Theodore Weld found his cause in Oneida County
The abolitionist attended classes at Hamilton in 1825 and then went to the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, the most abolitionist school in the country.
By Owen Tafel
Theodore Dwight Weld never formally enrolled at Hamilton College, but around 1825 he lived there and went to classes, staying in the rooms of tutor William Kirkland. He was “something of a leader among the students.” The evangelist Charles Grandison Finney, who was based in Oneida County, said Weld had great influence among Hamilton’s students. Weld later described himself as educated at Hamilton.
In Utica, then the county seat and a center of abolitionism, he became friends with Charles Stuart, an early abolitionist who ran the Utica Academy. On Stuart’s advice, Weld left Hamilton in 1827 and enrolled at the new Oneida Institute of Science and Industry in Whitesboro, which Stuart paid for. The institute was the most abolitionist school in the country.
At Oneida, Weld ran the cow-milking operation and spent two weeks at a time on the road lecturing on manual labor, temperance and moral reform. He went on to become one of the most important organizers of the anti-slavery movement.