Obed Dickinson

Obed Dickinson (June 15, 1818 – November 27, 1892 ) was an American pioneer, abolitionist, minister, and business owner in Oregon. Born in Massachusetts, he eventually settled in Salem, Oregon, where he ministered and started a seed business.

Early life Obed Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on June 15, 1818, the oldest son of Obed Sr and Experience Smith. In 1836 Obed Sr, a universalist, moved to Michigan and purchased four lots of land. Obed Jr worked on the family's farm until he was 25, and then he left to attend school at Marietta College in Ohio. of the voyage, which took four months and sailed around the tip of Cape Horn with approximately 50 passengers including eight to ten children.

It took eighteen days, traveling by boat and horse-drawn cart, for Obed and Charlotte to travel from Portland to Salem. Abolitionists believed slaveholding was a sin under all circumstances and that the sin must be condemned in unsparing and uncompromising terms. This meant excommunication of slaveholders and action to bring about the immediate and complete demise of slavery. Still white abolitionists' views and commitments to advancing racial equality varied in meaning and urgency and they were certainly not immune from the ubiquitous racial prejudice that they simultaneously labored against.

In both words and action, Obed Dickinson certainly demonstrated a commitment to racial equality that was at great variance with the overt, popular white supremacy of his time and place. In 1863 he stated, "It is true, we have no slavery now in Oregon, but we have that which is equally wrong: a prejudice and a hatred to the oppressed race." On Sunday, March 3, 1861, Dickinson welcomed nine new members into the Salem church. Three of the new members were African American, the first Black members of a Congregational church in Oregon, and possibly the first Black members of a "white" church in the state. Newspaper editor of the Oregon Statesman, Asahel Bush, called the wedding "shameful" in his newspaper and in a letter to Matthew Deady he wrote, "It was a negro equality sentiment mixed up with a little snob-aristocracy." The Oregonian retorted to Bush's negative press coverage by saying, "the heart of a man who could be guilty of making light even of a poor mulatto girl's feelings is blacker than the skin of any African."

His seed business thrived and continued after his death in 1892. They adopted a second daughter, Edna.