Nathaniel Colver

Minister Nathaniel Colver

"Memoir of Reverend Nathaniel Colver, D.D. with Lectures, Plans of Sermons, etc.," Internet Archive.

Quick Facts

Significance:

Minister, abolitionist, reformer, member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Orwell, Vermont

Date of Birth:

May 10, 1794

Place of Death:

Chicago, Illinois

Date of Death:

September 25, 1870

Place of Burial:

Chicago, Illinois

Cemetery Name:

Oak Woods Cemetery

An ardent abolitionist and minister of Tremont Temple, Reverend Nathaniel Colver served in the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in Orwell, Vermont in 1794, Nathaniel Colver grew up in a large family. Shortly after his birth, Colver and his family moved to Champlain, New York and eventually ended up in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. As a young man, he briefly served in the war of 1812 before marrying his first wife and beginning a family. Following the war, Colver started working as a minister, first in Vermont and New York, then later in Boston, where he became the first minister of Tremont Temple in 1839.

Considered the first integrated church in America, Tremont Temple had free seating where "'men of all ranks, conditions, and complexions, are on an equality.'"¹ Under Colver's leadership, the church took a strong stance against slavery. Here, Colver helped found the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 and the American Baptist Free Mission Society in 1843.² He also used his standing and influence to assist those escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. For example, he organized a rally at Tremont Temple in support of an organization founded in 1841 to assist freedom seekers in the city.³ In 1842, he paid $400 to secure the release of George Latimer, a freedom seeker apprehended in Boston and held at the Leverett Street Jail.⁴

When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 took effect, Colver denounced it strongly in a sermon at his church. He used the Bible to attack slavery and urged that the law "should be abhorred and trampled under foot by every man."⁵ Furthermore, he stated:

That as disciples of Christ and members of his church, we ought not, we cannot, and as we fear God, we will not render obedience to the said law. We should regard it as practical atheism, for a moment to give it the supremacy over the law of God, with which it is at direct and manifest war.⁶

Colver practiced what he preached. He joined thousands of attendees at Faneuil Hall to decide what Boston's response would be to this new hated law. As the participants adopted resolutions towards the end of the meeting, Colver rose to speak. According to one historian, Colver knew how "to force people to make a choice by stating the alternatives in stark terms." He "spontaneously" proposed one additional resolution: "Constitution or no Constitution, law or no law, we will not allow a fugitive slave to be taken from Massachusetts."⁷ The crowd resoundingly answered "AYE!" In this meeting, Bostonians created their third and final Vigilance Committee to protect freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Colver eagerly joined this newly formed organization. 

According to Vigilance Committee treasurer Francis Jackson's account book, Colver raised money to support the organization's work. For example, in March 1851, he raised $24. In May 1851, he traveled to Pawtucket, Rhode Island and raised an addition $42. That same month, he also secured $37.50 from people in Boston and Lynn. In Spring 1851, Colver may have traveled to Canada on behalf of the group as Jackson recorded a $21 reimbursement to him for "expenses in Canada for Committee."⁸

In 1852, however, Colver left Boston to minister in South Abington, Massachusetts. In 1853, he moved to a church in Detroit, Michigan followed by one in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1856. Here, he continued to work on behalf of freedom seekers. In one sermon in Cincinnati, he once again argued that the Fugitive Slave Law violated the laws of God and should be disobeyed. Someone from the audience called out, "'That is nothing but rank reason!'" Colver stood tall, stared the man directly in face, and "in his most majestic tones," declared "'Treason to the devil is loyalty to God.'"⁹

Following his work in Cincinnati, Colver ministered in Chicago where he taught theology at the University of Chicago for the Baptist Union Theological Seminary. After the Civil War, he also established the Colored Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in the former Lumpkin's Jail, a notorious slave pen which once held the freedom seeker Anthony Burns.¹⁰

Colver died in Chicago on September 25, 1870. His remains are buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in the city.¹¹

Footnotes

1. Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (Penquin: New York, 2012), 97. NPS maps geo-locate Nathaniel Colver at the approximate location of 2 Province House Court, Boston, where he lived while serving as a minister at Tremont Temple. 
2. Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale: New Haven, 2016), 472.
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), 53.
4. Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom, 97 and Jesse Leonard Rosenberger, Through Three Centuries: Colver and Rosenberger, Lives and Times, 1620-1922 (Chicago University Press: Chicago, 1922), 56, Internet Archive.
5. Nathaniel Colver, The Fugitive Slave Bill; or,God’s laws paramount to the laws of men: A sermon preached on Sunday October 20, 1850, by Rev. Nathaniel Colver, pastor of the Tremont St. Church (J.M. Hewes and Company: Boston, 1850), 11, Library of Congress, accessed 2/28/2024.
6. Nathaniel Colver, The Fugitive Slave Bill, 2.
7. Grodzins, 67.
8. 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; March 19, 1851, April 26, 1851, May 1851, May 31, 1851, accessed 2/28/2024.
9. Justin Almerin Smith, D.D., Memoir of Reverend Nathaniel Colver, D.D. with Lectures, Plans of Sermons, etc. (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1873), 229, Internet Archive, Accessed 2/27/2024.
10. Aaron Lumpkin, "How a Jail Became a Seminary," Sola Ecclesia, March 28, 2022, accessed March 5, 2024, https://solaecclesia.org/articles/how-a-jail-became-a-seminary/. 
11. "Rev. Nathaniel Colver, Doctor of Divinity, Baptist Pastor," Historical Society of Clarendon Vermont, accessed March, 5, 2024. Many online sources mistakenly date Colver's death as December 25, 1870, however, newspapers across the country accurately confirmed his death on September 25, 1870. For a more in-depth look at his life and work see Justin Almerin Smith's Memoir of Reverend Nathaniel Colver, D.D. with Lectures, Plans of Sermons etc., and Jesse Leonard Rosenberger’s Through Three Centuries: Colver and Rosenberger, Lives and Times, 1620-1922, pages 23-127.