Ebenezer Hunt

Quick Facts

Significance:

Doctor, Abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Nashua, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

April 13, 1799

Place of Death:

Danvers, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

October 27, 1874

Place of Burial:

Danvers, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Walnut Grove Cemetery

Doctor and abolitionist Ebenezer Hunt likely served in the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

In his memoir, Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse recorded the name Ebenezer Hunt on his "Doorman's List" of members of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that aided freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. Among other duties, Bearse watched the door at committee meetings and only allowed known members to enter. Although Bearse did not give any further identifying information, the Ebenezer Hunt that he listed is most likely the doctor and abolitionist Ebenezer Hunt of Danvers, Massachusetts.¹

Born in 1799, Ebenezer Hunt grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. He attended Dartmouth Medical College, and following graduation in 1822, moved to Danversport, Massachusetts. He married Sarah Cheever in 1828 and had a daughter with her. Following Sarah's death, he married Elizabeth Smith Cheever and began a family with her. After Elizabeth's death, he married his third and final wife, Mary Page, in 1844.²

Among "the earliest and foremost in the temperance and anti-slavery movements," Hunt joined "an association of anti-slavery friends" based out of the neighborhood of Danversport, also known as "The Neck" or "New Mills." This group included future Vigilance Committee member Richard Hood as well. Hunt took part in numerous abolitionist meetings and organizations, and once ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts as a member of the Liberty Party, an abolitionist political party of the 1840s.³

According to Bearse, Hunt also joined the Boston Vigilance Committee in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Other than appearing on Bearse's "Doorman's List," however, Hunt's specific contributions to the organization and larger Underground Railroad network remain unknown. In 1851, however, Francis Jackson, the treasurer of the Vigilance Committee, recorded a donation by "Mrs. E Hunt," which may have been Hunt's wife, Mary Page, who, by one account, gave "the strength and grace of her womanhood to the service of the poor and the oppressed."⁴

During the Civil War, and well into his sixties, Hunt enlisted in the Eight Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry (100 Days, 1864) Militia in which he served as Assistant Surgeon.⁵

Hunt passed away in 1874. One account remembered him as "Radical in his views, gruff in manner, he was warm of heart and skillful in his profession, and will long be remembered as a useful citizen."⁶

His remains are interred in Walnut Grove Cemetery in Danvers.⁷

Footnotes

1. Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; Dean Grodzins, "Constitution or No Constitution, Law or No Law: The Boston Vigilance Committees, 1841-1861," in Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 73, n.57.

2. "Ebenezer Hunt, 1799-1874," Ancestry Trees, Ancestry.com, Accessed February 10, 2025.

3. Hamilton D. Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis and Co., 1888), 522, Internet Archive; A.P. Putman, "Old Anti-Slavery Days," (Danvers: Danvers Mirror Print, 1893), xii; "Anti-Slavery Address at the Convention of Universalists at Lynn, Mass," National Anti-Slavery Standard, January 20, 1842; "Proceedings of the N.E. Anti-Slavery Convention," Liberator, June 7, 1839, 2; "Address of the Liberty State Committee," Emancipator, August 12, 1846, 62; "State Election," Liberator, November 5, 1841, 3.
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, 7, https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up; William Siebert, The Underground Railroad in Massachusetts, 53, American Antiquarian Society.
5. Hamilton D. Hurd, 522, US, Adjutant General Military Records, 1631-1976, (Year 1866), p. 69, Accessed via Fold3.com February 10, 2025. 
6. Hamilton D. Hurd, 522.
7. "Dr, Ebenezer Hunt (1799-1874)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed February, 2025.