Joel W. Lewis

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee member, blacksmith, businessowner, New England Freedom Association supporter

Place of Birth:

Sharon, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

circa 1808

Place of Death:

Chelsea, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

August 1, 1880

A businessowner in Beacon Hill’s free Black community, Joel W. Lewis committed himself to the antislavery cause.

Born to parents Job Lewis and Lucy Dyer, Joel W. Lewis grew up outside of Boston in Sharon, Massachusetts. Lewis’s father, Job, served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War prior to his birth. As a boy, Lewis “was very persevering in study.”¹ Lewis pursued training in skilled trades while continuing his academic education at Hosea Easton’s factory school in North Bridgewater, Massachusetts. There, he later worked as an apprentice at the only Black blacksmith firm in New England.²

Eventually, Lewis himself became a proprietor of a blacksmithing business in Boston. He successfully ran the business on Cambridge Street in Beacon Hill and employed both white and Black mechanics. A review in one newspaper considered Lewis a “master Blacksmith,” writing, “merchants, ship-owners and house-builders find him prompt and competent, in the various branches of his craft.”³

Additionally, Lewis ran a Genteel Boardinghouse with his sister, Catherine, as well as a Temperance Boardinghouse. Visitors remembered Lewis and his house fondly:

The Hospitality with which Mr. Lewis received us seemed to add a new zest to the delicacies of his table…We recommend strangers visiting the city to the house of Joel W. Lewis. He is a host whose easy manners cannot fail to strike every one agreeably, and his house is in a very pleasant situation.⁴

Beyond his businesses, Lewis grew involved in local societies as part of Beacon Hill’s free Black community. In 1833, he served as the first Vice President of the Boston Mutual Lyceum. A few years later, he led the Adelphic Union Library Association as its President.⁵ Both organizations provided fellow Black Bostonians the opportunity to debate, discuss literature, and hear lectures.

In Beacon Hill, Lewis also played an active role in Boston’s abolitionist movement. Primarily in the 1830s and 1840s, Lewis supported the cause through his participation and leadership in many organizations, committees, and conventions. For example, he sold tickets for the New England Freedom Association’s events and outspokenly supported William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator. Lewis served as a Chairman for the “Meeting of Colored Citizens” and also on the Business Committee for the Colored Citizens of Boston and Vicinity. Lewis, alongside other Bostonians, attended the National Reform Convention of the Colored Inhabitants of the United States in New Haven, Connecticut .⁶

Lewis also served as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.⁷ Bostonians founded this iteration of the Vigilance Committee in 1850 in response to the passage of the new Fugitive Slave Law. Those in the Vigilance Committee aided freedom seekers escaping enslavement on the Underground Railroad. While Lewis is listed on the membership roster, his direct contributions to the Committee remain unknown.

By 1850, Joel W. Lewis lived in Chelsea, Massachusetts, with his wife, Mary. Lewis continued his work as a blacksmith in Chelsea up until his death on August 1, 1880.⁸ 

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Footnotes

1. William Cooper Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, (Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855), 35.
2. George R. Price, "The Easton family of southeast Massachusetts: The dynamics surrounding five generations of human rights activism 1753—1935," (2006), Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers, 68, https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/9598; The Self Elevator, March 30, 1853, 3.
3. Liberator, January 27, 1854, 3.
4. Liberator, August 10, 1838, 3; Liberator, June 9, 1843, 4; Liberator, October 24, 1835, 4; Liberator, November 1, 1834, 4.
5. Liberator, February 26, 1841, 3; Liberator, December 25, 1840, 3; Liberator, September, 23, 1842, 3; Liberator, May 11, 1838, 2; Liberator, August 31, 1833, 3.
6. Liberator, July 10, 1840, 2; Liberator, May 22, 1840, 3; Liberator, May 5, 1843, 3; “Another Voice from the Colored Citizens of Boston,” Liberator, June 14, 1839, 3; Liberator, April 5, 1850, 3.
7. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society.
8. “Joel W. Lewis,” 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line], Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009, Images reproduced by FamilySearch; “Joel W. Lewis,” Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013, Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 - Ancestry.com.