John Gove

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston clothing merchant, abolitionist, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee member

Place of Birth:

Lincoln, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

July 3, 1801

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

May 21, 1871

Place of Burial:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Boston clothing merchant and abolitionist John Gove served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 1801, Gove eventually moved to Boston where he established a successfully wholesale clothing business, John Gove & Company. He married Mary Burgess in 1826 and had seven children.¹

In the 1830s, Gove became involved in the city's growing abolition movement. He served as Treasurer of the Massachusetts Abolition Society. An active Methodist, he served on the church's antislavery committee. He also involved himself in antislavery politics as an early member of the Free Soil and, later, Republican parties that opposed the spread of slavery in the country.²

In keeping with his abolitionist beliefs, Gove worked to help those escaping slavery. In 1841, he served as a witness against Benjamin Harris whom authorities charged with "confining and kidnapping a colored man named John Torrance." Torrance escaped slavery by stowing himself on a northbound ship that Harris worked on. Once in Boston Harbor, Torrance attempted to escape by leaping from the ship, but the crew soon recovered him, held him captive, and returned him to the South. This incident led to the creation of Boston's first Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers.³

Gove also contributed the Chaplin fund to help defray the legal costs of William L. Chaplin, arrested for helping two freedom seekers attempt to escape from Washington, D.C.⁴

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Gove and others gathered at Faneuil Hall to plan their collective response. At this meeting, participants created the third and final Boston Vigilance Committee and appointed Gove as one of its members. Committee records indicate several financial contributions from Gove to support the organization’s work helping those escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.⁵

In addition to his abolitionist work, Gove involved himself in other reform movements and charitable endeavors. For example, he supported the temperance movement and served as a trustee of Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut.⁶

Remembered as an "enterprising and esteemed citizen," Gove passed away in 1871. His remains are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.⁷

Footnotes

1. "John Gove," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed August, 2024; William Henry Gove, The Gove book; history and genealogy of the American family of Gove, and notes of European Goves, (Salem: S. Perley, 1922), 164, Internet Archive; "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society. NPS maps geo-locate John Gove at the approximate location of his business on the corner of Ann Street and Barrett Street in 1850 (as stated on the broadside). 
2. "Massachusetts Abolition Society," Boston Courier, August 30, 1850, 2; "New England Methodist Anti-Slavery Convention," Liberator, December 7, 1838, 3; "Free Soil Meeting," Boston Evening Transcript, November 9, 1849, 2; "Free Soil Candidates for Representatives to the General Court," Boston Evening Transcript, November 7, 1848, 2; "Republican Caucus," Boston Evening Transcript, October 9, 1855, 1.
3. "Police Court – Saturday," Boston Post, June, 7, 1841, 2; "Extraordinary Case of Kidnapping!," Liberator, June 11, 1841, 2; Dean Grodzins, "Constitution or No Constitution, Law or No Law: The Boston Vigilance Committees, 1841-1861," in Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 51-54.
4. "Collections," Liberator, October 4, 1850, 3; The case of William L. Chaplin: being an appeal to all respecters of law and justice, against the cruel and oppressive treatment to which, under color of legal proceedings, he has been subjected, in the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland (Boston: Published by the Chaplin Committee, 1851), Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/06043475/.
5. "Fugitive Slave Meeting," Daily Evening Transcript, October 15, 1850, 1; "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; 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, page 45, 75 (November 1851, and June 1855).
6. "Massachusetts State Temperance Convention," New England Farmer, September 20, 1851; William Henry Gove, The Gove book, 164.
7. Boston Evening Transcript, May 22, 1871, 2; "John Gove," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed August, 2024.