Religion

Asenath Nicholson—an abolitionist, writer, and former teacher— opened her first Graham boardinghouse in New York City at 118 Williams Street in 1835, following it up three years later with another home at 21 Beekman Street. The so-called Temperance Boarding House offered Grahamites the basics of boardinghouse living—a place to sleep, three meals a day, and social interaction—with the added supplies necessary to live a Graham-endorsed life. A vegetable diet was offered; and breakfast, dinner, and supper were served in a communal dining area to encourage interaction among the faithful. Cold baths, hard mattresses, and Graham bread were mandated in order to encourage health, circulation, and proper digestion. 

Located in an area filled with reform organizations—the American Anti-Slavery Society’s offi ces were down the block at 48 Beekman— Nicholson’s temperance boardinghouse served as a meeting place for New York’s reform-minded citizens. While dietetics may have been a central fi xation of the home’s residents, an all-encompassing attitude toward social reform prevailed. According to William Tyler, a professor of Latin and Greek at Amherst College and a resident of the Graham House on William Street, “the Boarders in this establishment are not only Grahamites but Garrisonites—not only reformers in diet, but radicalists in Politics. Such a knot of Abolitionists I never before fell in with.”

Most important, the boardinghouse ensured interaction between Grahamites, who shared experiences, meals, and ideologies. Grahamites were no longer content to share their dietary theories solely in lecture halls. Reformers also desired to live in communities of like-minded individuals within the urban landscape. The boardinghouse provided inhabitants meatless fare and the opportunity to discuss the important issues of the day—dietetics, slavery, suff rage, and temperance.  

Sylvester Graham himself was not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the boardinghouses he inspired. As much as Graham was responsible for the spreading of early proto-vegetarianism, practitioners morphed the ideology into a variety of life experiences. As Nicholson noted, while Graham served as an inspiration, his lectures and writings were merely “a starting point to be enlarged and improved as practice might suggest.” Graham’s dietary principles served as the backbone for boardinghouse life; how these ideals were enacted depended on a variety of local forces including geography, economics, and demographics. Despite this disconnect, during the 1830s and 1840s proto-vegetarians were largely labeled Grahamites, by themselves and others, because of Graham’s prominent public persona.  

But why the need for Grahamite boardinghouses in cities rather than the private practice of a Grahamite lifestyle? Urban areas, stricken with perceived vice and degradation, were seen as both morally and physically dangerous by reformers. New York City, with its commercial sex districts and visible brothels, was seen as particularly threatening to young, middle-class men living on their own, renting rooms throughout the city. One publication remarked on the Beekman Street home’s demographics, finding it “truly surprising to see how many temporary sojourners in the city, from different parts of the country, take lodgings at the Graham House, in order to be accommodated with the plain mode of living they practise at home.”  

Nicholson recognized the existence of these threats, believing that a Graham lifestyle provided moral clarity to her boarders and encouraged positive dietary habits by creating a small community of Grahamite practitioners.  Noting that “flesh-eating produces a moral obtuseness and irritableness of spirit,” Nicholson offered Graham bread, fresh vegetables, and cold baths in order to produce a “firmness of nerve, and clearness of intellect” to better prepare her residents for the dangers of city life. The proof of the diet’s success, Nicholson pointed out, was in the level of health of the houses’ residents, who exhibited “not a shadow of cholera . . . and the prevailing influenza, which has taken the lives of many.” With a proper, natural diet and a little exercise and fresh air, boardinghouse residents were able to overcome any illnesses that might appear. 

All boardinghouses had house rules prescribing meal times, visitor policies, and cost. Nicholson’s Grahamite home was guided by a litany of regulations, thirteen principles of the natural life inspired by Graham and his lectures. Visitors agreed to abide by these rules in order to remain in good standing as residents of the boardinghouse. Democratic principles allowed for some amendment of the regulations, relying on boarder votes to change prescribed dinner and supper times. Feather mattresses were banned, as Graham lectured that soft beds diminished “physiological powers.”  Exercise was mandated for residents, either a thirty-to-sixty-minute walk or a slow horse ride, though guidelines encouraged residents to avoid “all violence and excess” in their efforts. Lastly, during a time when regular bathing was rare, residents were required to take a daily sponge bath and at least one full bath per week.

