Site of William and Elizabeth Riley's House

The site of William and Elizabeth Riley's house is at 70 Phillips Street (formerly Southac Street).

NPS Photo/Pollock

Quick Facts

Location:

68-70 Phillips Street

Significance:

Served as a place of refuge for freedom seeker Shadrach Minkins.

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Residence

Clothing dealer William Riley and his wife Elizabeth owned and lived at 68 and 70 Southac (now Phillips) Street, the latter housing 1 Southac Court.¹

After William died in 1849, Elizabeth continued to live with her children at 70 Southac Street. In February 1851, she sheltered fugitive Shadrach Minkins in her attic following his rescue from the courthouse by Lewis Hayden and other Black Bostonians.² According to Hayden, when the rescue party arrived at Beacon Hill, he and Robert Morris, a Black attorney, "'escorted Shadrach away from the crowd' and 'safely lodged him in the attic of a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Riley, one of our race, whose fidelity and humanity we all fully confided in.'"³ Later that day, Hayden secretly moved Minkins out of the city and further on his way to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

By 1856, 1 Southac Court had become the residence of the famous freedom seeker Jane Johnson and her sons. Records indicate that she boarded the freedom seeker Carr in December 1857 at this home.⁴ Additionally, freedom seeker Lewis Howard lived at 1 Southac Court and 70 Southac Street in the late 1850s.

Newspaper clipping about Mrs. Riley. (Credit: Boston Globe, April 8, 1889)

Footnotes

1. Kathryn Grover and Janine V. Da Silva,"Historic Resource Study: Boston African American National Historic Site," Boston African American National Historic Site, (2002), 112.
2. Grover and Da Silva,"Historic Resource Study: Boston African American National Historic Site," 103-105.
3. Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 130.
4. Katherine E. Flynn, “Jane Johnson, Found! But Is She ‘Hannah Crafts’?” in In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on The Bondwoman’s Narrative, ed. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2004), 377; 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, 58, https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n57/mode/2up.