"Lewis and Harriet turned their home into one of the most active Underground Railroad sites in the city," says John Buchtel, curator of rare books and head of special collections at the Boston Athenaeum.
Between 1850 and 1860, it's estimated that Harriet sheltered hundreds of people fleeing slavery. In the evening, you might have found a table of men studying in her home, in one hand a book and the other resting upon [a] pistol or knife, as the Black journalist Pauline Hopkins wrote in a 1901 essay.
Harriet made her home a hub for Boston's prominent antislavery advocates: Harriet Beecher Stowe visited in 1853, as did John Brown in 1859, only months before his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
In her will, she bequeathed her estate of nearly $5,000 to establish a scholarship for Black students at Harvard Medical School-believed to be the only university bequest from someone who was once enslaved.
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