Mary Grew

GREW, MARY, b. Conn., 1813; daughter of Henry Grew, a Baptist clergyman; educated in Catherine E. Beecher's seminary in Hartford. In her youth, when New England was greatly agitated by the controversy between the old-school and new school theology, she received a training in metaphysics which made her a skillful logician. In childhood she was deeply interested in the condition of the colored people, both free and slave, and was therefore prepared to adopt the fundamental principle of immediate emancipation of slaves as the duty of the master and the right of the slave. Her public addresses combined the skill of the trained logician with the warmth of womanly sympathy, and she was therefore highly popular as a speaker. She was not less skillful with the pen. As corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, she wrote its annual reports for nearly or quite 30 years in succession, and so unique were they in their impressiveness that they excited a degree of public attention rarely awarded to such documents. At different times also, she was the editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, the organ of the Pennsylvania anti-slavery society. She was educated a Baptist, but is now connected with the Unitarians, in whose pulpits she occasionally preaches. She is an earnest advocate of woman suffrage. She has resided in Philadelphia since 1834. -- Library of Universal Knowledge: American Additions, Volume 2, 1881