David Wilmot
Bethany, Wayne County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The author of the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 barring slavery from territory acquired in the Mexican War, was born in this house Jan. 20, 1814. He died at Towanda, March 16, 1868, after a notable career in the State and Nation.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In this house in Bethany, David Wilmot was born on January 20, 1814. A Pennsylvania congressman, he gave his name to the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a proposal to bar slavery from any territory won in the Mexican War. Though it never became law, the Proviso set off one of the fiercest debates in American politics, hardening the sectional divide over slavery's westward spread in the years before the Civil War.
Why it matters
The Wilmot Proviso turned the question of slavery in the West into a national crisis, marking a crucial step on the road to the Civil War.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David Wilmot
Related events
- · Wilmot Proviso
- · Mexican-American War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hickory Grove Cemetery
Waverly Township, PA · est. 2003
Established in 1807 in what was then called Abington Center, Hickory Grove Cemetery is among the oldest known burial grounds tied to African Americans in northeastern Pennsylvania. Many of those laid to rest here were fugitives from slavery who reached Waverly by the Underground Railroad, part of a community that numbered some 75 former slaves by century's end. The cemetery remains the enduring trace of that vanished community.
The Dennis Farm
Brooklyn Township, PA · est. 2015
In 1793, Prince Perkins, a free African American veteran of the Revolutionary War, came from Connecticut to settle this land in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, and his descendants have held it for more than two centuries. His granddaughter Angeline Perkins Dennis and her husband Henry expanded the farm, sustaining a rare, lasting Black landholding in an integrated rural community. The property offers a window into free African American settlement and the strong antislavery currents that ran through this corner of Pennsylvania.
Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin (1810-1892)
Susquehanna Depot, PA · est. 2009
Born in 1810, Theresa Maxis Duchemin became the first American-born Black Catholic nun and a charter member of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the world's first congregation of women religious of color. In 1845 she helped found the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Michigan, a teaching order that endures today. At the invitation of Philadelphia's Bishop John Neumann she established an IHM community and Laurel Hill Academy in Susquehanna County, which operated here until 1923.
Jonathan Jasper Wright (1840-1885)
Springville Township, PA · est. 2001
Born in 1840 to parents who had escaped slavery, Jonathan Jasper Wright grew up in Springville and went on to become the first Black lawyer admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. He stood with Frederick Douglass in the fight for the vote and legal equality, and in 1870, during Reconstruction, he was elevated to the South Carolina Supreme Court—the first African American to sit on a state's highest court. His rise from a runaway slaves' son to the bench marked a breathtaking, if fragile, moment of possibility.