Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

In Theodore Parker Mr. Garrison found the accessibility and sympathy which were lacking in Dr. Channing; and a colleague in the anti-slavery and other philanthropic causes; a preacher, too, whose discourses gave him moral and intellectual satisfaction, and of whose slender congregation he now virtually became a member, without theological profession or attachment. More intimately still,¹ in April of this year, on the death of his loved infant, Elizabeth Pease, he naturally turned to Mr. Parker for ministrations of comfort which were gladly rendered at the funeral. ‘No strange thing,’ he wrote to this² clergyman on the morning of the fatal day, ‘has happened unto us, in view of human mortality—nothing dark or mysterious; yet we feel our bereavement deeply and tenderly.’

The grief of the parents over this first inroad on their little flock was softened by the birth of another child— their last—on October 29, 1848. Him, for weighty reasons of friendship and of obligation, they named after Francis Jackson.