biography
| name: |
Andrews, Stephen (Pearl)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1812–86)
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| biography:
| Abolitionist, linguist, and social thinker, born in Templeton, Massachusetts, USA. The son of a Baptist minister, he went to Louisiana at age 18 and studied and practised law there. He was appalled by the slavery he saw and became an abolitionist. Having moved to Texas (1839), he and his family were almost killed because of his abolitionist lectures and had to flee (1843). He moved to England, where he failed in his scheme to raise funds to free slaves in America, but became interested in Pitman's new shorthand writing system and, on his return to the USA, he taught and wrote about this new passion while continuing his abolitionist lectures. He also became interested in phonetics and the study of foreign languages, eventually learning 30, including Chinese. By the end of the 1840s he began to focus his energies on utopian communities, establishing Modern Times in Islip, New York (1851), and then Unity Home in New York City (1857). By the 1860s he was propounding an ideal society called Pantarchy, and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called ‘universology’ which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities. The last two decades of his life saw him at the centre of many of the progressive social reform circles in New York City. |
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