Mendenhall, Hiram

Born: 1801-XX-XX North Carolina

Died: 1852-06-30 Gulf of Mexico

Hiram Mendenhall was a millwright, miller, carpenter, blacksmith, and Abolitionist. He moved to Clinton County, Ohio, in 1806. In 1820, he married Martha Hale, with whom he eventually had ten children. In 1837, he relocated with his family to Randolph County, Indiana, where he amassed more than one thousand acres of land. He started a socialist intentional community named Unionsport in the county in 1842 along with eight to ten other families, but it only survived a few years. Mendenhall was financially damaged by the community's failure and worked throughout the remainder of his life to recover. In October 1842, he presented a petition to Henry Clay in Richmond, Indiana, urging Clay to free his slaves. Although Mendenhall and the other petitioners originally intended to present Clay with the petition quietly, Clay requested that they instead present it publicly. He then launched into a personal attack of Mendenhall and a denunciation of abolitionists in general, which became known as the "Reply to Mendenhall." Mendenhall traveled overland to California in 1850 as part of the California gold rush, in an effort revive his fortunes. He became ill with cholera while traveling home and died on a ship as it traversed the Gulf of Mexico near Key West, Florida. He was buried at sea, but has a gravesite and headstone in Indiana.

E. Tucker, History of Randolph County, Indiana (Chicago: A. L. Kingman, 1882), 338; Gravestone, Buena Vista Cemetery, Union Township, IN; Robert Seager, ed., The Papers of Henry Clay (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 9:777-81.