Enoch Lewis

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee

Enoch Lewis served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee. 

In his memoir, Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse recorded the name Enoch Lewis on his "Doorman's List" of members of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that aided freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. Among other duties, Bearse watched the door at committee meetings and only allowed known members to enter. Unfortunately, Bearse did not give any further information, such as an address, profession, or middle name, which hampers the search to clearly establish the identity of Enoch Lewis.¹

Fortunately, recently accessible records of the Vigilance Committee indicate Lewis’s address as “Fulton corner of Richmond St.” The Boston City Directory in 1851 and 1852 lists an Enoch Lewis working on Fulton Street at “J. Lewis Jr. and Bro.” Committee records also indicate that Lewis became a member in April 1851. Lewis’s further biographical information and any contributions to the Vigilance Committee, however, remain unknown.²

If you are a researcher or descendant of Enoch Lewis and can provide any further details of his life or work with the Vigilance Committee, please e-mail us.

Footnotes:

1. Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4, 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.
2. “Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston” (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL), 6, 16, Boston City Directory 1851, 152, Boston City Directory 1852, 156.