George R. Russell

George R. Russell, trader and abolitionist.

Boston Athenaeum

Quick Facts

Significance:

Merchant, Trader, Philanthropist, Abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Providence, Rhode Island

Date of Birth:

May 5, 1800

Place of Death:

Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

August 5, 1866

Place of Burial:

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Forest Hills Cemetery

Boston merchant George R. Russell served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1800 in Providence, Rhode Island, George R. Russell attended Brown University and became a well-traveled and successful international merchant with his trading house Russell and Sturgis. He married Sarah P. Shaw in 1835 and had seven children with her. With his fortunes amassed early in life, Russell became a philanthropist and dedicated much of his time and resources to causes dear to him.¹

Drawn to the abolitionist movement, Russell donated heavily to various antislavery efforts. One account remembered him as:

one of the earliest, most clear-sighted and devoted of the political assailants of the Slave Power. In this warfare his zeal never flagged, and while his hope never failed, his vigilance never rested…

He funded an antislavery newspaper, The Massachusetts Abolitionist (1839-1841), edited by Elizur Wright. He also served on a committee to raise funds for the Free Soil settlers in Kansas, who hoped to establish a free state there. Later, during the Civil War, Russell donated money towards the recruitment of African Americans into the United States military.²

In 1850, Russell became an outspoken opponent of the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed enslavers to recapture freedom seekers with the full backing of the federal government. Protesting the law, he said:

How long shall a people, calling themselves free, bear these things? And will any thing arouse us to the conviction that this Republic is in reality the vilest oligarchy that ever polluted the earth? I have hoped that I should live to see that infamous law repealed, and those about us heartily ashamed of their connection with it…³

In this spirit, Russell joined the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. According to committee records, Russell gave sizable donations throughout the group's existence, including in October 1850, April 1855, and at other times to offset costs associated with specific fugitive legal cases.⁴

Following the arrest of freedom seeker Anthony Burns in 1854, Russell presided over a protest meeting held at Faneuil Hall. Addressing the crowd, he said:

Slavery… has thrown off the mask and avowed the object of making one great slave country here. We have yielded and yielded – until compromise has become concession, and concession has become a disgrace. The question arises whether the men of Boston, of New England, of Faneuil Hall, are slave catchers…This meeting has been called…to protest against this wrong, not to counsel violence or wrong, but to protest against this outrage. He (Russell) hoped to live and die in a free land; where the air of New England could only be breathed by free men, and wherein no slave should exist.⁵

This meeting ended abruptly when word reached the hall that a mob had attacked the courthouse nearby in an attempt to rescue Burns from custody.

Fortunately, Russell lived to see the end of slavery in the United States. When he died in 1866, one obituary stated of him:

Favored of fortune, the poor, the lowly, and the slave, yet found in him a constant friend. Those who served freedom when her service involved much social, and entire political proscription, will remember that it was his choice to stand up with them. For this, let the blessings of the enfranchised, now at last exulting in broken fetters, rest upon his grave. Such a life makes the world fairer and brighter, and human nature surer of ultimate perfection.⁶

His remains are interred in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.⁷

Footnotes:

1. "Death of George R. Russell," Providence Daily Journal, August 10, 1866, 2; Genealogy of That Branch of the Russell Family which Comprises the Descendants of John Russell of W, Source Information: Ancestry.com. North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016., 52; Albert von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 55.
2. "Acknowledgements," National Anti-Slavery Standard, January 30, 1845, 3; "Acknowledgements," National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 2, 1846, 3; "Hon. George R. Russell," National Anti-Slavery Standard, August 18, 1866, 2; "George R. Russell," (1800-1866), Find a Grave Memorial; "To The Public," Liberator, June 13, 1856, 3; "The $50,000 Movement," National Anti-Slavery Standard, August 22, 1863, 3.
3. "Letter from George R. Rusell, Esq.," Liberator, March 17, 1854, 3.
4. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; "Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston" (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL); Francis Jackson, 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, https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up, 7, 43, 67, 73.
5. "Right and Wrong in Boston," National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 3, 1854, 2.
6. "In Memoriam: George R. Russell," The Commonwealth, September 1, 1866, 4.
7. "George R. Russell," (1800-1866), Find a Grave Memorial.