Lewis, Enoch Lovejoy
Biography
Enoch Lovejoy Lewis was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the early 1840s, at or around the same time that his father (Quack Walker Lewis) converted to the Church. Reports of Enoch’s interracial marriage with Matilda Webster, who the same reports indicate was a White member of the Church, drew negative attention from some Church leaders. In fact, news of their marriage generated strong condemnation of race mixing from Brigham Young, and their marriage appears to have contributed to his assertion of a racial priesthood restriction. Enoch’s association with the Church was short-lived, as was his time with Matilda. She died in 1852, the same year in which Young publicly decreed the priesthood ban. Regardless of Enoch’s relationship to the Church, reports of their membership and marriage had long-term implications, as they contributed to the formation of racial boundaries in the Church during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Enoch was unaware of these developments; while discussions about him and his family had an outsized influence on Latter-day Saint teachings and policies, he himself had little to do with Mormonism. His life had a logic of its own, though its trajectory was just as tragic on an individual level as the development of the Church’s teachings about Black people was at an institutional scale.
“Hair Dressers”
Enoch was born to Elizabeth Lovejoy and Walker Lewis in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 20, 1826.[1] Enoch Lovejoy may have been named after his uncle Enoch, who was just a few years younger than Walker. Walker and Elizabeth, whose father was Black and mother was White, had married in Cambridge a year before Enoch’s birth, on May 26, 1825.[2]
During Enoch’s childhood, Walker Lewis was actively involved in the Black community in Boston. He was a Freemason, a founding member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association, and president of the African Humane Society. With other Black Bostonians, Walker pursued abolition and equal rights.[3]
Enoch spent his childhood in both Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts. During the late 1820s and early 1830s, his father worked out of his barbershop on Fourth Street in South Boston, and the family lived on Washington Street in Boston. The family grew with the birth of Lydia in 1827 and Lucy in 1830, the first two of Enoch’s three siblings. In 1839, Elizabeth gave birth to Walker Lewis Jr., a baby brother and the final child born to Walker and Elizabeth.[4]
Around 1833, Enoch’s family moved to Lowell, where his father, Walker Lewis, and grandfather, Peter Lewis, worked as barbers. The family settled into a house on Washington Street in Belvidere, Tewksbury, which was annexed by Lowell in 1834. Throughout the 1830s and into the 1840s, Walker and Peter continued working as barbers at various locations in Lowell. City records indicate that by 1842, when Enoch was sixteen or seventeen, he was working as a hairdresser at Merrimack Square, presumably at the same barbershop where his father worked.[5] By this point, the family of six had moved from Belvidere to a house on Centre Street in Central Village—also called Centralville—which was located across the Merrimack River from downtown Lowell, where Walker and Enoch worked.[6] Enoch’s grandparents, Peter and Miner, had been living in a house on Centre Street since 1835.[7] Enoch grew up under the supervision and care of both parents and grandparents.
The Lewis children likely attended schools in Boston and Lowell, though surviving records shed little light on their formal education. Perhaps they attended the African School, which educated the children of Boston’s Black families.[8] In Lowell, Enoch and his siblings may have attended the primary school on Kirk Street. They also may have attended Lowell’s high school located between Kirk and Ann Street along the Merrimack Canal. Beginning in 1843, the Lowell High School became the first integrated high school in the United States.[9]
The educational situation of Black children in Lowell can be gleaned from an experience of Enoch’s cousins, the children of Peter Lewis Jr. In August 1844, traveling showman Robert Winter exhibited a series of illuminated, two-sided paintings in the Mechanic’s Hall on Dutton Street. By means unknown to viewers, the paintings changed before their eyes as the scenes transitioned from daylight to twilight and from twilight to moonlight. The presentation, which included a musical accompaniment, drew large crowds in several cities.[10] When the exhibition arrived in Lowell, Peter Lewis Jr. took his children to see it, but they were denied entrance. A writer for the Lowell Courier protested the decision, noting that “the proprietor has very much mistaken the public sentiment of Lowell.” He issued an invitation to Winter: “let him visit our public schools, and he will see the children of colored parents sitting side by side with those of white parents.” With pride, the writer noted, “we consider it one of the crowning glories of our public school system, and one which we will not suffer to be violated in a public exhibition without protesting against it.”[11] When Winter defended his position in a letter to the editor, the Courier dismissed his justifications and again boasted of the fact that “colored children are permitted to occupy seats in our school-houses and churches, and at the communion board.”[12] The experience of Enoch’s cousins and the response it garnered signal both the racism faced by Lowell’s Black community and Lowell residents’ commitment to racial integration.
