By the mid-19th century, the family that lived in the Jackson Homestead, once slaveowners themselves two centuries before, had joined the minority of Massachusetts residents who were anti-slavery and pro-abolition. Yet even within this one Newton family, not all members agreed on how the institution of slavery should be abolished. Brothers William and Francis Jackson differed over whether slavery could ever be ended by political means, and with their children and their spouses held a variety of opinions — and positions in organizations — opposed to slavery.
In 1895, Ellen Jackson, who grew up in the house in the years before the Civil War, wrote Annals from the Old Homestead. Towards the end of the manuscript, she recorded a night when her father, William Jackson, was asked to hide a freedom-seeker. Jackson was awakened one night by his friend Dr. William Bowditch of Brookline, who had brought a fugitive from slavery to the Homestead:
"On reading the 'Annals' Caroline [Ellen's sister] thinks I have omitted what had better have been given, a distinct recognition of the Antislavery sentiments with which the inmates of the "Homestead" were thoroughly impregnated, especially father. He did indeed give his time, money and much of his thoughts to the abolition of slavery. Thus the Homestead's doors stood ever open with a welcome to any of the workers against slavery for as often and as long as suited their convenience or pleasure. The Homestead was one of the Stations of the "Under Ground Rail Road" which was continually helping runaway Slaves from the South to Canada. One night between twelve and one o'clock, I well remember father was awakened by pebbles thrown against his window. He rose and asked what was wanted? Dr. Bowditch replied it was he, with a runaway slave whom he wished father to hide till morning, and then help him on his way to Canada, for his master was in Boston looking for him. Father took him in and next morning carried him fifteen miles to a Station where he could take a car for Canada. He could not have safely left by any Boston Station." — Annals from the Old Homestead, Ellen Jackson, 1894.
Dr. William Ingersoll Bowditch was the "conductor" who brought freedom seekers to the Jackson Homestead. In the letter below, written in 1893 to Wilbur Siebert, author of The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom (1898), Bowditch wrote that he "generally" brought those seeking freedom from enslavement (called "fugitives" because by escaping they were breaking the law) to William Jackson. Jackson could easily send these people westward via the Boston and Worcester Railroad, which ran in front of his home.
William Jackson
While William Jackson left little written evidence that he was against slavery, we know he was an abolitionist from the writings of his children and his civic activities. Also, he donated money to the Boston Vigilance Committee, which supported antislavery activities and assisted freedom-seekers.
Jackson grew up in Newton, but at 17 moved to Boston to work in a family business. He brought his own family back to Newton and the Homestead in the 1820s, and continued to be heavily involved in both business ventures and civic affairs.
William Jackson: He lived from 1783 to 1855. This portrait was taken about 1848.
In 1840, Jackson was one of several abolitionists who founded the Liberty Party, hopeful that politics could further their antislavery goals. Jackson ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts on the Liberty Party ticket. The same year, the party nominated James G. Birney, a former slaveholder, for president of the United States. The party hoped to raise antislavery issues and prevent the spread of slavery into western territories. But after failing win attention for its goals the party dissolved in 1848.
Francis Jackson
Unlike his older brother William, Francis Jackson did not believe that political action could end slavery. An ardent Boston abolitionist, he was a close friend and financial supporter of William Lloyd Garrison.
Like Garrison, Francis objected to parts of the United States Constitution. In 1844, Francis resigned his commission as a justice of the peace. He wrote that he could no longer support a document that "contains provisions calculated and intended to foster, cherish, uphold and perpetuate slavery. . . . While I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no compact which helps to rob any other man of his."
Francis Jackson: He lived from 1789 to 1871. This portrait (right) was taken about 1850.
