An Abolitionist in the Family
This week I serendipitously affirmed a rumor about a man who married one of my collateral ancestors.
Because he has a distinctive name, Milo Demetrius Pettibone, more commonly known Milo D. Pettibone, I occasionally use him as a test when I’m surfing various sites. A more systematic approach would be to use his name as a GoogleAlert, but usually I just search on his name from time to time. This week I discovered a 1970 Ohio State University Masters thesis showing he was the first person elected to president of the newly formed Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society in 1842. His daughter Annette Pettibone Little wrote in the second volume of the Daughters of the American Revolution magazine that her father has been “much interested in the abolishment of slavery…” but I had not be able to corroborate this.
A few years ago I was in Delaware County, Ohio doing some research on this family and in a conversation with the terrific folks at the Delaware County Historical Society, I found that they didn’t know much about this founding father for their area. It’s not surprising–he died young and most of his family moved on to Cleveland. But they couldn’t confirm his being an abolitionist either.
This was a surprisingly rewarding find. It verifies the importance of checking a wide array of resources–theses and dissertations often contain a gem of information about an ancestor I might never have found otherwise.
Gamble, Douglas Andrew. ”The Western Anti-Slavery Society: Garrisonian Abolitionism in Ohio.” Master’s thesis, University of Ohio, 1970. accessed 17 Jul 2010 at http://etd.ohiolink.edu/.
Little, Annette Pettibone. “”Ancestry of Annette Pettibone Little.” The American Monthly Magazine. vol. 2. 1893. GoogleBooks. http:///www.books.google.com : 2010.
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