Henry Brewster Stanton was born on 29 June 1805 at (Griswold) Preston, CT. The Stanton book indicates Joseph's children were born in Preston and Griswold, Conn., but doesn't identify which ones were born in which location.. He was the son of
Joseph Stanton and
Susan M. Brewster. Henry Brewster Stanton married
Elizabeth Cady on 1 May 1840 at Johnstown, NY. Henry Brewster Stanton died on 14 January 1887 at New York City, NY. From the New York "Tribune" of Jan. 15, 1887 as quoted by William A. Stanton. "Henry Brewster Stanton, who was one of the early anti-slavery agitators and who won many honors in journalism, died yesterday of pneumonia at No. 116 East Twenty-third street. His illness was known to but few friends, and his vigor of intellect and physical activity were retained up to the time he left the office of the "Sun" as week ago. He had sat in the office without laying aside his overcoat and in going out into the air he caught a cold that speedily brought on the disease which ended his life. Even after his sickness he continued to do work for several days, editing the proof-sheet o the fourth edition of his autobiography, entitled "Random Recollection" and up to within a few hours of his death he did not consider his condition serious./ His sons, Henry and Robert L./ Stanton, were at his bedside when the end came. His wife is now in London.
Mr. Stanton was born in the hamlet of Pachaug, New London county, Conn., now the own of Griswold, on June 27, 1805. Thomas Stanton, the first of the family in New England, came from England in 1635 and was Crown Interpreter-General of the Indian tongues and subsequently Judge of the County Court of New London. On his mother's side Mr. Stanton's ancestry ran back to Elder Brewster, of the Plymouth Colony. His father was a woolen manufacturer and a trader with the West Indies. A little red school-house in Pachaug and a rickety academy in Jewett City, a place on what is now known as the Thames river, furnished Mr. Stanton his education before he entered public life. George D. Prentice was one of his teachers and by him the field of newspaper work was laid bare to the young student. In 1826 Mr. Stanton went to Rochester to write for Thurlow Weed's newspaper, the Monroe "Telegraph". This sheet advocated the election of Henry Clay, and Mr. Stanton, attracted intro political life, took the stump for John Quincy Adams, making his first political speech in Rochester. For three years he was Deputy County Clerk of Monroe county. He studied for a short time under the Rev. Ferdinand Ward, father of Ferdinand Ward, of Grant & Ward fame. In 1832 he went to Cincinnati to finish his studies at Lane Seminary.
His first anti-slavery speech was made at a debating club at the date of "Nat" Turner's insurrection. He became one of the most effective platform orators who defended human rights in the great controversy preceding the war, and in 1834, at the anniversary in this city of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was secretary, he faced the first of the two hundred mobs he battled against in his devotion to the cause of freedom. As a public speaker he was ranked with Wendell Phillips, but his taste for politics early drew him into the Liberty party. He took sides with the Democracy in New York local contests at this period, but was an ardent Republican when the issue of slavery and secession became paramount in National affairs. In the early ant-slavery contest Mr. Stanton spoke for the relief of the oppressed in the principal cities of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. He was a member of the Free Soil party and served in the Massachusetts Senate for two terms. He was a member also of the New York Senate in 1850. Hr helped to launch the Republican party in 1855, and took the stump for Governor Seward. He made his home in 1847 at Seneca Falls, N.Y. and being admitted to the bar there, soon acquired reputation as a successful lawyer in patent cases.
He did a great deal of valuable work on newspapers., He wrote for the "Tribune" when Mr. Greeley was its editor, and subsequently for the "Sun", with which he had a close connection up to the time of his death. He published a book called "Sketches of Reforms and Reformers in Great Britain and Ireland," after his trip to Europe in the forties. His autobiography was engaging his attention when his fatal illness began."
William A. Stanton also quotes a letter from Henry B. Stanton's so Theodore, in Paris, to the Chicago "Inter-Ocean":
"Paris, Jan 21. - My father has passed away rich in years and not poor in honors. Henry B. Stanton was no ordinary man, and I know you will not consider it unbecoming in me to devote a letter to his memory, especially if I do little else than transcribe a few of the tributes of others which are coming to me by every post.
"Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes e from England: Your father was an eloquent speaker, a forcible writer, and an admirable conversationalist. Those who possess oratorical gifts are seldom able with their pen, and it is rare that a good writer is also a good speaker. Phillips was fine on the platform, so was Gerrit Smith, but neither could put his thoughts on paper without discovering a certain lameness. Garrison, on the other hand, could write better than we could speak. None of them were equal to your father in conversation. I never knew any one who could on the spur of the moment rise and express himself more appropriately on all subjects and on all occasions, whether he was called upon to deal with temperance, anti-slavery, education, agriculture, religion, politics, science, art or music. Sometimes when I have been serenaded or expected to say a few words I have pushed him forward to express what I could not without preparation, and, at such moments, he was always happy in speaking from my standpoint as well as from his own. He was asked one evening to respond to a toast on music. Now, said I to myself, for one he will be at a loss for something to say. But after a few general remarks on national aptitudes for music, especially among southern nations, he went on and spoke charmingly of the beauty of the negro melodies and the solace music has been to our slaves in their weary bondage. It being in the days or our anti-slavery excitement, he always seized every opportunity that offered to call public attention to the irrepressible conflict.
