John R. Manley

Quick Facts

Significance:

Merchant, abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Dedham, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

October 22, 1809

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

April 18, 1870

Place of Burial:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Boston merchant and abolitionist John Reupeke Manley served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1809, John R. Manley spent his early years in Dedham, Massachusetts. As an adult, he moved to Boston where he established a dry goods business on Dock Square with his business partner Cornelius Bramhall. He married his wife Abigail Fenno in 1838 and had two children with her.¹

In addition to his work and family life, Manley also became involved in several reform movements, including temperance and abolition. In 1839, a mob attacked his store "for his warm defence of the Temperance cause." He also became a close associate of the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. Manley served as a long-time treasurer and clerk for Parker's Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. ²

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Manley joined Parker, his former business partner Bramhall, and others in forming the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad.³

Vigilance Committee records listed multiple donations by Manley to support the work of the organization. For example, in 1859, he donated funds towards the purchase of an artificial leg for Johnson H. Walker, a freedom seeker who "had the misfortune to get one of his feet badly crushed under the wheel of a railroad car, on his way to the North, which ultimately had to be amputated."⁴

Records also indicated reimbursements to Manley for providing clothes to freedom seekers including William H. Palmer, John Williams, and Wellington Davis. Manley also sheltered a freedom seeker in his home and helped "to secure her a safe flight to Canada."⁵

As his wife Abigail became increasingly invalid due to a long-term illness, Manley largely withdrew from the business world to care for her. However, he did remain active "in such affairs as claimed his attention." Manley continued his work in Parker's church, served on a committee to raise funds for the family of abolitionist John Brown, and supported the Free Soil, and later, Republican parties, both of which opposed the expansion of slavery.⁶

Widowed in 1862, Manley died from consumption in 1870. His remains are interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.⁷

Footnotes:

 

1. “John R. Manley,” Commonwealth, April 30 1870, 4; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 226; “Married,” Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, April 23, 1838, 2; “On Easter-Monday morning…” Commonwealth, April 23, 1870, 2.
2. “Death of Mr. John R. Manley,” Daily Evening Traveller, April 18, 1870, 2.
3.  “Fugitive Slave Meeting,” Boston Evening Transcript, October 15, 1850, 1; "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; 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, 9, 31, 58, 61, 62, 70.
4.  "A Situation Wanted," Liberator, November 19, 1858, 2.
5. “John R. Manley,” Commonwealth, April 30 1870, 4.
6. “A Manly Man,…” Springfield Daily Republican, April 20, 1870, 4; “John Brown’s Family,” Boston Evening Transcript, December 21, 1859, 2; “Death of Mr. John R. Manley,” Daily Evening Traveller, April 18, 1870, 2; “Base Ball,” Brooklyn Daily Times, April 27, 1870, 3.
7. “Death of Mr. John R. Manley,” Daily Evening Traveller, April 18, 1870, 2; “On Easter-Monday morning…” Commonwealth, April 23, 1870, 2; “John Reupeke Manley (1809-1870),” Find a Grave Memorial.