David Howland

Quick Facts

Significance:

Merchant, Abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Barnstable, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 24, 1805

Place of Death:

Newton, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

September 9, 1886

Place of Burial:

Newton, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Newton Cemetery

Boston merchant David Howland served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1805, David Howland grew up in Barnstable, Massachusetts. He moved to Boston and worked in the ship chandlery business for nearly 30 years, providing equipment and supplies to ships. He married Rebecca Crocker in 1835 and began a family.¹

While in Boston, Howland became involved in the antislavery movement. Remembered as "one of the earliest abolitionists" who "was most ardent in the cause," Howland donated to various antislavery groups including the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society.²

In 1850, Howland also joined the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Records of the Vigilance Committee indicated several financial contributions from Howland to support the work of the group. For example, in 1851, he donated funds "for the defense of the rescuers of Shadrack." Though authorities arrested Shadrach Minkins in 1851, abolitionists quickly rescued him in a daring courthouse raid. Lawyers successfully defended all the accused rescuers in the months that followed.³

Howland ultimately moved to Newton, where he passed away in 1886. His remains are interred in Newton Cemetery. ⁴

Footnotes 

1. "David Howland," HDNA, Ancestry.com; "Married," Nantucket Inquirer, August 15, 1835, 3; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 196.
2. "Mortuary Notice," Boston Daily Journal, September 10, 1886, 1; "Donations," Liberator, February 8, 1856, 3; "Pledges," Liberator, August 11, 1854, 3; "American Anti-Slavery Society," National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 6, 1858, 3; "Subscription List," National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 4, 1865, 3.
3. "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; 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, pg 27, 45.
4. "David Howland (1805-1886)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed February 2025.