Person

Lewis E. Caswell

Gravestone with Lewis E Caswell's death date on it, as well as that of his wife's.
Lewis Caswell and his wife are buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

MarthaLI, Find A Grave

Quick Facts
Significance:
Minister, Boston City Missionary, Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Salem, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
1795
Place of Death:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
March 15, 1877
Place of Burial:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Mount Auburn Cemetery

City Missionary and Reverend Lewis E. Caswell assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1795, Lewis E. Caswell became a Baptist minister. He served as a pastor in New Hampshire before moving to Boston around 1847. Caswell worked as the City Missionary for the next thirty years, helping the impoverished and other underserved residents of Boston. He lived at 36 Leverett Street.1

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Caswell joined the newly revitalized Boston Vigilance Committee. In this capacity, he assisted many freedom seekers by securing passage for them to Canada. According to Francis Jackson's Treasurers Accounts Book, the Vigilance Committee reimbursed Caswell on April 18, 1851 for expenses related to the "passage of James H. Howard; Geo. Handy & James Handy to Canada.2 Later that month, the committee similarly reimbursed him for "sending a wounded Fugitive John Hatten to Canada."3 In May 1851, he secured "passage of 3 Fugitives to Canada H.J. Jones J Brown & Wife."4 A month later, records indicated reimbursement for "Hatton & Ringle fugitives" and "Mrs Ringle."5

These records likely detail just a small portion of the people helped by Caswell. In May 1851, fellow Vigilance Committee member Theodore Parker wrote:

One man, Mr. Caswell, the city missionary-has aided 93 to escape from the clutches of the kidnapper since last September, & has 8 or 10 more on his hands.6

Caswell died on March 15, 1877. One admirer remembered him, saying of this unsung hero:

He was a good man and especially kind to the poor. He was known' but little on the platform and in the pulpit, but his record was in the homes of woe and in the chambers of sickness.7

Caswell's remains are buried alongside his wife Betsey at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.8

Footnotes

  1. "Caswell, Lewis E.," McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia, accessed July 26, 2023, https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/C/caswell-lewis-e.html; "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 112. Due to massive building projects, Leverett Street no longer exists today, nor do the houses that once lined the street. NPS maps identify the approximate location of the home based on 1800s maps. 
  2. Francis Jackson, Treasurers Accounts Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, April 18, 1851, page 16.
  3. Francis Jackson, Treasurers Accounts Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, April 28, 1851, page 18.
  4. Francis Jackson, Treasurers Accounts Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, May 3, 1851, page 18.
  5. Francis Jackson, Treasurers Accounts Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, June 11, 1851, page 18 and June, 1854, page 20.
  6. Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 191.
  7. "Caswell, Lewis E.," McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia.
  8. "Lewis E. Caswell (1795-1877)," Find a Grave, accessed July 26, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142570053/lewis-e.-caswell.

Boston African American National Historic Site

Last updated: July 27, 2023