Last updated: March 24, 2025
Person
Thomas Hunter
Quick Facts
Significance:
Paper Hanger, Painter, Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Bristol, Maine
Date of Birth:
July 2, 1814
Place of Death:
Shirleyville, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
May 7, 1892
Place of Burial:
Shirely, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Village Cemetery
Boston paper hanger Thomas Hunter served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.
Born in 1814, Thomas Hunter grew up in Bristol, Maine, before moving to Boston. By the early 1840s, he established a paper hanging business with E.A. Coleman in the city. In 1851, Hunter married Augusta Parsons and had three children with her over the next several years.1
In 1850, Hunter joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. Formed in response to the Fugitive Slave Law, the Boston Vigilance Committee assisted freedom seekers coming to Boston on the Underground Railroad. Other than his name and address appearing on the Vigilance Committee’s official broadside, Hunter’s contributions to the organization, and the larger Underground Railroad network, remain unknown.2
By 1852, Hunter and his family moved to Charlestown where he worked as painter and cooper. Later records indicate he also became a glazier while he continued to work as a paper hanger.3
Eventually, the family moved to Shirley, Massachusetts, where Hunter passed away in May 1892.4
His remains are buried in Village Cemetery in Shirley.5
If you are a researcher or descendant of Thomas Hunter and can provide any further evidence of his work in the Boston Vigilance Committee, or larger anti-slavery movement, please e-mail us.
Footnotes:
1. “Thomas Hunter,” Find a Grave Memorial, Hunter appears in the Boston City Directory as a paper hanger as early as 1843, in 1850 he boarded at the National House, and his business was located at 73 Union Street, according to George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 198. Henry Parsons, Parsons family : descendants of Cornet Joseph Parsons, Springfield, 1636--Northampton, 1655, (New York,Frank Allaben Genealogical Company, 1912), 237, Parsons family : descendants of Cornet Joseph Parsons, Springfield, 1636--Northampton, 1655 : Parsons, Henry, 1835- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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
3. Hunter is not listed in the Boston City Directory in 1851, but reappears as living in Charlestown, working as a painter and cooper in 1852. Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011., 471, Boston City Directory, 1878, Parsons, Parsons Family, 237
4. “Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 9, 1892, 4, “Shirley,” Fitchburg Sentinel, April 25, 1911, 4, Hunter appears in the Boston City Directory as late as 1890, indicating he likely moved to Shirley in 1891.
5. “Thomas Hunter,” Find a Grave Memorial