Eunice R. Davis, Abolitionist Daughter of Andover: Part 2
New History Buzz contributor, Christiana Boehmer is back with the second of two posts on Eunice R. Davis.
Welcome or welcome back to History Buzz! If you’re a subscriber to the Buzz, thank you! If you’re new here, or you haven’t become a subscriber yet, please sign up for a subscription to have History Buzz delivered directly to your inbox. If you can, please consider a paid subscription to support the research and writing that make History Buzz possible.
This piece continues the story begun in Eunice R. Davis, Abolitionist Daughter of Andover - Part 1
Eunice R. Davis indeed deserves recognition for her abolitionist leadership. But Eunice and many other abolitionists viewed the cause of ending slavery as just the most well-known battle in a war fought on several fronts.
Black members of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) ensured that the group also worked to improve the lives of Black people in Massachusetts. In 1834, they established the Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Colored Children, to care for Black children excluded by the orphanages then in Boston. Eunice served as one of the managers of the Samaritan Asylum - while she was still raising her own three children.1 Within its first year, the organization cared for nine Black children, and established a home in Boston’s West End.2
Eunice helped her mother, still living in Andover, apply in 1838 for a widow’s pension, merited by Prince Ames’ years as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Their effort succeeded, and Mother Ames received an annual pension of $80.3 To complete her mother’s application, Eunice had to obtain signatures from several prominent white Andover men, who may have opposed her antislavery activism.
In 1839 the antislavery movement split over differing attitudes towards politics, women, and clergy.4 The original Garrison faction favored non-political strategies to change hearts and minds, they included women as members and leaders, and they vilified clergy who would not speak out against slavery. The rival faction sought a political solution to slavery, they excluded women from membership, and they chose not to antagonize religious leaders. Both factions continued to work for abolition.
Eunice and most other Black leaders in Boston sided with the Garrisonian abolitionists.5 By that time, Eunice had taken on a larger role in the movement, attending meetings of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as well as BFASS. Each time these societies held critical votes, Eunice voted her steadfast support for the Garrisonian approach.6
1839 also brought division in Eunice’s personal life, as she and John divorced. The 1840 census listed Eunice as the head of household, living in Boston’s West End with two of her children.7 Her ex-husband John Davis disappeared from Boston records; later documents indicate he was living in Canada.
But Eunice didn’t slow down. In 1839 she and 72 other Boston women - including her sister Lavina and daughter Dorcas - petitioned the state of Massachusetts to repeal laws against interracial marriage;8 women in three other towns joined the effort. Again, the issue resonated for Eunice. Those Massachusetts laws had prohibited Eunice’s own white and Native American grandparents from marrying legally. The state denied their 1839 petition, but three years later, the Massachusetts Antislavery Society coordinated a statewide petitioning effort to press again for repeal. One hundred and one Andover women signed the 1842 petition.9 This effort succeeded, and the state of Massachusetts repealed its laws against interracial marriage in 1843.10
The leaders of Boston’s Black community met in 1843 to celebrate that success, and to strategize on more petition campaigns, to protest racial discrimination on railroads and repeal all state laws that discriminated based on color. They appointed Eunice as one of seven people who would gather petition signatures.11 And while her children married and started families, Eunice served for ten years as president of the women’s group at her Baptist church on Beacon Hill.12 That woman was a dynamo.
