Nell, William Cooper, 1816 - 1874

William Cooper Nell was the son of a prominent African-American family of Boston's West End.  A student of the Smith School, he read law under William I. Bowditch, a Boston abolitionist.  He worked as a printer's apprentice and clerk at William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator and wrote articles and corresponded with other abolitionists.  Nell helped found the Freedom Association, an organization devoted to aid and protect fugitive slaves.  In 1848, he removed to Rochester, New York where he helped publish Frederick Douglass' North Star but returned to Boston after a conflict between Garrison and Douglass.  In 1851, he published Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 and four years later, Colored Patriots of the American Revolution.  Nell, with six other abolitionists in 1851, unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts General Assembly for a monument to Crispus Attucks.  To honor African-American Revolutionary War patriots, seven years later, he organized the annual Crispus Attucks Day celebrations in Boston, which ran for six more years.  During the American Civil War, he supported the Northern side.  He became the Nation's first African-American to be appointed to a position in the United States Government when he took the position of Boston's postal clerk. While most of his energies were spent on Anti-slavery activities, in 1850 and 1853, Nell penned Ponkapaug the petition of Polly Burr Crowd (the aunt of Lemuel Burr) to the Massachusetts General Court.  ANBO.  Image courtesy of Wikipedia.