Abel Brown

Abel Brown (9 November 1810 — 8 November 1844) was an American abolitionist.

Abel Brown was born November 9, 1810, in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Abel and Joanna (Lyman) Brown. He moved with his parents to New York State at age 11. During his youth, he was a clerk in a store, but at the age of twenty-one, he began to study for the ministry in the Literary and Theological Seminary at Hamilton, New York. In 1832, he preached in Springfield nine times, and in various other places.

As a young man, he soon felt called to action in the abolitionist movement. He was an eloquent voice crying out against slavery, publishing letters and reports in The Liberator and other periodicals with abolitionist leanings, as well as in his own paper, The Tocsin of Liberty (later The Albany Patriot). The founder and corresponding secretary of the Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society, he traveled widely, preaching the message of abolition, often accompanied by fugitive slaves. 

Brown was ordained November 16, 1837, at Northeast, Pennsylvania, and accepted a call to Beaver, Pennsylvania, the following year. He was active at this time in the underground railroad, assisting escaped slaves on their way to Canada. 

In April 1839, he was appointed agent of the Western Education Society; in July 1839, he accepted a commission from the Massachusetts Abolition Society, and subsequently, he was settled as pastor of the Baptist church in Northampton, Massachusetts. 

Brown's death one day before his 34th birthday was a blow to New York's abolitionist movement and devastating for his wife, Catharine Swan, who published this biography in 1849 as a way of keeping his memory alive. The work draws heavily on Brown's correspondence, journals, and newspaper articles, allowing him to tell the story in his own words. 

Brown died on November 8, 1844, in Canandaigua, New York, at the age of 34.