Last updated: October 31, 2023
Person
Lorenzo G. Chase
Quick Facts
Significance:
Daguerreotypist, Member of Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
New Hampshire
Date of Birth:
c. 1822
Place of Death:
St. Louis, Missouri
Date of Death:
1860
Place of Burial:
New Hampshire
Cemetery Name:
Kensington Cemetery
A prominent daguerreotypist in Boston, Lorenzo G. Chase served in the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.
Born in New Hampshire, Lorenzo G. Chase moved to Boston by the early 1840s. He married Judith Shaw in 1845, and the couple soon welcomed their son Sidney. By the mid-1840s, Chase established a successful daguerreotype studio on Washington Street. Confidant in his abilities as a daguerreotypist, he claimed "If better likenesses can be produced than I can take, mine will be given gratis." By the early 1850s, he advertised that his studio had "executed 40,000 Likenessess."1
In his Reminisces of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse listed Chase in his roster of Vigilance Committee members. Chase is also among the Bostonians who called for the public meeting at Faneuil Hall in response to the Fugitive Slave Law, which resulted in the formation of the third and final Vigilance Committee in the city.2 Further evidence of his contributions to the Vigilance Committee have yet to be uncovered.
However, Chase's contribution to the larger abolition movement can be seen in some of his work as a daguerreotypist. For example, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society hired Chase to create a daguerreotype of the noted freedom seeker William Wells Brown. A local artist then used Chase's daguerreotype to create the image that served as the frontispiece to The Narrative of William Wells Brown: A Fugitive Slave. Some historians suggest that Chase may have also been hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to create a daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass used to create the frontispiece of his hugely successful Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.3
Additionally, in the fall of 1850, Chase began The Daguerreotype, a small weekly paper that promised to be "liberal, independent, and courteous in its tone." Among other topics, this paper provided a forum for those opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law. For example, Chase's colleague Charles Stearns addressed the notorious law in one of the early editions of the paper. Stearns said in a contemporary editorial:
if the slave hunter attempts to carry off his victim, I should repeat my call in the Sunday News to the friends of freedom to arouse and prevent that slave from being returned to slavery. My plan of procedure in such a case, is fully explained in the 2d No. of the Daguerreotype, published at 247 Washington Street, by Mr. L.G. Chase...4
By 1852, Chase briefly moved to California where he continued to work as a daguerreotypist. He returned to Boston shortly afterwards and worked in the business until at least 1856. Though we do not yet know his whereabouts in the later years of the decade, by 1860, Chase had moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he worked as a clerk and reporter. He died there that year of bilious typhoid fever. Though records indicate his burial in Wesleyan Cemetery in St. Louis, it appears that his remains eventually made their way to Kensington Cemetery in New Hampshire where the remains of his wife are buried as well.5
If you are a descendant or researcher of Lorenzo G. Chase and can provide any further details of his life and work in the Vigilance Committee or the larger abolition movement, please reach out to us at boaf@nps.gov.
Footnotes
- 1850 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com; "Stimpson's Boston directory" (1842), Internet Archive, 130. This directory lists Chase as a mason living at 20 Orange Street. Boston Evening Transcript, May 12, 1851, 3; "The Boston Directory for the Year 1852," Internet Archive, page 35 of Advertising Department. All sources accessed 10/25/2023. The 1850-1851 City Directory identifies Chase's address as 3 Groton Street. NPS maps geolocate Chase at the approximate location of this address. The historical location of Groton Street is Peters Park today.
- Austin Bearse, Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days (Warren Richardson, 1880), 3; Liberator, October 18, 1850, 2.
- Celeste-Marie Bernier, John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American (Liveright: 2018), 78-79, Google Books, Accessed 10/24/2023.
- Boston Investigator, October 16, 1850; Boston Investigator, November 20, 1850. We are currently still looking for digital or hard copies of The Daguerreotype to examine any further connections between Chase and the abolition movement and Underground Railroad.
- Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 174; Missouri, U.S., Death Records, 1850-1931, Ancestry.com; 1860 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com; 1860 City Directory (wustl.edu), 100; "Lorenzo G. Chase (unknown-1860)," Find a Grave Memorial. All sources accessed on 10/25/2023.