The "father of the Muslim religion in America" was a convert to the faith and has NY roots. Does anyone know of primary sources on his early life in NY? I don't find any primary sources in Excelsior (NY State Library catalog) or HDI. Alexander Russell Webb was born in Hudson NY 1846 to journalist parents. After some brief schooling in Massachusetts, he attended Claverack College near Hudson, a private secondary school (also attended by Stephen Crane) then went on to a journalistic career in Missouri. He started life as a Presbyterian but is reported to have found it "dull and restraining." In the early 1880's he began reading about Buddhism and Islam as he searched for a true faith. He is the subject of a 2006 biography: A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (Hardcover) by Umar F. Abd-Allah. Hardcover, 400 pages, Oxford University Press, 2006 From the book copy: Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as U.S. consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In 1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of merits. In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb's life and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb's life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam's ambassador to America (and vice versa). As America's Muslim community grows and becomes more visible, Webb's life and the virtues he championed - pluralism, liberalism, universal humanity, and a sense of civic and political responsibility - exemplify what it means to be an American Muslim. David W. Palmquist NY State Museum 518-473-3131 [log in to unmask]