Lovejoy, Elijah (Parish) (1802–1837)

US abolitionist. Ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1833, he went to St Louis, Missouri, to preach and edit the Presbyterian St Louis Observer, enlisting the paper in the fight against slavery, intemperance, and ‘popery’. Harassed for promoting even gradual abolitionism, in 1836 he moved to Alton, Illinois, where he renamed his paper the Alton Observer. Although some citizens supported his views on slavery, others were adamantly opposed and they threw three successive printing presses into the local river. Following his call for the establishment of an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1837, he was shot during a mob attack as he was defending the arrival of yet another printing press. Lovejoy was born in Albion, Maine.