Richard Dillingham

Richard Dillingham
Born	June 18, 1823 Peru Township, Morrow County, Ohio
Died	June 30, 1850 Nashville, Tennessee
Occupation(s)	school teacher, abolitionist
Spouse	unmarried

Richard Dillingham (June 18, 1823 – June 30, 1850) was a Quaker school teacher from Peru Township in what is now Morrow County, Ohio, U.S.A., who was arrested in Tennessee on December 5, 1848, while aiding the attempted escape of three slaves. Tried April 12, 1849, he was sentenced to three years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. He died there of cholera.

Dillingham was celebrated as a martyr to the abolitionist cause by novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, fellow Quaker Levi Coffin and the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who wrote the poem The Cross in Dillingham's honor.

The exact location of Dillingham's grave is not known. He was buried in a cemetery on the prison grounds the day he died. The site was built over in the course of Nashville's later urban development.

References

• Levi Coffin's Memoir of Richard Dillingham
• The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (See pp. 101–108.)
• A.L. Benedict, Memoir of Richard Dillingham, Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, Printers, 1852. (transcription)
  • Facsimile ISBN 1-4297-1672-X (reprint)
• Wilbur H. Seibert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, New York: Macmillan Co., 1898, pp. 174-175.
• Transcription of Tennessee State Penitentiary record listing Richard Dillingham ("Dillionham") as inmate.

External links

• Richard Dillingham at Find a Grave
• The Cross by John Greenleaf Whittier