued until his death in 1895 to work for the rights of women and African Americans.