Underground Railroad in Boston
Boston served as a critical hub of the Underground Railroad, the informal network of routes, safe houses, and supporters that helped enslaved people escape to freedom before and during the American Civil War. Unlike the romanticized popular image of the Railroad as a single organized system, Boston's role was shaped by a decentralized and often improvised network in which free Black residents, abolitionists, and sympathizers worked together to shelter, feed, and protect freedom seekers arriving in the city. The history of this network is preserved today through documented sites, heritage trails, and ongoing historical research that continues to recover the stories of those who risked their lives on both sides of the journey.
Background and Historical Context
The Underground Railroad was not a literal railroad, nor did it operate according to a fixed organizational structure. In Massachusetts, the network was notably fluid. The abolitionist William I. Bowditch told historian Wilbur Siebert in 1893 that "We had no regular route and no regular station[s] in Massachusetts," a statement that underscores how different the Boston experience was from the more systematic routes imagined in popular history.[1]
Boston's geography and social composition made it a distinctive destination for freedom seekers. By the antebellum period, the city had a sizable free Black community concentrated primarily on the north slope of Beacon Hill, an area that would later become the focal point of both the Black Heritage Trail and Underground Railroad historical documentation. The city's active abolitionist press, including William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, also contributed to Boston's atmosphere of resistance to the institution of slavery.
In Boston, this network was mostly made up of free Black residents who worked together to support and protect freedom seekers.[2] This stands in contrast to narratives that have historically emphasized the role of white abolitionists as the primary agents of the Railroad. Recent scholarship and heritage programming have increasingly centered the agency of Black Bostonians in this history.
Key Sites and Locations
The Lewis Hayden House
Among the most thoroughly documented stops on Boston's Underground Railroad network is the Lewis Hayden House, located on Phillips Street on Beacon Hill. The house served as a station for escaped enslaved people, and Hayden himself was a former enslaved person who became a central figure in Boston's abolitionist community.[3] The Lewis Hayden House is designated Stop 13 on the Black Heritage Trail, the walking route that winds through the streets of Beacon Hill in the shadow of the Massachusetts State House.
The Hayden House is significant not only as a physical structure but as a symbol of self-determination within the Underground Railroad. Hayden's personal history — escaping slavery and then actively working to liberate others — illustrates the broader pattern by which freedom seekers, once established in Northern cities, often became central participants in the network that had aided them.
Smith Court and the Beacon Hill Network
The National Park Service has documented a range of sites connected to Underground Railroad activity in Boston, beginning at Smith Court on Beacon Hill. Smith Court was home to several free Black families and is part of the broader network of streets and residences that sheltered freedom seekers in the antebellum period.[4] The NPS has developed an audio tour that guides visitors from Smith Court to the Middle Passage Marker on Long Wharf, tracing a path that connects the inland refuge of Beacon Hill to the waterfront where many freedom seekers arrived and departed.[5]
The route from Beacon Hill to Long Wharf is historically meaningful: Boston Harbor was both a point of arrival for freedom seekers who traveled by sea and a potential point of vulnerability, given the legal risks of capture that persisted even in nominally free states before and after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Long Wharf and the Middle Passage Marker
Long Wharf represents the maritime dimension of Boston's role in the broader history of slavery and resistance. The Middle Passage Marker at Long Wharf commemorates the transatlantic slave trade and connects Boston's colonial and antebellum history to the stories of those who later used the city's waterfront as part of their journey to freedom. The National Park Service includes the marker as a significant endpoint in its Underground Railroad tour of the city.[6]
Notable Episodes
The Rescue of Shadrach Minkins
The 1851 rescue of Shadrach Minkins is among the most documented episodes of Underground Railroad activity in Boston. Minkins had escaped slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, and settled in Boston, where he was subsequently arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. His case drew national attention when a group of Boston abolitionists intervened to prevent his return to slavery. Minkins ultimately settled in Canada. His story is part of the history of the West End neighborhood, as documented by the West End Museum.[7]
The Minkins rescue illustrated the dangers facing freedom seekers even after they reached Boston, and the willingness of the city's Black community and its allies to take direct action in defiance of federal law. The episode also demonstrated the limits of legal protection for Black residents of the city, free or formerly enslaved, in the period following the Fugitive Slave Act.
The Underground Railroad Network in Practice
As Bowditch's 1893 account suggests, the Boston Underground Railroad did not operate through a centralized command structure. Routes and hiding places were arranged informally, often on short notice, and the participants were bound together by shared commitment rather than formal organization.[8] This informality was both a practical adaptation to the risks involved and a feature of how community-based mutual aid networks functioned in the antebellum period.
The composition of the network — predominantly free Black Bostonians — meant that the Railroad in this city drew on deep community ties and shared vulnerability. Participants risked not only legal penalties but physical danger in a period when the Fugitive Slave Act empowered federal authorities and slave catchers to pursue freedom seekers even in free states. The informal structure also meant that historical documentation of the network is incomplete; many participants left no written record, and the full scope of the city's role continues to be reconstructed by historians and heritage organizations.
Heritage and Commemoration
The Black Heritage Trail
The Black Heritage Trail is a walking route that covers fourteen stops across Beacon Hill, connecting sites of significance to Boston's free Black community and the Underground Railroad. The trail winds through the narrow streets of Beacon Hill in the shadow of the State House, preserving access to structures and locations that date to the antebellum period.[9] The Lewis Hayden House is among the trail's most historically significant stops, but the route also encompasses churches, schools, and residences that formed the broader infrastructure of Black life in antebellum Boston.
The trail is administered in partnership with the Museum of African American History and the National Park Service, and it represents one of the primary means by which Boston's Underground Railroad history is made accessible to the public.
The National Park Service's Role
The National Park Service has developed substantial programming around Boston's Underground Railroad history through the Boston African American National Historic Site. The NPS designates Boston as an Underground Railroad hub and offers both in-person and audio-guided tours of relevant sites.[10] These tours extend from Beacon Hill to Long Wharf, connecting the residential network of safe houses to the maritime geography of the harbor.
Connections to Harriet Tubman's Network
Boston's Underground Railroad history intersects with the broader network associated with Harriet Tubman, whose routes through Maryland and the Eastern Seaboard connected to sites as far north as Massachusetts. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad trail encompasses forty-five documented stops, including the Leverton House, a documented safe house, and the Linchester Mill.[11] While these specific Maryland sites are not located in Boston, they represent the southern end of the network whose northern terminus included Boston and other New England cities.
Legacy
Boston's Underground Railroad history occupies a complex place in the city's collective memory. The informal, community-based nature of the network means that much of the history was never formally documented by participants, and recovery of this history has required sustained work by historians, heritage organizations, and community advocates. The emphasis placed by programs such as the Black Heritage Trail and the NPS audio tour on centering the experiences of free Black Bostonians reflects an ongoing effort to accurately represent who built and maintained the network.
The physical sites that remain on Beacon Hill — including the Lewis Hayden House and the residences and meeting places of Smith Court — provide a material connection to this history that continues to attract scholars, students, and visitors. Boston's role as an Underground Railroad hub is now recognized as an integral part of the city's broader history, inseparable from the story of its Black community's resistance to slavery and its contribution to the movement for abolition.
See Also
- Black Heritage Trail
- Lewis Hayden House
- Boston African American National Historic Site
- Museum of African American History
- Shadrach Minkins
- Beacon Hill, Boston