Last updated: December 19, 2023
Person
Lemuel Capen
Quick Facts
Significance:
Minister, Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
November 25, 1788
Place of Death:
South Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
August 28, 1858
Place of Burial:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Mount Hope Cemetery
Reverend Lemuel Capen worked as a minister and participated in the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers coming through the city on the Underground Railroad.
Born in Dorchester in 1788, Lemuel Capen grew up in Boston and graduated Harvard College in 1810. He and his wife Mary Ann had nine children. He began his ministerial career at a church in Sterling, Massachusetts. In 1827, Capen began ministering at the Hawes Place Church in South Boston where he remained for the next twelve years. Following his time at the Hawes Place Church, Capen did not have "charge of any religious society," but preached occasionally as needed and once served as Minister at Large in Baltimore.1
Capen's contributions to the Vigilance Committee and the larger Underground Railroad are unknown. Although Capen's name did not appear on the 1850 broadside listing members of the Vigilance Committee, fellow committee member Austin Bearse included Capen in his list of members in his memoir Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave-Law Days in Boston. Historian Dean Grodzins refers to Bearse's list as the "Doorman's List." Among other things, Bearse often watched the door at any closed meetings of the Vigilance Committee and maintained a list of who would be allowed in.2
Looking at some of Capen's other activities and associates may provide a window into his motivations for joining the Vigilance Committee. His deep religious faith and work as a minister tending to the less fortunate may have influenced his commitment to alleviating the plight of the freedom seekers. He also became involved in local and state politics as a member of the Free Soil party, which dedicated itself to stopping the expansion of slavery.3 Several members of the Vigilance Committee, including future governor John Andrew, participated in the Free Soil party as well. Capen also participated in the Transcendental Club, a group made up of intellectuals and reformers including Ralph Waldo Emerson and future fellow Vigilance Committee member Theodore Parker.4 Furthermore, he lent early support to and even signed the original documents establishing Brook Farm, an experimental community inspired by Transcendentalism in West Roxbury. Despite his initial support, however, Capen did not ultimately join the group for the long term.5 Brook Farm drew many radical thinkers and had connections with other Vigilance Committee members as well, including William H. Channing and Bronson Alcott. 6
Capen died in South Boston in 1858. According to one obituary, Capen "was a gentleman of a most amiable disposition, was greatly beloved and respected; a worthy man, and devout Christian." His remains are buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in the city.7
If you are a descendent or researcher of Lewis Capen and can provide any further information of his involvement in the Vigilance Committee or the larger abolition movement, please reach out to us at boaf@Nps.gov.
Footnotes
- "Death of Rev. Lemuel Capen," Boston Evening Transcript, August 30 1858, page 4, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Genealogy and History Obituaries and Death Notices (genealogytrails.com); Christian Register, February 28, 1846, page 4
- Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), page 3 Reminiscences of fugitive-slave law days in Boston : Bearse, Austin, author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive page 3; 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), 73, n.57. In 1850, Lemuel Capen lived at the corner of K Street and Ninth Street, according to the 1850 Boston City Directory, page 44. NPS maps geo-locate Capen's address at the approximate location of this intersection, as it is unclear which corner Capen lived at.
- "Free Soil Rally in Chapman Hall," Emancipator and Republican, September 5, 1850, page 2; "Free Soil Nominations," Boston Evening Transcript, November 28 1848, page 2; "Free Soil Candidates for Representatives to the General Court," Boston Evening Transcript, November 7, 1848, page 2; "Boston Free Soil Representative Ticket," November 1 1849, page 2.
- Robert Murphy, "List of Brook Farm Members," West Roxbury Historical Society, from The Story Of Brook Farm – New Brook Farm, accessed December, 2023.
- Sterling Delano, Brook Farm : The Dark Side of Utopia (Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004) 45 and 69, Internet Archive.
- Robert Murphy, "List of Brook Farm Members;" Robert D. Richardson, Jr., "The Transcendental Club" from Emerson: The Mind on Fire, accessed December 18, 2023, https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/club.html.
- "Suffolk County, Massachusetts Obituaries and Death Notices," Massachusetts Genealogy Trails, accessed December 2023, https://genealogytrails.com/mass/suffolk/obits/obitsC.html; "Rev Lemuel Capen" Find A Grave, accessed December 2023, Find a Grave.