Alvan E. Bovay

Major Alvan Earle Bovay (July 12, 1818 – January 13, 1903) was a founder of the United States Republican Party.

He was born in Adams, New York. He later attended Norwich University, in the mountains of Vermont, where he also received military training. After he finished his studies, he taught mathematics and Languages at several eastern institutions including academies at Oswego and Glens Falls and the military college at Bristol, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the bar at Utica, New York in July, 1846 and four months later, in St. Luke's Episcopal church in New York city, he married the daughter of Ransom Smith. He lived with his wife in New York practicing law and additionally teaching mathematics at the New York Commercial institute.

Four years later, Bovay moved with his family to Ripon, Wisconsin. Ripon was then a new community—less than a year old—of only thirteen houses. He opened an office as an attorney and became a very respected and important member of the community, creating "Bovay's addition" to the town and helping to create Ripon College—which to this day has a wing called "Bovay Hall"—among other contributions to the town. The community of Ripon flourished and gained many new members from different walks of life, turning the town into a hotbed of politics. Settlers in Ripon on the hill were for the most part Whigs; those in the valley were Democrats and Free soilers. In-depth debates in the post-office or store of the town, often led by Alvan Bovay, were a common feature of life in Ripon.

As early as 1852, Bovay was calling for a new party to form with a platform to stop slavery. At that time, Bovay visited New York and had a conversation with Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York tribune about the topic. Bovay told him of his idea of a new party named the Republican party, and Greeley who had himself already proposed the name "Republican" was enthusiastic.

In 1854, because of the issue of the Kansas-Nebraska Act being considered by congress, Bovay—a member of the Whig party—then thirty-six years old, called a meeting to be held on the evening of February 28, 1854, at the Congregational church. A resolution was adopted that if the Nebraska bill would pass, they would "throw old party organizations to the winds and organize a new party on the sole issue of slavery."

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