HARRIET HAYDEN (c. 1820-1893) and
LEWIS HAYDEN
(c. 1811-1889)
Boarding House Owners
Lewis Hayden
Courtesy of: Houghton Library, Harvard University
When Lewis and Harriet Hayden moved to Boston in
1849, they opened a boarding house in their home at
66 Southac Street, now Phillips Street. Their boarding
house sheltered self-liberated African Americans such
as William and Ellen Craft for brief periods, and
housed unmarried freemen for several months and even
years, including: artist William Simpson; gilder Jacob
Andrews; shoemaker Mark DeMortie; gas pipefitter Nelson
Perkins; hairdresser George L. Ruffin; and physician
Dr. John Rock. As a safe house on the Underground
Railroad, more than one hundred self-emancipated people
passed through the Haydens' doors. When Harriet
Beecher Stowe once visited the house, she found thirteen
self-liberated people there. Since Lewis Hayden also
operated a clothing store on Cambridge Street, most
of the day-to-day management of the boarding house
probably was Harriet Hayden's responsibility.
Lewis Hayden and Harriet Hayden were born enslaved
in Kentucky. Early in life Lewis Hayden experienced
many of slavery's vicissitudes: changing masters
four times and losing his first wife and child when
Henry Clay sold them away. During his enslavement,
Lewis Hayden taught himself to read. Lewis Hayden
and Harriet Bell married in c. 1839 and escaped to
Canada with Harriet's son via the Underground
Railroad in 1844. From Canada the Haydens moved several
times in the United States before coming to Boston.
In Boston, Lewis Hayden quickly became a prominent
community leader as an abolitionist and as a Mason.
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850,
Hayden joined the Vigilance Committee. He participated
in the rescue of Shadrach Minkins and the attempted
rescues of Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns. He raised
funds and recruited men for John Brown's raid
on Harper's Ferry, and successfully lobbied
Governor Andrew to create African American Civil War
regiments. He became Grand Master of the Prince Hall
Grand Lodge in 1852 thereafter playing a significant
leadership role among Masons. After the failure of
his clothing business in 1858, Lewis Hayden was appointed
Messenger to the Massachusetts Secretary of State,
the first black government employee in the Commonwealth.
Lewis Hayden's community leadership role was
affirmed by his election to the Massachusetts legislature
in 1873. Due to his respected prominence in the antislavery
movement, Hayden served as a pallbearer at the funerals
of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.
|
