Top of page

Chronicling America
National Endowment for the Humanities

Newspaper Philanthropist (Mt. Pleasant, Ohio.) 1817-1822 Philanthropist, a weekly journal

View All Front Pages

About Philanthropist (Mt. Pleasant, Ohio.) 1817-1822

The Philanthropist was a weekly newspaper, typically eight pages long, published in Mount Pleasant, Ohio from 1817 to 1822. In its first issue, it described itself as “free from the rancour of party spirit, containing such religious, moral, agricultural and manufacturing information, as may tend to the great aim of ‘giving ardour to virtue and confidence to truth.’”

The publisher, a Quaker abolitionist minister from Tennessee named Charles Osborn, advocated for a range of benevolent causes. In its biography of Osborn, the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography describes the Philanthropist as a “weekly forum for the discussion of slavery, war, Indian suffering, and related evils.” Those “related evils” included vices like gambling and drunkenness, the latter being at one point described as a “fiend” that “biteth like a serpent” and which ruined the lives of otherwise good men (and, by extension, those of their wives and children). While the Philanthropist can be identified as an early newspaper in support of abolition, it was especially notable for its opposition to the American Colonization Society, a group which sought to solve the perceived issue of free Blacks by sending those former slaves to colonize Africa.

Much of the Philanthropist’s content consisted of parables with moral lessons for its readers. These stories, often heavily laden with religious imagery, reflected Osborn as a Quaker minister and tended to read more like a sermon than a newspaper article. The October 17, 1817, issue, for example, tells a story of a cruel slave owner that was so inspired and reformed by an old, enslaved man’s piety that he became an ardent anti-slavery preacher. While many of the Philanthropist’s pages were occupied by similarly didactic stories, it also offered more traditional news material. This included local adverts and bulletins, news from the rest of the state, and whatever dispatches trickled in from the rest of the world.

The Philanthropist reached readers as part of a national network of mostly Quaker abolitionists and reformers. The newspaper’s agents were primarily found across Ohio and Pennsylvania, but a handful were also present in Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina. Lists of these agents can be seen atop some of the Philanthropist’s front pages. Perhaps the most notable was Benjamin Lundy of Saint Clairsville, OH, a leading abolitionist of the early nineteenth century and eventual publisher of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Greeneville (TN) Genius of Universal Emancipation.

Ruth Anna Ketring’s Charles Osborn in the Anti-Slavery Movement, perhaps the most exhaustive and thorough study of Osborn’s life and works, suggests that the Philanthropist was not a financial success. In 1818, Osborn sold it to Elisha Bates, likewise a Quaker minister in Mount Pleasant. Its last issue was printed in 1822. There is evidence that Bates later owned a different newspaper, the Miscellaneous Repository, but it is unclear if that title was a direct successor to the Philanthropist.

Provided By: Ohio History Connection, Columbus, OH

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Philanthropist (Mt. Pleasant, Ohio.) 1817-1822

Other Title

  • Philanthropist, a weekly journal

Names

  • Osborn, Charles, 1775-1850

Dates of Publication

  • 1817-1822

Created / Published

  • Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. : Charles Osborn, 1817-1822.

Headings

  • -  Mount Pleasant (Jefferson County, Ohio)--Newspapers
  • -  Jefferson County (Ohio)--Newspapers
  • -  Ohio--Jefferson County
  • -  Ohio--Mount Pleasant (Jefferson County)
  • -  United States--Ohio--Jefferson--Mount Pleasant

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Vol. 1, no. 1 (Aug. 29, 1817)-v. 7, no. 24 (Apr. 27, 1822).
  • -  Editor: Charles Osborn.
  • -  Published as: Philanthropist, a weekly journal, Dec. 11, 1818-Apr. 27, 1822.
  • -  Publisher's name recorded in Brigham, C.S. Amer. newspapers.
  • -  Began a new series numbering Dec. 11, 1818.
  • -  Includes bibliographical references (Shaw & Shoemaker 41793; Brigham, C.S. Amer. newspapers, page 811).

Medium

  • 7 v. ; 28 cm.

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83025983

OCLC Number

  • 1715483

ISSN Number

  • 3067-4379

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

The NEH awardee responsible for producing each digital object is presented in the Chronicling America page display, below the page image – e.g. Image produced by the Library of Congress. For more information on current NDNP awardees, see https://aj.sunback.homes/ndnp/listawardees.html.

For more information on Library of Congress policies and disclaimers regarding rights and reproductions, see https://aj.sunback.homes/homepage/legal.html

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Philanthropist Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. -1822. (Mount Pleasant, OH), Jan. 1 1817. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83025983/.

APA citation style:

(1817, January 1) Philanthropist Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. -1822. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83025983/.

MLA citation style:

Philanthropist Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. -1822. (Mount Pleasant, OH) 1 Jan. 1817. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83025983/.