Enoch Lewis

Quick Facts

Significance:

Community leader, laborer, Boston Vigilance Committee

Date of Birth:

c. 1801

Place of Death:

Liberia

Date of Death:

c. 1859

Cambridge-based African American laborer and activist Enoch Lewis may have 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

Though several people with the same name lived in Massachusetts at this time, Enoch Lewis of Cambridge likely served on the Boston Vigilance Committee, given his proximity to the city and his family history of activism and community leadership. Lewis worked as the Superintendent of Rooms at Harvard University for four decades. Members of his family participated in the abolition and civil rights movement. His specific contributions to the Vigilance Committee, however, remain unknown.²

In 1858, Lewis organized and led the Cambridge Liberia Emigrant Association. This group intended to emigrate to Africa to: 

better the condition of ourselves and our prosperity… and like the Pilgrim Fathers, seek to establish the institutions of civil and religious liberty, the blessings of education, and the full enjoyment derived from mechanical, mercantile and agricultural pursuits, and permanently establish the high-minded and honorable Christian sentiments which actuate the freemen of our beloved Massachusetts.³

Though the association initially found success in Liberia, sickness soon "befell them and bore off one-third of the company," including Lewis and his wife.⁴

If you are a researcher or descendant of this Enoch Lewis, or a different Enoch Lewis who may have participated in the Boston Vigilance Committee, and can provide any further details related to his work with the group, 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. Longfellow-Washington Headquarters National Historic Site, “Though Dwelling in a Land of Freedom,” Though Dwelling in a Land of Freedom (U.S. National Park Service), Accessed 6/24/2025; John Ford, The Cambridge directory and almanac for 1850, (Cambridge: Chronicle Office, 1850), 42; Cambridge Historical Commission, Lewis Family Photographs, 2, fa_lewisfamily.pdf, Accessed 6/24/2025.
3. American Colonization Society, The African Repository (Washington: C. Alexander, 1858), 249-250, The African Repository, Internet Archive.
4.  "Unfortunate," Cincinnati Enquirer, September 27, 1859, 1; "A party of colored persons,” Liberator, October 7, 1859, 4.