Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting - March 8, 2012
The March 2012 meeting of the Madison
County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday,
March 8, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the
meeting to order.
A large audience came to hear our
speaker, John Dunphy tell us about Abolitionism and the Civil War in
Southwestern Illinois.
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MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $20.00
Patron Annual Membership $30.00
Life Membership $250.00
Contact our Secretary, Barbara Hitch, at racerbarb@aol.com,
about a gift membership.
March Meeting
On March 8, 2012, John Dunphy, owner of
the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton, Illinois, and the author of hundreds of
articles and several books, presented a program on the Abolitionist Movement in
Southwestern Illinois.
Mr. Dunphy talked about the "two most interesting prisoners" at the
Alton Civil War Prison - Mary Ann Pitman, (there were women incarcerated in the
Alton Prison), a cross-dressing Confederate sympathizer who switched allegiance
and became a double-agent for the Union. The other inmate was Griffin Frost, a
Confederate POW who kept a painstaking journal of his incarceration in both St.
Louis and the Alton Prison.
John claims an abolitionism heritage even though he has no blood relation to
any particular abolitionist. His great uncle, Joseph Dromgoole, was the
assistant editor of the Alton Telegraph for many years, retiring in 1962. The
Alton Telegraph has all but adopted Elijah Lovejoy, well-known abolitionist, as
its unofficial "Patron Saint."
Elijah Lovejoy is significant not just because he was an abolitionist newspaper
editor who became the first major martyr of the abolitionist movement in the
United States. He is interesting to us because he was not born an abolitionist.
His was a long, steady, uncertain journey to abolitionism.
Abolitionists believed in the immediate abolition of slavery - its elimination,
its eradication. Abolitionists were opposed by a group called the gradual
emancipationists, who thought the immediate abolition of slavery would be too
disruptive. They supported the elimination of slavery over a period of time
through a series of legislative measures. At one time, Lovejoy supported the
position of gradual emancipation. Even before he supported that viewpoint, when
he was editor of the St. Louis Times, the newspaper actually carried ads for
the sale of slaves.
Lovejoy vociferously condemned the extremely heinous lynching of a freed slave
in St. Louis and his printing press was destroyed by a mob because of this.
After having his press destroyed in St. Louis, Elijah Lovejoy moved his
newspaper, The St. Louis Observer, to Illinois, where it became The Alton
Observer. Although Illinois was a free state, it had a proslavery element. The
more Lovejoy extolled abolitionism, the more he infuriated the proslavery
element.
Elijah Lovejoy and Thaddeus Hurlbut were co-founders of the Illinois
Antislavery Society, which was founded in Upper Alton in 1837, just two weeks
before Lovejoy's assassination.
Mr. Dunphy's second link to the abolitionist movement comes through Joseph
Dromgoole's wife, Dorothy Horton Dromgoole. She grew up in the
Hurlbut-Messenger House. It was a station on the underground railway.
John's third link to the abolitionist movement is the building where his
bookstore is located, the Dimmock House on East Broadway in Alton. The house
was purchased in 1840 by an abolitionist from Massachusetts, Elijah Dimmock,
and he converted the house into a station on the underground railway.
A Madison County man, Edward Coles, second governor of the State of Illinois,
is responsible for keeping Illinois a free state. In 1824, a referendum was
held to try to have a constitutional convention to rewrite the Illinois
constitution to allow slavery Governor Coles was largely responsible for the
defeat of this referendum. Governor Coles had a son named Robert, who was
living in Virginia at the time the Civil War started. He took up arms for the
Confederacy and was killed in battle.
There are two "communities" in the area that can be considered
abolitionist communities - Rocky Fork and Brooklyn. The Rocky Fork Church was
legally established in 1863 but there was a community of fugitive slaves living
in that area as far back as the 1820's and the 1830's.
Brooklyn, established in the 1820's, was a community of freed and fugitive
slaves. The entire community functioned as a stop on the underground railway.
Mr. Dunphy ended with a very brief description of the rest of his book
"Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois." He had
copies of his book available to purchase and signed them for the purchasers.
This interesting presentation was well received and generated quite a few
questions and comments from the large audience.