Charles Ellis

Quick Facts

Significance:

Merchant and banker, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee Member

Place of Birth:

Walpole, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 27, 1794

Place of Death:

Roxbury, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 9, 1860

Place of Burial:

Boston, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Forest Hills Cemetery

Merchant and banker Charles Ellis served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

Born in 1794 in Walpole, Massachusetts, Charles Ellis eventually moved to Roxbury and became a merchant. He married Martha Mayo in 1816 and had five children. In the early 1850s, he joined the board of directors at Howard Bank and eventually served as its president. He also became involved in the antislavery movement.¹

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Ellis and his son, Charles Mayo Ellis, joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. Records indicate that the elder Ellis made numerous donations to support the work of the Committee. For example, in 1858, Ellis contributed funds to purchase an artificial leg for freedom seeker Johnson H. Walker. Walker had escaped from Maryland but "had the misfortune to get one of his feet badly crushed under the wheel of a railroad car, on his way to the North, which ultimately had to be amputated."²

Ellis also served as one of the vice-presidents of the "Great Meeting in Faneuil Hall" called to protest the arrest of freedom seeker Anthony Burns. In 1859, he contributed funds to support the Vigilance Committee’s work in the "Hyannis case." Committee member and future governor John A. Andrew helped argue this case against the men who returned freedom seeker Columbus Jones, caught in Hyannis, Massachusetts, to slavery.³

Ellis died at age 69 at his home in Roxbury in 1860. One obituary remembered him as "a gentleman of rare intelligence, integrity and independence of mind" who "was highly esteemed by all."

His remains are buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.⁵

Footnotes

1. Ancestry.com. Geneanet Community Trees Index [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2022. Original data: Geneanet Community Trees Index. Paris, France: Geneanet.; "Howard Bank," Boston Evening Transcript, June 28, 1853, 2; "Death of Mr. Ellis," Boston Evening Transcript, January 10, 1860, 2; 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: Roxbury, Norfolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 330; Page: 165a, Source Information, Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA; "American Anti-Slavery Society," Liberator, February 25, 1858, 3.
2. Francis Jackson, 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, Internet Archive, 61; "A Situation Wanted," Liberator, November 19, 1858, 2.
3. The following broadside lists Ellis' address as 21 Old State House, the same address as his son. NPS maps geo-locate Ellis at the approximate location of this address. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Francis Jackson, Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of pages 7, 43, 61, 65 67, 81; "Great Meeting in Faneuil Hall," Liberator, June 2, 1854, 2; New York Tribune, November 18, 1859, 4.
4. "Death of Mr. Ellis," Boston Evening Transcript, January 10, 1860, 2.
5. "Charles Ellis," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed July, 2024.