John Denison Baldwin | |
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| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's8th district | |
| In office March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1869 | |
| Preceded by | Charles R. Train |
| Succeeded by | George Frisbie Hoar |
| Member of theConnecticut House of Representatives from the Blank district | |
| In office 1847–1852 | |
| Preceded by | George S. Catlin |
| Succeeded by | William W. Boardman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 28, 1809 |
| Died | July 8, 1883 (aged 73) |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Lemira Hathaway |
| Profession | Minister, Writer, Editor |
John Denison Baldwin (September 28, 1809 – July 8, 1883) was anAmerican politician,Congregationalist minister,newspaper editor, and popularanthropological writer. He was a member of theConnecticut State House of Representatives and later a member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts.
Baldwin briefly studied law, but graduated with a degree in theology fromYale Divinity School in 1834. He became aCongregationalist minister and preached inWest Woodstock,North Branford, andNorth Killingly, all in Connecticut. In 1839Yale awarded him an honoraryMaster of Arts degree.
He became a member of theConnecticut State House of Representatives in 1847.
Baldwin was active in theFree Soil[1] andanti-slavery movements.[2] He edited anti-slavery journals the "Republican" (published inHartford) and the "Commonwealth" (published inBoston), and from 1859 became the owner and editor of the "Worcester Spy," whatGeorge Frisbie Hoar called "one of the most influential papers in New England."[2]
From this time onwards Baldwin was resident inWorcester, Massachusetts. He was adelegate to the1860 Republican National Convention, whereAbraham Lincoln was nominated asRepublican presidential candidate, and in 1863 he was elected to theU.S. House of Representatives forMassachusetts's 8th congressional district. A "close friend" of bothCharles Sumner andHenry Wilson,[3]Senators from Massachusetts, Baldwin served for three terms in the House, promoting fullequal rights forblack Americans in the wake of theCivil War. In 1869, whenGeorge F. Hoar was nominated as the Republican candidate for his seat, Baldwin returned full-time to his journalistic and anthropological work. He edited theWorcester Spy until his death in 1883. In 1867 Baldwin was elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society.[4]
Baldwin married Lemira Hathaway ofBristol County, Massachusetts on April 3, 1832, and they had four children. Two daughters died by the age of 21, and neither married. Both of Baldwin's sons survived into adulthood and became partners in their father's newspaper business. The elder, John Stanton Baldwin, served as acaptain in theFifty-first Massachusetts Regiment in theUnion Army during theCivil War.[1]
John D Baldwin was a distant cousin ofRoger Sherman and of theBaldwin, Hoar, and Sherman political family. He was also a direct descendant of Mayflower passengerJohn Billington.
Baldwin conducted correspondence with many notable thinkers of his time, includingRalph Waldo Emerson,Charles Darwin,James Russell Lowell, and particularly his friendCharles Sumner. He accepted Darwin'stheory of evolution while maintaining a belief in the divine origin of "first forms."
In 1865 he was elected a corporate member of theAmerican Oriental Society. Baldwin's anthropological writing posited the origins of humancivilization as arising among anArabian or Northeast African people, theCushites, in pre-historic times.
InAncient America, In Notes on American Archaeology he also speculated on the origins of the "Mound Builder" people then believed to have constructed the famous mounds around theMississippi andOhio River Valleys, suggesting that they had been anaboriginal people who had migrated northwards from Central America orMexico. He rejected the then-common notion that they had been a lostEuropean,Semitic, orAsian people who had been wiped out by theNorth American Indians, asserting on the contrary that the Mounds were "wholly original, wholly American" and "did not come from the Old World".[5] He did, however, still subscribe to the idea that these "Mound Builders" were not the same as the American Indian inhabitants of the region at that time, who he believed were a separate race originating in Asia.
Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Baldwin, John Denison".The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. p. 196.| International | |
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