Lewis Hayden was born into slavery in Kentucky. When he was ten years old, his owner traded him to a traveling salesman for a pair of horses. But Hayden and his family eventually escaped to freedom, and they settled in Boston. Their Beacon Hill home was a refuge for enslaved people seeking freedom on the Underground Railroad, and he would go as far as threatening to blow the house up instead of cooperating with slave catchers, saying “Go in peace, or go in pieces!” After Lewis Hayden’s death, his wife Harriet endowed a scholarship for African American students at Harvard Medical School, the only endowment contribution to a university made by a formerly enslaved person. For more on these remarkable people, listen to this week’s show!
Lewis and Harriet Hayden
Harvard Medical School’s “Lewis and Harriet Hayden Scholarship for colored students.”- Visit the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House on a tour of the Boston African American National Historic Site and its Black History Trail.
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People of the Underground Railroad: A Biographical Dictionary by Tom Calarco
This Week in Boston History
- An account of the 1769 fire in the Boston jail, and another version from a complete history of the Boston Fire Department.
- Massachusetts issues North America’s first paper currency in 1690.