William C. Nell was born and raised in Boston, son of William G. Nell, a prominent tailor and African American activist. In the 1830s he joined the Juvenile Garrison Independent Society and was a printer’s apprentice for William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, the Liberator. He was a founding member of the New England Freedom Association in 1842, led a campaign to desegregate the Boston railroads and performance halls, and helped fugitive slaves gain their freedom.

Nell moved to Rochester, New York in 1847 where he worked with Frederick Douglass, publisher of The North Star, a famous abolitionist newspaper.  Nell lived with Amy and Isaac Post who were members of the Rochester Circle, one of the first spiritualist circles in the country. The circle’s members included the Posts, Leah Fox Fish (a Fox sister), and Susan B. Anthony, and many others

Nell attended his first séance in 1848 and became “a firm believer in the reality of those manifestations.” In 1851, he wrote to William Lloyd Garrison about his experiences. “I have met Mrs. Leah Fish the oldest of the knocking mediums. The manifestations were the same as beforehand, read and satisfactory to those who questioned.”

Nell spread the word about Spiritualism. “I have penned this to you if for no other reason than merely as an inkling of what is now going on in this Rochester Spiritual World.”

Nell’s stay in Rochester was short, but his interest in Spiritualism continued when he returned to Boston. He befriended a black “Lecturer on Psychology” named Peterson, who was also a medium, attended séances with other abolitionists and befriended Andrew Jackson Davis. It may be that Spiritualism appealed to Nell because it was “unmoored from the white supremacy of established churches,” Wirzbicki wrote.

Nell’s interest in Spiritualism waned as other events became more prominent in his life. He ran, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the Massachusetts Legislature on the Free Soil Party ticket. He co-founded the Massasoit Guards, a black military company in 1854.   He published his second history book, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855) and became the first African American to hold a federal position as clerk in the U.S. Postal Department.

When the Civil War began, Nell worked to have blacks accepted as Union soldiers in army. He married Frances Ann Ames, the twenty-six-year-old daughter of Philip Osgood Ames in 1869. They had two sons before Nell died of a stroke in 1874 at the age of 58.

Additional Reading:

Letter from William Cooper Nell, Rochester, [N.Y.], to William Lloyd Garrison, Sept[ember] 15. 1851. Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery (Collection of Distinction).

Ruffin II, H. (2007, January 18) William C. Nell (1816-1874). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/nell-william-c-1816-1874/

Wesley, Dorothy Porter and Constance Porter Uzelac (2002) William Cooper Nell: Selected Writings 1832-1871. Black Classics Press, Baltimore.

Wirzbicki, Peter (2018) Black Transcendentalism. In Journal of the Civil War Era , Vol. 8, No. 2, The Future of Abolition Studies: A SPECIAL ISSUE (JUNE 2018), pp. 269-290, University of North Carolina Press