- Source: Henry S. Clubb
Henry Stephen Clubb (21 June 1827 – 29 October 1921) was an English-American Bible Christian minister, activist, journalist, author, Civil War veteran, and Michigan State Senator. Born in Colchester, England, Clubb advocated for various causes, including abolitionism, vegetarianism, and Chartism. He emigrated to the United States in 1852, where he worked as a journalist and was involved in efforts to establish a utopian community, known as Octagon City, Kansas. During the American Civil War, Clubb served in the Union Army as a quartermaster, including during the Siege of Vicksburg. From 1873 to 1874, he represented Michigan's 29th Senate district. Clubb also led the Bible Christian Church in Philadelphia and founded the Vegetarian Society of America, serving as its president. In 1903, he published his best-known work, Thirty-nine Reasons Why I Am a Vegetarian.
Biography
= Early life and background
=Henry Stephen Clubb was born on 21 June 1827, in Colchester, England. He was the youngest of the nine children of Stephen and Elizabeth Clubb. His parents were first Unitarians who then became Swedenborgians. They were also vegetarians for a time and were members of the Vegetarian Society, as was his brother Robert. Clubb's education, similar to that of many English boys of the time, was obtained from various sources, including attending evening school and studying Cobbett's Grammar and Pitman's phonography until the age of 12.
= Early activism
=At the age of 13, Clubb became a clerk at the Colchester post office. While working there, he learned about W. Gibson Ward, a London-based commercial traveler, who spoke of a community called the Concordium that practiced an alternative lifestyle. This community, later called Alcott House was found in Ham Common, and influenced by transcendentalism. Clubb was inspired to become a vegetarian by Ward's regular visits to his father's home, where he listened to Ward's vivid descriptions of the horrors and cruelties of the slaughterhouse.
In 1842, at the age of 15, Clubb joined the Concordium. His journey there was via London, his first visit to the English capital and his first journey by train. After the dissolution of the community, he remained in London and became proficient in Pitman's shorthand, which had been advocated by progressives like the Concordists as a tool for the 'new age'. He initially worked as a shorthand teacher before taking on the role of secretary to James Simpson, the affluent leader of the early English vegetarian movement.
In 1850, he joined the Bible Christian Church, a sect founded by William Cowherd. He also became the local secretary of the Vegetarian Society in Salford and wrote for the Vegetarian Advocate newspaper. Around this time, Clubb and his family participated in a shorthand and vegetarian community in Stratford St Mary (c. 1848–1851), near Colchester.
By 1848, Henry Clubb had joined the Chartist movement. Clubb played a key role in uniting the Chartist localities and land plan branches in the region into what became known as the Essex and Suffolk Chartist Union. However, his involvement appears to have been brief. The following year, he was elected president of a dietetic class at the Library Institution in Salford and was earning a living through lecturing and writing on vegetarianism across the country.
= Career in the United States
=In 1853, Clubb emigrated to the United States and initially found work as a journalist in New York, where he worked alongside Charles A. Dana for the New-York Tribune. As an abolitionist and pacifist, he lectured against slavery.
Between 1856 and 1857, he was involved with Charles DeWolfe and John McLaurin in building a utopian community known as Octagon City, Kansas. This project was originally designed as a vegetarian colony, but changed its focus to promoting a highly moral society with the octagon as its basic architectural structure, as propagated by Orson Fowler. The project failed due to mosquitoes, malnutrition, grain thefts and general exhaustion in the inhospitable terrain.
In the American Civil War, Clubb fought for the Union Army as a quartermaster. He took part in the Siege of Vicksburg, with his wife accompanying him. Clubb was hit by a bullet, but survived because the bullet was slowed down when it passed through his pocket which was filled with money and his naturalization papers, which were destroyed.
While living in Grand Haven, Michigan, Clubb published the Grand Haven Herald newspaper and served as a state senator representing the 29th District from 1873 to 1874. He also served as clerk of the constitutional commission of Michigan and oversaw the printing of the Journal of the Constitutional Commission of Michigan.
= Vegetarian Society of America
=Clubb founded the Vegetarian Society of America (VSA) in 1886 and served as its first president. He published a cookbook for the organization and founded its magazine, Food, Home and Garden. In 1893, Clubb was largely responsible for the success of the International Congress for Vegetarians at the Chicago World's Fair.
In 1900, the VSA merged with the Chicago Vegetarian Society. The VSA's Food, Home and Garden was renamed The Vegetarian and Our Fellow Creatures (1901–1903), The Vegetarian Magazine (1903–1925), The Vegetarian Magazine and Fruitarian (1925–1926), and The Vegetarian and Fruitarian (1926–1934).
= Later life
=Clubb briefly returned to England in 1901, visiting Salford. He published Thirty-nine Reasons Why I Am a Vegetarian in 1903, describing his reasoning for following a vegetarian lifestyle. In 1907, he decided to write a history of vegetarianism, to be published in the Chicago Vegetarian Magazine.
= Personal life and death
=Clubb married Anne Barbara Henderson on 15 November 1855, in Allegan, Michigan and they had three daughters. His wife died in 1915.
Clubb died in Philadelphia on 29 October 1921, at the age of 94, due to chronic gastritis and dementia. He was buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Sharon, Pennsylvania, with his wife and daughters.
Selected publications
The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History, and Results, Including a Life of Hon. Neal Dow (1856)
Thirty-nine Reasons Why I Am a Vegetarian (1903)
Unpolished Rice, the Staple Food of the Orient (1905)
References
Further reading
Heiman, Kelly (11 June 2010). The Not-So Wild West: The Rise and Fall of Vegetarian Settlements in 19th century Kansas.
Day, Meagan (26 December 2017). "The abolitionist, vegetarian, octagon-obsessed utopia that never was". Timeline.
Kniggendorf, Anne (14 July 2019). "Meet the Well-meaning Pioneer Behind a Vegetarian 'fairy Land' in Kansas". KCUR-FM 89.3.
External links
Henry S. Clubb at Find a Grave
Works by Henry S. Clubb at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
The Vegetarians (episode 13), The Vegan Option podcast discusses the life of Clubb
Food, Home and Garden (1899), the magazine founded by Clubb
Henry S. Clubb letterbook; Payne and Swiney letterbook, 1836-1840, 1865