black-history – Ben Jacques Stories

The Midnight Ride of . . . Shadrach Minkins?

On the road to Concord, three Black men in a wagon make a daring escape

It had rained that day in Boston, and now, even though the moon was full, there was little light in the sky as three men left Cambridge and headed for Concord. No, it wasn’t the midnight ride of Paul Revere, but another of unusual significance. For riding in a dark wagon was a fugitive from justice and two conspirators, unwilling to let another human being be returned to slavery. It was Saturday, Feb. 15, 1851.

The morning had started out as any other. Shadrach Minkins, a waiter at the Cornhill Coffee Shop in Boston, had put on his apron and started work. What he didn’t know was that he would soon become a test case for the Fugitive Slave Act, a law enacted by Congress to keep Southern states from bolting. The story has been told beautifully by Gary Collison in his book, Shadrach Minkins: from Fugitive Slave to Citizen, from which I have drawn here.

Born into slavery in the port city of Norfolk, Virginia, Minkins had worked for various masters, having been sold three times. In the spring of 1850, around 30 years of age, he disappeared, escaping most likely as a stowaway on a merchant ship headed north. Arriving in Boston, he joined a community of some 2,500 free blacks and former slaves. Considered a haven for those seeking their own emancipation, Boston would soon become the focus of federal agents and bounty hunters.

David Hayden was a leader in Boston’s abolitionist community.

Mandating the return of all former slaves to their owners, the Fugitive Slave Act imposed stiff penalties of imprisonment and fines to anyone sheltering fugitive slaves. Further, state governments, local law officers, and even citizens were called on to aid in its enforcement.

If Minkins could be arrested in Boston, the hub of the abolitionist movement in the North, and returned to his owner, Southern states would see that Washington was protecting their interests, muting talk of succession. Even President Millard Fillmore and Secretary of State Daniel Webster had approved Minkins’ capture.

Enacted in September of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act divided families, towns, political parties and churches. As most governors, legislators, and clergy fell in line with the law, New England abolitionists voiced their opposition. In Boston, the Vigilance Committee, made up of Black and white abolitionists, warned of arrests and planned counter measures.

Poster urging fugitive slaves in Boston to watch out for slave catchers.

Now, as Minkins waited tables in the restaurant, a federal marshal and eight officers took up positions outside the restaurant. After a considerable delay, waiting for the man who would identify their suspect, the marshal and one of his men entered the restaurant and ordered coffee. They were served by a “stout, copper-colored man,” no other than the fugitive they sought, writes Collison.

When Minkins took the marshal’s payment to get change, two officers grabbed him under the arms, rushed out a back door and dragged him into the Court House, a block away. They had been seen, however, and word quickly spread. Within minutes a crowd of abolitionists and onlookers filled Court Square. One of them was a former slave from Kentucky, Lewis Hayden, now a clothing merchant and owner of a boarding house on Beacon Hill.

For several years, Hayden had been owned by Henry Clay, the senator and future architect of the Fugitive Slave Act. After seeing his siblings, then his wife and child sold, Hayden had fled with his second wife and her son to Philadelphia, then on to Canada. In 1846 Hayden brought his family to Boston. Lewis and Harriet Hayden became leaders in the abolitionist community, and their home on Southac Street a station on the Underground Railroad.

As Shadrach Minkins awaited arraignment, abolitionists packed into the stairway and hallway outside the upstairs courtroom. After the judge arrived, federal officers presented evidence that the suspect was in fact a fugitive from Virginia and the property of a Norfolk businessman.

Meanwhile, the crowd inside and out became more agitated. Defense attorneys, including Richard Henry Dana, Jr., presented petitions for Minkins’ release. When they were denied, black activists led by Hayden forced their way into the courtroom, surrounded Minkins and carried him “by the collar and feet” out to the street. Then, mixing in with the crowd, Hayden and Minkins scurried off towards Charles Street.

Turning quickly into a side street, Hayden took Minkins to the widow Elizabeth Riley, who hid him in her attic. Returning after dark, Hayden then took Minkins across the bridge to Cambridge and the home of the Rev. A. J. Lovejoy. HHe knew, however, that the fugitive could not stay there for long.

