Joseph Pratt

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee member, business owner

Place of Birth:

North Carver, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

September 2, 1814

Place of Death:

Quincy, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 25, 1888

Place of Burial:

Carver, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Union Cemetery

Business owner Joseph Pratt served as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born on September 2, 1814, in North Carver, Massachusetts, Joseph Pratt came to Boston to work in the iron manufacturing business. Pratt became a proprietor of an iron foundry firm called Bowers, Pratt, & Co. The firm sold items such as stoves and hollowware.¹

While running his business, Pratt also supported the local antislavery movement. Pratt donated to the “Chaplin Fund” in 1850 to provide legal aid for William Chaplin, a man arrested for aiding two freedom seekers in Washington, D.C.²

Additionally, following the passage of a new Fugitive Slave Law, Pratt joined the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee. The organization aided those seeking freedom from slavery as they came to Boston on the Underground Railroad. Like other businessmen in the organization, Pratt donated funds to support the committee’s efforts on two occasions in 1851.³

Pratt died in Quincy, Massachusetts on January 25, 1888. His remains are interred in his hometown of Carver, Massachusetts.⁴

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Footnotes

1. The Boston Directory, (Boston: Sampson & Murdock Company, 1850), 266; “Proprietors of the Roxbury Iron Foundry,” Boston Post, June 29, 1843, 1; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 26, 1888, 1. 
2. “Collections for the Chaplin Fund,” The Liberator, November 1, 1850, 3. 
3. Pratt is mapped at his approximate location, Suffolk Street opposite Blackstone Square, found on "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, 79, 83. 
4. “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 26, 1888, 1; “Joseph Pratt,” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133097272/joseph-pratt.