Early Life
Oren Cheney was born in Holderness, New Hampshire, to Abigail and Moses Cheney, who were prominent abolitionists. His father was a paper manufacturer and also a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Young Cheney was educated at the Parsonsfield Seminary (a Free Will Baptist prep school). He attended college at Brown University, and Dartmouth College, where he graduated with the Class of 1839. Cheney had transferred from Brown to Dartmouth after seeing mob violence on campus against abolitionists. The college had many economic ties with slave trade shipping. Cheney believed that Dartmouth was more tolerant of abolitionism.
In 1844 Cheney was ordained as a Free Will Baptist minister. He later attended the Free Will Baptist Bible School in Whitestown, New York to study theology but had to leave following his wife's death in 1846. (This was later called the Cobb Divinity School).
Read more about this topic: Oren B. Cheney
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