George Dodge

Quick Facts

Significance:

Mason, Member of 1846 and 1850 Boston Vigilance Committees

Place of Birth:

Francestown, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

January 26, 1817

Place of Death:

Dorchester, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

July 28, 1896

Boston mason George Dodge served in both the 1846 and 1850 Boston Vigilance Committees, organizations that assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

Born in Francestown, New Hampshire in 1817, George Dodge eventually moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts. He married his wife Sarah in 1844 and they had at least seven children. He became a mason by trade and ran his business at 23 Common Street in Boston.¹

In 1846, Bostonians gathered in Faneuil Hall to protest the capture and return of a freedom seeker named George from Louisiana. At this meeting, they created the second iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted those escaping slavery. Dodge joined with thirty nine others to form this committee with its stated goal "to baffle all future efforts of slave hunters on the soil of Massachusetts" and protect those seeking their freedom on the Underground Railroad.²

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Bostonians once again rallied at Faneuil Hall and created the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee. Dodge joined this committee as well, though his specific contributions to the organization remain unknown. His name and address appeared on the official broadside published by the Vigilance Committee. This inclusion showed his public support for the Committee's work on behalf of freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad.³

The only other uncovered evidence of Dodge's work in the antislavery movement so far is his participation in a meeting at Tremont Temple in 1848 to discuss the creation of an anti-slavery political party. At this meeting, he joined with future Vigilance Committee members John A. Andrew and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. as they and other speakers "devoted themselves to arguments against slavery, and to statements that its extension can only be prevented by opposition to the two parties which now enroll almost all the votes of the country."⁴

Dodge died in 1896. His family held his funeral at their 18 Harvard Street home in Dorchester.⁵

If you are a descendant or researcher of George Dodge and can provide any further details of his work in the Vigilance Committee, the Underground Railroad, or the larger anti-slavery movement, please e-mail us.

Footnotes

1. Year: 1870, Census Place: Boston Ward 16, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: M593_649; Page: 553B, Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line], Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch., Accessed 6/25/2024; 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: Dorchester, Norfolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 329; Page: 31a, Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch, Accessed 6/25/2024; Birth Certificates, 1631-1919, Archive: New Hampshire Department of State, Location: Concord, New Hampshire, Credit: The Original Document May Be Seen At the New Hampshire Department of State, Ancestry.com. New Hampshire, U.S., Birth Records, 1631-1920 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.; "Married," Boston Courier, August 19,1844, 4; George Adams, The Directory of the city of Boston : embracing the city record, a general directory of the citizens, and a special directory of trades, professions, &c., with an almanac from July 185, to July 1851., 139, Boston Athenaeum, Accessed 6/25/2024.
2. "The Late Slave Case," Boston Recorder, October 1, 1846, V. XXXI n40, 158.
3. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society.
4. "Third Party Meeting," Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, July 8, 1848, 2.
5. "Deaths," Boston Globe, July 29, 1896, 8.