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Samuel
J. May Biography
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Samuel J. May graduated from Harvard in
1817 and subsequently became a teacher. After studying theology under
Norton and Ware in Cambridge, he was ordained in 1822. He served as a
pastor in churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts, before coming to
Syracuse in 1845. His congregation, now named May Memorial Unitarian Universalist
Society, still exists there.
May was first and foremost a humanitarian and he worked tirelessly for a variety of causes. As a pacifist, he organized the Windham County Peace Society. As an early champion of equal rights for women, he invited Angelina Grimké to address his congregation on abolitionism, and wrote a sermon "the Rights and Condition of Women" in 1846. As an educational reformer, he worked to improve teaching practices in schools. As an abolitionist, he served as a general agent and secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and his house was a station on the Underground Railroad between Boston, Syracuse and Canada. In addition, he was involved in the temperance movement, penal reform and the treatment of Native Americans.
In 1870, Samuel J. May, a mentor and close friend of Cornell's first president Andrew Dickson White, donated his substantial collection of pamphlets, books, newspapers, and manuscripts to the new university. Part of Cornell's vast holdings documenting ante-bellum and Civil War America now housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, The Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection comprises over 10,000 pamphlets and leaflets collected by May, which document the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, national and international levels.
Copyright
© 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript
Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853
Phone Number: (607) 255-3530. Fax Number: (607) 255-9524
For information about copyright issues and securing permission to publish digital reproductions of images from the Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection, please consult our Copyright & Permissions Page.
For
reference questions, send mail to:
rareref@cornell.edu
For questions or comments about the site, send mail to: webmaster.
