Historic Resource Study Boston African American National Historic Site 31 December 2002 Kathryn Grover Janine V. da Silva Contents Acknowledgments 1 Executive Summary 3 Introduction 21 Historic Resources 42 1: Site of David Walker House 81 Joy Street 42 2: John T. Hilton House 73 Joy Street 45 3: Robert Roberts House 71 Joy Street 48 4: George Putnam / Robert Johnson House 69 Joy Street 51 5: Site of Coffin Pitts House 67 Joy Street 55 6: James Scott / William C. Nell House 3 Smith Court 61 7: George Washington House 5 Smith Court 67 8: Joseph Scarlett Tenant House 7 Smith Court 69 9: Holmes Alley House 7A Smith Court 70 10: William Henry / Joseph Scarlett House 2 Smith Court 71 11: African Meeting House 8 Smith Court 73 12: Abiel Smith School 46 Joy Street 79 13: George Middleton / Lewis Glapion House 5 Pinckney Street 82 14: Second Site of Home for Aged Colored Women 27 Myrtle Street 87 15: Second John P. Coburn House 2 Phillips Street 88 16: Site of Henry L. W. Thacker House 5 Phillips Street 92 17: First John P. Coburn House / Coburn Court 3 Coburn Court 94 18: Site of Twelfth Baptist Church 43-47 Phillips Street 96 19: Lewis Hayden House 66 Phillips Street 100 20: Site of John Sweat Rock House 81-83 Phillips Street 107 21: Thomas Paul House 36 West Cedar Street 115 22: Site of John A. Andrew House 110 Charles Street 116 23: Charles Street Meetinghouse / Charles Street AME Church 62-76 Charles Street 118 24: John J. Smith House 86 Pinckney Street 119 25: George and Susan Hillard House 62 Pinckney Street 121 26: Charles Sumner House 20 Hancock Street 125 Suggestions for Further Research 131 Notes 137 Annotated Bibliography 175 Appendix A: Site Descriptions and Chain of Title Appendix B: Maps of Boston’s West End Acknowledgments The research undergirding this historic resource study has been greatly aided by numerous people and institutions, but no one has been more critical to it than Michael P. Terranova, who lives on Joy Street in the John T. Hilton House. At literally a moment’s notice—at many moments’ notice—he has shared all of his research, gathered over years in tax records, deeds, and other sources about African Americans who have lived in the West End. His work is meticulous, detailed, and thoroughly documented. We can never adequately thank him for his unstinting assistance. We also wish to thank the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society for compiling the database Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800, built largely on the 125,000 index cards Annie Haven Thwing compiled during her research for her Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, published in 1920. The cards listed everything Thwing found in town and church records about residents of Boston between those years. Between 1993 and 1999 the historical society converted the cards to an electronic database and added another five thousand records for spouses, children, native Americans, and African Americans. The entire CD-ROM database was copublished with the New England Historical Genealogical Society in 2001. Terranova’s work, this database, and our own work in censuses, directories, and assessors’ records made it possible to assemble fairly detailed information on many West End residents. We have attempted in this study to synthesize this primary data with what other primary and reputable secondary sources reveal as we focus on the people who owned and occupied the homes and institutions on the north slope of Beacon Hill. BOAF HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY / 31 DECEMBER 2002 1 Others who were extremely helpful and generous with their time were Lorna Condon and Rebecca Aaronson at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities Library and Archives, Colleen Meagher of the Boston Landmarks Commission, Kristen Swett and David Nathan at the City of Boston Archives in Hyde Park, James Capobianco at the Massachusetts Archives, and Donald Yacovone at the Massachusetts Historical Society. BOAF HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY / 31 DECEMBER 2002 2 Executive Summary This Historic Resource Study presents detailed descriptions both of properties already included within Boston African American National Historic Site (BOAF) and of properties that, on the basis of their historical and architectural significance, we have judged worthy of inclusion in BOAF. These descriptions are preceded by an examination of how the neighborhood BOAF interprets evolved and a brief discussion of the people who lived within it. There are two appendices. The first is a set of architectural descriptions of sites accompanied by photographs and a chain of title; the second is a set of map reproductions illustrating the physical development of the West End of Boston between 1722 and 1884. The Griffin M. Hopkins Map of the City of Boston, and Its Environs (1874) has been marked to show both current and recommended BOAF sites. Two supplements to the study not included in the scope of work—biographical files of Boston’s African American population