John Ayres

Quick Facts

Significance:

Abolitionist, Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

c. 1807

John Ayres participated as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization founded in 1850 in response to the passage of the new Fugitive Slave Law. Ayres and others in this group provided assistance to freedom seekers escaping enslavement on the Underground Railroad.

According to the 1850 census, a John Ayres lived in Ward 10 of Boston.¹ However, both the Boston City Directory and a donation record in the Boston Vigilance Committee Treasurer’s Account book record Ayres and his family living in West Newton as early as 1854.²

An 1850 Vigilance Committee broadside lists him as working at the Bank of Commerce on State Street.³ The same year, Ayres appeared in an ad in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, that called for a meeting against the new Fugitive Slave Law in Faneuil Hall.⁴

In subsequent years, his name regularly appears in calls to action in abolitionist articles and newspapers. For example, from 1859-1860, Ayres’ name appeared in The Liberator at least three times, each related to abolitionist causes. He served as a point of contact to collect donations for John Brown’s family after the raid on Harpers Ferry,⁵ he signed a call for the creation of an anti-slavery political party,⁶ and he acted as a reference for the fully integrated West Newton English and Classical school alongside William Lloyd Garrison.⁷

While further specifics of Ayres’ life are yet to be identified, his participation in the fight against slavery is apparent in what has been discovered so far.

If you are a researcher or descendant of John Ayres or can provide any further details about his life or abolitionist work please reach out to us at [e-mail].

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Footnotes:

1. United States Federal Government, “1850 United States Federal Census,” Massachusetts, Suffolk, Boston Ward 10, accessed October 2021 through Ancestry.com.
2. The Boston City Directory, 1854; 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, Archive.org.
3. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside by printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society.
4. “The Fugitive Slave Law,” The Liberator, October 18, 1850.
5. “John Brown’s Family,” The Liberator, December 23, 1859.
6. “Political Anti-Slavery Party,” The Liberator, May 18, 1860.
7. “West Newton English and Classical School,” The Liberator, September 14, 1860.