Henry Grew was born on December 25, 1781, in Birmingham, England. Henry was the third of six children born to John Grew (1752-1800) and Mary Coltman Grew (1756-1834).

Henry's father belonged to a group of liberals associated with the famous Unitarian clergyman and scientist, Dr. Joseph Priestly. Birmingham is described as a center of social, political, and religious reform during this time in history.

John Grew brought his family to America in July, 1795, when Henry was 13. The family settled in Providence, Rhode Island. John died on January 23, 1800, in Liverpool, England. It is not known why he was in England, or how he died.

Sometime prior to 1804, Henry entered business of an uncertain type, but was likely a merchant like his older brother, John. (John's son and grandson of Boston-both also named Henry-were international traders, who later became multi-millionaires.)

Henry married Susan Pitman, of Providence, on June 24, 1802. A daughter, also named Susan, was born in 1804. Susan followed in her father's reform footsteps, and was very close with her younger half-sister, Mary. Susan lived with Henry's family in Hartford, Boston, and for some time in Philadelphia, before returning to live in Boston. She was active in both the Anti-Slavery and Women's Rights Movements, but she did not rise to the level of prominence held by Henry and Mary. She died on January 9, 1881, in Providence, RI. Like Mary, she had never married.

Circa 1805, Henry was elected Deacon of The First Baptist Church of Providence. Between then and 1807, he served as pastor of the Pawtuxet Baptist Church for about one year.

He then moved to Hartford, Conn., where he pastored the First Baptist Church of Hartford from 1807 to 1811. Henry was contentious by nature, and became involved in a dispute with others in his congregation over the observance of civilly appointed fasts and thanksgiving days. Combining this with his evolving unorthodox theological views, Henry soon separated from the main body of the church. It is not clear whether he resigned, or whether he was dismissed.

It is not known what happened to Henry's first wife, or whether they had any more children, but Henry next married Harriet Johnson, of Hartford, on May 19, 1810. However, she died 11 months later on April 9, 1811. Again, the reason is not known, nor whether she had any children.

After Harriet died, Henry married Kate Merrow, of East Hartford, in 1812. Kate was the Mother of Mary Grew, who became a prominent national political figure. (Refer to her Biography in the "Storrs/Grew" thread.) Kate died in July 1845.

Henry also had a daughter named Eliza C. (mother uncertain), who married a Rev. John Taylor Jones on July 14, 1830. They served in Siam and Burma under the auspices of the American Baptist Missionary Union, but Eliza died of cholera in Bangkok on March 28, 1838.

Henry also had a daughter named Julia, as well as a son named Henry J. (No other info.)

When Henry resigned his official pastorship in 1811, he continued to pastor to a Hartford group that split from the main Baptist church. In 1827, in a letter to the "Christian Baptist", Grew indicates that he is a "member of a Church of Christ in Hartford". We assume this church was affiliated with the "Christian Connextion".

In 1827, Henry was one of the founding shareholders of the Hartford Female Seminary, which Mary attended for 2 years in 1828-29.

Historian Leroy Froom publishes that Grew also served as Treasurer of the Hartford Peace Society, and in 1837 as Secretary-Treasurer of the Connecticut Peace Society. We don't know whether Froom has gotten the date wrong, or confused "Henry Grews", but the following described relocation would seem to place doubt on Froom's accuracy.

In late 1833, or early 1834, Henry moved his family to Boston, where other family members lived. This probably was due to his mother's health, since she died in Boston on July 25, 1834. Soon thereafter (1834), Henry relocated to Philadelphia, supposedly because he didn't like the Boston climate. While in Boston, Henry delivered a public address, on March 10, at the Masonic Temple, on behalf of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1840, Henry and Mary were among 40+ Americans who attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, in London, England. (The events of such are contained in Reports posted in the "Henry Grew: Prominent Abolitionist" thread.) Henry and Mary toured England for approximately 10 days before the Convention, and for 45 days after such. This included 2 trips to Birmingham (Henry's hometown), Liverpool (where John died), and a trip to the Oxford University library. It is also noted that Henry owned property in England, since he once referred to receiving "rents" from such.

Henry married his last wife, Elizabeth Noble, sometime after Kate died in July 1845. Elizabeth survived Henry, but she may have died soon thereafter.

Regarding Kate's death, Henry wrote, "...our affecting bereavement in the departure of my beloved wife who has been the companion of my pilgrimage 33 years... Blessed be God for the consolation of his word and spirit and for hope of meeting in the everlasting Kingdom."

