bMS 144

Austin, John Mather. Journals, 1840-1877.

Biographical Information:

John Mather Austin (1805-1880) was born in Redfield, New York. He traced his lineage from Richard Mather, who was the grandfather of Cotton Mather. He married Sarah Ann Somerdyke in 1828 and they had twelve children. He was a minister of the Universalist Society of Auburn from 1844 to 1851, and from 1851 to 1861 he was editor of the Christian Ambassador, a newspaper of the New York State Convention of Universalists. President Lincoln offered him two different consulships, in the West Indies and the Prince Edward Islands, and he refused both of them due to his reluctance to abandon his religious work. However, Austin did accept Lincoln's commission of Paymaster in the Union Army, which carried a rank of Major, and he held this post until he was decommissioned in 1866. Austin labored against the death penalty and war; and for abolitionism, women's rights, prison reform, and the Underground Railroad. He wrote several books, of which his Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness (1859) is the most well known. He died at his home in Auburn, New York.

Container List:

Note: These journals were discovered in the Tufts University Library in the 1950s by the librarian, Joseph S. Komidar. In April, 1968 they were given to the Universalist Historical Society Library by Tufts. They were then donated to the Andover-Harvard Theological Library.

The journals in this collection are numbered 2-9, and there is a total number of eight journals in the collection. All of these journals have been microfilmed onto two reels, and this microfilm is located in box 1 of the collection.

• bMS 144/1 (Journal 2) January 1, 1840-December 31, 1841. (174 pages)
• bMS 144/1 (Journal 3) January 1, 1842-October 4, 1846. (459 pages)
• bMS 144/1 (Journal 4) October 5, 1846-November 12, 1850. (534 pages)
• bMS 144/2 (Journal 5) December 31, 1850-May 31, 1856. (368 pages)
• bMS 144/2 (Journal 6) June 1, 1856-May 18, 1861. (386 pages)
• bMS 144/3 (Journal 7) May 19, 1861-December 31, 1864. (374 pages)
• bMS 144/3 (Journal 8) January 1, 1865-October 12, 1869. (382 pages)
• bMS 144/4 (Journal 9) October 12, 1869-August 14, 1877. (360 pages)