Mrs. Elizabeth T. Porter-Beach address
- Title:
- Mrs. Elizabeth T. Porter-Beach address
- Collection:
- 19th Century Prison Reform Collection
- Date:
- 1807-1868
- ID Number:
- RMM01157_B01_F18_023_01
- Collection Number:
- 1157
- File Name:
- RMM01157_B01_F18_023_01.jpg
- Work Type:
- documents
- Description:
- Elizabeth T. Porter-Beach was a native of Skaneateles, New York and attained considerable distinction in literature after writing "Pelayo; an epic of the olden Moorish time." She was close to her uncle by marriage, Governor Enos T Throop whose relationship to the Auburn System is documented elsewhere in this exhibit. She was also daughter of James Porter who served in the New York State Assembly (1814-1815) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1817-1819). He then returned to the practice of law, serving as surrogate of Onondaga County (1822-1824), before finally returning to Albany as register of the New York State Court of Chancery.
She was also wife of John Campbell Beach who was a partner of law with William H. Seward. Seward was New York Governor (1839-1842), United States Senator (1849-1861), and United States Secretary of State (1861-1869). He became the center of Auburn controversy in 1846 when he defended two felons accused of murder with the relatively new defense of insanity. In the case of William Freeman, an African American accused of house burglary and stabbing, Seward argued for the intersection of mental illness and racial oppression: "he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race—the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man." He later gained further notoriety when he handled the unsuccessful appeal in the United States Supreme Court of John Van Zandt, an anti-slavery advocate who was sued by a slaveowner for helping African Americans escape through the Underground Railroad.
John Campbell Beach was also a son of the New York Assemblyman John H. Beach who steered the 1816 decision to build the prison in his home town of Auburn.
This address belonged to former Governor Throop, and encapsulates the many personal and political connections between prison reform, slavery abolition, protections for the mentally ill, and rights for women. - Cite As:
- Enos Thompson Throop. Papers, #1157. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
- Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Archival Collection:
- Enos Thompson Throop Papers
- Box:
- 1
- Folder:
- 18
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The content in the 19th Century Prison Reform Collection is believed to be in the public domain by virtue of its age, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections [http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright]. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2017 from print materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Katherine Thorsteinson. For more information about these volumes, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.