Barnabas Yale

Portrait of Barnabas Yale's nephew, Walter D. Yale, public notary and professor of the Bible for 30 years

Barnabas Yale (1784 – 1854) was an American abolitionist attorney, vice-president and cofounder of the Central New-York Anti-Slavery Society, part of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He petitioned Congress in 1838 for the abolition of slavery, about 30 years before the American Civil War, and was made Justice of the Peace of Martinsburg, New York.

Early life Barnabas Yale was born in Rupert, Vermont, on April 9, 1784, to Sally Baxter and Amasa Yale, grandnephew of Capt. Theophilus Yale, and member of the Yale family. His father was a soldier in the American War of Independence, surveyor and merchant, and his mother, born in Boston, was from the Baxters involved with the Boston Tea Party. He married Achsah, daughter of John Dewey.

Her father was a selectman and a clothing merchant who also enlisted in the War of Independence, and wrote in his journal his travels during the war, including the passing of the Delaware River with General Washington, while Baxter Yale's brother-in-law, Perez Dewey, was the first president and wealthiest merchant in Sinclairville, New York. Barnabas removed to Salem, New York, during his childhood, where his father died, leaving him and his two siblings to the care of their mother. In 1836, he moved to St. Lawrence county and then to Potsdam, New York.

For many years, Yale was Justice of the Peace.

"Mr. Wright presented the petition of Barnabas Yale and others, citizens of Potsdam, St. Lawrence county, New York... praying the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia... praying the abolition of slavery in those territories of the United States where they exist... and praying that no new state may be admitted into the Union, whose constitution tolerates domestic slavery." - The entry in the Journal of the Senate, 2nd Session, 25th Congress, Washington, March 19, 1838, p. 294

The World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 at Exeter Hall in London. William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan, founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society were participants

Yale cofounded the Central New-York Anti-Slavery Society in 1842, auxiliary to the American Anti-Slavery Society. He was elected a vice-president of this society at its convention, and the event was reported on December 30, 1842, by the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, property of reformer William Lloyd Garrison.

During the Utica convention, they adopted resolutions against Henry Clay as the presidential candidate of the country, stating that the "politics of this country is thoroughly corrupt and diabolical", that "all the sympathies of our beneficent Creator are with the oppressed, and all his indignation against the oppressor", and that the society's objective is "the entire abolition of slavery in the United States".

Barnabas Yale died on October 11, 1854, at the residence of his son in Norfolk, New York.