William N. Sawyer

Quick Facts

Significance:

Mariner, 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Gloucester, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

c. 1799

Place of Death:

Lexington, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

January 1, 1862

Mariner and sea captain William Newman Sawyer served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Likely born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1799, William Newman Sawyer took to the sea in his late teenage years. In 1819, he married Ellen White in Liverpool, England, and eventually began a family with her back in the United States.¹

Sawyer earned his living as a sea captain and mariner, before he began working at the shipping office in Boston in the 1830s. He served as treasurer of the Seamen’s Bethel Temperance Society in the city. He also served on the board of managers of the Port Society of the City of Boston and Its Vicinity, which dedicated itself to the "the moral and religious instruction of seamen."² 

Following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Sawyer joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization assisted freedom seekers escaping from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Committee records indicate one donation from Sawyer in 1851. His further contributions to the committee, or larger Underground Railroad network, remain unknown.³

Sawyer passed away in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1862.⁴

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

Footnotes:

1. The Sawyer Family of Elliotsville (Piscataquis Co, Maine), 27. Source Information: Ancestry.com. U.S., Family History Books [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2025, England, Select Marriages, 1538-1973 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014; Massachusetts, U.S., State Census, 1855 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
2. The Sawyer Family of Elliotsville (Piscataquis Co, Maine), 27; Boston City Directory 1836, 323, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 284; "Seamen’s Bethel Temperance Society," American Traveler, September 2, 1833, 1; Port Society of the City of Boston and Its Vicinity, An Account of the Port Society of the City of Boston and Its Vicinity (Boston: S.N. Dickenson, 1832), 28.
3. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; this broadside lists Sawyer at 84 Commercial Street in Boston; 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); 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 , 19.
4. "Deaths," Boston Evening Transcript, January 3, 1862, 3.