Robert Apthorp

Quick Facts

Significance:

Lawyer, Real Estate Broker, Abolitionist, Social Reformer

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 20, 1811

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

February 10, 1882

A successful lawyer and real estate broker, Robert East Apthorp used his status to support several causes, including Boston’s abolitionist movement.¹

Born to Colonel John Threcothick Apthorp and Mary S. Foster, Robert joined one of Boston’s most highly regarded families.² He attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1844. In between Boston Latin and Harvard, Apthorp spent time in Europe for his health and married Elizabeth (Eliza) Hunt of Northampton in 1837. They had one son, William.³

Robert Apthorp supported the early abolitionist movement in Boston, becoming friends with William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Charles Sumner.⁴ His actions during the early years drew respect from these and other abolitionists. Wendell Phillips recalled a particular moment that spoke to Apthorp’s character:

While sitting, a dozen years before the Rebellion, in a Connecticut river railroad car, where every seat had at least one occupant, he saw a colored woman enter and sink timidly into the seat nearest the door, whose other occupant was a white man. With an insolent and vulgar outburst, meant to draw the notice of the whole car, the fellow flung himself instantly into another seat. While every eye was on the scene, Apthorp moved quietly forward and took his place at the woman’s side. It was a delicate attention that saved her feelings—a protest and example which, from one of his position and influence, was not easily forgotten.⁵

In 1850, newspaper records show that Robert Apthorp publicly supported political and social movements that targeted the end of slavery. During the October 1850 Faneuil Hall meeting that launched the third Boston Vigilance Committee, Robert Apthorp became appointed to the Committee of Safety.⁶ A month later, a Boston Evening Transcript article listed him as a Vice President of the local Free Soil party.⁷

As the Vigilance Committee took shape, Robert Apthorp joined the Finance Committee. Records indicate that Apthorp and other Finance Committee members gave Austin Bearse approval to collect money for the defense of Shadrach Minkins in 1851, and he co-signed Wendell Phillips’ bail bond following the rendition of Anthony Burns.⁸ The Vigilance Committee also refunded Apthorp for purchasing circulars to disperse among Massachusetts churches.⁹

During and after the U.S. Civil War, Robert Apthorp continued his successful career as a lawyer and real estate broker.¹⁰ He also became involved in several charitable causes. Apthorp served as a Trustee for the Perkins Institute for the Blind for many years, and he became president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children towards the end of his life. The Society remarked that Apthorp "always bestowed unflagging zeal and constant thought upon [the Society’s] minutest details, as well as upon its larger interests."¹¹

When Apthorp died unexpectedly on February 10, 1882, Wendell Phillips remembered him as a man with "generous sympathy and quick, nice sense of duty, fine tact, perfect simplicity, and the courage of his convictions."¹²

Footnotes:

1. Wendell Phillips, “Robert East Apthorp,” The Woman’s Journal 13, 7 (February 18, 1882), accessed October 2021, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:48880298$58i; Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records, 1620-1988, accessed September 2021 through Ancestry.com. Based on historical maps, Apthorp's house at 21 Rowe was located somewhere on this block. While Apthorp held several Boston addresses throughout his life, he lived at 21 Rowe in the early 1850s when he started his work with the Boston Vigilance Committee: 1850-1851 The Boston Directory (Boston, Sampson & Murdock Company), accessed October 2021 through HathiTrust, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000499337. 
2. Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1633-1850, accessed September 2021 through Ancestry.com; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, February 10, 1882.
3. U.S. School Catalogs, 1765-1935, American Antiquarian Society, accessed September 2021 through Ancestry.com; Phillips, “Robert East Apthorp,” The Woman’s Journal; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript; 1855–1865 Massachusetts State Census, New England Historic Genealogical Society, accessed September 2021 through Ancestry.com. 
4. Phillips, “Robert East Apthorp,” The Woman’s Journal; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript.
5. Phillips, “Robert East Apthorp,” The Woman’s Journal.
6. “Fugitive Slave Meeting,” Boston Evening Transcript, October 15, 1850; "Rocking of the Old Cradle of Liberty," The Liberator, October 18, 1850.
7. “Meeting of the Free Soilers,” Boston Evening Transcript, November 7, 1850.
8. “Arraignment of Wendell Phillips,” The Liberator, December 22, 1854. While Austin Bearse’s records show that a “W. E. Apthorp” signed the note in the 1851 Shadrach Minkins case, it is likely to have been Robert Apthorp, as he served on the Finance Committee at this time. See Austin Bearse, Reminisces of the Fugitive Slave Law Days (Warren Richardson, 1880), 6, 22, Archive.org. 
9. 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, 10, Archive.org.
10. “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript.
11. “The Late R. E. Apthorp,” Boston Evening Transcript, February 16, 1882; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript; Mortuary Notice in Boston Journal, February 10, 1882; Listed as a Trustee from at least 1871 to 1878 in Perkins Institute for the Blind, Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind to the Corporation (Boston: Wright and Potter), Archive.org.
12. Phillips, “Robert East Apthorp,” The Woman’s Journal.