Charles F. Hovey

Charles F. Hovey, abolitionist and merchant

The History of the House of Hovey, Internet Archive

Quick Facts

Significance:

Merchant, Abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committees

Place of Birth:

Brookfield, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 28, 1807

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

April 28, 1859

Place of Burial:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Cemetery Name:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Boston merchant and abolitionist Charles F. Hovey served in both the 1846 and 1850 Boston Vigilance Committees.

Born in 1807, Charles Fox Hovey spent his early years in and around Brookfield, Massachusetts. In 1837, he married Justine de Peyster in New York and soon began a family. By the early 1840s, Hovey established a wholesale dry goods business in Boston. He later opened C.F. Hovey and Company, a large scale department store in the city. He lived in Boston as well as in Gloucester, Massachusetts, for a time.¹

Hovey joined various reform movements including temperance, women's rights, and abolition. He made substantial donations to and served on many committees for abolitionist organizations such as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Anti-Slavery Society.²

Hovey also participated in Boston’s Underground Railroad network, serving on both the 1846 and 1850 Boston Vigilance Committees. These organizations provided much needed assistance to freedom seekers escaping slavery to Boston. For example, in 1858, Hovey donated to the Vigilance Committee to help purchase an artificial leg for freedom seeker Johnson H. Walker. Walker had escaped from Maryland but "had the misfortune to get one of his feet badly crushed under the wheel of a railroad car, on his way to the North, which ultimately had to be amputated." Following the attempted rescue of freedom seeker Anthony Burns in 1854, Hovey paid the $1500 bail for Martin Stowell, who had participated in the unsuccessful assault on the courthouse where authorities held Burns.³

After a brief illness, Hovey died unexpectedly in 1859, at age 52. He left a substantial endowment "for the promotion of the Anti-Slavery cause and other reforms." Fellow Vigilance Committee member Wendell Phillips managed this Hovey Fund, which paid out no less than $8000 a year to support the antislavery movement and other causes.⁴ 

His remains are interred at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.⁵

Footnotes

1. Tribute to the Memory of Charles F. Hovey, (1859), 1-2, Internet Archive; "Hovey, Charles," Fitz Henry Lane, accessed February 2025; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 194
2. "Treasurer's Report," Liberator, November 12, 1852, 3; "Eighteenth Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society," Liberator, May 21, 1852, 2; "Donations," Liberator, June 10, 1853, 3; "Pledges," Liberator, June 12, 1857, 3.
3. "A Voice From Faneuil Hall," Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, October 1, 1846, 2; "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; "Fugitive Slave Meeting," Boston Evening Transcript, October 15, 1850, 1; Francis Jackson, Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, Dr. Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History Archives,  https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up, 61; "A Situation Wanted," Liberator, November 19, 1858, 2; "Further Arraignments of Participants in the Burns Excitement," Liberator, December 8, 1854, 3.
4.  "Will of the Late C.F. Hovey,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 25, 1859, 1; "Hovey, Charles," Fitz Henry Lane, accessed February 2025.
5. "Charles Fox Hovey, (1807-1859)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed February 2025.