Levi Yale



Levi Yale (April 11, 1792 – February 19, 1872), of Meriden, Connecticut, was a postmaster, justice of the peace and abolitionist, who worked as an agent of the Underground Railroad. He was a member of the state legislature, cofounded the abolitionist Liberty Party of Connecticut and was twice nominated for lieutenant governor under Senator Francis Gillette.

Early life
Levi Yale was born April 11, 1792, to Joel Yale and Esther Clark, members of the Yale family. He was a great-grandson of Capt. Thomas Yale of Wallingford. His uncle Thomas Yale was a soldier during the American War of Independence, enlisted in Capt. John Couch's company, and was married to Capt. Couch's daughter. His cousin Asahel Yale was a doctor in New York, and his aunt Rebecca married to Capt. Noah Parsons. Levi Yale was also cousin of Yale graduates Congressman Jonathan Brace and American life insurance founder Thomas Kimberly Brace, as well as of Senators Kenneth S. White and John Baldwin.

A more distant cousin, Bertrand L. Yale, was the owner of a large insurance business and became postmaster. Levi Yale's father, Levi Sr., was a merchant, postmaster, and soldier in the War of 1812, brother of Rosetta Yale, whose granddaughter married Judge James Perry Platt, son of Senator and Congressman Orville H. Platt. He was also the uncle-in-law of General Edwin R. Yale of the U.S. Hotel in Manhattan and the Mansion House in Brooklyn Heights.

Levi Yale was the oldest of a large family of children and at the death of his father, he became the main support of his mother, at 12 years of age. At the age of 16 he began teaching school in the winter and farming his mother's land in the summer. At 19 years of age, in 1811, he was elected pathmaster of Meriden at the town council meeting.

Career
In 1821, Yale was elected a member of the Connecticut State House of representatives, and figured prominently during the agitation of the anti-slavery question, jeopardizing his life number of times in defense of anti-slavery principles.

In the fall of 1837, Yale requested with Major Cowles, Julius Pratt, and a few others, to have Rev. Henry G. Ludlow, an abolitionist lecturer, give a speech at the old Center church in Meriden. Prominent pro-slavery businessmen used their influence to try to prevent the meeting from being held in town. They organized riots across different cities, using force if necessary, as during this period, being an abolitionist was a reproach, and violence often resulted.

The day of the meeting, stones and eggs were thrown at men, women and children. Levi Yale and two others acted as body-guards, protecting and escorting Reverend Ludlow out of the church. This was about 30 years before the American Civil War led by Abraham Lincoln, at the time of the presidency of Martin Van Buren, which brought new heights to the slavery question.

Yale then became an agent of the Underground Railroad in Connecticut, along with lieutenant governor Benjamin Douglas, Rev. George William Perkins, and others. Douglas replaced Julius Catlin as Lt. Gov. of Connecticut, the father-in-law of philanthropist Laura Wood Catlin, another member of the Yale family. Her in-laws included robber baron Trenor W. Park and Senator Chauncey Depew, member of the Skulls and Bones, and President of N. Y. Central Railroad for Commodore Vanderbilt.

Yale's home was a station of the Underground Railroad, and he has been described as "a man of very pronounced views against slavery, and one who had the courage of his convictions." Number of runaways found "food and harbor" at his farmhouse, and with Rev. Zolva Whitmore, they helped conduct fugitives from New Haven to Springfield.

Along with two manufacturers in Meriden, they voted for the Liberty Party, and as a result, had their shops burned by pro-slavery men. Yale was ridiculed for his aid to the runways at the time. In 1839, he was elected Justice of the Peace and postmaster. He was a cofounder of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Guilford and was elected a trustee.

Later life
In 1841, Levi Yale cofounded the Liberty Party of Connecticut and was appointed president at the Political Anti-Slavery Convention, with General Uriel Tuttle as vice-president, whose home was also a station for the Underground Railroad. As president of the convention, he wrote, signed and published in newspapers a letter requesting the President of the United States, John Tyler, to emancipate his slaves. The Party would later merge with four other political parties and become the Republican Party of the United States in 1854.

In 1841, and from 1843 to 1849, he was candidate for lieutenant governor of Connecticut under U.S. Senator Francis Gillette, the party's candidate for governor, losing on each occasion to William S. Holabird, Reuben Booth, Noyes Billings, Thomas Backus and Charles J. McCurdy, later U.S. Ambassador of Austria.

About the same time in 1841, Yale is featured in The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper, at the clerical convention of ministers and members of the churches of Connecticut. He was elected among the first selectmen of Meriden from 1845 to 1848, and then from 1852 to 1853. He was a cofounder of the city town hall, being part of their committee, and cofounded the Meriden Savings Bank, with merchant Ashbel Griswold, merchant Bertrand L. Yale, Major General Walter Booth, and others.

He was also elected a board director of the bank, now the oldest banking institution in the city. In 1851, Yale was candidate for Judge of Probate of Meriden but lost to Hiram Hall. In 1857, he was elected a member of the Connecticut State Legislature from Meriden. In 1861, he was candidate for State Senator but lost to Orville H. Platt, later U.S. Senator and Secretary of State of Connecticut.

Death
Levi Yale died February 19, 1872, at Meriden. He was married to Abigail Ellen Bacon, of Middletown, Connecticut. They had three children together, two daughters, Harriet Ellen and Emma Louisa, and a son named Levi Bacon Yale. Levi B. was a Republican, Prohibition candidate, nominated for Senator in the 6th District in 1900, and was an active member of the Congregational Church.

His nephew was a wholesale grocer in New Haven, Connecticut, named Edward Payson Yale, founder of Yale, Bryan & Co., one of the oldest wholesale grocery houses in Connecticut. Yale initially started the enterprise in 1857 under Stout, Yale & Co., with city council member Jerome L. Stout, and became the sole agents for a number of the largest flouring mills in the West, in addition to manufacturing coffee, tea, canned goods, and other items. He was also the proprietor of the Yale Brick Company in Berlin, Connecticut, and a real estate investor.