Moncure D. Conway - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Conway was born of an old Virginia family in Falmouth, Stafford County. His father was a wealthy gentleman farmer, a slaveholder, and county judge whose home still stands in Falmouth at 305 King Street (aka River Road) along the Rappahannock River. Conway's mother was a homemaker and homeopathic physician. Both parents were Methodists, his father having left the Episcopal church, his mother the Presbyterian. Moncure's later opposition to slavery came from his mother and from his boyhood experiences. His father and three brothers remained staunchly pro-slavery. As a youth he himself briefly took a pro-slavery position, under the influence of a cousin, the Richmond editor John Moncure Daniel.

He graduated at Dickinson College in 1849, studied law for a year, and then became a Methodist minister in his native state. In 1852, thanks largely to the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his religious and political views underwent a radical change, and he entered the Harvard University school of divinity, where he graduated in 1854. Here he fell under the influence of "transcendentalism", and became an outspoken abolitionist. After graduation from Harvard University, Conway accepted a call to the First Unitarian Church of Washington, D.C., where he was ordained in 1855, but his anti-slavery views brought about his dismissal in 1856.