Persons of Interest Cards

Reference Sheet for Antebellum America

Susan B. Anthony
Born: 1820

John James Audubon

Died: 1906

Highlights
Womens suffragist leader
Made speeches and organized state and national
conventions on women's rights

Born: 1785

Died: 1851
Highlights
American artist who specialized in painting wild birds
His paintings of western wildlife contributed to
western population movements

Dorothea Dix
Born: 1802

Frederick Douglass
Died: 1887

Highlights
Helped improve conditions in jails, poorhouses, and
insane asylums during the 1820s
Got state governments to care for the mentally ill

Born: 1818

Died: 1895
Highlights
African American who wrote an autobiography about
his life (born a slave; escaped to freedom)
Powerful speaker for the Abolitionist Movement

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Born: 1803

Robert Fulton
Died: 1882

Born: 1765

Died: 1815
Highlights
American inventor who designed the first
commercially successful steamboat (1807) and the
first steam warship (1814)

Highlights
American transcendentalist who was against slavery
and stressed self-reliance, optimism,
self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom

William Lloyd Garrison

Born: 1805

Angelina Grimke
Died: 1879

Highlights
American abolitionist, social reformer, and journalist
Best known for his anti-slavery newspaper, The
Liberator

Born: 1805

Died: 1879
Highlights
Abolitionist & Suffragette (Womens Rights supporter)
First female to speak at the Massachusetts State
Legislature

Sarah Grimke
Born: 1792

Francis Cabot Lowell

Died: 1873

Highlights
Abolitionist & Suffragette (Womens Rights supporter)
Wrote
Letter on the Condition of Women and the
Equality of the Sexes
with her sister in 1837

Born: 1775

Died: 1817
Highlights
Toured British textile mills in 1810 & made sketches of
what he observed
Opened Lowell Mills in Waltham, MA in 1823

Horace Mann
Born: 1796

Cyrus McCormick
Died: 1859

Highlights
Strong advocate for public school reform
Set the standard for public schools throughout the
nation

Born: 1809

Died: 1884
Highlights
Irish-American inventor who developed the
mechanical reaper in 1831
His invention helped agricultural growth in America

Samuel Morse
Born: 1791

Samuel Slater
Died: 1872

Highlights
American painter of portraits and historic scenes
Creator of a single-wire telegraph system and
co-inventor (with Alfred Vail) of the Morse Code

Born: 1768

Died: 1835
Highlights
British-born mechanic who memorized British
machinery plans and secretly immigrated to America
Created first American spinning thread machine
(1791)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Born: 1815

Henry David Thoreau

Died: 1902

Highlights
Womens suffragist leader
Created "Declaration of Sentiments & Resolutions"
which declared "all men & women are created equal"

Born: 1817

Died: 1862
Highlights
American Transcendentalist author
Started a movement of civil disobedience when he
refused to pay a tax to support the Mexican War

Sojourner Truth
Born: 1797

Harriet Tubman
Died: 1883

Highlights
Female African American born into slavery, but later
gained her freedom and joined Abolitionist Movement
Strong advocate for womens rights

Born: 1822

Died: 1913
Highlights
Female African American born into slavery, but later
gained her freedom and joined Abolitionist Movement
Famous conductor on the Underground Railroad

Walt Whitman
Born: 1819

Eli Whitney
Died: 1892

Highlights
American Transcendentalist poet who believed that
truth is found within each individual
Considered first modern American poet

Born: 1765

Died: 1825
Highlights
American inventor who developed the cotton gin in
1793
Contributed to idea of interchangeable parts in 1798