Lewis and Harriet Hayden House

Lewis and Harriet Hayden House
Lewis and Harriet Hayden House, former home of African American abolitionists.
General information
Location	Beacon Hill
Address	Private residence: 66 Phillips Street
Town or city	Boston
Country	United States
Coordinates	42°21′37″N 71°04′09″W / 42.360239°N 71.069036°W / 42.360239; -71.069036

Lewis and Harriet Hayden House was the home of African-American abolitionists who had escaped from slavery in Kentucky; it is located in Beacon Hill, Boston. They maintained the home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Haydens were visited by Harriet Beecher Stowe as research for her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Lewis Hayden was an important leader in the African-American community of Boston; in addition, he lectured as an abolitionist and was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which resisted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Lewis Hayden was born into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky in 1812. His first wife and their son were sold to U.S. Senator Henry Clay. They were sold again to the Deep South, and Hayden never saw them again. Hayden remarried Harriet Bell, who already had a son Joseph. In 1844 with the help of abolitionists, they escaped to Ohio and then along the Underground Railroad to Canada. Abolitionist Delia Ann Webster had driven the family of 3 to freedom. She was a school teacher from Vermont who had moved to Kentucky. She was caught when she returned from the journey from Kentucky to the Ohio River crossing to Ohio. She was jailed, tried and sentenced to years in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Somehow, she obtained a pardon from the Governor and was released. Her work continued, and she was jailed several more times. Yet she has been forgotten, and lies in an unmarked grave.

In 1845 they returned to the US at Detroit, and by January 1846 they moved to Boston. Hayden owned and ran a clothing store on Cambridge Street.

In 1849 or 1850, the Haydens moved into the house at 66 Phillips (then Southac) Street on Beacon Hill. The house was purchased in 1853 by Francis Jackson of the anti-slavery Vigilance Committee. The African American Museum hypothesized that may have been done "to assure that Hayden would not be harassed in his Underground Railroad activities."

The Haydens routinely cared for African Americans who had escaped from slavery, including the noted Ellen and William Craft, and their home served as a boarding house. Hayden prevented slave catchers from taking the Crafts by threatening to blow up his home with gunpowder if they tried to reclaim them. Records from the Boston Vigilance Committee, of which Lewis was a member, indicate that scores of people received aid and safe shelter at the Hayden home between 1850 and 1860.