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Calvin Fairbank (November 3, 1816 - October 12, 1898) was an abolitionist minister who spent more than 17 years in prison for his anti-slavery activities. Born in what is now Wyoming County, New York, he grew up in an intensely religious family environment. Listening to the stories told by two escaped slaves whom he met at a Methodist quarterly meeting, he became strongly anti-slavery. He began his career freeing slaves in 1837 when, piloting a lumber raft down the Ohio River, he ferried a slave across the river to free territory. Soon he was delivering runaway slaves to the Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin for transportation on the Underground Railroad to northern U.S. cities or to Canada.
The Methodist Episcopal Church licensed Fairbank to preach in 1840 and fully ordained him in 1842. Hoping to improve his education, he enrolled in 1844 in the "preparatory division" of Oberlin Collegiate Institute, now Oberlin College, a center of anti-slavery sentiment. Responding to an appeal to rescue the wife and children of an escaped slave named Gilson Berry, Fairbank left Oberlin for Lexington, Kentucky, where he made contact with Delia Webster, a teacher from Vermont who was to help with the rescue. Berry's wife failed to meet Fairbank as planned, so he and Webster set their sights on freeing Lewis Hayden and his family.
Fairbank and Webster successfully delivered Hayden, his wife Harriet and their son William to freedom in Ohio, then returned to Kentucky where they were indentified and arrested for assisting the runaway slaves. Webster was tried in December 1844 and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary, but served less than two months of her sentence. Fairbank was tried in 1845 and received a 15-year term, five years for each of the slaves he helped free. He was pardoned in 1849 when a grateful Lewis Hayden raised the money to pay off Hayden's former master.
In 1851, Fairbank helped a slave named Tamar escape from Kentucky to Indiana. On November 9, with the connivance of the sheriff of Clark County, Indiana, marshals from Kentucky abducted Fairbank and took him back to their state for trial. In 1852, he was again sentenced to 15 years in the state penitentiary, where he was singled out as a target for exceptionally harsh treatment that included flogging and overwork. Finally, in 1864, three years into the Civil War, he was pardoned by Acting Governor Richard T. Jacob, who had long advocated Fairbank's release.
Once free, Fairbank married Mandana Tileston, to whom he had become engaged during his brief period of freedom in 1851. Known as "Dana," she moved from Williamsburg, Massachusetts, to Oxford, Ohio, in order to visit Fairbank in prison as often as possible. Their only child, Calvin Cornelius Fairbank, was born in 1868.
The conditions of Fairbank's life in prison broke his health. Although he held jobs with missionary and benevolent societies, he was not able to support his family adequately. His wife died in 1876 and their son was raised by relatives. Fairbank remarried in 1879, but little is known of Adeline Winegar, his second wife.
Fairbank's memoirs were published in 1890 under the title Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." Unhappily, this effort earned him little money. He died in near-poverty in Angelica, New York, and is buried there. He is generally credited with helping free 47 slaves.
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