Bela Marsh

Quick Facts

Significance:

Bookseller, Publisher, abolitionist, reformer, Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Hingham, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

1797

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 20, 1869

Place of Burial:

Hingham, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Hingham Cemetery

Boston bookseller and abolitionist Bela Marsh served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1797, Bela Marsh grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts. He later moved to Boston where he married Mary Beal in 1827. Together they had one son.¹

In Boston, Marsh ran a publishing and bookselling business. He operated his "Social Reform Bookstore" from the Anti-Slavery Office at 25 Cornhill Street. Marsh published and sold numerous reform tracts, abolitionist pamphlets and speeches, as well as The Narrative of Henry Watson, A Fugitive Slave.²

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Marsh joined with others at Faneuil Hall to create the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Though appointed to the committee at this meeting, Marsh’s specific contributions to the group remain unknown.³

Marsh passed away at the age of 71 in 1869. One obituary remembered him with:

He was for many years engaged in the business of publishing and selling books, and was widely known and highly respected. In his religious opinions he was a believer in Spiritualism, and always proved himself to be so liberal-minded, worthy, and honest a man, that any Society or party would have felt honored to have acknowledged him as a member.⁴

His remains are buried in Hingham Cemetery.⁵

Footnotes:

1. Ancestry.com. U.S., Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704-1930 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors. Original data: Newspapers and Periodicals. American Antiquarian Society, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M432; Residence Date: 1850; Home in 1850: Boston Ward 10, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 337; Page: 364b.
2. George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 227; “Books and Stationary,” Liberator, April 12, 1844; “Social Reform Bookstore,” Liberator, April 25, 1845, 4.
3. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; “Fugitive Slave Meeting in Faneuil Hall,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper (published as The North Star), October 24, 1850; Society, Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; “Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston” (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL), “Fugitive Slave Meeting in Faneuil Hall,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper (published as The North Star), October 24, 1850.
4. “Bela Marsh,” Boston Investigator, January 27, 1869, 6.
5. “Bela Marsh (1797-1869)," Find a Grave Memorial.