Joseph Cutler Bruce

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

January 7, 1831

Place of Death:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

June 23, 1897

According to an 1850 broadside, Joseph C. Bruce served on the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

Although Austin Bearse recorded Jeptha C. Bruce as a member of the Vigilance Committee in his 1880 memoir, he likely misremembered or conflated two different people with similar names. In the 1850 "Members of the Committee of Vigilance" broadside, Joseph C. Bruce, not Jeptha C. Bruce, is listed along with his business address of 34 Pearl Street. According to other records from 1850, the year the Vigilance Committee began, Jeptha C. Bruce operated a hat company in Dock Square, whereas nineteen year-old Joseph C. Bruce worked as a clerk on Pearl Street and resided at home with his family in Cambridgeport.¹

Born in 1831, Joseph Cutler Bruce grew up and lived in Cambridge. Numerous records list him working as a clerk or bookkeeper. There are very few newspapers accounts of Bruce discovered so far. For example, newspapers reported he served as Secretary in the Republican ward meetings in Cambridge in 1861 and worked as an Assistant Accessor for the Fourth Congressional District in Cambridgeport in 1869. Several members of the Vigilance Committee, including future Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew, participated in the Republican party, which, in part, dedicated itself to anti-slavery principles. None of the records found to date shed any light on his contributions to the Vigilance Committee or Underground Railroad. He died of heart disease in June 1897.²

If you are a researcher or descendent of Joseph Cutler Bruce or can provide any further details of his participation in the Vigilance Committee, please reach out to us at [e-mail].

Footnotes

1. Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 3; "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, page 102 https://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/digital/collection/p16057coll32/id/42/; Federal Census, 1850, The National Archives in Washington D.C.; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M432; Residence Date: 1850; Home in 1850: Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts; Roll: 325; Page: 32b, 1850 United States Federal Census - Ancestry.com. All NPS maps geo-locate Joseph C. Butler at the approximate 1850 location of 34 Pearl Street in Boston.
2. New England Historical Genealogical Society; Boston, Massachusetts; Massachusetts Vitals to 1850, Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850 - Ancestry.com, Cambridge City Directory, 1877, Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850 - Ancestry.com; Boston Morning Journal, November 26, 1861; Boston Herald, January 26, 1869, page 4; New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 - Ancestry.com; Boston Evening Journal, June 24, 1897