Wilson, Hiram, 1803-1864

Hiram Wilson, reformer and missionary to black fugitives in Canada, was born in 1803 in Ackworth, New Hampshire. He attended the Oneida Institute in New York state and in 1833 went to the newly-founded Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. He accompanied the the band of student abolitionists known as the "Lane Rebels" to Oberlin, Ohio and graduated with the first class of the Oberlin Theological Seminary in 1836. He departed for Canada in the fall of 1836 with $25 given to him by evangelist Charles Grandison Finney. In 1838, he established the Canada Mission, which supported his work and the work of fourteen other Oberlin teaching missionaries in Canada. He was made an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Eventually, he attracted the attention of the Quaker philanthropist, James Cannings Fuller, who joined in 1842 with Wilson and Josiah Henson, an escaped slave, in founding the British-American Institute of Science and Industry. The school, at Dawn, Canada West, trained blacks, whites, and Indians for teaching careers and incorporated the principle of manual labor. Financial and administrative problems plagued the institution, and Wilson left in 1850 to settle in St. Catherines, where he spent the remainder of his life.