Last updated: July 2, 2024
Person
Alfred Augustus Childs
Quick Facts
Significance:
Boston gilder and fine arts dealer, reformer, member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
June 9, 1815
Place of Death:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
October 10, 1884
Place of Burial:
Townsend, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Hillside Cemetery
A gilder by profession, Alfred Augustus Childs served in the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.
Born in 1815 in Boston, Alfred Augustus Childs worked as a gilder for many years in the city. He later became a fine arts dealer. He married Diana Spear in Townsend, Massachusetts in 1844, and together had several children.1
In his Reminisces of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse listed Childs as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which organized after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Other than appearing in Bearse's "Doorman's List," Childs' contributions to the Boston Vigilance Committee and the Underground Railroad at large remain unknown.2
However, looking at Childs' other activities sheds light on his possible motivations for joining the Vigilance Committee. He involved himself in anti-slavery political work, first as a member of the Free Soil party, then later in the Republican party. Both of these parties advocated for stopping the spread of slavery. Childs' anti-slavery work dovetailed with his involvement in other reform movements of the era, including temperance, his work with the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic's Association, as well as his participation in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.3
Childs died suddenly while eating at a Boston restaurant on the morning of October 10, 1884. His obituary stated that in addition to his longtime work as a "dealer in works of art," Childs had "been identified with many reform movements in this city. He was a Free Soiler, a strong advocate of temperance, and was prominent in religious affairs." His remains are buried in Hillside Cemetery in Townsend.4
If you are a descendant or research of Alfred A. Childs and can provide any further details of his work in the Vigilance Committee, please email us at e-mail us.
Footnotes
- Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 115, Boston Athenaeum; In 1850, Childs worked at 37 Washington Street, and lived at 62 Allen Street. NPS maps geolocate Childs at the approximate location of his work. "Alfred A Childs," Ancestry.com, 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch; "Diana C. Spear," Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1633-1850 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005, Ancestry.com. "Alfred Augustus Childs," FamilySearch.
- Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), page 3, Internet Archive; 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), 73, n.57. Childs does not appear in the official broadside listing member of the Boston Vigilance Committee but only in Bearse's roster, which Grodzin's notes as the “Doorman's List,” meaning Bearse watched the door of the committee meetings and would only let members in.
- Boston Evening Transcript, November 11, 1854, page 2; Boston Evening Transcript, August 10, 1877, page 2; Boston Globe, April 22, 1878, page 1; Boston Evening Transcript, June 30, 1876, page 1; Boston Evening Transcript, January 20, 1881, page 2.
- Boston Evening Transcript, October 10, 1884, page 1; "Alfred Augustus Childs," Find a Grave, accessed March, 2024.