John C. Danforth

Quick Facts

Significance:

Lawyer, Member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Meredith, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

circa 1828

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

February 14, 1855

Place of Burial:

Boston, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Hope Cemetery

Lawyer John C. Danforth participated in the Boston Vigilance Committee of 1850.

Born in Meredith, New Hampshire in 1828, John C. Danforth worked as a lawyer in Boston. He opened a law practice at 51 Court Street with fellow attorney John C. Park, for whom he had previously worked as an office-boy.¹ He also served as an active member of the Universalist Church. Danforth created the Universalist Teachers' Union and served as a Director to the Young Men’s Christian Union, superintendent to the Fifth Universalist Sunday school, and president of the Massachusetts Sabbath School Association.² Additionally, he belonged to the City Guard and the fraternal organization, the Lodge of Odd Fellows.³

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, both Danforth and his law partner joined others by publicly calling for a meeting at Faneuil Hall “to consider the condition of the Fugitive Slaves and other colored persons of this city, under the new Fugitive Slave Law.”⁴ At this meeting, Bostonians created the third and final iteration of the Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. Danforth joined the Vigilance Committee and his name appeared on the “Members of the Committee of Vigilance” broadside published by the organization.⁵

In May 1854, slave catchers arrested Anthony Burns, a 20-year-old freedom seeker who escaped slavery in Virginia and sought refuge in Boston. On June 2, 1854, the federal government returned Burns to slavery. More than 50,000 people lined the streets to protest as authorities marched Burns, under heavy martial guard, to a waiting ship.⁶ Upon hearing the Court’s decision to send Burns back to slavery,”[t]he law office of John C. Park and John C. Danforth, on Court square, immediately in front of the Court-house door, was draped from its windows with black.”⁷ Other lawyers and merchants in the area quickly followed their example. In addition to drapes, protesting abolitionists strung up a coffin over the street with the word "Liberty" inscribed on it, signifying a funeral procession.⁸

Upon Danforth’s untimely death from tuberculosis in 1855, Reverend Otis A. Skinner of the Fifth Universalist Church delivered the sermon, “The Christian Lawyer.” He spoke about Danforth’s commitment to his faith and to the freedom and prosperity of all: 

Take, for instance, his broad love for the world, a love that embraced in its aims and desires the entire race, and that prayed to see the fetter broke from the bondman, and the veil lifted from the ignorant, and the most distant wanderer brought back to the fold of the Saviour.⁹

Though initial interred in the South Burial Ground in 1855, his remains moved to Mount Hope Cemetery in 1864.¹⁰

If you are a researcher or descendent of John C. Danforth and can provide any further details about his work on the Boston Vigilance Committee or the Underground Railroad, please reach out to us at e-mail us.

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Footnotes

1. NPS Maps geo-locate Danforth at the approximate location of his law office at 51 Court Street. The Boston City Directory, 1849-1850.; Skinner, Otis A., “The Christian Lawyer.” A Sermon Delivered in the Fifth Universalist Church in Boston, February 18, 1855, at the Funeral of John C. Danforth, who died February 14, 1855. (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1855), 28.
2. Boston Courier, May 31, 1855, 2; The Monthly Religious Magazine, April 1852, 190; Boston Evening Transcript, February 19, 1855, 2; The Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, June 9, 1855, 2.
3. Boston Evening Transcript, February 19, 1855, 2.
4. Liberator, October 18, 1850, 2.
5. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society.
6. “‘God made me a man- not a slave’: The Arrest of Anthony Burns,” U.S. National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/-god-made-me-a-man-not-a-slave-the-arrest-of-anthony-burns.htm.
7. Parker, Theodore, Newspaper Clippings, 1854-1858. Boston Public Library, https://archive.org/details/newspaperclippin00park/page/n77/mode/2up?q=%22john+c+danforth%22
8. Liberator, June 9, 1854, 3.
9. Skinner, Otis A., “The Christian Lawyer.” A Sermon Delivered in the Fifth Universalist Church in Boston, February 18, 1855, at the Funeral of John C. Danforth, who died February 14, 1855. (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1855), 17.
10. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.