Theodore Dwight Weld - Early Life

Early Life

Weld, the son and grandson of Congregational ministers, at age 14 took over his father's 100-acre farm near Hartford, Connecticut, to earn money to study at Phillips Academy. He attended from 1820 to 1822 until failing eyesight caused him to discontinue his studies. After a doctor urged him to travel, he started an itinerant lecture series on mnemonics, traveling for three years throughout the United States, including the South where he saw slavery firsthand. Weld then moved with his family to upstate New York and studied at Hamilton College, where he became the disciple of Charles Finney, the famous evangelist. He spent several years working with Finney as a member of his "holy band" before deciding to become a preacher and entering the Oneida Manual Labor Institute in Oneida, New York. While there, he would spend two weeks at a time traveling about lecturing on the virtues of manual labor, temperance, and moral reform. At age 28, he was hired by Lewis and Arthur Tappan, great moral reform philanthropists, as the general agent for the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions. Weld’s report to the Tappan's as a manual labor agent reveals he "traveled 4,575 miles; 2,630 miles by boat and stagecoach; 1800 miles on horseback, 145 miles on foot. En route, he made 236 public addresses."

Influenced by Charles Stuart, a retired British army officer, and others at Western Reserve College, Weld joined the cause of black emancipation.

During his time as a manual labor agent, Weld scouted land and found the location for, the faculty for, and became a student at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati in 1833. There he became the leader of the so-called "Lane Rebels," a group of students who determined to engage in free discussion, including the topic of slavery. They held a series of slavery debates over 18 days in 1834, resulting in a decision to support abolitionism. The group also pledged to help the 1500 free blacks in Cincinnati. When the school's board of directors, including president Lyman Beecher, prohibited them from discussing slavery, about 80% of the students left Lane seminary, most of these enrolling at the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later renamed Oberlin College). Weld, however, left for New York to head the new American Anti-Slavery Society's training session.