Peter Kimball

Quick Facts

Significance:

Member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee

Peter Kimball served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee. 

In October 1850, Peter Kimball joined with many others calling for a public meeting at Faneuil Hall to protest the recently enacted Fugitive Slave Law. At this meeting, participants formed the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that assisted freedom seekers coming to Boston on the Underground Railroad. According to the published membership list, Peter Kimball served on the Boston Vigilance Committee.¹

On the membership list, Kimball's address is simply listed as Charlestown, a town adjacent to and later annexed by the City of Boston. Unfortunately, lack of any further details inhibits the ability to establish a clear identity and any biographical information for Kimball and his contributions to the Vigilance Committee.

The 1850 Boston City Directory lists two Peter Kimballs. One worked at 561 Washington Street, the other worked at 110 Commercial Street and lived in East Boston. An 1860 record lists a 30-year-old Peter Kimball living in Charlestown and working as a teamster. Other historical records during this period list a Peter Kimball in places such as New Hampshire and Maine. Newspaper records indicate a Peter Kimball supported the Free Soil party in the 1840s, and later the Republican Party in the mid-1850s.²

While the identity of Peter Kimball has yet to be confirmed, he either lived or worked locally in Charlestown around the time of the creation of the Vigilance Committee in 1850. 

If you are a researcher or descendant of Peter Kimball of Charlestown, and can provide any further details of his life and work with Boston Vigilance Committee, please e-mail us. 

Footnotes:

1. Liberator, October 18, 1850, 2, "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4.
2. 1849-1850 Boston City Directory, The Boston directory [1849-1850], Internet Archive; 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch, 1860 United States Federal Census - Ancestry.com; "Free Soil Caucus," Boston Daily Republican, August 31, 1848, 2; "Free Soil in Boston," Daily Chronotype, August 31, 1848, 2; "Ward Seven," Boston Evening Transcript, November 5, 1855, 2.