William Jennings Demorest
William Jennings Demorest was a prominent American abolitionist, reform publisher, and prohibitionist, born near Rochester, New York, in the early 19th century. He faced a challenging childhood, especially after the death of his father in a house fire, which led him to New York City to seek opportunities. Initially entering merchandising, Demorest quickly transitioned to publishing and real estate, achieving considerable wealth by his forties. He was married twice, first to Margaret Willamina Poole, with whom he had two children, and later to Ellen Curtis, who played a significant role in the fashion industry.
Demorest became the publisher of Demorest's Illustrated Monthly Magazine, which included extensive coverage of women's issues and social reforms, particularly through the contributions of editor Jane Cunningham Croly. He was an advocate for abolition, temperance, and women's rights, and he founded the National Prohibition Bureau to challenge liquor licensing laws. His efforts to promote prohibition included oratorical contests aimed at engaging young people in the cause. Demorest passed away in 1895, leaving behind a legacy as a dedicated reformer and a key figure in the prohibition movement, remembered for his commitment to social welfare.
Subject Terms
William Jennings Demorest
- William Jennings Demorest
- Born: January 10, 1822
- Died: April 9, 1895
Abolitionist, reform publisher, and prohibitionist, was born in Brighton, near Rochester, New York. His father, Peter Demorest, was descended from French Huguenots who settled in New Amsterdam in 1663; his mother, Jane (Brouwer) Demorest, was a native of Newton, New York. The oldest of seven children, William was educated in local public schools. When his father died in a fire that consumed the family home in 1837, the youth moved to New York City. There he hoped to train for missionary work, but lack of money forced him to enter a career in merchandising.
His skills as a businessman soon led him into publishing and real estate, enterprises from which he became wealthy by the time he was forty. In 1845 he married Margaret Willamina Poole; they had two children, Vienna Willamina and Henry Clay. In 1858, a year after his wife’s death, he married Ellen Curtis of Ballston Spa, New York; two children were born of this union, William Curtis and Evelyn.
In his second marriage Demorest found outlets for his interests in family, love, business, and reform. Ellen Demorest was a gifted retailer of women’s clothes (including hats) who soon established a nationwide business. William Demorest, already prospering in his various enterprises, combined their pursuits by launching one of the most popular magazines of the day, Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine and Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions, which was published from 1864 to 1898. The name was shortened to Demorest’s Family Magazine in 1879. Through it, he marketed dress patterns and a variety of dressmaking gadgets.
Basically a fashion and women’s magazine, Demorest’s contained substantial coverage of various reform issues. One of the editors in particular, Jane Cunningham Croly, who wrote under the name of “Jenny June,” used her columns to discuss female emancipation and equality of education, prison reform, and other social issues. She was fully supported in this by the Demorests. Ellen Demorest, in fact, was a founding member and longtime officer of Sorosis, the business and professional group begun in 1868 that touched off the women’s club movement.
Aside from promoting reforms in his publications, William Demorest also took public stands on abolition and temperance. After the Civil War, prohibition became his consuming interest. A teetotaler all his life, he had joined the Prohibition party in 1884 and in 1885 ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on that party’s ticket in New York State. In 1888 he made another unsuccessful race, this time for mayor of New York City.
In all these efforts, Demorest preached the necessity for destroying the retail liquor trade, which he saw as the creator of misery and poverty. His greatest contribution to the cause came in the late 1880s, when he founded the National Prohibition Bureau (later the Constitutional League) to test the constitutionality of state and local liquor licenses, and the National Prohibition Lecture Bureau, which sent speakers to prohibition meetings around the nation. The speakers included such temperance luminaries as Mary Torrans Lathrap and Frances E. Willard. The lecture bureau also ran the Demorest Medal Contests, an annual series of national public oratorical competitions, in which young people spoke against alcohol. Begun in 1886, the competitions attracted large audiences and stirred much interest in and support for the antiliquor crusade. After Demorest’s death in 1895, the contests and the lecture bureau were taken over by the national Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
When William Demorest died at seventy-three of pneumonia in New York City, he was mourned as a major figure in the prohibition battle. A self-made man, he was eulogized for his passionate devotion to the welfare of others. A Presbyterian by birth, he became a Congregationalist in middle age.
The best account of his life is I. Ross, Crusades and Crinolines: The Life and Times of Ellen Curtis Demorest and William Jennings Demorest (1963), which provides a list of the Demorests’ various publications. Also useful is the short account in the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, vol. 2 (1924). See also the sketch of Ellen Curtis Demorest in Notable American Women (1971).