Gerrit Smith: Biography from Answers.com Mobile

Gerrit Smith

(born March 6, 1797, Utica, N.Y., U.S. — died Dec. 28, 1874, New York, N.Y.) U.S. reformer and philanthropist. Born into a wealthy family, he became active in the temperance movement (1828) and built one of the first U.S. temperance hotels at Peterboro, N.Y. From 1835 he was an active abolitionist, and he made his hotel a stop on the Underground Railroad. He helped form the Liberty Party and was its unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1848 and 1852. He paid the legal expenses of many slaves arrested under the Fugitive Slave Acts. He gave a farm to his friend John Brown and financed some of Brown's activities.

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