Later that night, Hayden returned to the minister’s home. This time he came in a wagon drawn by two horses, one black and one white. The wagon was driven by John J. Smith, a barber and fellow abolitionist. Picking up Minkins, they headed west.

My guess is Hayden and Smith, dressed in oil-cloth and sou’esters, sat up front, while Minkins lay covered by a tarpaulin in the bed of the wagon. They may have traveled on the Concord Turnpike, which was the most direct route, but which had several steep hills. Or they may have taken the old route through Lexington along Battle Road to Concord. Perhaps the rain had stopped by then and the moon was penetrating the cloud cover with faint light. Given the muddy roads, it must have been slow going.

About 3 a.m. Smith turned the horses onto Main Street in Concord. Proceeding through the sleeping town, they then angled left onto Sudbury Road and entered the yard of the blacksmith, Francis Bigelow. Hearing the wagon, Francis got out of bed and went to the door. Francis’ wife, Ann, who was unwell, may have looked out the upstairs window, for it was she who noted the color of the horses. Years later, Ann would tell the story to Edward Waldo Emerson, Harriet Robinson and others, accounts found in the Concord Free Public Library.

“Mr. Bigelow, hearing the carriage, opened his door, and let in the poor fugitive [and his escorts], though the penalty was a thousand dollars, and six months’ imprisonment, for ‘aiding and abetting’ a slave to escape. The blinds of the house were at once shut, and the windows darkened, to evade the notice of any passers-by.”

As Ann told it, the Bigelows then warmed the fugitive and brought him into their own bedroom, where Ann served breakfast, using the bureau for a table. Minkins, worn by anxiety and lack of sleep, could barely keep his eyes open. Meanwhile, the Brooks, sympathetic neighbors, arrived.

After Minkins had eaten and rested, Francis found him warm clothes, but had no hat his size. But Nathan Brooks did. He promptly left and returned with “a hat of his own with which to disguise himself—the hat of a law-abiding citizen!”

Before dawn, Francis Bigelow led Minkins to his own wagon outside, and the blacksmith and fugitive drove west again, this time to a safe house in Leominster. From Leominster, Minkins was transported to Fitchburg, where he boarded a train to Montreal.

Many years later, Ann Bigelow would retell the story of Minkin’s escape. Photo courtesty of the Concord Free Public Library

For Minkins the flight to Canada was a continuation of a life in exile. Separated from his family in Virginia, he joined a small community of former slaves in Montreal. He got a job as a waiter, saved his money and opened his own restaurant. Later, he set up a barbershop.

Over time, he married, and had four children. He never returned to the United States. He was the first runaway slave arrested in Boston under the Fugitive Slave Act, but not the last.

Meanwhile, Minkins’ rescuers returned to Boston. As Ann Bigelow recalled: “Mr. Hayden and Mr. Smith drove leisurely to Sudbury, stopped with friends there, went to church, and, after a good dinner, returned unmolested to Boston.”

Hayden did not, however, escape prosecution. One of several abolitionists charged with aiding and abetting Minkins’ escape, Hayden was acquitted after a jury—which included none other than Francis Bigelow himself—would not convict.

For years after, Lewis and Harriet Hayden continued their militant opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, hiding and transporting fugitives and raising money. Lewis joined the black Masonic lodge created by Prince Hall, and later served in the state legislature. He also led a successful effort to integrate Boston schools and campaigned for women’s rights.

During the Civil War, Hayden helped to convince his friend, Governor John Andrew, to form a black regiment and actively recruited soldiers for the Massachusetts 54th.

Today, you can visit the Hayden home, a site on the Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill. And in Concord, you can still find the house on the Underground Railroad, where the Bigelows opened their doors to Shadrach Minkins and his escorts 172 years ago.

Note: This story first appeared in the magazine, Discover Concord, Summer 2024, as “A Midnight Stop on the Underground Railroad.”

Slavery, the Smithsonian and Stoneham

African slaves first arrive in Boston in 1638

Our President is attacking the Smithsonian for its portrayal of slavery. He wants exhibits that show the horrors of slavery taken down. We don’t want our children to get the wrong idea.

