Courtship

Jonathan met his wife, Mary Bent Blanchard, during his time as an anti-slavery lecturer in Pennsylvania. They lived in the same boarding house until Mary moved to the South to spend eight months as a schoolteacher in Montgomery, Alabama. Jonathan was to attend Lane Seminary for a year and finally become a minister. They corresponded through letters, as it was unsafe for Jonathan to visit the South as a known abolitionist. Some of their letters may have been intercepted by postal authorities, a custom in Alabama at the time. Several of Mary’s letters never reached Jonathan.