Arianna Sparrow's House

Arianna Sparrow lived here in the heart of the Beacon Hill community.

NPS Photo/Woods

Quick Facts

Location:

62 Phillips Street

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Residence

Arianna Sparrow lived at 62 Phillips Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Born in Virginia, Sparrow moved to Boston with her mother in 1852.¹ A talented soprano singer, she sang at public events throughout Boston. She also took an active role in her Beacon Hill community, particularly in the women’s suffrage and anti-lynching movements at the end of the 1800s.

In the 1880s, Arianna Sparrow helped organize several suffrage events throughout Beacon Hill, speaking alongside other community leaders. During a Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association (MWSA) meeting held at Twelfth Baptist Church, Sparrow “led the audience in the woman suffrage songs.”² She also helped organize the West End Woman Suffrage League, a primarily Black chapter of the MWSA. She served as a member of the executive committee for the league and offered to hold a subscription of the suffrage paper The Woman’s Journal at her home.³

She served as founding member of the Woman’s Era Club and became involved in the anti-lynching movement. Through her work with the club, Sparrow helped organize the 1895 First National Conference of Colored Women of America in Boston.⁴ The final day of the convention was held at the Charles Street Meeting House.⁵

In 1897, Sparrow hosted the esteemed activist and Underground Railroad operator Harriet Tubman at her home. She commented on Tubman’s humanitarianism and generosity. “No one can give her anything,” she said, “for everything she has she gives away...She is as generous as the sunshine.”⁶

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Footnotes:

1. John Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace: A Study of the Boston Negros (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), 454; “Declare North is Backsliding,” Boston Globe, June 15, 1911.
2. “Massachusetts Field Notes,” Woman’s Journal 16, no. 44 (October 31, 1885), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:49020442$354i. 
3. “West End Woman Suffrage League,” The Woman’s Journal 18, no. 34 (August 20, 1887), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January, 2020, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:49687853$274i.
4. “Best City in the World,” Boston Globe, July 09, 1895.
5. Guillen, Sherry. "Shall We Have a Convention...?" National Park Service.
6. "Harriet Tubman's Work," The Boston Daily Advertiser, May 7, 1897.