From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)

Lewis Hayden was enslaved when he was born in Lexington, KY; his name at birth was Lewis Grant. He escaped and left Kentucky with the help of abolitionists Calvin Fairbank and Delia Webster. On January 4, 1845, Webster received a sentence of two years hard labor for her part in the escape; she was pardoned on February 24, 1845. Also, during Februar, Fairbank was sentenced to 15 years.

Hayden, who had relocated to Canada, changed his name from Lewis Grant to Lewis Hayden. The Hayden family soon returned to the U.S. Lewis, an abolitionist, worked with his wife Harriet to challenge racial segregation on railroads in Massachusetts and provided for runaway slaves passing through Boston.

Lewis also gained some degree of wealth and raised $650 to purchase his freedom and to help Fairbank get out of prison. Fairbank was pardoned on August 23, 1849.

Lewis Hayden was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1873, seven years after the state's first African American Legislators Charles Lewis Mitchell and Edward Garrison Walker.

For more see Black Bostonians, by J. O. Horton and L. E. Horton; Dictionary of American Negro Biography, by R. W. Logan & M. R. Winston; and Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad, by R. P. Runyon.

Additional Information written and shared by Yvonne Giles:

Lewis Hayden (1811-1889) 1/2024

Lewis Hayden was asked in 1844, why do you want your freedom? He replied, ‘Because I am a man.”
[1]

Hayden was born enslaved in 1811. His mother was owned by Adam Rankin, a Presbyterian minister who had been called to Lexington, KY in 1794. Lewis told that before he was seven or eight years old, Rankin sold his mother. His brothers and sisters and other enslaved were sold around 1826. Lewis was traded for two horses and a carriage and remained in Lexington. [2]

Lewis married Esther Harvey, who was enslaved to James Harvey; they had two children, one of whom died shortly after birth. When Harvey’s assets were sold at auction to satisfy debts, Esther and her son were purchased by Henry Clay. They remained property of Henry Clay for about two years until sold to Payne, a slave dealer. [3]

Lewis desired to be free. He would not leave, however, without his second wife Harriet and her son Joseph, whom Lewis accepted as his own. Together they left on a rainy Saturday evening, September 28, 1844, riding in a hack, disguised as ‘Yankee travelers,’ with Delia Webster and Calvin Fairbanks. [4] They followed Mulberry Street (it would not be named Limestone until 1887) out of Lexington, where it became the Maysville Road.

During their 12 hour, 64 mile journey to the Ohio river town of Maysville, they would pass through 13 toll gates and 8 communities. [5]

About 30 miles into the journey, one of the horses became sick. They were forced to stop just beyond Millersburg at an inn. The proprietor, William Holladay (Holloway), came out to the hack to ask how he could assist them. When he learned that the horse had likely developed botts (a disease caused by larvae of the bott fly), he offered to trade a horse of his own, retaining the sick horse until their return trip. [6] Unknowingly, perhaps, Mr. Holladay had aided the Hayden family in their escape.

Once they crossed the Ohio River by ferry to Abeerden, they traveled to Ripley and then to Red Oak, where they were placed in the care of Gordon Hopkins for their journey to the next station on the Underground Railroad. After traveling for over three weeks, they reached Sandusky, Ohio and crossed Lake Erie by steamboat to Amherstburg, Canada. [7]

They remained in Canada for about four months before crossing back into the United States, settling in Detroit, Michigan among a large African American community. They connected with Rev. John Mifflin Brown, a Methodist minister who was developing a church. Hayden traveled to eastern states to help Brown raise money to build a brick building for the congregation. Originially known as the ‘fugitive church,’ it would become Bethel African Methodist Episcopal. [8]

Lewis and Harriet made the decision to relocate to Boston, Massachusetts in 1846. Here they established a boarding house and a new and used clothing store. The house became a safe haven, and the store provided clothing for fugitive slaves. They became conductors on the Underground Railroad. [9] Financial support came from the Vigilance Committee that had been formed to offer assistance, protection, and travel arrangements to those escaping their bondage. [10]

REFERENCES:

[1]Strangis, Joel. Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery, 14,  Linnet Books. The Shoestring Press. New Haven, Connecticut. 1999. (Available in the Special Collections Research Center.)

[2] Ibid, p. 6.

[3] Robboy, Robert J. and Anita W. Robboy. The New England Quarterly. December 1973. Vol. 46. No. 4., pp. 591-613. “Louis Hayden: From Fugitive Slave to Stateman.”  https://www.jstor.org

[4] Ibid.

[5] Tanner, Paul. Toll Roads in Kentucky 1817-1917 and Boone County. 1993. (See WorldCat for holding libraries. See also Boone County Roads, Toll and Otherwise by the same author.

[6] Webster, Delia. Kentucky Jurisprudence: A History of the Trial of Miss Delia Webster at Lexington, KY, December 17-21,1844. Full text @ Library of Congress. 

[7] Strangis, Joel. Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery, 28. Linnet Books; The Shoestring Press. New Haven, Connecticut,  1999.

[8] Ibid. p.  37.

[9] Ibid. p. 57.

[10] Francis Jackson. Account Book of Francis Jackson Treasurer, The Vigilance Committee of Boston. Library of Bostonian Society, Old State House, Boston.

Lewis Hayden is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Everett, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
Lewis Hayden (1811-1889) - Find a Grave Memorial

Harriet Bell Hayden (1813-1893) - Find a Grave Memorial

Autobiographical Letter of Lewis Hayden

“I belonged to the Rev. Adam Runkin (sp), a Presbyterian minister in Lexington, KY.

My mother was of mixed blood-white and Indian. She married my father when he was working in a bagging factory nearby. After a while my father’s owner moved off and took my father with him, which broke up the marriage. She was a very handsome woman. My master kept a large dairy, and she was the milk woman. Lexington was a small town in those days, and the dairy was in the town. Back of the college was the Masonic lodge. A man who belonged to the lodge saw my mother when she was about her work. He made proposals of a base nature to her. When she would have nothing to say to him, he told her that she need not be so independent, for if money could buy her he would have her. My mother told old mistress, and begged that master might not sell her. But he did sell her. My mother had a high spirit, being part Indian. She would not consent to live with this man, as he wished; and he sent her to prison, and had her flogged, and punished her in various ways, so that at last she began to have crazy turns. When I read in Uncle Tom’s Cabin about Casey, it put me in mind of my mother…She tried to kill herself several times, once with a knife and once by hanging. She had long, straight black hair, but after this it all turned white, like an old person’s. When she had her raving turns she always talked about her children. The jailer told the owner that if he would let her go to her children, perhaps she would get quiet. They let her out one time, and she came to the place where we were. I might have been seven or eight years old -don’t know my age exactly. I was not at home when she came. I came in and found her in one of the cabins near the kitchen. She sprung and caught my arms, and seemed going to break them, and then said, “I’ll fix you so they’ll never get you!” I screamed, for I thought she was going to kill me; they came in and took me away. They tied her and carried her off. Sometimes, when she was in her right mind, she used to tell me what things they had done to her. At last, her owner sold her for a small sum, to a man named Lackey. While with him she had another husband and several children. After a while this husband either died or was sold…The man then sold her to another person, named Bryant. My own father’s owner now came and lived in the neighborhood of this man, and brought my mother with him. He had had another wife and family of children where he had been living. He and my mother came together again and finished their days together. My mother almost recovered her mind in her last days.”

Source: Robboy, Robert J. and Anita W. Robboy, “From Fugitive Slave to Stateman," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4, December 1973, pp. 591-613.

y.giles 1/2024