Marlboro Church

The approximate site of Marlboro Church, which no longer stands today.

NPS Photo/Woods

Quick Facts

Location:

Approximately 385 Washington Street

Significance:

Site of the founding of the first Vigilance Committee in Boston.

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

Though no longer standing, the Marlboro Chapel played an important role in the anti-slavery movement in Boston.¹ On June 4, 1841, abolitionists created the first Boston Vigilance Committee at the chapel. Inspired by the New York Committee of Vigilance, founded in 1835, the Boston organization hoped to provide aid for freedom seekers escaping enslavement. Speaking to this goal, Charles T. Torrey, one of the organization’s founders, wrote,

By a judicious expenditure of effort, it is believed that New-England will soon cease to be the slaveholder’s hunting-ground. We do not believe that our fellow citizens will suffer their sacred soil to continue to be a part of the Guinea coast of America…²

Though founded with admirable principles, this organization lacked support from key leaders and clashed with Garrisonians over tactics. By December of 1841, the group had apparently disbanded, and Charles T. Torrey moved to Washington DC to continue his work on the Underground Railroad.³

This article documents the founding of the first Boston Vigilance Committee. (Credit: The Liberator, June 11, 1841)

Footnotes

1. Approximate location of Marlboro Church was identified by using the following map: H. Henry McIntyre, Friend & Aub, and Wagner & M'Guigan, "Map of the city of Boston and immediate neighborhood," Map, 1852, Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f4632536.
2. “To the Friends of the Slave, in New England,” The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), June 11, 1841.
3. Dean Grodzins, “Constitution or No Constitution, Law or No Law: The Boston Vigilance Committees, 1841-1861” in Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 54.