Eunice also hosted a station on the Underground Railroad. Her brother-in-law had helped organize the Boston Vigilance Committee in 1841, “to protect the liberty of persons alleged to be slaves, and to rescue from bondage persons of color who are entitled to be free.”13 These efforts kicked into high gear after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act made life more dangerous for Black people in Boston. Eunice undertook the critical but unpublicized work of women who sheltered and fed these people and helped them start new lives. Years later, Eunice told a reporter about this time:
[They] used to send numbers of these slaves who had succeeded in escaping to Boston, to me. I had but very few men, mostly girls. I used to keep them in secret about the house, teach them cooking and educate them for work girls, chambermaids and ladies’ maids. We used to instill religious truths into them and give them as much of a common school education as we could. When capable we obtained employment for them among sympathizing people. Most of my girls I never heard of after, although a few called upon me after achieving prosperity. Two girls who reached Canada safely and married well and became prosperous, called upon me some years after to express their gratitude.14
In 1854, Eunice re-connected with her ex-husband John Davis, who returned from Canada. They married a second time,15 and moved to Jamaica Plain. True to form, Eunice immediately helped establish the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain and remained a member for the rest of her long life.16
Eunice continued to help her mother navigate the pension bureaucracy. In 1855 they also applied to the federal government for bounty land, to which Mother Ames was entitled as the widow of a Revolutionary War veteran.17 The government had promised each long-term soldier a free piece of land, if they won the war. But the government did not approve Mother Ames’ application. I’m struck by the tragic irony of this Native American family applying to receive land that the British and colonists had taken from Native Americans - and being denied.
During the Civil War, two of Eunice’s grandsons joined the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry as servants to the officers; the Union would not enlist Black soldiers until later in the war. Right away, the rebels in Galveston, Texas captured and imprisoned their entire regiment. Within weeks the Confederates paroled all the white soldiers and sent them back to Union lines. But they enslaved Eunice’s grandsons, both born free in Boston. The two young men remained enslaved for two and a half years until the summer of 1865, after the Union prevailed and the Juneteenth announcement reached Texas.18
Eunice experienced other losses in the 1860s. Mother Ames and brother-in-law John T. Hilton both died in 1864, within the space of two weeks. The Liberator published side-by-side obituaries for them, penned by Black abolitionist William Cooper Nell,19 a family friend. Then Eunice’s husband John Davis died a year later.20
In 1865, Eunice’s grandsons re-joined their family in Boston. The 13th Amendment later that year abolished slavery in the U.S. “except as a punishment for crime” - a loophole that haunts our country still. In its final December 1865 issue, The Liberator offered many celebrations of the end of slavery, but also a few warnings. One article observed:
Already it has been boasted, by men of influence in South Carolina, that this opening would give them slavery enough for all practical purposes, and that, as soon as the reconstruction of that State was affected, they could make enslavement the legal penalty for any needful number of petty offenses.21
I imagine Eunice and her sister Lavina celebrating the abolition of slavery with their children and grandchildren, and also planning how the next generations would continue the fight for racial equality.
Eunice lived to be 100 years old. In her later years, she lived with her son and granddaughter in Dedham. She received special recognition from the Daughters of the American Revolution,22 and journalists from all over came to interview her and write stories of her long and eventful life. When Eunice passed away in 1901, she was buried in Dedham’s Brookdale Cemetery.
Her life story still resonates today. In recent years, the Dedham Historical Society has written about Eunice’s life,23 and the Daughters of the American Revolution have placed a permanent marker at her gravesite to honor her life and service.24
These days, when I hike the trail at Haggett’s Pond in Andover, I like to think that my feet are tracing a path that Eunice walked when she lived here. The next time you walk around Haggett’s Pond, I hope you remember the name of Eunice R. Davis, abolitionist daughter of Andover, and carry seeds of her compassion and courage with you wherever you go.
Thank you for reading! Please leave us a comment. We love to hear from History Buzz readers!
Debra Gold Hansen, “The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Limits of Gender Politics,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, editors. (Cornell University Press, 1994), 47.
A. Pico, “To the Editor of the Liberator,” The Liberator, May 16, 1835, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/8k71px13d.
“Prince Ames in the U.S., Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900,” s.v. “Prince Ames,” https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/1784556?mark=cf1770f25406a5365fdd599efe1dafb1150dc6fceeb84ec14c200248e6265520, Ancestry.com.
James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 88, https://archive.org/details/holywarriorsabol00stew/page/88/mode/2up.
William Lloyd Garrison, “Letter from William Lloyd Garrison, Boston, [Mass.], to Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Sept. 1, 1840,” https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/cv43qb23x.
“Quarterly Meeting of the Mass. A. S. Society,” The Liberator, March 29, 1839, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/8k71q5459. Eunice brought supporters to the MASS meeting, including her daughter Dorcas Ann Amos and her mother Eunice Ames. For the BFASS vote, see also “Important Certificate,” The Liberator, November 15, 1839, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/8k71q705r. Her daughter Dorcas joined her in this critical vote as well.
