43 Facts About Lewis Woodson

Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist.

Lewis Woodson was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Lewis Woodson was among the original 24 trustees to found Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856, in a collaboration between the AME and the Cincinnati Methodist Council.

Lewis Woodson was the oldest of eleven children born to Thomas and Jemima Woodson.

Lewis Woodson was born in January 1806 in Greenbrier County, Virginia.

Lewis Woodson became an orphan, but, fortunately, a free orphan.

Thomas and Jemima's first child, Lewis Woodson, was named after his uncle.

Birth certificates were not common until 100 years after Thomas Lewis Woodson was born and they were never issued for the birth of slave children.

The Lewis Woodson family moved from Virginia to Chillicothe, Ohio about 1821.

In 1829 Thomas Lewis Woodson acquired a 50-acre farm in Jackson County, Ohio, which he grew over time to 382 acres.

In Chillicothe, Lewis Woodson married Caroline Robinson, born in Virginia.

One of the ten Lewis Woodson children married a member of the Tanner family and another married a member of the Highgate family, who had lived in Pennsylvania since well before the American Revolution as free black Americans.

Lewis Woodson served as Dean of the Payne Theological Seminary at Wilberforce for over three decades, ending in 1937.

Lewis Woodson contributed to the design of Union Station in Washington, DC, and became a civic activist.

Lewis Woodson advocated colonization in separate black communities in the United States as an alternative.

Reverend Lewis Woodson served as secretary for an AME Conference in Hillsborough, Ohio while Bishop Morris Brown presided.

In Pittsburgh, Woodson joined with John B Vashon to establish the African Education Society.

One of the students in Lewis Woodson's school was George Vashon, who was taught by Lewis Woodson until black students were allowed to attend publicly financed schools.

Lewis Woodson filled a key role in the establishment of the Third, or Ohio District, of the AME denomination.

Lewis Woodson operated the business at the same time he pursued his ministry and major civic interests.

Vashon and Lewis Woodson befriended the young Martin Delany, and acted as his teachers and mentors.

In 1837 Lewis Woodson served as secretary for a group of African Americans who created the "Pittsburgh Memorial", a document asserting that free blacks should retain the voting right in Pennsylvania.

Lewis Woodson joined the Western District of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and worked for abolition.

Miller suggested that in this role, Lewis Woodson could be called the "Father of Black Nationalism".

From 1837 to 1841, Lewis Woodson published numerous letters as "Augustine" in The Colored American newspaper.

Lewis Woodson advocated black initiatives to create institutions independent of whites, including churches, newspapers, and schools.

Lewis Woodson advocated preparation for the time when the multitudes of American slaves would gain freedom, and require social, organizational, and other assistance.

Lewis Woodson attended and organized national and state conventions of black American abolitionists.

Lewis Woodson attended at least one national convention and spoke there.

Lewis Woodson helped to organize and lead conventions targeted toward Pennsylvania.

Lewis Woodson served as one of the secretaries for that convention.

Lewis Woodson attended conventions where black and white abolitionists gathered, including one in Cincinnati in 1850.

Lewis Woodson engaged in debates and ideological clashes with other black American leaders.

Lewis Woodson joined the American Moral Reform Society, but his contribution was that of dissent.

The letters Lewis Woodson wrote to the Colored American newspaper were, in part, meant to oppose Whipper's views.

Lewis Woodson clashed with Frederick Douglass because of Lewis Woodson's opposition to Garrisonism.

Part of Lewis Woodson's mark is that he was unwavering; the ideological stances he adopted over 40 years of activism did not change.

Lewis Woodson never called for a slave uprising, he never supported black American emigration to Africa, and he never supported Garrisonism.

Lewis Woodson became the first black American woman to teach at any college and the first black American to teach at an historically black college or university.

Lewis Woodson was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Caroline Lewis Woodson, who died after her husband, is buried next to him.

Unlike Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, John Mercer Langston, and Benjamin Tucker Tanner, Lewis Woodson did not write an autobiography, consequently no historian has written Lewis Woodson's biography, as historians have in the cases of the four men mentioned.

Not only did Lewis Woodson not make the effort to write an autobiography, but he rebuffed at least one effort to record the story of his life.