James Steele Papers, 1841, 1935, 1940, n.d. | Oberlin College Archives

Steele, James (1808-1859)

James Steele was born on November 24, 1808 in Hebron, New York (Semi-Centennial Register, 1833-83).  He attended the Rochester Institute, studied at Oneida and enrolled in Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati in 1833.  He left for Oberlin in 1834 with the other “Lane Rebels,” seminary students who objected to the requirement to abstain from discussion of slavery at Lane.  Oberlin agreed to appoint Asa Mahan, the lone dissenter among Lane's trustees, as its first president, and hired a faculty member fired by Lane for supporting the dissenting students.  Oberlin offered them a college environment fully supportive of abolitionism.

During Steele's first year at the Oberlin Theological Seminary, the Oberlin Evangelist began its career, and Steele was its first printer.  Steele graduated with a degree in theology in 1840.  On November 11 of that year, the recent graduate James married Frances R. Cochran.  Also an Oberlin student, Cochran had graduated from the Women’s Course in 1840.  Popular and beloved on campus, she was noted for her beauty.  It is no wonder that her death on November 17^th of the same year, only 12 days after her wedding day, was such a personal and public tragedy.  James was devastated and his brother noted that he “was never the same man afterward.”

When Steele was offered the opportunity to join the mission to return the freed captives aboard the Amistad to Mendhi, he agreed.  This plan was to return the freed slaves on the ship to Africa and establish a mission there.  They sailed on November 17, 1841, exactly a year after the death of Frances Cochran.  Once they arrived in Africa, Steele did a good deal of exploring with the freed persons to see if any of their former tribes would welcome them back or allow a mission on their territory.  His findings were less than encouraging.  The Amistad captives belonged to seven different tribes, some at war with each other.  All of the chiefs were slave traders and authorized to re-enslave freed persons.

These findings led to the decision that the mission must start in Sierra Leone, under the protection of British colonizers.  However, as the mission was being created, Steele fell ill.  As he lay sick in the throes of what was probably malaria, the doctor told him he would not survive another rainy season in Africa.  Disappointed, he returned to America in 1842.  Of the fifteen men and women who went to Africa from Oberlin alone, eight perished in the struggle to establish the mission; the rest were forced home for their health.

Upon his return, Steele immersed himself in missionary work in Illinois, and in a few years he married Minerva S. McConoughey.  Minerva graduated from Oberlin in 1845 and they married on November 29, 1845.  Together they had three children, James Cochran Steele, Edward S. Steele, and Frances Cochran Steele.  In August of 1856, they moved back to Oberlin where much of the Steele family had become prominent members of the community.  Steele’s parents moved to Oberlin soon after his coming in 1834, and at least three generations of Steeles lived in Oberlin.  James Steele died in Oberlin on April 20, 1859.

Sources

Electronic Oberlin Group, James Steele biographical sketch, http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelBios/JamesSteele.html, accessed 5/10/2010.  Copy located in the James Steele student file (RG 28), Oberlin College Archives.

Frances J. Hosford, “The Age of Heroes,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 4, January 1931, 103-106.

Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich

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