Print
Email
Look It Up
AT A GLANCE
Russwurm, John Brown
4 articles on Russwurm, John Brown
Russwurm, John Brown
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 920 Includes: Bibliography(b. 1799; d. 1851)
an African American journalist, reformer, and politician. John Brown Russwurm was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, to a white merchant, John Russwurm, and an unidentified black woman. John Brown Russwurm spent his early years in Jamaica and was sent to Canada in 1807 or 1808 to obtain a formal education. In 1813 his father remarried and brought Russwurm to Maine to join his new extended family. Russwurm remained in the care of his stepmother, Susan Blanchard, even after his father's untimely death in 1815, when he began a series of short appointments as an instructor at schools in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. In 1826 Russwurm earned a bachelor of arts degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Among his classmates were Henry Wadsworth Longfellowand NathanielFranklin ...
Read full articleRusswurm, John Brown
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 2751799–1851
American publisher of first black newspaper, emigrationist, and Liberian government official. Born John Brown to a slave mother and a white American merchant father in Jamaica, he became John Russwurm when his stepmother demanded that his father acknowledge by name his paternity. Sent to Quebec for schooling, Russwurm was taken by his father to Portland, Maine, in 1812. He attended Hebron Academy in Hebron, Maine, and graduated in 1826 from Bowdoin College, one of the first black graduates of an American college. In his graduation speech he advocated the resettlement of American blacks to Haiti.Moving to New York, New York, in 1827, Russwurm helped found Freedom's Journal with Samuel E(li) Cornish. It was the first black-owned and black-printed newspaper in the United States. The paper employed itinerant black ...
Read full articleRusswurm, John Brown
Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1908 Includes: Further Reading(1 Oct. 1799–9 June 1851), journalist and first nonwhite governor of Maryland in Liberia Colony, West Africa, was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, the son of John Russwurm, a white American merchant, and an unidentified Jamaican black woman. As a boy known only as John Brown, Russwurm was sent to Canada for an education by his father. After his father's settlement in Maine and marriage in 1813 to a white New England widow with children, he entered the new family at his stepmother's insistence. John Brown thereupon assumed his father's surname and remained with his stepmother even after the senior Russwurm's death in 1815. His schooling continued at home and, later, at preparatory institutes such as the North Yarmouth Academy in Maine. He made a short, unhappy visit to Jamaica and returned to Portland, Maine, to begin collegiate ...
Read full articleRusswurm, John Browne
Source: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
Word Count: 400(1799–1851), journalist and editor. Born a slave in Jamaica, John Browne Russwurm was sent by his white father to Quebec in 1807 to go to school. In his early teens Russwurm rejoined his father in Portland, Maine, where he was given an opportunity to continue his intellectual development. In 1824, Russwurm enrolled in Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, from which he graduated in 1826 with one of the first bachelor's degrees earned by an African American in the United States.Migrating to New York, Russwurm formed a partnership with Samuel Cornish, a black Presbyterian minister, to found a newspaper. The result of their partnership was Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States, launched on 16 March 1827. Freedom's Journalwas offered for sale in theDavid ...
Read full article