Lewis Hayden

Lewis Hayden (December 2, 1811 – April 7, 1889) was an African-American leader who escaped with his family from slavery in Kentucky; they moved to Boston, where he became an abolitionist and lecturer, businessman, and politician. Before the American Civil War, he and his wife Harriet Hayden aided numerous fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, often sheltering them at their house.

He was elected in 1873 as a Republican representative from Boston to the Massachusetts state legislature. He helped found numerous black lodges of Freemasons. The Lewis and Harriet Hayden House has been designated a National Historic Site on the Black Heritage Trail in Boston.

Lewis Hayden was born into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky in 1811, as one of a family of 25. His mother was of mixed race, including African, European and Native American ancestry; slavery of Native Americans had been prohibited since the 18th century. If his mother had been able to show direct maternal Native American ancestry, she would have had grounds for a freedom suit for herself and her children. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem adopted by the slave states in the 17th century, the children's status in the colonies followed that of the mother. Children of white women and Native American women were thus born free. Lewis' father was a slave "sold off early".

Hayden was first owned by a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Adam Rankin. He sold off the boy's brothers and sisters in preparation for moving to Pennsylvania; he traded 10-year-old Hayden for two carriage horses to a man who traveled the state selling clocks. The travels with his new master allowed Hayden to hear varying opinions of slavery, including its classification as a crime by some people. When he was 14, the American Revolutionary War soldier Marquis de Lafayette tipped his hat to Hayden while visiting Kentucky, which helped inspire Hayden to believe he was worthy of respect and to hate slavery.

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