Richard Hildreth

Richard Hildreth: lawyer, writer, and historian.

"Cyclopedia of American Literature" by Evert A. Duyckinck, Internet Archive

Quick Facts

Significance:

Lawyer, Writer, Abolitionist, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee member

Place of Birth:

Deerfield, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 27, 1807

Place of Death:

Florence, Italy

Date of Death:

July 11, 1865

Place of Burial:

Florence, Italy

Cemetery Name:

Cimitero Acattollico

Lawyer, writer, and historian, Richard Hildreth served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1807, Richard Hildreth grew up in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire before entering Harvard College at age fifteen. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1826, Hildreth studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1830, he started a practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts, before moving to Boston to work in the city. He married Caroline Neagus in 1844 and soon after had a son.¹

In addition to his work as a lawyer, Hildreth became a prolific writer and historian, as well as an active abolitionist. He served as editor of the Boston Atlas and the temperance newsletter The Boston Spy. He wrote articles for such publications as Boston Magazine and New England Magazine. Longer works by Hildreth include Despotism in America: An Inquiry into the Nature, Results, and Legal Basis of the Slave-Holding System in the United States; The History of the United States of America; and the fictional Archy Moore, the White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive, one of the first anti-slavery novels.²

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Hildreth joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Vigilance Committee records indicate a payment to Hildreth of $100 in July 1851 for unspecified "law services." Given the timeframe and contemporary newspaper accounts, these services likely included his work with fellow committee member Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on the Thomas Sims case. Authorities arrested Sims under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law and returned him to slavery, despite the efforts of Bostonians, including Hildreth.³

In his final years, Hildreth served as Consul to Trieste, then a region of Austria. Following years of reoccurring ill-health, Hildreth passed away in 1865 at age 58 in Florence, Italy. His remains are buried there in Cimitero Acattollico, which, unintentionally, is also the final resting place of fellow Vigilance Committee member Theodore Parker.⁴

Footnotes

1. "Richard Hildreth (1807-1865)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed December 2024; "Death of Richard Hildreth, the Historian," The Buffalo Commercial, August 3, 1865, 2; Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook); "Death of Richard Hildreth," Liberator, August 4, 1865, 3.
2. "Death of Richard Hildreth, the Historian," The Buffalo Commercial, August 3, 1865, 2; "Circular, To Temperance Men," Liberator, March 6, 1840, 4; "Death of Richard Hildreth," Liberator, August 4, 1865, 3; "Hildreth, Richard," Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, accessed December 2024; Evert A. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American literature : embracing personal and critical notices of authors and selections from their writings : from the earliest period to the present day : with portraits, autographs, and other illustrations, (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1965), 298-301, Internet Archive.
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, 80; "The Fugitive Slave Case," Boston Evening Transcript, April 8, 1851, 2.  
4. "Richard Hildreth (1807-1865)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed December 2024.