Francis Jackson was the treasurer of the Boston Vigilance Committee from 1850 to 1861. The organization raised and distributed monies to aid freedom-seekers and increase awareness of antislavery causes. It was a role that apparently fit him: he was also president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and treasurer of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Francis and William had three other brothers and a sister, and anti-slavery beliefs seem to have been common to most of the family and its offspring. Two of William's daughters, Hannah and Sarah, married men active in abolitionist causes. Francis Jackson Merriam, the grandson of Francis Jackson, joined John Brown in his raid on Harper's Ferry. Merriam escaped and later fought in the Civil War. After the war William's daughter Ellen was president of the Freedmen's Aid Society until just before her death in 1902.
Sisters Hannah Fuller and Sarah Tappan
Sarah and Hannah were two of William Jackson's daughters who shared the family's fervent anti-slavery feelings and activities — as members of sewing circles, they made clothes for Union soldiers and escaping slaves. Hannah lived in Newton and was the mother of William Jackson Fuller (see below). By the time of the Civil War, Sarah was living in Brooklyn, New York, the second wife of Lewis Tappan, a businessman and abolitionist who had helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.
In an 1862 letter Sarah wrote to Hannah about her hopes for an end to slavery. In the letter, Sarah wrote about the work she was doing for "ex-slaves," including a man named John Parker to whom she gave hand-knitted socks. When Sarah wrote this letter, early in the war, it was not clear to her, or to others, that a Union victory in the Civil War would mean an end to slavery. She told her sister, "Our national affairs look more encouraging. Now my greatest fear is, that they will hurry up a peace, without putting an end to slavery. Such a victory would be defeat. Our labor is all lost, if we do that. I feel like praying that the war may not end till slavery does."
Sarah's obituary, published in 1884 reveals the different opinions Jackson family members, and American abolitionists in general, had over the best way to end slavery.
William Jackson Fuller
William Jackson's grandson, William Fuller, was a 17-year-old student at Newton High School in 1859. In an entry in his school journal dated December 5th, Fuller laments the hanging of John Brown for treason and wishes that President James Buchanan had never been born. The entry reads:
"Monday Dec. 5th 1859 — Today is the beginning of my last term of school days. We have just had a vacation of two weeks and not a bit of snow have we had during that time except on yesterday it began to snow and hail and do that very thing so as to make hard walking for us on the first day of school. If this snow only lasts we shall have excellent sleighing but no skating for some time I reckon. We recited in Algebra + History. Least [sic] Friday Dec 2 1859 that ever memorable and notorious day poor Capt John Brown was hung! And what was he hung for, we hear asked on all sides? Hung for nothing but trying to liberate some slaves from bondage! Is that anything worthy of death! No! by St. Bride of Bothwell No! John Brown, live forever! Old Buchanan, live never!"
William Jackson Fuller: The grandson and namesake of William Jackson was born in 1842 and died at 24 in 1868. This portrait (left) was taken about 1861.
Not all abolitionists felt the same as Fuller. Some believed that Brown's violent actions would hurt anti-slavery causes.
Mythology on the Underground Railroad
Events as secret and as important as journeys on the Underground Railroad inspire daring and sensationalized stories, but what documentation exists often shows the truth is less dramatic. As people who participated in fugitive assistance passed away, this mythology arose based in great measure on the term "Underground Railroad." "Underground," in this context, meant "secret," or "clandestine," but many mistook it to mean the use of subterranean tunnels for hiding fugitives. But recollections of people who sheltered fugitives make plain that the private sections of houses — kitchens, pantries, cellars, attics, and bedchambers — were adequate for hiding if fugitives were being pursued.
There are no secret hiding places at the Jackson Homestead: In the 1850s, before Newton was so densely settled and before electric streetlights, simply getting into the house under cover of night, as the freedom-seeker in the story from Ellen's Annals did, was often sufficient to be hidden.
"I am sending a photo of my residence, the Underground home of my parents, & now I have a private school here. Many times the girls ask where the secret rooms were, but my father had no secret rooms for the colored — he allowed them to be in any before he took them on to Bedford." — Lucy Allen, West Newton, daughter of Nathaniel T. Allen