"No man was better acquainted with the politics and politicians of the last century. Not in England and America, than he was. Very conversant with history and literature, he had an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes of the living and the dead, authors, statesmen, and artists. His memory was really wonderful, and he never forgot what he saw, read, or heard. In another respect he was also very remarkable: he was uniformly in good spirits. Although of a nervous temperament and capable of the highest enthusiasm, he never suffered corresponding depression, but was always ready for cheerful conversation. His industry was truly praiseworthy. He was continually busy reading, writing or working outdoors.
"When speaking before an audience, he was very quick to turn to account any unexpected occurrence. On one occasion he was delivering a temperance lecture on a platform covered by a thick oil-cloth that protruded two or three inches over the edge of the boards in front. In the midst of one of his most eloquent passages, he was comparing the inebriate's downward course to the Falls of Niagara, and the struggle with drink to the hopeless effort of a man in the rapids. Just as he reached, in his description, the fatal plunge over the precipice, he advanced to the edge of the platform, the oil-cloth gave way under his feet, and in an instant he went down headlong into the audience, carrying with him desk, glass, pitcher and water. Being light and agile, he was quickly on the platform again, and immediately remarked with great coolness: 'I carried my illustration further than I had intended to. Yet even so it is that the drunkard falls, glass in hand, carrying destruction with him. But not so readily does he rise again from the terrible depths into which he has precipated himself.' The whole house cheered again and again, and even Gough never struck a more powerful blow for temperance.
"Your great delight, when a little fellow 4 or 5 years old, was to have him make speeches to you, he pretending that you were a judge and himself an advocate. He used to seat you on the piano an then, with vehement gesture and pirouettings, would argue the case. Not one word of the speech did you understand. But you remained spellbound by the passion that was displayed, by the denouncing of witnesses and opposing counsel, by the laying down of the law to the judge - yourself - and by appeals to the jury - your older brothers, who were not less amazed than you were by the whole performance. You never smiled nor took your eyes off of him for ten minutes on the stretch, when the court adjourned. One day in your father's absence I tried to amuse you in the same way, but I had scarcely uttered two sentences when the judge coolly clambered down from the bench and walked off, whether because moved by a masculine dislike of a feminine advocate, or the comparatively lifeless presentation of the case I have never learned to this day. I never repeated the humiliating experiment.
"Your father had a strong taste for agricultural pursuits. He enjoyed planting trees, grafting, raising fruit and vegetables, and never a day passed in summer that he did not go the round of the garden. He once made a wager with a friend that he could raise the largest melon and won. He watched the growing fruit day after day, and when the big fellow was ready for the table invited his friend to dinner. At dessert the much-praised and long-cared-for melon was brought in , and the host, knife in hand, was about to cut it open when it fell apart of itself. One of Erin's daughters, who had been serving us for several days with muskmelons, and had never seen a watermelon, had kept the edible portion in the kitchen, and had sent in to us the rind! General surprise was followed by as general a laugh, and your father, returning to his guest, asked: 'Basom, why am I at this moment like that melon? We are equally crusty.'
"Theodore Tilton in a letter to me, says: 'My chief recollections of your father date back to the anti-slavery days, when he and I were sometimes speakers on the same platform. I was always struck by his cogent style of argument and appeal, particularly when the subject had a political interest. It was in political discussion that he excelled. He was a splendid campaigner - full of fact, logic, anecdote, wit and passion - and with a voice as clear as a clarion. He was a born orator and debater'.
"A fortnight ago Mr. Frederick Douglass told me how and when it was that he first heard my father speak in public. When I was escaping from bondage I was received under the humble but hospitable roof of Nathan Johnson, an old colored man who died at the age of 90. He it was, by the way, who gave me my name. He was reading the 'Lady of the Lake' while I was with him, and suggested that I take Scott's Douglas as my last name. I did so, adding an 's' for some reason or another, or for no reason at all; I don't now remember why. Nathan Johnson also told me all about Henry B. Stanton's wonderful oratorical powers, and took me one evening to hear him denounce the slave system. It was one of the sit abolition lectures I ever heard, and this circumstance, combined with the eloquence of the speaker, left an ineffaceable impression on my mind. Your father was then unquestionably the best orator in the anti-slavery movement. I listened to him on many other occasions, but this first one, when I was fresh from slavery, naturally touched me the most deeply.'
"I might go on and give some of my own recollections. I might tell how father used to like to talk of these early anti-slavery days, to which Mr. Douglass has just referred, and especially to a lecture tour that he once made through New York State in the company of Whittier, who had not then won an honored place in literature. I might even cite a letter that the Quaker poet wrote last summer to father, in which he recalled in words tinged with sadness this joint anti-slavery crusade. I might describe his ardor for the collection of the engraved or photographed portraits of the great men of all times and countries, how he had them framed, hung in groups on the wall, and how he would dilate upon the virtues and their vices of the originals to the circle of children whose eyes were riveted on the pictures and their ears wide open to all that was said. What an admirable way to teach history and biography, and how vividly those faces and lives still come back to me now! I might mention, as an example of his large acquaintance with American political history, the many hundred pages of notes that he once furnished me when I was preparing a series of lectures to be delivered at Hobart College, but which a sudden call to Europe interrupted. I might relate the enthusiasm that he created in New Jersey during the Tilden campaign when he stumped the State for the Democratic candidates, and after many years of absence from public life returned to it with all the old fire and success.
'Why we didn't know that we had such a stunner amongst us,' the old Dutch farmers used to say, and if Tilden carried the State is was due in no small manner to Henry B. Stanton. I might touch upon these facts and many similar ones, but as I wrote at the beginning of this letter, I have preferred today to transcribe only what others had said."
