Cornelius Bramhall

Quick Facts

Significance:

Abolitionist, Merchant

Place of Birth:

Plymouth, MA

Date of Birth:

September 9, 1811

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Date of Death:

April 24, 1896

Place of Burial:

Cambridge, MA

Cemetery Name:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Cornelius Bramhall, a lawyer, merchant, and abolitionist, worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison as an active member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the 1850 Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1811 to Benjamin Bramhall and Priscila Burbank, Cornelius Bramhall grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as the youngest of twelve children.¹ Bramhall moved to Boston in the early 1830s, and married his wife, Ann Rebecca Reed, in 1834. He received a lawyer's education as a young man, and became a successful merchant. In 1845, Cornelius and Ann Rebecca Bramhall welcomed the birth of their daughter and only child, Marcia Warren Bramhall.²

Throughout his life, Bramhall owned several retail businesses. He first co-owned a dry goods store in Boston's Dock Square called Bramhall and Manley, established in 1838. Later, in 1846, he went into business with his brother-in-law, Franklin Reed.³ Together they operated a dry-goods store on Milk Street.

Cornelius and Ann Rebecca Bramhall shared a commitment to abolition work and became staunch supporters of William Lloyd Garrison. They became dues-paying members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1838, and continued their formal association with the American Anti-Slavery Society until 1864.⁴ Cornelius Bramhall held many leadership positions in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1843, he served as an Assistant Secretary and Vice President, and in 1845, meeting records list Bramhall among the Society's Legal Counsel and the Committee of Roll and Finance.⁵

Cornelius Bramhall’s name appears in connection to the Vigilance Committee of 1846 and the Vigilance Committee of 1850.⁶ Though appointed by his peers to serve in the 1846 Vigilance Committee, Bramhall ultimately declined to participate, possibly due to political differences with the group's founder, Samuel Gridley Howe.⁷ Two other men appointed to the 1846 Vigilance Committee refused to serve for similar reasons as well. When the Committee of 1850 formed following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Bramhall joined without reservation. Vigilance Committee account books list Bramhall as a financial contributor to the Committee's activities, though further details of his involvement are not specified.⁸

Cornelius Bramhall's abolition work in Boston came to an end in 1855, when he opened a business in New York manufacturing water heaters and kitchen stoves. Bramhall proceeded to auction off his home in Dorchester, and he and Ann Rebecca moved to Orange, New Jersey.⁹ Shortly after their move, Bramhall officially resigned his officer positions in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He joined the New York Anti-Slavery Society, where he served as Vice President and a member of the Executive Committee from 1856-1864.¹⁰

Letters between William Lloyd Garrison and Ann Rebecca Bramhall indicate frustration with life in New Jersey, which had a smaller abolitionist community.¹¹ The Bramhalls still found ways to stay active in the abolitionist movement despite its relative unpopularity in their new community. In 1859, after the John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Cornelius and Ann Rebecca Bramhall joined fellow New Jersey abolitionists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell in writing letters to the governor of Virginia. They hoped to recover the remains of any participants sentenced to death for their involvement in the raid who had no family to bury them.¹² In addition to these actions and their continuous involvement in the New York and American Anti-Slavery Societies, the Bramhalls regularly hosted fellow abolitionists in their New Jersey home.

Cornelius Bramhall died in 1896 in New York, two years after the passing of his wife. Both Cornelius and Ann Rebecca Bramhall are buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Footnotes:

1. New England Society of Orange, New Jersey, Constitution and Bylaws of the New England Society of Orange, New Jersey 28th Edition (New Jersey: The Chronicle Press, 1897), http://archive.org/details/yearbook02lcnewe.
2.  "Obituary 1 -- no Title," New York Times (1857-1922), Nov 22, 1894.
3. Stimpson’s Boston Directory (Boston: Stimpson & Clapp, 1846).
4. William Lloyd Garrison, The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 402, http://archive.org/details/lettersofwilliam0000garr_t0a7.
5. “Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,” The Liberator, January 31, 1845.
6. Boston Citizens, Samuel Gridley Howe, Address of the Committee Appointed by a Public Meeting, Held at Faneuil Hall, September 24, 1846 (Wentworth Press: 2019), 53; Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 3.
7. Conrad Edick Wright, Katheryn P. Viens, and Matthew Mason, ed., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 71. 
8. 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,11, archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/26/mode/2up.
9. “Auction Sales,” Boston Evening Transcript, April 18, 1856, https://www.newspapers.com/image/734929309/, Accessed July 16, 2022.
10. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at the Annual Meetings Held in 1854, 1855 & 1856 : With the Treasurer’s Reports and General Agent’s Annual Statements (Boston: Office of Massachusetts anti-slavery society, 1856), 65, http://archive.org/details/proceedingsofmas00mass_0.  
11. Garrison, The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 401.
12. Francis Garrison, “Address of Francis Garrison,” The Woman’s Journal: Vol 40 Iss 47, Nov 20, 1909, 188, http://archive.org/details/sim_the-womans-journal_1909-11-20_40_47.