Graves, Kersey

Kersey Graves was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on 21 November 1813. His parents were Quakers, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, and then later moved to the Hicksite wing of Quakerism. Graves was largely self-educated, and at the age of 19 was teaching in a school at Richmond, a career he was to follow for more than twenty years. He was an advocate of Abolitionism was also interested in language reform, and became involved with a number of radical freethinkers within Quakerism. In August 1844, he joined a group of about fifty utopian settlers in Wayne County, Indiana...