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In 1835, Nicholson authored the first American vegetarian cookbook, Nature's Own Book.[5] Nicholson stated that "good bread, pure water, ripe fruit, and vegetables are my meat and drink exclusively." The book utilized some recipes with dairy, but Nicholson personally advocated against its use.[6]

Nicholson also authored, Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians.[7] The book was published by William Horsell in 1849. A review in the Vegetarian Advocate, noted that "butter and eggs are excluded" from the recipes.[8] The Vegan Society have cited the book as the first vegan cookbook.[9]

William Alcott was one of the founding and leading members of the APS and lent credibility to the growth of the meatless cause. He began advocating for a vegetable diet by the early 1830s, the heyday of Grahamism. Unlike Graham, however, Alcott was a formally trained physician, graduating from Yale University in 1836. He began publishing a series of treatises attacking such vices as alcohol, tobacco, and sexual intemperance. Alcott’s advocacy of a meatless diet gained mass exposure for the first time in a letter supporting the Graham system, which he published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in May 1836.  A war of words had broken out in the journal between Sylvester Graham and Thomas Lee, superintendent of the McLean Asylum in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Lee claimed that Grahamism was “destructive in its operation,” a cause of insanity and “emasculation.” Graham, charged Lee, was “an intolerable impostor.” Further, Lee claimed, Graham believed that it would be better for a patient to starve to death rather than dine on flesh foods. Graham, in response, defended himself and his dietary system, accusing Lee of being driven by “a morbidly excited imagination” and producing a “most dangerous article to be thrown before the public.” Graham concluded that Lee was threatened by new ideas, part of a medical establishment apt to treat its patients with “flesh, wine and opium.”  A month later, William Alcott entered the fray. Writing to the journal in defense of the Graham system, Alcott emphasized his own credentials as a trained medical professional. Alcott claimed that doctors like Lee were driven by “prejudice” and “supposed facts.” Medical doctors were usually reasonable and rational. When it came to the Graham system, however, established medicine was “exceedingly lame” in its observations. Alcott argued that millions of laborers worldwide—particularly in northern Europe—had subsisted on vegetable diets for years and did not go insane. The letter closed with Alcott’s own conversion story, claiming to have “abstained suddenly, about six years ago, from animal food, and from all fermented, narcotic, and alcoholic drinks; and have confi ned myself, to this hour, to vegetable food and water.” The results were immediately observable to himself and those around him, causing “great gain” in mind and body. Alcott ended his missive by asking the public at large to judge whether or not he—a medical doctor, aft er all—was in the throes of insanity. 

This debate illustrated a larger change for proto-vegetarianism as the movement began shifting. Graham and his followers were harsh critics of doctors and established medical science. However, in the late 1830s food reformers began emphasizing meatless fare’s legitimacy based on the scientific principles of physiology. Proto-vegetarians during this period defi ned themselves by proclaiming their medical expertise rather than their perspectives as outsiders. Organizations such as the American Physiological Society used medical credentials to support their controversial calls for dietary reform.  

The closing of the Graham Journal of Health and Longevity at the end of 1839 enabled Alcott’s Library of Health to emerge as the new public voice of meat abstention in the United States. Although not an official voice of the APS, Library of Health frequently reported on its activities. Originally published in 1837, Alcott’s journal was similar to the Graham Journal in structure. However, Library of Health touted its writers’ credentials as medical experts, advocating a vegetable diet as one component of healthy living. The journal hoped to take advantage of Alcott’s medical pedigree, assuring readers that “we began the following volume with the full intention of striking a heavy blow at quackery. . . . Quackery is not confined to the venders of nostrums, nor to any one class of citizens; it is rife everywhere.” Library of Health sought to distance itself from the claims of pseudo-science and religious heresy that traditionally followed meat abstainers, arguing that dietary reform “is indeed nothing less than the application of Christianity to the physical condition and wants of man.”

Library of Health featured medical experts in its defense of a meat-free diet, further diff erentiating itself from the Grahamites’ more personal notion of medical care, a view that attacked mainstream medical practitioners. Amariah Bringham, superintendent of the Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, Connecticut, argued that flesh foods caused “an inflammatory fever of an unusual character for children” and that “infants who are accustomed to eat much animal food become robust, but at the same time passionate, violent and brutal.” Alcott noted the efforts of one medical doctor who opposed the use of emetics to induce vomiting. The doctor’s opinion was reached through years of observation, viewing irritated, expanded stomachs that suffered from poor digestion for years afterward.  Reuben Mussey, a medical doctor, dietary and health reformer, and future president of the American Medical Association, frequently contributed to the journal. Mussey was regarded for his work exposing the poisonous nature of tobacco, which he claimed caused dizziness, stomach pain, and swollen feet. Another medical expert reported that hot drinks and foods made individuals more apt to catch a cold because extreme temperatures acted as a stimulant on the body. Alcott emphasized scientific credentials in appealing to the masses, subtitling a treatise on the merits of a vegetable diet “ As Sanctioned by Medical Men .”