compiled from federal censuses, selected city directories, tax records, and primary or secondary sources examined in the course of this research; and a database in Microsoft Access that permits correlations of the data in the biographical files—have been completed and submitted separately. This Historic Resource Study was constrained from covering the entire period between 1797 and 1897 by several circumstances. In any project dealing with people of African descent, it is essential from the start to establish a solid demographic understanding of the population in order to deal sensibly, first, with sources that do not identify people by race and, second, with kin and friendship networks. On the north slope, a relatively small area in physical terms and so well demarcated in topographical terms, these networks seem to gain BOAF HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY / 31 DECEMBER 2002 3 greater significance. Because the Historic Resource Study was to be completed in one year, the authors needed to rely as much as possible on data collected by other institutions and individuals, yet the authors were unable within the crucial first seven months of the project to gain access to the three databases that had been compiled over the last three decades of people of color in Boston between 1790 and 1865.1 In the end, the authors compiled data from the federal censuses between 1790 and 1850 as well as from the city directories of 1813, 1816, 1820, 1823, 1827, 1830, 1833, 1836, 1841, 1847, and 1850. They collected data beyond these years for individual in current and recommended BOAF properties. They also compiled data from Boston city assessors’ records from 1835 to 1860 for Belknap and Southac Street properties and incorporated tax record information Michael Terranova had assembled for Belknap Street, Smith Court, and Holmes Alley properties from 1822 to 1849. This data is presented narratively under the relevant properties in this study, as well as in the biographical files in Word and WordPerfect and in the Access database. Because of the amount of demographic work that needed to be done simply to establish the contours of the African American population in the West End, this project was unable to proceed in demographic detail beyond 1860. Sources exist that have made it possible, however, to recommend certain post-1860 sites for inclusion in BOAF, in particular the site of the Home for Aged Colored Women (site 14) and the John J. Smith House (site 24). Sarah J. Shoenfeld’s recent publication of the records of application and admission to the Home for Aged Colored Women provides an important link between the antebellum and postbellum African American community in Boston, and the fact that the home operated within the community it was created to serve is a highly significant feature of its existence.2 The John J. Smith House on Pinckney Street BOAF HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY / 31 DECEMBER 2002 4 (site 24), in the process of being documented, is another site that bridges the half-century mark: it can be used to interpret a figure central both to the fugitive slave assistance, abolitionism, and school integration struggles of the pre-Civil War years and to the equal rights campaigns of the postwar decades. Still, because of the study’s general focus on the antebellum decades, it tends for the most part to place BOAF’s current and recommended sites within contexts particular to that time—the development of the African American community on the north slope of Beacon Hill, the growth of its political culture in general, its activism with respect to fugitive slave assistance specifically, and its inclinations with respect to integration and separatism. This last context had ramifications along the full spectrum of life. It affected North Slope residents on a global level in the colonization movement, both as colonization was encouraged and effected by people of African descent and by whites. It influenced their more everyday existence as well in the school integration struggles, which began as early as the 1780s and culminated with the legislative mandate of 1855. The question whether there could ever be, as the Quaker William Thornton phrased it in 1786, “a sincere union between the whites and the Negroes” provoked debate among both whites and African Americans. Just as some north slope African American families decided the question by resettling in Sierra Leone and Haiti before the Civil War, others—among them John T. Hilton, Anthony F. Clark, John T. Raymond, Henry Weeden, Joshua Bowen Smith, and Isaac and Charles Snowden—decided it by moving to Cambridge, where schools were already integrated. And even as William C. Nell had many supporters as he made his case for integrated institutions, so Thomas Paul Smith (like Nell once an apprentice in the Liberator office) had followers for his argument that African American children would receive better educations in classrooms with other African American children taught by African American instructors.