During the fifth annual National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Philadelphia, in October 1854, Henry attended and sparked a heated debate. Henry asked for the floor, and was granted such. He apologized for differing from the general tone of previous speakers (including Mary), and then proceeded to explain that his view of woman's rights was based on Scripture. He quoted numerous Bible texts to show that it was God's will that man should be superior in power and authority to woman. Rebuttals came from friends William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. Mott's comments included an evidently declined invitation to Mary to come to the podium to respond to her father.

Henry's health declined gradually during the last years of his life. William Lloyd Garrison recorded that during a trip to Philadelphia in May 1857, that he visited with Mary Grew, but that Henry was too ill to see him.

In April 1860, Henry became severely ill, and his family expected him to die, but he somewhat recovered.

Henry was unable to attend the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society meeting in West Chester, during October 1861, but he prepared a long letter, which was read to the convention.

In 1862, Mary Grew declined invitations to travel due to Henry's health. Susan Grew also came to Philadelphia to assist with Henry. In June 1862, William Lloyd Garrison visited the Grew family, noting that the "venerable invalid" was glad to see him. He also noted that Henry was poring over his Bible, despite his feeble condition. Henry died on August 8, 1862. The local newspaper published a brief notice of his death and funeral, without any biographical information or tribute.

However, the August 16 issue of the "National Anti-Slavery Standard" reported that Henry had supported the movement from its beginning until his death, and that "the anti-slavery cause never had a more unselfish and devoted friend than Father Grew." Regarding his character, it said that Henry's gentleness and childlike simplicity were combined with firmness and integrity. Henry was faithful in fighting wrong, but his rebukes were always tempered with kindness. It also noted his patience and other Christian qualities.

A separate article noted that Henry's funeral was impressive, with tributes by J.M. McKim, Lucretia Mott, a Mr. Green, a Rev. Stewart, a Dr. Child, and a Rev. Campbell (Alexander???).

William Lloyd Garrison also paid tribute to Henry in his "Liberator" issue of August 15. In addition to Henry's humanitarian and charitable work, Garrison noted Henry's deeply religious nature, his independent thinking, and Henry's desire to know truth and righteousness. It was noted that Henry held true to his unpopular convictions.

On September 11, 1862, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society adopted a tributory Resolution memorializing Henry's lifelong support of the movement.

Henry has been described as a man of "independent means", who chose to live a frugal lifestyle. He chose to spend his money promoting his religious and social viewpoints. As noted above, Henry had business interests earlier in his life, and some of his Bostonian relatives became millionaires. He also was known to own property in England. There is also mention of a Boarding House in Philly, which was owned either by he and/or Mary.

I've been searching through my archives for more information about Deacon Grew and found this short obituary on his life in "The World's Crisis."

THE WORLD'S CRISIS

1863 VOL. XVII, No. 1

Obituary Notices

EDITOR OF THE CRISIS:

Dear Bro.: –The subjoined notice of my late grandfather was written for the Watchman and Reflector, where it appeared soon after his death. His widow is desirous to have it inserted in your paper, and therefore I copy it.

—

Died in Philadelphia, August 8th, 1862, ELDER HENRY GREW, in the eighty-first year of his age.

Mr. Grew was a native of Birmingham, Eng., but came to Boston with his parents at the age of fourteen. While here he was converted, and united with the Baptist church. Before he became of age, he commenced business in Providence, when, at the early age of twenty-three, he was elected deacon of the First Baptist church. Soon after, he was licensed to preach, and exercised his gift for about a year in Pawtuxet. He then became pastor of the church in Hartford, which he served acceptably for ten years or more. This connection was dissolved in consequence of his adoption of views deemed heretical, but his piety was never questioned. After preaching several years to a small portion of the church which sympathized with his views, he removed to Boston, for the sake of devoting himself to Christian beneficence. Finding the climate here unfavorable, he removed within a year to Philadelphia, where he spent the rest of his days.

Possessed of a moderate income, he practiced unusual economy, that he might have the more to bestow in charity. More than half his income was probably thus bestowed. He gave considerable sums to various missionary and benevolent societies, but was generally his own almoner to the poor of the city; and while he ministered to their temporal necessities, he seldom if ever failed to impress upon them the care of their souls. He thus continued to preach frequently until within a year of his death. He loved the noon-day prayer meeting, and was almost always there when his strength would allow; and his aged form and tremendous but earnest roles will there be long remembered. His last illness was attended with much pain, but he enjoyed the full use of his faculties to the end, and died, as he had lived, with calm confidence in his Redeemer.

