Edward Atkinson

Portrait of Edward Atkinson in 1897.

Courtesy of the Public Library of Brookline via Digital Commonwealth

Quick Facts

Significance:

Economist, Inventor, and Philanthropist

Place of Birth:

Brookline, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 10, 1827

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

December 11, 1905

Place of Burial:

Brookline, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Walnut Street Cemetery

A self-educated economist and inventor, Edward Atkinson dedicated his life to various social and political movements, including abolitionism and anti-imperialism.

Born on February 10, 1827, Edward Atkinson grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts with his five siblings. His father, Amos Atkinson, previously served as a lieutenant in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later became a merchant.¹ As a young boy, Edward Atkinson attended private schools in both Brookline and Boston. He planned to attend Harvard College at the age of sixteen, but his father’s financial difficulties prevented him from enrolling. Instead, Edward Atkinson started working at Read and Chadwick, a dry-goods store in Boston. Here, he gained important business and accounting skills that helped him quickly advance in his career. In the 1850s, Atkinson became treasurer for J.C. Howe and Company, a group that operated cotton mills around New England.² In 1855, Atkinson married Mary Caroline Heath. The couple had nine children, though two sadly died in infancy.³

In the subsequent decades, Atkinson’s broad interests led him to pursue business ventures in other industries. When his cotton mills began to fail in the mid-1870s, he entered the railroad industry. Later in the decade, Atkinson became an insurance broker and worked as president of Boston Manufactures Mutual Insurance Company.⁴ According to census records, he held this position until his death.⁵ He also gained an interest in home economics, and in 1888, invented the Aladdin Oven, a slow-cooking oven created to help lower the cost of cooking food for working class families.⁶

Although he did not receive a formal college education, Atkinson became a keen pamphleteer. His practical business experience and thirst for knowledge inspired him to write on a variety of topics, including economics, nutrition, imperialism, and slavery.⁷ According to an article by abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atkinson had a "power of accumulating knowledge," as well as a gift when writing to his specific audiences, stating: "He talks as a miner to miners, a farmer to farmers, a cook to cooks..."⁸

Despite his ties to the cotton industry, Atkinson considered himself an abolitionist. In his 1861 pamphlet titled Cheap Cotton by Free Labor, Atkinson emphasized the need for the "utter destruction of slavery" and argued its potential economic benefits on the cotton industry.⁹ Austin Bearse’s Reminiscences of the Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston lists Atkinson as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.¹⁰ Atkinson made several donations to help the committee's efforts in aiding freedom seekers.¹¹ He also donated money to other abolitionists’ causes, and allegedly helped "furnish John Brown and his companions with rifles" for Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry.¹²

Atkinson remained active in social and political organizations during and after the Civil War. He held the role of secretary of the 1862 Educational Commission, which aimed to provide education to formerly enslaved people in the South.¹³ He served on the board of directors for the 1863 Protective War Claim Association for New England, an organization that helped soldiers or sailors, and their families, receive proper benefits for their service during the U.S. Civil War.¹⁴ As a member of the Anti-Imperialist League in the late 1890s, Atkinson opposed the American annexation of the Philippines.¹⁵

These various roles eventually led to special appointments and honors later in Atkinson’s life. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland nominated him as a Special Commissioner to compile a report on Europe's practice of bimetallism, the use of two metals for currency.¹⁶ As treasurer and secretary of the Shaw Monument Fund, Atkinson played a key role in raising the funds for the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial that commemorates one of the first African American regiments of the U.S. Civil War.¹⁷

Edward Atkinson died on December 11, 1905 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.¹⁸ An obituary in the Evansville Courier and Press described him as "a self-educated man, with boundless energy and limitless ambition to benefit his fellow man."¹⁹

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Footnotes:

1. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Edward Atkinson,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 42, no. 29 (August 1907): 761, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20022288.
2. Massachusetts Historical Society, “Edward Atkinson Papers: Biographical Sketch,” Masshist.org.
3. Ibid.
4. Alden Whitman, ed., American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1985), 33, Archive.org.
5. 1900 U.S. Census, Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Edward Atkinson,” AncestryLibrary.com.
6. Whitman, American Reformers, 34.
7. “The Late Edward Atkinson,” Evansville Courier and Press (Indiana), December 13, 1905.
8. Higginson, “Edward Atkinson,” 763.
9. Edward Atkinson, Cheap Cotton by Free Labor (Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1861), 4.
10. Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of the Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 3, Archive.org.
11. Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History Archives, Archive.org.
12. Higginson, “Edward Atkinson,” 767.
13. “Address to the Public by the Committee on Correspondence of the Educational Commission,” The Liberator, March 7, 1862.
14. “Protective War Claim Association for New England,” The New England Farmer, April 11, 1863.
15. Whitman, American Reformers, 33. To learn more about the Anti-Imperialist League in Boston, see The American Anti-Imperialist League at Faneuil Hall.
16. “Edward Atkinson Dead; Stricken at His Home,” The New York Times, December 12, 1905.
17. ”Shaw Parade,” The Boston Journal, May 19, 1897.
18. “Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915,” digital image s.v. “Edward Atkinson” (1827-1905), AncestryLibrary.com.
19. “The Late Edward Atkinson,” Evansville Courier and Press (Indiana), December 13, 1905.