Sunderland was born on May 18, 1802 in Exeter, Rhode Island. He was an ordained clergyman in the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1826 to 1843, when he surrendered his surrendered his credentials. He formed the Methodist Antislavery Society in 1834 and wrote the essay “An Appeal on the Subject of Slavery” in the newspaper Zion’s Herald that year as well supporting abolitionism.[9]
^Bounds, Christopher (2016). Kurian, George Thomas; Lamport, Mark A. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 2231–2232. ISBN978-1-4422-4431-3.