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John Malvin

1795-1880

Name: John Malvin

Birthplace: Dumfries VA

Status: Free Person of Color

Occupation/Training: Educator, businessman

Residence: Cincinnati Ohio, Buffalo NY, Cleveland OH

Abolitionist Involvement: The son of a free mother and a slave father, John Malvin was apprenticed to the clerk of his owner. Upon the clerks death he learned carpentry from his father, the slave. He learned how to read from a slave who used the Bible for lessons. When he was of age, he moved to Ohio, and became interested in the cause to eradicate Ohio’s Black laws. He also became active in the Underground Railroad in Ohio and Kentucky. In Cleveland he organized the Cleveland School Education Society, which opened a school for Negro children. He purchased the freedom of his father in law Caleb Dorsey and organized and preached in the First Baptist Church in Cleveland.

In 1835 he established an educational fund for Negroes in Ohio. He worked occasionally as a steamboat hand, and purchased in 1841 a canal boat Auburn. He used his funds to support his other interests in the antislavery movement. At the beginning of the Civil War, he organized many meetings to discuss the involvement of Black soldiers in the war effort.

After the war, he supported the Radical Reconstruction movement, and was active in the Republican party activities of Ohio. In 1879 the Cleveland Leader published his Autobiography.

Family: Mother Dalcus Malvin. Wife--Harriet Dorsey.

Place of Death: Cleveland Ohio

Publications: Autobiography 1879 Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Convention: 1830-1864 edited by Howard Bell

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