Last updated: September 16, 2025
Person
T.B. MacKay
Quick Facts
Significance:
Merchant, Boston Vigilance Committee member
Place of Birth:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
February 16, 1802
Place of Death:
Kittery Point, Maine
Date of Death:
August 12, 1884
Place of Burial:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Commission merchant T.B. MacKay served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.
In his Reminiscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, Austin Bearse listed T.B. MacKay as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. 1
Other committee records as well as the 1850 Boston City Directory list MacKay at 49 and 51 Pearl Street, working as a commission merchant. He lived nearby on Winter Street. According to the account book of Vigilance Committee treasurer Francis Jackson, MacKay donated money to the organization in 1851. Other than this donation, however, MacKay’s further contributions to the group remain unknown.2
T.B. MacKay may be the merchant Tristram Barnard MacKay, though other records place him in Concord, Massachusetts around the same time. It is possible, however, that he maintained two residences: one in Concord, and one in Boston.
Born in 1802, Tristram Barnard MacKay worked as a merchant and passed away in 1884 in Kittery Point, Maine. His remains are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.3
If you are a researcher or descendant of T.B. MacKay and can provide any further information on his work with the Boston Vigilance Committee or the larger Underground Railroad network, please e-mail us.
Footnotes:
- Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4.
- “Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston” (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL); George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 224; 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, 85.
- “Tristram Barnard MacKay (1802-1884),” Find a Grave Memorial; “Died,” Boston Daily Advertiser, August 15, 1884, 8; Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.. Original data: Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).