Edward Lovejoy: The Son of Abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy
by
John J. Dunphy
(Originally published in the 1/20/13 edition of The Telegraph of Alton, IL)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 12, 1836, Edward Payson Lovejoy was less than two years old when his father, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Edward’s mother, Celia French Lovejoy, came from a slave-holding family that had little use for abolitionists such as her late husband. While Elijah Lovejoy had eight siblings, none of them offered his widow any appreciable degree of financial or moral support. Late in life, Edward noted that he felt “my father’s kindred and my own ought and might have stretched forth a helping affectionate hand and greatly alleviated her [Celia’s] lot.”
Celia and Edward assumed a nomadic existence after Elijah’s murder. They tried putting down roots in several states and even Canada before returning to Upper Alton, Illinois, where Edward enrolled in Shurtleff College. He completed two years before coming down with bilious fever and cholera. When he recovered, the Lovejoys moved to Iowa.
An Iowa neighbor in 1856 begged Edward to go to California and bring home his daughter and grandson, who had been taken to that state by the daughter’s gambler-husband. As fate would have it. The woman and child returned to Iowa without Edward’s intervention, but the young man decided to stay in California. He wrote to his mother to ask her to join him, and Celia journeyed to California in a stagecoach. While trying his hand at mining, Lovejoy was moved by the plight of a man who was falsely accused of assault with intent to commit murder. Acting as an attorney, Edward addressed the jury and convinced its members of the defendant’s innocence. The abolitionist’s son decided that he should become a lawyer, He read law in a Trinity County lawyer’s office and was admitted to the California bar in 1865.
Trinity County voters elected Lovejoy their district attorney in 1867 and re-elected him two years later. Lovejoy won the office of county judge in 1871. He also served as a U.S. court commissioner. Lovejoy in 1868 purchased the Weekly Trinity Journal and became a newspaper published and editor — the career of his late father. And much like his father, he attacked racial bigotry.
When a local politician denigrated Chinese and Japanese immigrants who lived in California, Lovejoy editorialized, “The past teaches us that mere appeals to prejudice yield no lasting victories.” He further declared, “There is a sense of right written on the hearts of all men that, tardy though it be, renders a final verdict on the side of reason and justice.”
California at that time prohibited black and Asian children from attending school with white children. In another editorial, Lovejoy ridiculed a California school board that established a school to educate just one black child. In an article about Edward Lovejoy, historian William G. Chrystal stated that Lovejoy “stood up for the Chinese in Trinity County” and “was the closest thing to a champion they had.” Lovejoy feared that the employment of Asian-Americans at such low wages would lead to their eventual enslavement. “We cannot ignore the fact that they are human beings,” he wrote.
Edward married Julia Holland in 1869. Their only child was stillborn in 1871. This tragedy, coupled with his mother’s death the previous year, permanently darkened Lovejoy’s world. When he was defeated in a bid to regain the office of district attorney in 1877, Lovejoy and his wife left Trinity County and moved to Virginia City, Nevada, where he eventually took a job laying track for the Carson and Colorado Railroad. Edward later became the railroad’s agent in Wabuska, a town about 30 miles southeast of Virginia City. The abolitionist’s son prospered in Wabuska, where he opened a general store and a bar that served railroad passengers. He was appointed the town postmaster and owned about 1,500 acres upon which he grazed horses and cattle.
Lovejoy in 1890 was surprised by a letter from his father’s sister, Elizabeth Lovejoy Hammond of Evanston, Illinois. He replied with a long letter summarizing the events of his life. He praised his long-dead mother, who “battled with poverty to rear and educate her boy.” Edward told his aunt that “Whatever was good in him, he owes to her teaching and example.”
Edward Lovejoy died unexpectedly on August 26, 1891, and was buried in Dayton, Nevada. Commemorative tombstones honoring Celia Lovejoy and Edward Lovejoy have been placed near Elijah Lovejoy’s grave in Alton’s City Cemetery.
John J. Dunphy is a writer and poet. His books include Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois and Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials.