Charles Augustus Wheaton (1809–1882) was a businessman and major figure in the central New York state abolitionist movement and Underground Railroad, as well as other progressive causes.
He was one of the founders of the First Congregational Church in Syracuse, which took an abolitionist stand, and was part of the Vigilance Committee that formed in 1850 to resist the Fugitive Slave Law.
[1] They had followed three of the elder Wheaton's sisters: Lydia, Sylvia and Loraine, who had already moved to Pompey with their families, part of a westward migration of many in the state in the years after the American Revolutionary War.
Wheaton married Ellen Douglas Birdseye on June 24, 1834, at the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, where they were both members for a time.
Ellen was well educated, having attended a girls seminary in Cortland and music school in the state capital of Albany.
Progressive views and activism, particularly relating to abolition and women's rights, were an important part of the Wheatons' family life.
After the death of Ellen in 1858 and moving to join friends in Northfield, Minnesota in 1860, Wheaton married the widow Martha Elizabeth (Archibald) Wagener in 1861.
As a young man, Charles clerked in the general store owned by his brother-in-law Moses Seymour Marsh.
In 1849, the Wheatons' close friends and fellow abolitionists, John and Anna Loomis North, left Syracuse to move to Minnesota.
Ellen noted their departure in her diary, "[John] thinks very highly of the climate and resources in Minnesota, and says it is rapidly filling up with an Eastern population."
Wheaton & Co.—housed in the city's grandest mercantile block, a four-story building overlooking the Erie Canal and Clinton Square.
Between 1839 and 1847, the Wheatons operated their house as a station on Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves travel to Canada.
His public reputation as an abolitionist was such that the family seamstress, a Mrs. MacManus, was said to have reported to a census taker that Wheaton was "president of the Underground Railroad.
"[citation needed] In a notable case in 1839, Syracuse abolitionists helped the slave Harriet Powell to escape from her masters, a family from Mississippi who were staying at a local hotel.
The Law required all citizens to support capturing escaped slaves and returning them to their masters, even if found in northern states that prohibited slavery.
On October 4, 1850, a biracial group chaired by A.H. Hovey, mayor of Syracuse, appointed a Vigilance Committee of thirteen men.
They included Wheaton, Lyman Clary, Vivus W. Smith, Charles B. Sedgwick, Hiram Putnam, E.W.
They intended to resist the Fugitive Slave Law and sent copies of their resolution to the newspaper, political representatives, and Congress.
"[citation needed] The meeting was led by men of both races: Enoch Marks, white, and George B. Vashon, African American.
The group was committed to nonviolent action, and members pledged "our fortunes and our sacred honor, to stand by those individuals on whom this hand of government may fall; that we will help to bear with them any pecuniary losses to which they may be subjected, and manifest in every way we can, our sympathy for them, and show that we suffer as those who are bound with them.
On October 1, 1851, Wheaton was part of a biracial group who rescued William "Jerry" Henry, an escaped slave apprehended and jailed in Syracuse.
At the time, Wheaton was with fellow abolitionist Judge Charles Sedgwick to prepare a kidnapping complaint against the agent sent to catch Henry.
[6] When the federal government investigated the case, it traced the file used to cut Henry's fetters to the Wheaton house.
When John North had earlier suffered financial failure in the Panic of 1857, Wheaton purchased his interests in the local flour mill and other properties—an act that may have economically saved the town.
After his second marriage in 1861, Wheaton and his large family first took over the second floor of the American House Hotel, built by John North in 1857.
[citation needed] He regularly wrote a column, "Sunday's Doings," that reviewed the sermons of local ministers.