“He Has Married a White Girl & They Have a Child”
While pursuing work and education in Lowell, the Lewis family also participated in the religious life of the community. Although existing records tell us little about the family’s religious experiences and affiliations during the 1820s and 1830s, they suggest that the family may have received visits from Reverend Theodore Edson during the late 1830s. Edson was a Harvard graduate who had been ordained at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Lowell in 1825. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company had built the churchand requested that Edson serve as its rector. The company also created a school and placed it under Edson’s supervision. Edson later served as the chairman of the School Committee in Lowell. Edson may have become familiar with the Lewis family through his educational and ecclesiastical roles. In his journal entries for March 1839, he recorded making Friday evening visits to Belvidere for the purpose of meeting with those whom he described as “my colored people.”[13] Observing that the group “so seldom come to church though they have a pew,” Edson noted his desire to visit them. In particular, he hoped to “come at the young men,” but when he arrived at their residence, he only found “but two” of the six individuals he expected to find.[14] Edson may have been referring to members of the Lewis family, including Enoch, then approaching thirteen years old.[15] Edson made a few more visits during the following weeks, but he was discouraged by the men’s late arrival to the meetings.[16] After another discouraging visit on April 5, Edson noted that he did not see “any prospect of [the men] attending” subsequent meetings, and so he ceased his visits.[17]
Sometime during the early 1840s, Walker and, apparently, Enoch converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During the summer of 1842, Eli Maginn, an elder in the Church, arrived in Lowell and delivered a series of sermons in the City Hall, located across the Merrimack Canal on Merrimack Street, not far from the barbershop where Walker and Enoch worked. Maginn baptized nine or ten individuals.[18] Walker and Enoch may have been among that number. According to Maginn’s reports at Boston conferences, the Lowell branch had grown to thirty-six members by September, and sixty members, with one elder among their number, by February 1843.[19] In September 1843, after a group of Lowell converts left for Nauvoo, the branch consisted of about forty-eight members.[20] Extant records do not indicate whether other members of the Lewis family joined the Church.[21]
Enoch’s father received the Latter-day Saint priesthood in 1843 or 1844, when William Smith, an apostle and brother of Joseph Smith, ordained Walker as an elder in the Church. This preceded a period of turmoil among New England branches of the Church, instigated by the actions of several elders. Apostle Wilford Woodruff visited the small Lowell branch in the fall of 1844, and a few weeks later he reported that “all the mail [male] members resigned their offices … except one colourd Brother who was an Elder.”[22] Walker Lewis remained steadfast throughout the 1840s, as indicated by Woodruff’s report, continued interactions with Church leaders, and the tithing donations he sent to Nauvoo. The donations included a trombone, which, together with the musical instruments listed among Walker’s assets at the time of his death—including two violins, a French horn, a piano, and a clarinet—suggest that music had a prominent place in the Lewis household.[23] Perhaps Enoch played one or more of these instruments.
While sources highlight Walker Lewis’s involvement in the Church, historical records offer little insight into his son Enoch’s membership or involvement during this period. Even circumstantial evidence is thin. In the fall of 1844, poet John Greenleaf Whittier visited Lowell and reported listening to two Mormon speakers, one of whom he described as “a young man, with dark, enthusiastic complexion, black eyes and hair.”[24] Connell O’Donovan suggests that this speaker may have been Enoch Lewis, though this seems unlikely, as Whittier’s description lacks specificity and no corroborating evidence has been found.[25]
Reports of Enoch’s membership in the Church are tied to reports of his interracial marriage. On September 18, 1846, a few years after abolitionists succeeded in their efforts to overturn Massachusetts’ anti-miscegenation law, Enoch married Mary Matilda Webster (or, possibly, Matilda Mary Webster) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[26] Extant records provide little insight into her background and life. Aside from marriage records, she is most often listed as “Matilda” rather than “Mary,” and sometimes as “Matilda Mary Lewis.” Marriage records for this period often designated Black couples as “colored,” as with Enoch’s parents. Enoch’s uncle, also named Enoch, and his aunt, Zuba, appear with that designation just above Matilda and Enoch in one of the marriage records. The entry for Enoch and Mary carries no such designation, suggesting that Mary may have been White, and perhaps that Enoch occasionally passed as White.[27] Mary may have been pregnant at the time of their marriage, as she gave birth to a son, named Enoch R. Lovejoy Lewis Jr., the following April.[28]
Weeks before Enoch Jr.’s birth, and over 2000 miles to the west, Brigham Young had singled out Enoch Sr.’s father as an example of a righteous Black elder. During a March 1847 conversation between Church leaders and William McCary, a Black member, Young referred to Walker Lewis, noting: “we [h]av[e] one of the best Elders[,] an African in Lowell—a barber.”[29] Perhaps Young had met Lewis while in Lowell in 1844. In any case, Young held Lewis in high regard. Within a few months, however, Young used Walker’s son, Enoch, as a clear example of fatal moral failing.
