Charles V. Dyer
| Charles Volney Dyer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 8, 1808 Clarendon, Vermont |
| Died | April 24, 1878 (aged 69) Lake View, Illinois |
| Residence | Chicago, Illinois |
| Alma mater | Middlebury College |
| Spouse(s) | Louisa M. Gilford |
| Children | 6 children |
Charles Volney Dyer (December 6, 1808 in Vermont – April 24, 1878) was a prominent Chicago abolitionist and Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad.
Charles was born in Clarendon, Vermont on June 12, 1808, the ninth of the ten children of Daniel and Susan Owen Dyer. A precocious child, he was sent at age 15 to the Castleton Academy to prepare for college. He then attended Middlebury College's medical department, from which he graduated on December 9, 1830.
He established a practice in Newark, Wayne County Vermont in February, 1831.
Ambition led him to Chicago, then a small, but rapidly growing town, in August 1835. He became Surgeon for the garrison at Ft. Dearborn soon thereafter. In 1837, he married Louisa M. Gilford, of Elgin, with whom he would have six children, three of whom (Stella, Charles G. and Louis) would survive into adulthood. The Dyers also adopted a daughter, Cornelia. Reentering private practice, he was instrumental in the fight against the cholera that plagued Chicago in the late 1840s. In 1839, he shared offices with Dr. Levi D. Boone, who would go on to become Mayor of Chicago in 1855.
Dyer invested his savings in real estate, and after several ups and downs, was able to retire from the practice of medicine in 1854.
In 1837, Dr. Dyer rented a hall and called a protest meeting in reaction to the murder of Elijah Lovejoy by a mob in Alton, Illinois. In 1838, he helped organize a Chicago Chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society, along with Rev. Flavel Bascom, Philo Carpenter, Robert Freeman L.C.P. Freer and Calvin De Wolf.
In 1839, Dyer took in a runaway slave boy, and arranged for his passage on to Windsor, Canada, thus beginning his career as a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. From then on, he would host many runaways, evading the Illinois law against "harboring" (fraudulently concealing) runaways by allowing them to live openly in his home while waiting for passage to Canada. One prominent conductor on the Underground Railroad, Owen Lovejoy, is known to have taken many runaway slaves to Dr. Dyer's home, and was frequently a guest there himself.
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