His was no common life, and he will receive no common reward. Such meekness both in public and private life, combined with such zeal for what he deemed the truth, is seldom seen. Never has the writer witnessed a brighter example of that wisdom which cometh from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. God granted him a long life, and nobly it was spent. Of none can it be said more truly, "He rests from his labors, and his works do follow him."

Yours truly,

Howard M. Jones.

This electronic version is fully protected by U.S. Copyright Law, and I would ask that neither you nor your visitors make any copies of this article, without first obtaining the same permission which I received from the copyright holder shown in the Copyright Notice included with the article below.

Mary Grew was the fifth child of Henry Grew, by his third wife, Kate Merrow. Mary was born in Hartford, Conn. on September 1, 1813.

Mary's education included 2 years at the Hartford Female Seminary, in 1828-29. While there, Mary taught a Sunday School class for black children.

In 1833/34, Mary moved with her parents to Boston, and also moved with them to Philadelphia, later in 1834.

Mary battled various health problems all her life. She was also extremely close to Henry, and they worked together in the Anti-slavery Movement. Mary was also close to her half-sister, Susan, who worked in the Movement, in Boston.

Both Henry and Mary were among the 40+ Americans who traveled to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London, England, in 1840. (The report from such is posted in the "Henry Grew: Prominent Abolitionist" thread.)

Henry and Mary's anti-slavery activities brought them into close association with other national political figures, who held similar convictions. Top Abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, visited their home several times over the years, with Mary reciprocating such.

This Excerpt is taken from "To Believe In Women", authored by Lillian Faderman:

Grew was for many years a high official in anti-slavery societies. She was an especially powerful speaker for the cause and had successfully challenged the early prohibition within the movement —shared even by her abolitionist father— on women speaking in mixed gatherings. Like most female antislavery lecturers who were agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society, she never married in the conventional sense, but she lived most of her adult life with Margaret Burleigh, a schoolteacher. Burleigh also worked closely with Grew, both in the antislavery movement and for women's rights. After the Civil War, in 1865, they fought side by side against the move to disband the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, on whose executive committee they both served. Their argument was radical at the time: the society's work had not finished with the Emancipation Proclamation, they insisted, but needed to continue until the constitutional amendments granting the former slaves full citizenship were ratified.

To their abolitionist and suffrage acquaintances, Mary and Margaret made no secret of the fact that they shared both a home and a bed. Nor did they hide from their friends their general distrust of heterosexual relations and the married state. To young William Lloyd Garrison II, who was contemplating marriage, Mary preached, "When I say that I think you are qualified to be a good husband, I think I say a great deal, for that manner of man is rare." Even well-intentioned men failed at matrimony, she said, because of "the low ideal of a wife's position...[and] the marriage relation," a relation from which she believed she was saved through her "union" with Margaret Burleigh.

Pages 365-369

MARY GREW

The datughter of Rev. Henry Grew, of Philadelphia, has been for thirty years one of the ablest and most faithful workers both in the anti-slavery and woman's rights cause.

She is a cousin of Wendell Phillips. Being, a woman of sound judgment, and great general information, she has been one of his [Henry] most reliable friends and counsellors, in planning and executing his lifelong work. She is one of the most terse and finished writers of the age. Her anti-slavery reports made out annually, and published in "The Anti-slavery
Standard," are concise and comprehensive statements of facts and principles governing them. She is a woman of vigorous thought, and high moral principle. Gentle, refined, unobtrusive in manner, she is still a woman of great independence, and self-reliance of character.

Being one of the delegates to the World's Anti-slavery Convention, I met her for the first time in London in 1840. I remember how charmed I was to hear her laud our republican institutions, in the presence of boasting Einglishmen, and, in her keen, sarcastic way, express the utmost contempt for the sham and tinsel, the pomp and ceremony of the Old World.

I was especially pleased with a little incident that occurred one day, at a large dinner party, at Samuel Gurney's, a wealthy banker who had a beautiful
country-seat near London. Lord Morpeth and the Duchess of Sutherland had been invited to meet a party of Americans there, as they had expressed a wish to see the American abolitionists.

As it was a warm, pleasant afternoon in June, we went out on the smooth green lawn, under the shade of some majestic old trees, to hear Lord Morpeth read the reports to the British government from Jamaica. Most of us had been formally presented to the Lord and Lady, but Mr. Grew, having come late, had not yet had the honor of an introduction.

