Joseph H. Putnam

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee member, hairdresser

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

1828

Place of Death:

Salem, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 20, 1859

Place of Burial:

Salem, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Harmony Grove Cemetery

A member of Salem’s free Black community, hairdresser Joseph H. Putnam fought for the abolition of slavery.

Born in Boston in 1828, Joseph H. Putnam lived and worked as a barber on Beacon Hill, as did his father George. Putnam participated in the Young Men’s Literary Society, an organization “composed of the most promising colored young men in the city of Boston, whose noble object is to improve their minds, strengthen their intellectual facilities, and cultivate a refined literary taste.”¹ Putnam attended their meetings at the African Meeting House with other members of the literary society like William Cooper Nell, Isaac H. Snowden, and William T. Raymond.²

However, after a few years of work as an assistant schoolteacher, Putnam left Boston for Salem. In 1846, he married Caroline Remond, a member of the prominent Remond family of Salem. Caroline worked as a wigmaker; she and Joseph then began pursuing a hairdressing and wig-making business together.³

While in Salem, the couple dedicated themselves to the abolitionist cause. Putnam worked closely with his brother-in-law Charles Lenox Remond, serving on the Executive Committee of the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society for many years.⁴

In 1850, Putnam served as a member of the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization created to aid freedom seekers coming to Boston on the Underground Railroad in the wake of a new Fugitive Slave Law. While Putnam appears on the committee’s membership list, his direct contributions to the organization remain unknown.⁵

Putnam died at only 31 years old. William Cooper Nell wrote in Putnam’s obituary in the Liberator: 

To the anti-slavery cause he gave an intelligent and unwavering support, being one of those model colored Americans, whose theory is hatred of oppression, and whose practice coincides therewith.⁶

Nell continued his kind remarks about Putnam, recognizing: 

He was an obedient son, an affectionate brother, a faithful husband, a kind father, and to his friends as steadfast as truth itself. His mission on earth was brief indeed, compared with the usual allotment of man; but he was diligent and progressive, and reaped the reward of well-doing.⁷

Putnam’s remains are interred in the Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts.⁸

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Footnotes

1. “Young Men’s Literary Society,” The Liberator, May 2, 1845, 3. 
2. Kori Lamontagne, “A Study of Black Intellectual and Literary Societies in Antebellum Boston,” accessed November 14, 2025, A Study of Black Intellectual and Literary Societies in Antebellum Boston; “Notice,” The Liberator, April 11, 1845, 3.  
3. “Married,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, October 8, 1846, 3; Dorothy Burnett Potter, “The Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth-Century Family Revisited,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society Annual Meeting, 1985, 491-491, 44539361.pdf 
4. “Essex County A.S. Society,” The Liberator, July 11, 1851, 3; “Essex County A.S. Society,” The Liberator, July 2, 1852, 3; “Annual Meeting of the Essex Co. A.S. Society,” The Liberator, July 12, 1850, 3; “Matters Pertaining to the Anti-Slavery Cause,” The Liberator, March 11, 1853, 3.  
5. Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 5. 
6. “Died,” The Liberator, January 28, 1859, 3. 
7. Ibid.
8. “Joseph H. Putnam,” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/256170741/joseph-h.-putnam.