Thomas Mott Osborne

Thomas Mott Osborne (September 23, 1859 – October 20, 1926) was an American prison officer, prison reformer, politician, industrialist, and New York State political reformer. In an assessment of Osborne's life, a New York Times book reviewer wrote: "His career as a penologist was short, but in the interval of the few years he served, he succeeded in revolutionizing American prison reform, if not always in fact, then in awakening responsibility.... He was made of the spectacular stuff of martyrs, to many people perhaps ridiculous, but to those whose lives his theories most closely touched, inspiring and often godlike."

Early life

He was born on September 23, 1859, in Auburn, New York, to David Munson Osborne (1822–1886) and Eliza Lidy Wright (1822–1886). Auburn was a center of progressive political activity, particularly anti-slavery activism before and during the American Civil War. His family included several eminent reformers, particularly his grandmother, Martha Coffin Wright and her sister, Lucretia Coffin Mott and his uncle William Lloyd Garrison, who were organizers of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Seneca Falls, New York.

His grandmother, Martha Coffin Wright, and in succession her daughter and Osborne's mother, Eliza Wright Osborne, and a niece, Josephine Osborne, oversaw the finances of Harriet Tubman, who spent her last half-century in Auburn. Martha's home in Auburn was part of the Underground Railroad where she harbored fugitive slaves. Both women frequented the Osborne household during Thomas Mott Osborne's upbringing. Thomas Osborne's aunt, Ellen, or as she is known to her descendants, Nella, married William Lloyd Garrison Jr., the son of the noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Thomas Mott Osborne's mother, Eliza Wright Osborne, wife of David Munson Osborne, was also a feminist leader, though of lesser note.