Young’s knowledge of Enoch depended on various reports provided by William I. Appleby, an elder of the Church who Young had appointed to survey the condition of Church branches along the east coast of the United States. Appleby was alarmed by what he found in Lowell. In a June 1847 letter to Young, Appleby reported on the family of “a coloured brother, by the name of ‘Lewis,’ a barber, an Elder in the Church, ordained some years ago by Wm [William] Smith.”Appleby indicated that Lewis had a brother or a son “who is married to a white girl” and added that “both are members of the Church.” This is the clearest and most proximate record we have indicating that Enoch and Matilda were members of the Church and that they were interracially married.
Appleby’s observation sparked two questions. He asked Young: is it “the order of God or tolerated in this Church ie to ordain Negroes to the Priesthood, and allow amalgamation[?] If it is I desire to know it, as I have yet got to learn it.”[30]Appleby, who had been a member of the faith for seven years, did not have a clear sense of Church leaders’ position on Black priesthood ordination and interracial marriages. His questions suggest that such matters remained unsettled during the late 1840s. Indeed, it appears that his reports contributed to the emergence of a position against Black priesthood ordination and interracial marriage. In formulating his questions to Young, Appleby brought together ordination and amalgamation in ways that anticipated Young’s later statements and the attendant priesthood and temple ban.[31]
In May 1848, Appleby began writing a biography and compiling a journal.[32] In doing so, he retraced his steps, including those he took in Lowell during the summer of 1847. In a May entry, he referred to Walker Lewis’s ordination.[33] In his entry for June 16, Appleby noted that while searching “for a Bo. in the Church, I called at a House, a coloured man resided there, I set myself down for a few moments, presently in came quite a good looking ‘White woman’ about 22 years old I should think, with blushing cheeks, and was introduced to me as the negro’s wife, an infant in a cradle near by bore evidence of the fact. Oh! Woman, thought I, where is thy shame. (for indeed I felt ashamed and not only ashamed, but disgusted, when I was informed they were both members of o[ur][34] Church!) Respect for thy family, thyself,—for thy offspring, and above all the law of God?”[35] While Appleby did not name the individuals involved—perhaps a kind of distancing from these Church members on his part—circumstantial evidence indicates that he was writing about the same couple he had referred to in his June 1847 letter to Young.
Appleby’s account suggests that Enoch and Matilda were living in one of the Lewis homes on Centre Street. By this point, Enoch’s grandfather, Peter, had died, and his grandmother, Miner, had likely already moved to Cambridge, where other members of the Lewis family resided.[36] An 1850 map of Lowell assigned the names of “W. Lewis” and “Lewis” to adjoining structures on Centre Street.[37] Members of the Lewis family lived on this same street, and perhaps in the same house or houses, until the late nineteenth century.[38]
Matilda was twenty at the time of Appleby’s visit. The infant in the cradle was probably Enoch Jr., who would have been about two months old. The shock of this interracial marriage, and the fruits of that relationship, shaped Appleby’s memory of that day. While Black reformers and their allies had succeeded in repealing the anti-miscegenation law in Massachusetts, Appleby and many White people continued to oppose interracial marriage throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, in large measure because they believed that such marriages contradicted the law of God, regardless of what the law of the land indicated.
About six months after writing his letter to Young, Appleby met Young in person at Winter Quarters, where he delivered a firsthand account of his visits along the east coast.[39] According to the minutes of that meeting, Appleby reported that “Wm. [William] Smith ordained a black man [as an] Elder at Lowell & he has married a White girl & they have a child.” While this record might suggest that Enoch was also ordained as an elder, it seems more likely that the report conflates Walker with his son Enoch. This may indicate that Appleby had already misremembered some of the details of his visit, or perhaps the conflation was introduced by the individual keeping the minutes. In either case, Appleby’s report touched a nerve in Young, who responded to the news of the Lowell interracial marriage with a violent (though untenable) resolution. Young stated, “if they [the couple] were far away from the Gentiles they wod. [would] all [h]av[e] to be killed—when they mingle seed it is death to all.” Young, who was sustained as Church president a few weeks after making this statement, insisted that “the law is their seed shall not be amalgamated.”[40] Historical records such as these demonstrate that fears of interracial relationships between Black and White individuals, including the marriage of Enoch and Matilda Lewis, contributed to the emergence of the priesthood and temple ban, which Young would publicly assert for the first time in 1852.[41]
Although these records, produced by and in connection with William Appleby, are somewhat confused and conflicting, and while they comprise all the known contemporary records indicating that Enoch and Matilda Lewis were members of the Church, they nonetheless offer strong evidence of that membership. But whereas various sources attest to Walker Lewis’s ordination and his membership over the course of about a decade, the same cannot be said for Enoch’s relationship to the Church. While his membership and marriage drew negative attention and appear to have contributed to consequential decisions on the part of Church leaders, Enoch seems to have had little to do with the Church in the decades after his baptism.
