William Hamlet

Quick Facts

Significance:

Printer, Member of Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Dracut, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

October 31, 1823

Place of Death:

Washington, DC

Date of Death:

June 27, 1873

Place of Burial:

Manchester, New Hampshire

Cemetery Name:

Valley Cemetery

Boston printer and publisher William Hamlet served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1823 in Dracut, Massachusetts, William Hamlet and the details of his life remain largely elusive. Though he worked for a long time as a publisher, his name rarely appeared in print in the newspapers and other historical records of the time. 

He married Mary Ann Wood in 1845. After her death, he married Sarah Stebbing and had two daughters, Harriet and Nellie.¹

In the 1840s, he worked in the firm of Bailey, Hamlet, and Company, which published the Boston Daily Sun. By 1849, Hamlet worked in the office of the Boston Directory, headed by George Adams.²

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, both Hamlet and Adams joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. Though Hamlet’s specific contributions to the organization remain unknown, the Vigilance Committee provide valuable assistance to freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.³

In the 1850s, Hamlet participated in the American, or Know-Nothing party. Though a party that coalesced largely around anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments, the Know-Nothing party formed alliances with antislavery advocates in Massachusetts and held power in the state for a brief time.⁴

Towards the end of the decade, Hamlet and his family moved to Chelsea, just outside of the city, and he established another publishing firm, Hamlet and Lingham.⁵

By 1870, however, Hamlet had changed cities and professions. Census records place him in Washington, D.C. along with his wife Sarah, and two daughters. During the 1860s, he must have received medical training, because he now worked as a physician.⁶

Hamlet died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis in 1873. 

His remains are buried in Valley Cemetery in Manchester, New Hampshire.⁷

If you are a researcher or descendant of William Hamlet and can provide any further details of his work on the Vigilance Committee, please e-mail us.

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Footnotes

1. Hamlet is mapped at his business address from 1850 at 91 Washington Street. ; “Married,” Boston Weekly Messenger, January 22, 1845, 5; The National Archives in Washington, DC; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M432; Residence Date: 1850; Home in 1850: Boston Ward 5, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 335; Page: 214a; ‘Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, August 17, 1852, 3; “Marriages,” Boston Evening Transcript, June 20, 1854, 2; The National Archives in Washington D.C.; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Residence Date: 1860; Home in 1860: Chelsea, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: M653_526; Page: 809; Family History Library Film: 803526.
2. George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1846-1847, 31; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 178.
3. "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.
4. “Rejuvenation,” Boston Daily Atlas, July 10, 1855, 2; “Another Platform,” Boston Courier, June 25, 1855, 2; Stan Prager, "Strange Bedfellows: Nativism, Know-Nothings, African-Americans, and School Desegregation In Antebellum Massachusetts," Saber and Scroll, Volume 6, Issue 2, Spring-Summer, 2017, 15.
5. George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1860, 198; The National Archives in Washington D.C.; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Residence Date: 1860; Home in 1860: Chelsea, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: M653_526; Page: 809; Family History Library Film: 803526.
6. United States Federal Census, Year: 1870; Census Place: Washington Ward 4, Washington, District of Columbia; Roll: M593_124; Page: 809A.
7. "Died,” Forney’s Sunday Chronicle, June 29, 1873, 4; "Dr William Hamlet," Find a Grave, Dr William Hamlet (1823-1873) - Find a Grave Memorial.