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James Whitcomb (1804-1880) was a prominent figure in Windham county for many decades. He was already deeply engaged in defense of the Canterbury Female Academy when was started, since he is noted as accompanying Samuel J. May to the "calling" of Charles Burleigh to its editorship (see letter of Gertrude Kimber Burleigh to Samuel May, Jr., November 14, 1857). In addition to his medical work - which was extensive - he was a founding member and first corresponding secretary of the Brooklyn (CT) Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. His first wife, Mary Louisa Whitcomb, was a charter member of the Brooklyn Female Anti-Slavery Society. He was a friend to the Benson family, and was known by the young William Lloyd Garrison. He was credited with using his house as a station on the Underground Railroad; see Horatio T. Strother, The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), p. 134, 211. Whitcomb served as a surgeon in the Civil War, a war in which his son Edwin perished. After the war, as a member of the Unitarian Society in Brooklyn, he invited Celia Burleigh to preach - one of the first women to be an official preacher in Connecticut. Celia Burleigh was the second wife, and later widow, of Unionist co-editor William H. Burleigh
