Abolitionism in Concord

This is the story of a letter that survived time to link together a centuries-long quest for liberty, a group of red-hot abolitionists, a British woman cloaked in scandal, and a Concord house tied to the Underground Railroad. Written by Senator Charles Sumner in 1860 and making its way to Concord via Barrow Bookstore, the letter leads one to ask, “What would you do for a cause in which you believed?”

When we think of Concord’s history, images of Walden Pond, the Old North Bridge, Transcendentalists, and Little Women might come to mind. We don’t always think about a remarkable, diverse group of women from Concord’s past dedicated to eradicating slavery. We might not even know their fascinating story. The Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society worked diligently across three decades, becoming important players in the abolitionist cause, and helping to more widely promote its messages.

For the first time in 200 years, Concord will publicly honor and celebrate the birth of one of its most inspirational daughters, Ellen Garrison. 

How could an enslaved man or woman ever find a path out of bondage? The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln and formally signed and put into effect on January 1, 1863, is well-known throughout the country. Much less well-known are the thousands of emancipations that occurred in New England long prior to 1862, many happening one at a time.

Concord has a reputation for producing people of radical ideas, justice, and bravery. From the minutemen of the American Revolution to transcendentalist writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the town of Concord has an ability to grow a sense of social justice in all its citizens. The story of Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark, an African American woman born and raised here in Concord who went on to fight for freedom at a national level, is a less well-known example—an injustice that The Robbins House and the Concord Museum are seeking to rectify.

In 1976, Concordians and school administrators Barbara Elliot and Janet Jones published the text Concord: Its Black History, 1636-1860 through the Concord Public Schools. The text included photos of Black and White children visiting places associated with 19th century [and earlier] Black residents. 

It was cold outside, but the glowing fire in the brick oven warmed the kitchen as Elizabeth busied herself baking the week’s bread for her enslavers, Col. John Ashley and his wife Hannah. Her younger sister Lizzie, also enslaved in the Ashley household, was too frail for heavy labor, so she watched as Elizabeth stirred the fire with an iron shovel. A

The list of Concord abolitionists is long, and the names of Thoreau, Alcott, Bigelow, and Brooks are assured in the town’s history. But for every famous name involved in abolitionism, many more remain forgotten. One of Concord’s heroes, while not exactly lost to history, is certainly not a household name: he was the Reverend Daniel Foster. 

It remains a moral, political, and economic necessity to understand America’s underground railroad’s origin and legacy.¹ The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts provides us with an inside view into this history. The Wayside is part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. The NPS program “commemorates and preserves the historical significance of the Underground Railroad which sought to address the injustices of slavery and make freedom a reality in the United States and is a crucial element in the evolution of our national civil rights movement. Inhabitants of The Wayside house have witnessed a dramatic spectrum of American history including the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.”²

For the past decade, The Robbins House has committed to telling the story of Concord’s African American history and culture through the narratives of the inhabitants of the house and their participation in Concord’s rich history of independence, civil rights, and activism. Enmeshed throughout this narrative is the concept of “the long Civil Rights movement,” a conceptual framework that recognizes that the struggle for black and indigenous civil rights began the moment the first African was enslaved on US soil and continues today; it spans both time and place, enslaved and free, White and Black.