It reminds me of comments I heard in the ‘60s. Comments like, most slave owners treated their slaves like family. Or, slaves benefited from slavery because they could learn a trade—a viewpoint recently written into the Florida public schools curriculum.

Which brings me to a document that surfaced this summer in the Stoneham Public Library titled “A History of the Black in Stoneham.” Written in 1969, it was published in the Stoneham Independent.

Disregarding the awkward reference to “the Black,” the reader is left with the impression that slavery was not so bad.

The article covers three periods, Colonial, pre-Civil War, and modern, and provides much good information. But it starts to break down when it compares slavery to indentured servitude, implying little difference. The authors failed to distinguish between the contractual—and finite–obligations of the indentured person and the ownership in perpetuity of slaves and their offspring. In other words, barring exceptional actions by their owners, enslaved men, women and children labored with no rights and no expectation of freedom. They were chattel.

That hopelessness is expressed in the will of one slave owner: “I bequeath unto my son … one negro woman named Fanny and her children now in his possession and one Negro man named Harry and all their increase to him and his heirs forever.”

A few of the article’s statements about enslaved people in Stoneham can only be described as absurd, like this one: “They were all shoemakers and they laid stone walls, but none was exploited!” And another: “Conditions must have been good because free blacks settled here.”

As we celebrate three hundred years of our history, it’s important to understand the role slavery played in Stoneham. It’s important to know that apart from how individuals were treated and the degree of physical trauma or deprivation they endured, they would have suffered deep and lasting psychological wounds.

Some basic facts. From the colonial period, we have records of some three dozen enslaved men, women and children in Stoneham. Named and unnamed, they show up in church and town records, wills and inventories. Like a “Negro woman and her children” mentioned in Daniel Green’s will. Like the 8-year-old “Mulatto Negro” purchased by James Hay in 1744.

Like “a Negro named Cato, the son of Simon, a Negro servant of Deacon Green,” or a maid named Dinah, owned by the school teacher William Toler.

Like a woman named Phebe, purchased that same year for 75 British pounds by the Rev. James Osgood, and listed along with his house furnishings after his death as simply, “a Negro Woman—70 £.”

Like Jack Thare, 40, “a servant of Joseph Bryant, Jr.,” one of six free or enslaved Black men from Stoneham who fought at Bunker Hill. When Jack failed to return from his enlistment, his master posted a fugitive want ad. Here’s what it said:

Ran away from the subscriber on the 24th of February, a Negro fellow, named Jack, of a — stature, has lost his upper teeth; had on when he went away, a blue coat, with large white buttons. Whoever will take up said Negro, and convey him to the subscriber in Stoneham, shall have three dollars reward. Joseph Bryant, Jr.

The 1969 article on Blacks in Stoneham was published the year I graduated from college. Our nation was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We were being challenged to examine not only our actions and prejudices, but a long history of subjugation and dehumanization of Black people.

As we celebrate our Tricentennial, let’s look honestly at our history. The value of doing so is that it will affect who we will become. By insisting that we tell the truth about our past, we commit to embracing the full humanity of all those around us.

What would he say today?

A fugitive, he got off the boat in Newport and continued by coach to New Bedford. There, in the whaling seaport founded by Quakers, he found safety. He also found work.

“There was no work too hard—none too dirty,” he would write. “I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks.”

His name was Frederick Douglass and for first time in his life, he was working for himself and his newly married wife, Anna. “It was the first work,” he wrote, “the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it.”

The year was 1838. Dressed as a sailor and using false papers, the young man (he was just 20) had fled Baltimore. Having found a haven in New Bedford, he was amazed at its wealth and absence of poverty. “I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement.”

He continued: “Everything looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see.”

Instead, Douglass found a city bustling with commerce and men and women eagerly engaged in their work. “I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness….”

Most surprising was the condition of fellow fugitives and free Blacks. “I found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland.”

His friends, Nathan and Polly Johnson, who had taken him and Anna into their home, “lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson.”

Even though New Bedford had become a refuge for escaped slaves, there was still racial prejudice. In Baltimore, Douglass had worked as a ship’s caulker, but was refused work with the white caulkers here, work which would have earned him twice his laborer’s wage.

