Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Samuel J. May graduated from Harvard in 1817 and subsequently became a teacher. After studying theology under Norton and Ware in Cambridge, he was ordained in 1822. He served as a pastor in churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts, before coming to Syracuse in 1845. His congregation, now named the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society, still exists there.

May was first and foremost a humanitarian and he worked tirelessly for a variety of causes. As a pacifist, he organized the Windham County Peace Society. As an early champion of equal rights for women, he invited Angelina Grimké to address his congregation on abolitionism, and wrote a sermon “the Rights and Condition of Women” in 1846. As an abolitionist, he served as a general agent and secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and his house was a station on the Underground Railroad between Boston, Syracuse and Canada.

May’s friendship with Cornell’s first President, Andrew Dickson White, and his passionate belief in the enduring educational value of his abolitionist library inspired May to donate his collection to Cornell University in 1870, a year before his death.

Continue the tour

• Anti-Slavery Collections at Cornell
• Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
• May Collection Designated a National Treasure