September 30th will mark the 170th anniversary of the Vegetarian Society (established in England in 1847): https://www.vegsoc.org/history
From a few years after that, in New York City, here is an interesting document - meeting notes from the 1850 American Vegetarian Convention: https://ivu.org/congress/1850/convention.html . Except for their 1800s diction, those long-ago vegetarians sound quite a bit like us. Spoiler alert: Dr. Sylvester Graham - inventor of graham crackers and anti-masturbation "champion" - was in attendance at that meeting (and caused a stir). Even in those days, our community had its wild cards.
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From a few years after that, in New York City, here is an interesting document - meeting notes from the 1850 American Vegetarian Convention: https://ivu.org/congress/1850/convention.html . Except for their 1800s diction, those long-ago vegetarians sound quite a bit like us. Spoiler alert: Dr. Sylvester Graham - inventor of graham crackers and anti-masturbation "champion" - was in attendance at that meeting (and caused a stir). Even in those days, our community had its wild cards.
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