Moncure D. Conway
Moncure D. Conway (1832–1907) was an American abolitionist, minister, and bold, independent writer. He spent much of his later life in England and France, where he published biographies of Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Thomas Paine, as well as his own autobiography. He led the freethinkers at London’s South Place Chapel, which later became Conway Hall.
Conway was born in Falmouth, Virginia, into a family with deep Virginia and Maryland roots. His father, Walker Peyton Conway, was a wealthy slaveholding farmer, a judge, and a state representative. His mother, Margaret Stone Daniel Conway, came from a family that included signers of the Declaration of Independence. Both parents were Methodists. Conway’s family history included supporters and opponents of slavery, and his boyhood experiences—along with his mother’s anti-slavery influences—helped shape his later views, though he briefly held pro-slavery ideas through a cousin.
He studied at the Fredericksburg Academy and then at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he helped start a student publication and began to embrace Methodism and anti-slavery principles. After a period studying law and serving as a circuit-riding Methodist minister, Conway entered Harvard Divinity School to continue his spiritual journey. There he met Ralph Waldo Emerson and became influenced by Transcendentalism. He also grew into a committed abolitionist, guided by conversations with leaders like Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Wendell Phillips.
After graduating in 1854, Conway became a Unitarian minister in Washington, D.C., but his strong abolitionist stance led to tensions with the church. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he preached to an anti-slavery congregation and edited a liberal journal, The Dial. He also published The Rejected Stone, a work supporting abolition, and helped fugitive slaves escape to safety in Ohio.
In 1863 Conway went to London to persuade Britain that the American Civil War was mainly about abolition. A failed diplomatic effort angered his sponsors, and he eventually decided to stay abroad. He moved to Italy briefly, then returned to London, where in 1864 he became minister of the South Place Chapel and led the South Place Religious Society in Finsbury. He continued writing and publishing, served as a war correspondent during the Franco-Prussian War, and acted as a literary agent for well-known American writers in London.
Conway’s religious views continued to evolve. He moved away from theism after the death of his son Emerson in 1864 and shifted toward Freethought. He allowed women to preach at South Place and supported radical reform causes, including women’s suffrage. The South Place Chapel later became the South Place Ethical Society, and Conway led it for many years, until his death.
His circle included famous writers and thinkers, such as Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin. In the 1870s he helped initiate or support progressive efforts like the push for a non-denominational women’s college at Oxford, which helped spawn Lady Margaret Hall.
In his later years Conway grew critical of some spiritual movements and, after the rise of hostilities with Spain, moved toward pacifism and the peace movement. He also traveled, including a journey to India, about which he wrote My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906). He criticized some mystical leaders of the time, such as Blavatsky, and questioned the beliefs around certain occult claims.
Conway died on November 15, 1907, in Paris at the age of 75. His body was buried in Kensico Cemetery in New York. Conway Hall in London was named in his honor, commemorating his lifelong commitment to liberty of thought and social reform. He left a legacy as a controversial, influential voice for abolition, freethought, women’s rights, and liberal religion.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:32 (CET).