Moncure Conway (Notable Americans)

CONWAY, Moncure Daniel, author, was born near Falmouth, Va., March 17, 1832; son of Walker Peyton and Margaret Eleanor (Daniel) Conway. His father was presiding justice of Stafford county, and his mother a daughter of Dr. John Moncure Daniel, U.S.A., physician in the war of 1812, and granddaughter of Thomas Stone, signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was graduated at Dickinson college in 1849 and studied law in Warrenton, Va. He expressed his sympathy with institutions of the south in articles written for the Richmond Examiner, of which John Moncure Daniel, his cousin, was editor. He soon abandoned law for the Methodist ministry. His political and religious beliefs having changed, he entered the Unitarian divinity school at Cambridge, Mass., where he was graduated in 1854, and became minister of the Unitarian church in Washington, D. C. His anti -slavery sermons in Washington caused much excitement, and by a small majority he was requested to resign his Washington church in 1857, and was succeeded by W. H. Channing. In 1857 he took charge of the Unitarian church at Cincinnati, Ohio, and during the war settled his father's slaves, escaped from Virginia, at Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1863 he visited England with a view to lecturing and writing in explanation of the connection of the anti-slavery cause with the war for the Union, and was appointed minister of South Place chapel, London, whose " Centenary History " he wrote in 1895. He returned to the United States in 1884. He was married to Ellen, daughter of Charles Davis and Sarah Pond (Lyman) Dana. He founded the Dial (monthly) in Cincinnati in 1860; edited the Boston Commonwealth (1861-63); contributed to Fraser's Magazine and the Fortnightly Review; was London correspondent of the New York Tribune, and afterward of the Cincinnati Commercial; and contributed to Harper's Magazine, "South Coast Saunterings in England" (1868-69). He was made a member of the Author's club, New York, and of the Phi Beta Kappa association; and in London he was a member of the Anthropological institute, the Folklore society, the Society of authors, the Omar Khayyam club and other clubs. He received the degree of L.H.D. from Dickinson college. Among his published works are : Tracts for Today (1858); The Rejected Stone (1861); The Golden Hour (1862); Testimonies Concerning Slavery (1863); The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870); Republican Superstitions (1872) ; Sacred Anthology (1874); Idols and Ideals (1877); Demonology and Devil-Lore (1879); A Necklace of Stories (1880); The Wandering Jew and the Pound of Flesh (1881); Thomas Carlyle (1881); Travels in South Kensington (1882); Emerson at Home and Abroad (1882); Pine and Palm (1887); Omitted chapters of History disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph (1888); George Washington and Mount Vernon (1889); George Washington's Rules of Civility (1890); Life of Hawthorne (1890); Prisons of Air (1891); Life of Thomas Paine (2 vols., 1892), which has been translated into French.