Early life and family George L. Stearns was born in
Medford, Massachusetts, on January 8, 1809, the eldest son and second child of Luther and Mary (Hall) Stearns. His paternal immigrant ancestor, Isaac Sterne, arrived in Salem on June 12, 1630, from
Suffolk,
England. He had sailed to the new colony with
John Winthrop, a future governor, and Sir
Richard Saltonstall, among others. Isaac Sterne moved to Watertown, located along the
Charles River, where he died in 1671. What became known as the American Stearns family (note spelling variation) grew, with branches moving northward and westward. For decades men typically worked as farmers, teachers, and clergymen. Stearns' father, Luther Stearns, was born on February 17, 1770, the eldest of five children born to Captain Josiah Stearns, a soldier in the
American Revolutionary War. He commanded a company of 50 men from
Lunenburg, Massachusetts. Luther Stearns had entered Dartmouth College at age seventeen but transferred, graduating from Harvard in 1791. He worked as a tutor at Harvard and eventually studied medicine. He later became an obstetrician. He was honored in 1811 by an honorary degree from Harvard. After getting his practice started, Luther married Mary Hall of
Brattleboro, Vermont, on December 29, 1799; she was 16 years old, not an uncommon marrying age for women. They settled in Medford, Massachusetts, to be closer to her relatives. They had three children together: Elizabeth Hall, George Luther, and Henry Laurens Stearns (named after the American ambassador of that name, a distant relative). The senior Stearns later opened a private preparatory school for boys in Medford; many students came from the
American South and the
West Indies. Stearns died of pneumonia on April 27, 1820, when son George was eleven years old. To earn money, young George sometimes tended the locks on the
Middlesex Canal in town. At the age of 15, he entered the workforce to support his mother and sisters.
Career In early life, Stearns was engaged in the business of ship-
chandlery. After a prosperous career, he began the manufacture of sheet and pipe-lead, doing business in
Boston and residing in Medford. He married Mary Elizabeth Preston on October 12, 1843. They met through acquaintances, including her father Warren Preston, a probate judge in Norridgewock, Maine; and
Lydia Maria Child, an American abolitionist and women's rights activist, who was her aunt. After President
Abraham Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, Stearns worked tirelessly for the
civil rights of African Americans. Among his many admirers and friends were
Louisa May Alcott,
Henry David Thoreau,
Charles Sumner,
Frederick Douglass, and President
Andrew Johnson. He also helped to found the
Freedmen's Bureau, a federal organization designed to support emancipated African Americans (
freedmen) in the South after the end of the war. ==Death and legacy==