Last updated: July 15, 2025
Person
Charles B. Adams
Quick Facts
Significance:
Member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Unknown
Date of Birth:
Unknown
Place of Death:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
1875
Boston merchant Charles B. Adams served as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee.1
Little is known about Charles B. Adams other than that he worked as a merchant and lived at 379 1/2 Washington Street.2
In 1850, he joined the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization founded in response to the passage of the new Fugitive Slave Law. This controversial law empowered enslavers and their agents to capture and return freedom seekers to bondage with the full backing of the federal government. It also mandated the assistance of local and state officials and the public at large. The Vigilance Committee provided funds, shelter, transportation, medical attention, and other assistance to freedom seekers escaping enslavement on the Underground Railroad. Adams' specific contributions to the organization, however, remain unknown.
Adams also participated in the Free Soil Party, a political group dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery. According to a November 17, 1851 Boston Daily Mail article, Charlotte M. Adams, a dressmaker, reported that her husband "Mr. Charles B. Adams of No 379 1-2 Washington street, left home last evening, about quarter past 6 o'clock for the purpose of attending a meeting of the Free Soil party, and has not been heard of since."3
Adams eventually made his way home following the Freedom Soil Party meeting. City Directory Records from 1853 show him and Charlotte living at 300 Washington Street.4 He lived until 1875 and left his estate to Charlotte, his wife of nearly thirty years. His obituary referred to him as "one of the old merchants of Boston," but mentioned nothing of his political affiliations or work with the Vigilance Committee.5
If you are a researcher or descendent of Charles B. Adams or can provide any further details of his work with the Vigilance Committee or the larger Underground Railroad network, please e-mail us.
Footnotes
- Austin Bearse, Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days (Warren Richardson, 1880), 3, Archive.org.
- “Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston” (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL).
- News Article," Boston Daily Mail, November 17, 1851, GenealogyBank.
- "Boston Directory, 1853 (Boston: Published by George Adams, 1853), Boston Athenaeum, 48.
- Boston Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1875