Ephraim Allen

Quick Facts

Significance:

Abolitionist, Merchant, Free Soil and Republican Party Activist

Place of Birth:

Sturbridge, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

April 9, 1789

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 15, 1869

Boston wool merchant Ephraim Allen participated in the anti-slavery movement for more than twenty years, including serving on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1789, Ephraim Allen spent his early years in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. He later moved to Waltham where he appears on an 1818 list of qualified voters. In Waltham, he began a business dealing in "clothing and woolen goods" first in partnership with Willard Adams and then on his own.¹ At present we know little more about Allen's early life and when he began his involvement in the anti-slavery movement.

The 1840s provide the first documented evidence of Allen's support of the movement. "Ephraim Allen, Waltham" appears on a list of donors to the 1841 New England Anti-Slavery Convention.² Allen also attended several of the town and county meetings organized by Massachusetts abolitionists to protest the 1842 arrest of freedom seeker George Latimer. The people chose Allen to represent Waltham at the Middlesex County Latimer Convention held in Concord, Massachusetts ten days later.³

Allen moved his business, now "E. Allen & Co., Foreign and Domestic Woolens and Tailor's Trimmings" to Milk Street, Boston in 1846.⁴ He changed his residence to Boston in 1847.⁵ In 1850, he joined the Boston Vigilance Committee.⁶ Abolitionists formed this third and final iteration of the Vigilance Committee to actively resist the new Fugitive Slave Law. This law empowered slave catchers to arrest and return suspected freedom seekers without due process and with the support of the federal government and other authorities. The Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer of the Boston Vigilance Committee documented Allen's fundraising for the cause. This same year, Allen presided over a mass meeting held on the Boston Common on April 5 to "devise all possible means of preventing the return" to slavery of Thomas Sims under that law.⁷

Allen may also have been active in other ways. In his Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave-Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse describes driving a freedom seeker from Boston "to Concord-- arriving about one o’clock. We drove directly to Mr. Allen's house, by agreement—he being one of the Vigilance Committee."⁸ We cannot confirm that this "Mr. Allen" and our "Ephraim Allen" are one and the same – but Ephraim is the only "Mr. Allen" documented on surviving Vigilance Committee membership lists. A likely possibility, at least.

Allen's anti-slavery views also influenced his politics. In 1848, he became one of the original members of the Massachusetts Free Soil Party, founded to oppose the extension of slavery into new American land.⁹ In 1854, he joined the new Republican Party. For more than a decade Allen served both parties, presiding over city and county meetings, representing Boston in state party conventions, and running for election to the state House of Representatives.

In one of his last public appearances Allen presided over an 1862 Faneuil Hall meeting celebrating the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. He helped lead attendees to declare "we rejoice, with unspeakable joy, that the cause of the country is now seen to be the cause of universal and impartial freedom; that Liberty and Union are henceforth made one and inseparable by the glorious proclamation of the 22nd of September… God bless Abraham Lincoln!"¹⁰

Ephraim Allen lived long enough to see the anti-slavery movement succeed with the ratification of the 13^th Amendment in 1865. Then, after more than twenty years active devotion to that cause, he died peacefully at his home in the South End on January 15, 1869.¹¹

Footnotes

1. The list of voters is found in "Voting List of Waltham in 1818," Waltham Sentinel, Waltham Massachussets, August 13, 1858, 1. The announcement of the dissolution of the firm of Allen & Adams of Waltham is found in "Dissolution of Copartnership," Columbian Sentinel, Boston, Massachusetts, January 10, 1821, 3. The description of Allen and Adams as dealers in clothing and woolen goods is found in "Retrospective," Waltham Sentinel, June 28, 1872, 2.
2. "Moneys Collected at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention," The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, June 11, 1841, 3. This is the earliest record I have found of Allen's anti-slavery activities.
3. He attended a December 10, 1842 meeting "of the people of Waltham" which unanimously declared slavery "a sin of the greatest magnitude, a violation both of the law of God and the inalienable rights of man." He also represented Waltham abolitionists at the Middlesex County Latimer Meeting held in Concord, Massachusetts twelve days later. "Latimer Meeting in Waltham," The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, December 23, 1842, 4. "Boston Business Cards," National Aegis, Worcester, Massachusetts, September 9, 1846, 3.
4. According to Boston City Directories, Allen resided at 69 Atkinson St. from 1847 to 1851, at 26 Harrison Ave. from 1859, and at 36 Chester Place in Boston's South End from 1851 to his death in 1869."Ephraim Allen & Co." remained on Milk St. until after Allen's retirement in 1855. National Park Service maps place Allen at 69 Atkinson St. Today, Atkinson Street is Congress St.
5. Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston, Printed by Warren Richardson, Boston, 1880, 3.
6. "Mass Meeting on the Common," The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, April 11, 1851, 3. Sims tragically was returned to slavery in 1851 but successfully escaped to freedom in Boston in 1863.
7. Bearse, Reminiscences, 39.
8. "Death of a Well-Known Citizen," Waltham Sentinel, January 22, 1869, 2. In 1852 the Massachusetts Free Soilers began to call themselves the "Free Democracy" or the "Free Democratic Party," most likely to express their broader opposition to the institution of slavery itself. Vigilance Committee members active in the Free Soil Party included John A. Andrew, Joel Bishop, Henry I. Bowditch, Anson Burlingame, William F. Channing, Richard Dana, Robert Morris, and Theodore Parker, among others. "Large Meeting in Faneuil Hall," Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, Massachusetts, October 6, 1862, 2.
9. He is buried next to his wife Mary Pierce Allen in the Grove Hill Cemetery in Waltham. Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167840167/ephraim-allen : accessed 13 September 2021), memorial page for Ephraim Allen (9 Apr 1789–15 Jan 1869), Find a Grave Memorial ID 167840167, citing Grove Hill Cemetery, Waltham, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA ; Maintained by spifftastic (contributor 48890417).