Theron C. Leland was born in April 1821 in Cattaraugas County, New York, to James Leland and Diana Chapman. His father was a farmer who owned $400 of real estate in 1850. As he later recalled, his “mother was a born poet, and [his] father a reverent and devoted student of his Bible and the stars.” His mother taught him to read at an early age, and he became a voracious reader.

 

The family moved to Genesee County, in the early 1830s, and Leland “lived away from home…choring on a farm, and under various indentures and apprenticeships, which never lasted long.” He enrolled in Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, around 1838, and he graduated with “first-class honors” three years later. He taught school for a year before spending the 1840s “traversing western New York” lecturing on socialism and phonography.

 

By the late 1840s, he was living in New York City and working as a reporter. He became president of the New York Phonographic Society around 1850. He supported the abolition movement and spent at least two months teaching African American students to write. He also attended a national women’s rights convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853. He married women’s rights activist Mary Chilton, and they had at least four children: Rachel, born around 1858; Frederick, born around 1860; Grace, born around 1866; and Theron, born around 1869. By the early 1860s, he was working as a custom house secretary. By 1870, he owned $30,000 of real estate and $1,000 of personal property. He died in New York City in June 1885.

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