in the slave trade. In 1789, he helped found the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade with both Quaker and non-Quaker associates to help enforce recently passed anti-slave trade legislation. He later helped engineer passage of a law in the U.S. Congress to forbid foreign slave ships from being equipped in American ports. He also became known for his willingness to help slaves and free blacks on an individual basis, through financial and legal assistance. In contrast, his brother John was one of the state's leading slave traders and the first person prosecuted under the federal laws prohibiting slave importation. Moses Brown School One of his last great contributions to Rhode Island life was his role in the revival of the New England Yearly Meeting School. It had existed intermittently in the 1770s and 1780s, but died out through lack of interest. In 1814, Brown presented the Yearly Meeting with 43 acres of land in Providence, and worked diligently toward the creation of a school on this land. He provided important financial assistance, and also donated his impressive book collection to the school library. His son Obadiah joined him as a major supporter of this effort until his untimely death in 1822. Moses Brown served as the school's treasurer until shortly before his own death in 1836, at the age of 98. The school was renamed in his honor in 1913 as the Moses Brown School, and remains a leading preparatory school in the U.S. See also Brown Square Brown Square House Moses Brown School References Further reading Rhode Island Historical Society Moses Brown Papers Moses Brown School History Charles Rappleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster, New York: 2006) Encyclopedia Brunoniana Brown University Charter John and Moses Brown reviewed in the Providence Journal with portraits of both Hidden in Plain Sight: Slavery and Justice in Rhode Island - an address by Brown President Ruth J. Simmons at St. John's College, Cambridge University on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Act of Parliament abolishing the British slave trade Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice External links Emlen Family Papers from Swarthmore College Peace Collection 1738 births 1836 deaths 18th-century American inventors American abolitionists American Christian pacifists American manufacturing businesspeople American Quakers American slave owners American slave traders American tax resisters Moses Brown Brown