Moncure Conway timeline

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Date published: 2/2/2002

1832 (March 17)--Moncure Daniel Conway is born at a house known as Middleton in Stafford County.

1834--His father purchases Inglewood, a large farm just north of Falmouth near the present Drew Middle School. It is here that Conway has his earliest memories of growing up.

1838--Inglewood burns, and the family moves into a brick house along the Rappahannock River at Falmouth. The large Georgian home today is owned by Norman and Lanetta Schools and still is known as Conway House.

1842--Conway enters school at Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, which he described in his autobiography as "the principal educational institution in northern Virginia."

1847--At age 15, he enrolls at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. He graduates with the class of 1849 and soon begins work in the law offices of a family friend in Warrenton.

1850--Conway discovers the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose philosophy of self-reliance strengthens his growing anti-slavery beliefs and will be an influence on him the rest of his life.

1851--Conway turns his back on a career in law, commits himself to the Methodist Church and becomes a circuit-riding minister.

1852--Conway's older brother, Peyton, dies, leaving him the eldest son in a family with power and influence. Conway leaves Virginia for Massachusetts, however, and embraces Unitarianism. He also enters Harvard Divinity School and graduates the following year.

1854--After standing next to William Lloyd Garrison as he burns a copy of the Constitution during a Fourth of July gathering of abolitionists, Conway makes his first anti-slavery speech in Framingham, Mass.

1854--Conway becomes minister at the First Unitarian Church of Washington.

1857--When his anti-slavery views become an issue with his congregation, he is asked to leave. He then accepts a position at the Cincinnati Unitarian Church.

1858--Conway meets and marries Ellen Dana. Together they will have four children: three sons, Eustace (1859), Emerson (1861) and Dana (1865), and a daughter, Mildred (1868).

1862--Both Conway and his wife separate from the Unitarian church. He travels throughout the North as an outspoken leader in the abolitionist movement. Meanwhile, Conway House in Falmouth is saved from destruction by Union troops when a young soldier recognizes Conway's portrait hanging in his mother's bedroom.

1862--Conway arranges for transportation north for 31 of the family slaves who had escaped Stafford and gathered in Washington. The group survives a dangerous trek between train stations in Baltimore and eventually reaches safety in Ohio.

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Date published: 2/2/2002