{"id":7115,"date":"2025-05-14T06:26:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T06:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/?page_id=7115"},"modified":"2026-08-22T11:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T15:54:44","slug":"susan-lyons-wagoner","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/delegates\/susan-lyons-wagoner\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan M. Lyons Wagoner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Main Street, Amherstburg, 1865<\/strong>
Susan Lyons was living in Amherstburg when she met and then married Henry O. Wagoner. (Source: Alvin D. McCurdy fonds, Reference Code: F 2076-16-6-2-44, Archives of Ontario, I0024850. Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Susan M. Lyons Wagoner was part of Chicago Black activist circles from the mid-1840s through 1866. Born in Indiana in 1819, Susan spent her early adulthood in the town of Amherstburg, Ontario, across the river from Detroit.[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan\u2019s father, Nero Lyons, became known as a successful businessman in Amherstburg. In the 1840s, he petitioned for a license to open a tavern, a move that would have made him the second Black tavernkeeper in town. Lyons informed authorities that the other Black-run tavern was patronized \u201cprincipally by Europeans,\u201d while his aim was to open \u201ca publick[sic] house\u201d for Black people to \u201cresort to.\u201d Lyons\u2019 petition was granted and by the 1850s, the Provincial Freeman <\/em>noted that he was a prosperous entrepreneur.[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Lyons\u2019 life changed around 1843, when she met Henry O. Wagoner<\/a>, who was teaching and working for a newspaper in nearby Chatham, Ontario. The pair married in 1844 and moved to Chicago two years later. During the 1840s and 50s, Susan Wagoner cared for the couple\u2019s growing family, helped operate the hominy mill attached to their home, and opened her household to fugitives from slavery. Frederick Douglass was a frequent visitor to the Wagoners\u2019 \u201ccosy home,\u201d which stood on the corner of Harrison and Griswold Streets, not far from the busy Van Buren Street railroad station.[3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blake Street, Denver, Colorado, 1860\u00a0<\/strong>
The Wagoners lived on Blake street in the 1860s. (Source: Denver Public Library Special Collections<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

By the late 1850s, the Wagoners and other Black activists in Chicago were collaborating with John Brown, the white radical. For three days in 1859, Susan and her family sheltered a group of twelve men, women, and children whom Brown had liberated at gunpoint from Missouri farms. Shortly after Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, the Wagoners\u2019 mill burned. Henry soon moved to Colorado, while Susan and their children remained in Chicago.[4] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Civil War, Susan Wagoner and other activist Black women in Chicago organized relief for freedpeople in the southern states, forming the Colored Ladies\u2019 Freedmen\u2019s Aid Society of Chicago in 1863. Mary Richardson Jones<\/a> served as president, Martha Ann Blanks was vice-president, and Ailey Maria Bradford was treasurer. The society provided both monetary support and goods to newly freed people. Susan\u2019s oldest daughter, Marcellena, also took up a public role during the war. In 1863 and 1864, she worked as a secretary to Martin R. Delany as he sought to recruit Black soldiers to the U.S. Army.[5]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan and most of the children moved to Colorado in 1866. There, Susan lived near her sister, Julia Lyons Ford, who had married Barney Launcelot Ford, a successful restaurateur whose home in Breckinridge still stands.[6]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Wagoner died in 1869, at just fifty years old. She is buried in Denver.[7]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

1. Susan M. Lyons Wagoner, Find a Grave<\/em>, Memorial no. 27385625, Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Denver County, Colorado, accessed Sep. 8, 2021, https:\/\/www.findagrave.com\/memorial\/27385625\/susan-m-wagoner<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Julia Roberts, In Mixed Company: Taverns and Public Life in Upper Canada <\/em>(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), 117; \u201cCanada Towns,\u201d Provincial Freeman<\/em>, Jan. 26, 1856.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. \u201cFred Douglass Double Henry O. Wagoner of Denver, a Life Long Friend of the Recently Deceased Orator and Statesman,\u201d Denver Times<\/em>, date unknown. This article, most likely published in 1895, is reproduced in full on \u201cHenry O. Wagoner\u201d page of the \u201cThe Old Pioneer\u201d blog: http:\/\/rdb9507.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/henry-o-wagoner.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. \u201cLife Romance: Adventures of the Late Henry O. Wagoner of Denver Were Many,\u201d Rocky Mountain News, <\/em>Feb. 3, 1901; Richard Junger, \u201c\u2018Thinking Men and Women, Who Desire to Improve Our Condition\u2019: Henry O. Wagoner, Civil Rights, and Black Economic Opportunity in Frontier Chicago and Denver, 1846-1887,\u201d in Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy,<\/em> eds. William H. Alexander, Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, and Charles H. Ford (Newcastle upon Tyne, Eng.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 153-54, 156.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. \u201cChicago Correspondence,\u201d The Christian Recorder<\/em>, March 12, 1864; Jennifer Harbour, \u201c\u2018I Earn By My Own Labor From Day to Day\u2019: African American Women\u2019s Activism in the Wartime Midwest,\u201d Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society <\/em>108, no. 3-4 (Fall\/Winter 2015): 355-357; Martin R. Delany, Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader<\/em>, Robert S. Levine, ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 384n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Barney Launcelot Ford, Find a Grave, <\/em>Memorial no. 8821848, Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Denver County, CO, accessed Sep. 8, 2021, https:\/\/www.findagrave.com\/memorial\/8821848\/barney-launcelot-ford<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Susan M. Lyons Wagoner, Find a Grave<\/em>, Memorial no. 27385625, Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Denver County, CO, accessed Sep. 8, 2021, https:\/\/www.findagrave.com\/memorial\/27385625\/susan-m-wagoner<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credits<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Written by Hope McCaffrey. Edited by Kate Masur.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Main Street, Amherstburg, 1865Susan Lyons was living in Amherstburg when she met and then married Henry O. Wagoner. (Source: Alvin D. McCurdy fonds, Reference Code: F 2076-16-6-2-44, Archives of Ontario, I0024850. Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario.) Susan M. Lyons Wagoner was part of Chicago Black activist circles from the mid-1840s through 1866. Born in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6829,"parent":7030,"menu_order":25,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7115","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7857,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7115\/revisions\/7857"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}