Levi Yale

In 1821, Yale was elected a member of the Connecticut State House.^[5][4] He was postmaster during the Jackson and Van Buren presidencies and was frequently elected as a town Justice of the Peace.^[6][7][8]

In the fall of 1837, Yale, Elisha Cowles, Julius Pratt, and others, invited abolitionist lecturer Rev. Henry G. Ludlow to speak at the Center Congregational church in Meriden.^[9][10] Anti-abolionists attempted to prevent the meeting from being held and organized a riot when they were unable to stop it.^[11] Stones and eggs were thrown at the attendees.^[9] Levi Yale and two others acted as body-guards, protecting and escorting Reverend Ludlow out of the church.^[10]

Yale's home was a station of the Underground Railroad, and he has been described as "a man of very pronounced views against slavery, and one who had the courage of his convictions."^[12][3] Fugatives found "food and harbor" at his farmhouse, and he helped conduct them from New Haven to Springfield.^[13]

In 1841, Yale co-founded the Connecticut Liberty Party, presiding at the Political Anti-Slavery Convention that established the party in the state and nominated its first candidates. As president of the convention, he wrote, signed and published in newspapers a letter requesting the President of the United States, John Tyler, to emancipate his slaves.^[14][15]

In 1841, and from 1843 to 1849, Yale was the Liberty party candidate for lieutenant governor of Connecticut.^[16] He was elected first selectman of Meriden from 1845 to 1848, and then from 1852 to 1855.^[1][17] In 1851 he lost the race for Meriden Judge of Probate. In 1856 he was again elected to the state house.^[18]

Yale was a member of the committee that build Meriden's town hall and was among the officers that incorporated the Meriden Savings Bank.^[19][20] He was a Congregationalist and was among the members who formed Center Congregational after First Congregational moved to a new location.^[21]

Levi Yale was married to Abigail Ellen Bacon, of Middletown, Connecticut. They had three children together, two daughters, Harriet Ellen and Emma Louisa, and a son named Levi Bacon Yale. Levi B. was a Republican, Prohibition candidate, nominated for Senator in the 6th District in 1900, and was an active member of the Congregational Church.^[1]

He was a great-grandson of Capt. Thomas Yale of Wallingford.,^[2] and his uncle, Thomas Yale, was a soldier during the American War of Independence. He was a cousin of Congressman Jonathan Brace and Aetna life insurance founder Thomas Kimberly Brace, as well as of Senators Kenneth S. White and John Baldwin.^[22]