 Library of Health warned against the perils of dietary intemperance in all its forms. Poisoned cheese was widely available in the marketplace; an article claimed that small amounts of arsenic were used to tenderize curds, an assertion similar to Graham’s criticisms of the bread making industry. Late, heavy suppers were described as being “prejudicial to health,” leading to digestive problems and poor sleep. Condiments and sweets were condemned, as were complex, diversified diets; simplicity was far more advantageous and less stimulating. These criticisms were similar to Graham’s but were expressed through the language of medical expertise. Through 1839, the journal dealt with dietary issues in a generalized manner, rather than advocating the specific advantages of a meatless diet.

Similar rules prevailed at Boston’s first Grahamite boardinghouse, though without the flexibility of democratic decision making for meal times. The home opened at 23 Brattle Street near Harvard Square in April 1837.  The Boston Grahamite home was run by David Cambell, an abolitionist who in 1840 spread the gospel of Graham to reform-minded students at Oberlin College in Ohio. Students embraced the lifestyle, and the college briefly banned meat from all of its dining halls.  Boston’s Grahamite boardinghouse purportedly drew a mixed crowd as well, ranging from “the most laborious to the most sedentary,” and from the permanent to the “transient or occasional.” The home reported housing between twenty and thirty permanent boarders at a time, consistently throughout the year. Advocates for the Boston house emphasized that it sought to draw healthy, vigorous individuals already acclimated to the Graham diet, rather than “invalids” who were “pale and sickly.” Homes that drew unhealthy boarders had another name, one that Grahamites wanted to avoid being connected with: hospitals.  Boston’s Grahamite boardinghouse was also utilized as a meeting place for dietary and social reformers.  

Animal flesh was barred from the New York Grahamite home, as were other poisons such as caffeine and alcohol. Toasted, stale Graham bread brewed with water was off ered to those who craved a cup of morning coffee.  The simple meals furnished centered on vegetables and whole grains. Breakfast consisted of the omnipresent Graham bread, along with a variety of fresh fruits, including apples, peaches, cherries, and strawberries.  

Interestingly, eggs were allowed at the breakfast table, and were even considered an important component of Grahamite diets, despite being animal-based. Eggs were not directly connected to death or suffering. As a result, Grahamites found them to be acceptable for consumption. Dinner— served in the afternoon and the largest meal of the day—consisted primarily of hominy, rice, porridge, and a variety of seasonal vegetables including beets, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and squash. Supper was a simpler, lighter meal and included Graham bread, milk, oatmeal, hominy, barley gruel, or mashed cornmeal. 

Grahamites represented a cross-section of moral and scientific reformers in the United States. The group’s message eventually reached as far as the South and West, as evidenced by letters and articles that appeared in group’s publication, the Graham Journal of Health and Longevity.  Grahamism, however, was most organized and popular in the Northeast, where Grahamite boardinghouses proliferated.  

The houses drew a mix of urban middle-class reformers. Similar to abolitionists of the period, Grahamites were primarily skilled artisans or trade workers, including housewrights, piano makers, grocers, merchants, bookbinders, and cabinetmakers. These were individuals with respectable occupations, and the boardinghouses provided structure and moral guidance. Residents were often interested in the total reform ideology associated with Grahamism. The boardinghouse on Beekman Street, for example, housed at various times such well-known New York reformers as New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, pacifist Henry Clarke Wright, abolitionists Lewis Tappan and Theodore Weld, and future president of the American Anti-Slavery Society Arthur Tappan. Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson— though not a Grahamite—did visit once to dine with Greeley and utopian socialist Albert Brisbane in March 1842.

The Graham Journal , in contrast, focused on dietetics as a vehicle for healthy living rather than as a product of a better lifestyle. At the center of the Grahamite journal was a structured reform regimen that hinged on avoiding meat. With the absorption of the Graham Journal , Library of Health shifted from a generalized physiological journal to one focused on meatless dietary reform. Library of Health supported the continued growth of a meatless, proto-vegetarian community, in the process pushing meat abstention further away from the sole terrain of Grahamites.  

The new focus on meat abstention was quickly and readily apparent by 1840. The year’s first issue advocated for the use of a vegetable diet for children. The article opened with a conversion story, relaying the life of “J. B.,” a three-year-old boy afflicted with large scabs all over his face. With the adoption of a vegetable diet, the author wrote, “a great change was manifest in the appearance of the child,” and the scabs “entirely disappeared.” The long-term benefi ts of dietary change were even more impressive, as the child seemed “to have known nothing about sickness or pain” since adopting the meat-free diet. This development was all the more remarkable given that J. B. had been “living, for the last year, in a region of the West, where, for months, almost all others were sick and dying.” The child enjoyed better teeth, smoother skin, and a general increase in mental capabilities.

