Nathan Hersey

Quick Facts

Significance:

Carpenter, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

c. 1814

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

February 1898

Boston carpenter Nathan W. Hersey served in the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in Massachusetts around 1814, Nathan W. Hersey worked as a carpenter and lived with his wife Lucy on the North Russell Street in the West End of Boston.¹

In his memoir Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse listed Hersey as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. Formed in response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, this organization provided assistance to freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. Other than appearing on Bearse's list, however, Hersey's contributions to the Vigilance Committee, and larger Underground Railroad network, remain unknown.²

Hersey continued to live and work in Boston until his death in 1898.³

If you are a researcher or descendent of Nathan W. Hersey and can provide any further details of his life and work with the Vigilance Committee, please e-mail us.

Footnotes

1. NPS Maps place Nathan Hersey at the approximate location of his address at 17 North Russell Street. North Russell Street no longer exists due to urban renewel of the area. George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 187, Year: 1870; Census Place: Boston Ward 3, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: M593_642; Page: 148A, Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
2. Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4.
3. "Hersey," Boston Globe, February 10, 1898, 2.