William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

illiam Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, De-

cember10, 1805. Forty years before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather,

emigrated from Massachusetts and settled with three sons and a daughter

on the St. John River, in Nova Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary,

and it was she who was to be the future grandmother of our hero. One

of the neighbors of Daniel Palmer was Joseph Garrison, who was probably

an Englishman. He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude of five

hundred acres and Mary Palmer's charms proved too much for the suscep-

tible heart of Joseph Garrison. He wooed and won her, and on his thirti-

eth birthday she became his wife. The bride herself was but twenty-three,

a woman of resources and of presence of mind, as she needed to be in that

primitive settlement. Children and cares came apace to the young wife, and

we may be sure confined her more and more closely to her house. But in

the midst of a fast-increasing family and of multiplying cares a day's outing

did occasionally come to the busy housewife, when she would go down the

river to spend it at her father's farm. Once, ten years after her marriage, she

had a narrow escape on one of those rare days. She had started in a boat

3 ARCHIBALD HENRY GRIMKÉ

with her youngest child, Abijah, and a lad who worked in her household.

It was spring and the St. John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the river

the ice broke that morning and came floating down with the current. The

boat in which Mary Garrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the frag-

ments and wrecked. The mother with her child sought refuge on a piece of

ice and was driven shoreward. Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could

spare she threw him ashore. She and the lad followed by the aid of an over-

hanging willow bough. The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him

into a snow-bank. But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the

woods. In them Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less

a personage than the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she

found the hut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her

with his best words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely

to her father's."

The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and Joseph Gar-

rison was a man of unusual force and independence of character. The life

which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on the land and partly

on the river. They were equally at home with scythe or oar. Amid such

terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the children should de-

velop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them took to the water and

became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The amphibious habits of boyhood

gave to his manhood a restless, roving character. Like the element which he

loved he was in constant motion. He was a man of gifts both of mind and

body. There was besides a strain of romance and adventure in his blood.