Home of Dr. Henry Bowditch

Bowditch's home once stood at the location of this building.

NPS Photo/Woods

Quick Facts

Location:

8 Otis Place

Significance:

First meeting place of 1846 Vigilance Committee

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Residence

Following the capture and return of the fugitive George in 1846, Bostonians formed a Vigilance Committee to protect those seeking freedom in the city. The committee met for the first time at the home of Dr. Henry Bowditch at 8 Otis Place on September 30, 1846. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe became its first president. This group resolved to aid freedom seekers “declaring it to be the first duty of all governments to guarantee the safety of every individual on their soil, and that the abduction of a man from Boston should be felt as an alarming menace to the safety and personal rights of every citizen.”¹ This short lived committee assisted seventeen freedom seekers between November 1846 and April 1847.²

Footnotes

1. William Siebert, "The Underground Railroad in Massachusetts," American Antiquarian Society (April, 1935) 40-41. https://ipswich.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/underground-railroad-massachusetts.pdf
2. 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).