  In another article, the author tackled the difficulties faced in challenging meat culture and the lack of thought average Americans gave to their dietary choices. The writer argued that the majority of the population believed “that flesh-meat is not only the kind of food on which they were intended principally to subsist, but . . . it is indispensably necessary to preserve their strength, and to enable them to perform their various avocations in life.” In order to gain converts it was essential to impress on the public that a “vegetable diet . . . by its mild but nutritive qualities, keeps the circulation in the human system regular and cool.” The legacy of the need to keep the humoral body in balance was clearly still apparent. When properly executed, a meatless diet prepared the body to “become an appropriate temple of the mind, and leads man to a more perfect mode of being.” Throughout 1840 the journal increased its coverage of dietary issues, even reprinting William Beaumont’s digestive experiments that had appeared in the Graham Journal of Health and Longevity. Library of Health made the connection between dietary choice and scientifi c discovery explicit.  

By the middle of 1840, Library of Health started featuring vegetable diet stories at the beginning of each issue, proof that the publication’s conversion to a natural dietetic journal was complete. The first volume of the year featured an article titled “Nutritive Properties of Various Kinds of Food,” where vegetables, grains, and fruits were presented as easily digestible and nutritious, whereas meat was difficult to assimilate into the bloodstream and thus of little dietary value. Of the fifty most nutritive food products listed, forty were vegetables, grains, or fruits. By including flesh foods on the list—though farther down in the rankings—the journal hoped to illustrate its scientific accuracy and rigor, advocating for a vegetable diet through study and observation.  The same issue advocated for the use of vegetable foods to ensure productive work, relaying the story of a young laborer who gained mental and physical strength from his dietary change. With the new meatless diet, the article claimed, it was possible to work “on an average, twelve hours a day at hard labor.” Physical labor had previously made the worker unable to “relish for close study” because his “mind would shrink from it.” However, with the support of a meatless diet, the young man reported becoming “perfectly calm, my mind clear, and delighted with close study and patient thought.” Dietary conversion made him not only a better worker but also a sharper, more complete citizen, a model of the republican self-made man.

Mary Gove Nichols was a leading crusader for vegetarianism during the mid 19th century. She was a disciple of Sylvester Graham - perhaps the foremost vegetarian advocate of the century - and as a "Grahamite" her major form of activism was to teach physiology and anatomy to Americans. 

To this end, Gove, who was a physician and proprietor of a water cure establishment (a non drug, "nature cure" facility), presented a series of lectures to female-only audiences eager to learn about the human body and how it functions. At the time, women were not supposed to lecture to audiences including males, but Gove managed to reach them as well through her published lectures, her magazine, and other works. Gove was also a novelist, acknowledged by no less a literary figure than Edgar Allan Poe, whose dying young wife Gove attempted to save from a fatal case of consumption (tuberculosis). 

Gove couldn't save Poe's beloved cousin/wife, but she did help many people regain good health. Women (and men) were interested in what Gove had to teach, because they wanted to take control of their health and the health of their families instead of relying on the often treacherous, sometimes fatal drug medicine prevalent throughout the century. 

Nichols and her lectures were popular. History records that at one lecture, the audience numbered as many as 2,000 - and that lecture was delivered in a small city. Vegetarianism was an integral component of Gove's teachings. Like her mentor Graham, Gove explained that God did not design the human body for flesh eating but to eat of the foods of the vegetable kingdom. 

Gove, like Graham, was not typical of today's vegetarian advocate. It's doubtful that she would have approved of many vegetarian convenience foods, although she probably would have liked those low in fat and high in fiber. One's diet had to be heavy on whole grains, vegetables, and fruits - devoid of coffee, tea, condiments, and grease as well as meat - to pass inspection by her. Gove and other vegetarian crusaders contended that in some cases a diet that included flesh foods might be more wholesome than one that was vegetarian but loaded with grease and pastries. This was a concession evidently born out of compromise, which all but the staunchest vegetarian activists (those motivated primarily by religion or animal rights) seem to have made. Most likely they made this concession because they lived in a virulently meat-hungry and vegetarian-suspicious time that lacked hard scientific evidence proving the benefits of rejecting meat. 

Besides the "vegetable diet," Gove and other "physiologists" called for a long list of daily practices, from bathing and exercise to adequate rest and cheerful attitude, as the prescription for health. If that advice seems familiar, the next time it is mentioned remember Gove, who like Graham, journeyed from city to city preaching physiology and a vegetable diet. Over time, many of the ideas of the American veg pioneers - derived from observation, the Bible, and natural history - have been scientifically verified and adopted by mainstream medicine. Until now, Graham, Gove, and company have rarely received credit for their attempts to aid ailing America. When they have been recognized, they and their groundbreaking work have usually been portrayed more as caricatures than as people of strong character, out to save the sick from unhealthful habits.