Having formed ourselves into a semicircle round his lordship during the reading, at the close Miss Grew took her father's arm, and, in a cool, self-possessed manner, walked across the intervening, space, and introduced her father to the Duchess of Sutherland, then mistress of the robes, with the same air as she would have presented two plain republicans in her own couitry. Standing near the daughter of Sir Fowell Buxton, she said to me,

"What are you American girls made
of? Not a girl in all England would have presumed to introduce a commoner, to one of such rank as her Grace."

"Ah! madam," I replied, "you forget that in our country we are all of noble blood, all heirs apparent to the throne."

The women who devoted themselves to the anti-slavery cause in the early days, endured the double odium of being
abolitionists, and "women out of their sphere;" hence the men who were engaged in the same cause little knew all the peculiar aggravations and trials of their position. The admiration such women as Angeline Grimke', Abby Kelley, and Lucretia Mott, commanded by their presence and eloquence, was well tempered by ridicule and denunciation. The press and the pulpit exhausted the English language to find adjectives to express their detestation of so horrible a revelation as "a woman out of her sphere." A clerical appeal was issued and sent to all the clergymen in New England, calling on them to denounce in their pulpits this unwomanly and unchristian proceeding. Sermons were preached portraying, in the darkest colors the fearfiul results to the church, the State, and the home, in thus encouraging women to enter public life. It was the opposition of the clergy to woman's
speaking and voting in their meetings, that occasioned the first division in "The American Anti-slavery Society."

The reports of the meeting held in New York, May, 1840, are worthy the perusal of every philosophical thinker, to see how ridiculously even good conmmon-sense men can talk and act when moved by prejudice rather than principle.

The question under debate on that occasion was, whether woman should speak and vote in all business matters in their meetings. Men opposed to this went through the audience tiring every woman who agreed with them to vote against it,
thus calling on them to do then and there what, with feivid eloquence, on that very occasion, they had declared a sin against nature and Scripture for them to do anywhere. It was a stormy meeting held that day by the friends of the slave, and, though he still groaned in bondage, it was urged by many that woman's voice should not be heard in his behalf. Whilst with one hand they strove to loose the chains that clanked on the rice plantations in Georgia, with the other they tried to force woman back into the narrow niche where
barbarism had found her. So partially does truth illuminate some minds that even the colored man was found voting, to
exclude woman from an anti-slavery organization.

History, however, records that William Lloyd Garrison, ever sound on questions of human rights, carried the resolution by one hundred majority in favor of woman's right to speak and vote in their meetings. At this crisis a World's Anti-slavery Convention was called to meet in London. Several American organizations saw fit to send women as delegates to represent them in that august assembly. But, after going three thousand miles to attend a World's Convention, it was discovered that woman formed no part of the constituent elements of the
moral world.

In summoning the friends of the slave from all parts of the two hemispheres, to meet in London, John Bull never dreamed
that woman, too, would answer to his call, though the idea of immediate emancipation was first published by Elizabeth Herrick, an English woman, in a well-reasoned pamphlet in 1824.

Accordingly, on the opening of the convention bill London, June 12th, 1840, the delegates from the Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania societies were denied their seats. The delegation consisted of Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, Abby Iimbner,
Elizabeth Neale, Sarah Pugh, from Peinnsylvania; Emily Winslow, Abby Southwick, and Anne Greene Phillips, from Massachusetts. This sacrifice of human rights, by men who had assembled from all quarters of the globe to proclaim
universal emancipation, was offered up in the presence of such women as Lady Noel Byron, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Howitt, and Anna Jamieson.

The delegates had been persuasively asked to waive their claims that the
harmony of the convention might not be disturbed by a question of such minor importance. But through their champion,
Wendell Phillips (who was then a young man, and brave too, I thought, to advocate so unpopular an idea almost alone in
such an assembly), they maintained that as they had been delegated by large and influential organizations, they must press their claims and thus discharge their duty, not only to those whom they represented, but to the speechless victims of American slavery. Thus the debate on this question was forced upon them, and many distinguished gentlemen of France, England, and America took part in the discussion, which lasted through one entire day.

ANNE GREENE PHILLIPS.

As we stood in the vestibule of Freemason's Hall that morning, talking over the coming event, I saw the wife of
Wendell Phillips for the first time. Her earnest, impressive manner arrested my attention at once. She had just returned
from her bridal tour on the continent, and was in the zenith of her beauty. She had a profusion of dark-brown hair, large, loving blue eyes, and regular features. She was tall, graceful, and talked with great fluency and force. Her whole
soul seemed to be in the pending issue. As we were about to enter the convention she laid her hand most emphatically
on her husband's shoulder and said,