“United States Census, 1840, Eunice Davis, Boston Ward 6, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts,” s.v. “Eunice Davis,” 215, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHYR-VP2, FamilySearch.org.
"The Law of Caste,” The Liberator, March 22, 1839, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/8k71q540x. For the signed petition, see Mary A.W. Johnson et al, "House Unpassed Legislation 1839, Docket 577, SC1/series 230, Petition of Mary A.W. Johnson", in Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MTNVU, Harvard Dataverse, V4.
. Mary S. Jenkins et al, “House Unpassed Legislation 1842, Docket 1153, SC1/series 230, Petition of Mary S. Jenkins,” in Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DHXWG, Harvard Dataverse, V4.
Amber D. Moulton, “Closing the ‘Floodgate of Impurity’: Moral Reform, Antislavery, and Interracial Marriage in Antebellum Massachusetts,” Journal of the Civil War Era 3, no. 1 (2013): 2–34, https://www.jstor.org/stable/260620190.
“Meeting of the Colored Citizens of Boston,” The Liberator, February 10, 1843, 2, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/gb19gv94c.
Notice,” The Liberator, October 14, 1853, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/5h742327v. Similar notices from Eunice R. Davis appeared multiple times in The Liberator, as early as 1843.
“Vigilance Committee - Attention!,” The Liberator, June 4, 1841, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/8k71pt737.
“Grandma Davis Reads the Globe,” The Boston Globe, October 28, 1889, 2, https://bostonglobe.newspapers.com/image/430876740/?terms=Grandma%20Davis&match=1
“Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915," image 7 of 653, State Archives, Boston, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-X9R9-HBT?i=6&cc=1928860, FamilySearch.org.
“Jamaica Plain,” Jamaica Plain News, April 6, 1901, 4, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/00002t301. See paragraph beginning “A benefit entertainment.”
Ancestry.com, “Prince Ames pension.”
Gail Coughlin and the Dedham Historical Society and Museum, “History Tidbits: Eunice Russ Ames Davis, Activist, Abolitionist, Dedham Resident,” accessed February 28, 2023, https://dedhamhistorical.org/history/. See also Bennie MeRac, Jr., “Charles Fairfax Revaleon and Charles Gerrish Amos”, in Lest We Forget: African American Military History by Historian, Author, and Veteran Bennie MeRac, Jr., http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC3E54-9E6F-D5E3-7A5116BD0D2D9872. And Charles P. Bosson, History of the Forty-second Regiment Infantry, Massachusetts Volunteers, 1862, 1863, 1864 (Boston : Mills, Knight & Co., 1886), pages 63 and 175, https://archive.org/details/02016134.3255.emory.edu/page/n77/mode/2up?q=revaleon. And John Hartwell, “A Free Colored Servant's choice: ‘Choose a master or go to the Penitentiary’,” in Civil War Talk, April 30, 2017, https://civilwartalk.com/threads/a-free-colored-servants-choice-choose-a-master-or-go-to-the-penitentiary.134018/.
“Died,” The Liberator, March 25, 1864, 3, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/5h742t15d. William Cooper Nell later married Eunice’s grand-niece Frances Ann Ames.
"Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915, 1921-1924," image 284 of 676, State Archives, Boston, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6S6H-16, FamilySearch.org.
“Hear the Other Side,” The Liberator, December 29, 1865, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/5h742z47h.
“The Real Daughters of the American Revolution - Eunice Russ Ames Davis,” accessed February 28, 2023, https://www.dar.org/real-daughters-american-revolution.
Coughlin, “History Tidbits.”
Denise Doring VanBuren, “Honoring a Remarkable Real Daughter – and a Chapter’s 125th Anniversary,” in Daughters of the American Revolution blog, April 18, 2022, https://blog.dar.org/honoring-remarkable-real-daughter-and-chapters-125th-anniversary.
What an inspiring story of courage and iniative in a turbulent and painful part of America's past.