The Father of American Vegetarianism Dies

Sylvester Graham was an American Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer who spent the 1830s and 1840s touring the country preaching that coarse whole-grain bread, pure water, and a meatless diet would save the nation's health and morals. He is often called the Father of Vegetarianism in the United States, and his followers, the Grahamites, ran boarding houses built around his rules. He died on September 11, 1851, at his home in Northampton, Massachusetts, at age 57, after complications from opium enemas given on his doctor's orders. One historian's account of his final illness notes he had strayed from his own strict diet in a last attempt to get well. The bread crusade he preached for decades outlived him in a much smaller form: graham flour, graham bread, and the graham cracker.