BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. After receiving a public-school education, Benjamin Tappan, Jr. was apprenticed to learn copperplate engraving and printing, and devoted some attention to portrait painting. Subsequently he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice in Steubenville, Ohio in 1799. In 1803 he was elected to the legislature, and after the war of 1812, in which he served as aide to General William Wadsworth, he was appointed judge in one of the county courts, and for 7 years was presiding judge of the 5th Ohio circuit. In 1833 he was appointed by President Jackson as the United States judge for the district of Ohio. Being elected to the United States senate as a Democrat, he served from December 2, 1839, till March 3, 1845. He was an active leader of his party, but afterward joined in the free-soil movement at its inception. He was widely known for drollery and wit, and for decided antislavery sentiments. In 1831 Judge Tappan published CASES DECIDED IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, WITH AN APPENDIX (Steubenville, Ohio). HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1773 May 25, Tuesday: In Northampton, Massachusetts, Sarah Holmes Tappan gave birth to Benjamin Tappan, Jr. In 1793 he would come away from college with a bachelor’s degree in his pocket, Volt aire as his theologian, and with Thomas Paine’s THE RIGHTS OF MAN as his credo. –He would be the last son the Tappans would offer to any institution of higher education. He would study art for awhile with Gilbert Stuart and learn the dangers of alcohol, then become a lawyer in Connecticut, then become a merchant in Ohio, and a senator, and a judge. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1779 July 21, Wednesday: Sarah Holmes Tappan, mother of Benjamin Tappan, Jr., gave birth to William Tappan, who would grow up to be a drunkard and a shirker. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1786 May 22, Monday: Sarah Holmes Tappan, mother of Benjamin Tappan, Jr. and William Tappan, gave birth to Arthur Tappan, who all his life would be tortured by headaches. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1788 May 26, Monday: Sarah Tappan gave birth to Lewis Tappan, the younger brother of Benjamin Tappan, Jr., William Tappan, and Arthur Tappan, with the assistance of midwife “Granny” Allen — who charged mothers $1.00 for this service. TAPPAN FAMILY November 7, Friday: Benjamin Tappan was born in Newbury, Massachusetts, son of the Reverend David Tappan of a Congregational church in Newbury. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1793 Benjamin Tappan, Jr., eldest son of Sarah Tappan and Benjamin Tappan, Sr., came away from college with a bachelor’s degree in his pocket, with Voltaire as his theologian, and with Thomas Paine’s THE RIGHTS OF MAN as his credo. –He would be the last son the Tappans would offer to any institution of higher education. He would study art for a while with Gilbert Stuart and learn the dangers of alcohol, then become an Ohio lawyer, then become a merchant. TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1833 January 8, Tuesday: New-York businessman and philanthropist Lewis Tappan wrote to his skeptic brother Benjamin Tappan, Jr. in Steubenville, Ohio, to alert him to the prospect of his eternal damnation. TAPPAN FAMILY On the 41st birthday of the musician who was inspiring its formation, Lowell Mason, the Boston Academy of Music was organized. HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1840 Northampton’s Unitarian minister would be, for a brief period, the Reverend John Sullivan Dwight,1 who was ordained in this year. (But he would soon discover the region to be uncongenial for religious reform, and follow the Reverend George Ripley to Brook Farm. Of course, he would be wise to recognize when he had bitten off more than he could chew: Northampton had been the town of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, and one of its two Congregational churches was still named after him. The Tappan brothers –Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, Benjamin Tappan, Jr., William Aspinwall Tappan, Charles Tappan, and John Tappan– had grown up in this vicinity. One of the oldest towns in the region, a bastion of New England Federalism priding itself on its conservatism, the town was dominated by the Whig party. When Lydia Maria Child lived here, while her husband David Lee Child was attempting to grow slavery-fighting sugar beets, she called this region a “Desert where no water is” in the “iron-bound Valley of the Connecticut.” Referring to the self-righteous religious attitude which she encountered while there, she opinioned that “Calvinism sits here enthroned, with high ears, blue nose, thin lips and griping fist.”) TAPPAN FAMILY 1. Bear tradition in mind here: the Reverend Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, had been the grandson of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards of Northampton. HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1844 May 10, Friday: Senator Benjamin Tappan, Jr. was censured for disclosing to the New-York Evening Post a secret message sent by President John Tyler to the federal Senate on April 22d, 1844 detailing possible terms for an annexation of the Republic of Texas (he had disclosed this to the American public because the President was attempting to obtain an annexation accord without Senate discussion and, because he immediately confessed and due to considerable sympathy among his colleagues, despite censure he would be allowed to complete the remaining months of his term). TAPPAN FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. 1857 April 20, Monday: Henry Thoreau wrote to [Eben J. Loomis presumably]. We have a mention of the existence of such a letter but no indication of its content. Benjamin Tappan, Jr. died in Steubenville, Ohio. TAPPAN FAMILY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at <[email protected]>. “It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: December 3, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. BENJAMIN TAPPAN, JR. Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh..