Samuel Joseph May

Samuel Joseph May (September 12, 1797 – July 1, 1871) an American reformer during the nineteenth century, championed multiple reform movements including education, women’s rights, and abolitionism. May argued on behalf of all working people that the rights of humanity were more important than the rights of property and advocated for minimum wages and legal limitations on the amassing of wealth. He was born on September 12, 1797, in an upper class Boston area. May was the son of Colonel Joseph May, a merchant, and Dorothy Sewell, who was descended from or connected to many of the leading families of colonial Massachusetts, including the Quincys and the Hancocks. His sister was Abby May Alcott, mother of novelist Louisa May Alcott. In 1825, he married Lucretia Flagge Coffin with whom he had five children.

May was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts in 1788. When he was four years old his six year old brother Edward died while they were at play in their barn. May claimed that the loss of his brother and the dreams he had following the fatal accident led him to devote his life to God and inspired his passion to "rectify the world's wrongs." He started attending Harvard in 1813 at the age of fifteen; during his junior year he chose to become a minister. In addition, while he was at Harvard and afterwards, he taught school in Concord, Massachusetts. During this time, he met many prominent Unitarians and activists including Noah Worcester, who instilled in May the idea of peaceful opposition. May graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1820 and became a Unitarian minister. Following his graduation, he considered preaching in New York City and Richmond, Virginia prior to accepting a position in Brooklyn, Connecticut as the only Unitarian minister in that state. Here, he came to the forefront of the Unitarian movement and became well known throughout New England as he attempted to establish Unitarian churches and reform.

May began a biweekly publication, The Liberal Christian, in January 1823; its main goal was to explain the Unitarian Theology. He helped in the formation of Windham County Peace Society in 1826; in 1827, May organized a statewide convention for school reform in Connecticut, and he started a series of lectures in 1828. Meanwhile, he also belonged to the American Colonization Society whose purpose was to send the slaves back to Africa. May’s belief in perfectionism through imitating the life of Jesus Christ strongly influenced his involvement in reform movements. A pacifist, he actively participated in establishing peace societies, speaking out against the death penalty, and advocating nonresistance. He practiced this last belief to the extent of rejecting self-defense. He became a leader in the temperance movement, believing it to be a form of abolitionism since he saw men as slaves to drink. He was perhaps most renowned for his work in education reform as he sought to improve facilities, teachers, and curriculum in public elementary schools. May believed schools should be racially integrated and coeducational, and he advocated the philosophy of Swiss theorist Johann Pestalozzi. He spent time tutoring his sister Abigail May in philosophy and the humanities and wrote in a letter to her, "What you say relative to the need for universal education is certainly true. Nothing is of unimportance in the formation of the mind."

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