Still, he and his wife made a living and found their own apartment. They attended church and socialized with others in the community. As a boy he had been taught to read by the sympathetic wife of his owner. Now he scoured the pages of The Liberator, published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison.

Three years later, at an abolitionist meeting on Nantucket, he was asked to tell his own story, and the rest is history. He went on to become perhaps the most eloquent champion of the anti-slavery cause, lecturing, editing, writing and speaking throughout the Northern States, England and Ireland. A friend of all those yearning for freedom, he was an advocate for women’s rights as well.

Remembering Frederick Douglass is fitting as we celebrate Black History Month. But it’s also important given the threats to the human rights of millions of those in our nation today threatened with deportation. Like him, they have sought refuge among us. Like him, they will work at anything to provide for their families. Like him, they have stories to tell.

As the Trump administration carries out raids, as it dehumanizes men, women and children because of their immigration status or gender identity, I can’t help wondering what Frederick Douglass what would have to say.

Happy Juneteenth!

As we celebrate our newest national holiday, the day enslaved folk in Texas finally learned of their freedom, we recall our own history of slavery and abolition:

1754—A census of enslaved people in Massachusetts that year shows there were eight slaves above the age of 16 in Stoneham. They were among at least three dozen slaves in our town during the Colonial period—men like Cato, belonging to Deacon Green, and women like Dinah, a slave of the teacher James Toler, “who waited upon him to the end of his days” (Silas Dean). And they were children, like the unnamed 8-year-old mulatto purchased by Captain Peter Hay in 1744, the same year the Rev. James Osgood paid £75 for a woman named Phebe.

1775—Six Black men from Stoneham, three enslaved and three free, fight in the Battle of Bunker Hill, joining white colonists in the struggle for freedom from Great Britain.

1780—Four years after the Declaration of Independence, Massachusetts voters ratify the Massachusetts Constitution, authored mainly by John Adams.

1781—A slave called Mumbet (Elizabeth Freeman) and another named Brom sue their Sheffield owner for their freedom and win. This and other court cases bring about the eventual freedom of all slaves in Massachusetts based on the Massachusetts Constitution.

1790—The first federal census lists no enslaved people living in Stoneham.

1823—A former slave from Virginia named Randolph is seized in New Bedford. The state Supreme Judicial Court upholds the property rights of his owner, and he is returned to slavery.

1837—After an abolitionist meeting in Stoneham, a fight breaks out in the street, and a Stoneham man, Timothy Wheeler, is knifed and killed. He leaves a wife and four children.

1838-9—Sarah Richardson Gerry leads 27 women in founding the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Stoneham. The men also create a chapter.

1839—Church deacons pass a resolution calling on all ministers of the Gospel to “bear faithful witness against the sin of slavery.”

1850—A thirty-year-old minister of First Congregational Church, the Rev. William Whitcomb, preaches a fiery sermon against the federal Fugitive Slave Act, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. He calls on his parishioners to aid all fugitives, even at the expense of their property and lives.

1850—Deacon Abijah Bryant’s home on Main Street becomes a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering fugitive slaves and enabling their safe passage to Canada.

1854—Anthony Burns, a 20-year-old former slave from Virginia is arrested in Boston and brought to trial. Thousands of abolitionists attempt to free Burns from the courthouse, but fail. In a widely reported trial, Burns is convicted and ordered sent back to his owner. Thousands line the streets as Burns is led in shackles to the docks and shipped back to his owner.

1861—Hundreds of Stoneham men join Massachusetts regiments responding to President Lincoln’s call for a voluntary army to defend the Union.

1864—54 Stoneham men die in the War of Rebellion: 11 killed in battle, 9 from wounds, 9 while in Confederate prisons, 25 from disease. These include Col J. Parker Gould, with others buried in Lindenwood Cemetery.

1862—Rev. William Whitcomb, is commissioned as a chaplain in the Union Army. He serves in hospitals in North Carolina until his death from malaria.

Over time we have learned to extend the human rights we hold so dear, those spelled out so eloquently in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or gender. From our Constitution we read:

“All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

Happy Juneteenth!