“One Child Who Has Since Died”
Beginning in the late 1840s, Enoch’s life was marked by death, criminal indictments, imprisonment, and hospital stays. On February 23, 1848, he attempted to use a bank bill altered from one dollar to ten dollars.[42] Enoch seems to have wanted to exchange or use the altered bank note to purchase a drink at a store on Gorham Street in Lowell. He tried to exchange the note with two individuals, including Philip McGoughey, who called for the city marshal, Zaccheus Shed. After surveying the situation, Shed issued a complaint against Enoch and arrested him. At his trial, Enoch stated that when he was confronted about the altered bill, he had said “he did not know it” was a bad bill. One court record indicated that Lewis was nearsighted and further stated that “Lewis was an accomplice, the principal having escaped detection,” likely in reference to the individual who originally altered the bill.[43]
Counterfeiting bank bills and other notes was common during this period, as indicated by the warnings provided by Enoch’s contemporaries, including his father. In December 1846, Walker Lewis published a notice in a local newspaper cautioning individuals against purchasing notes purported to have been signed by him.[44] Many individuals commented on the problem, including William Appleby. In 1848, Appleby began writing a “history of the signs of the times,” wherein he described counterfeiting “Bank Bills” and other forms of currency as one of the prevailing evils of the era.[45]
Enoch pled not guilty before the Police Court, but the court demurred and ordered that he appear before the Court of Common Pleas in Concord, Massachusetts, in June. Enoch spent “several months” in prison before his trial.[46] Walker acted as a surety that Enoch would appear before the court in June, though Enoch failed to do so, forfeiting his father’s surety. When he did appear before the court in July, he was found guilty of uttering and sentenced to one day of solitary confinement and eight months of hard labor at the Middlesex House of Correction in Cambridge.[47]
While Enoch languished in prison, death stalked his home in Lowell. On September 5, 1848, Enoch Jr., just seventeen months old, died.[48] Enoch Jr.’s very existence as a mixed-race baby had shocked William Appleby. Appleby’s subsequent reports of that baby’s existence had drawn Brigham Young’s violent statements about Enoch and Matilda and appear to have shaped his emerging approach to Black members. Enoch Jr.’s sudden death also had immediate and long-term repercussions that are hard to measure. His death crushed his parents’ spirits. He was buried in the Hildreth Cemetery, where a headstone still stands as a testament to his short life.[49]
In October 1848, just over a month after Enoch Jr.'s death, his father petitioned for a pardon. The petition tragically noted that “he has a wife and at the time of his conviction had one child who has since died, that he is now twenty two years old, that he has a regular trade as a Hair Dresser which he has pursued at said Lowell for more than six years, that the above is the first and only offence of which he has ever been convicted.” The petition called into question the conviction and explained that Enoch’s “character from his youth up has in the opinion of those who are acquainted with him been generally good.” Enoch’s petition included an adjoining statement and signatures of twenty Lowell citizens, including Elisha Huntington and Jefferson Bancroft, the former mayor and then current mayor of Lowell. The citizens noted that they had “for many years been acquainted with Mr Walker Lewis the father … who is a highly respectable colored man.” They acknowledged that “our acquaintance with the petitioner himself has been somewhat limited,” but expressed their opinion, based on their knowledge of Enoch’s father and family, that “the Ends of Public Justice would be answered, and the probability of the future good conduct of the petitioner would be increased by granting him a pardon.”[50] The committee on pardons noted that Enoch’s conduct had been “uniformly good since his confinement,” and recognizing that he “has a father highly esteemed” and believing “he is sincerely disposed … to lead a virtuous life,” encouraged the governor to remit Enoch’s sentence. In the wake of his first grandchild’s death, a grieving Walker Lewis probably secured this statement on behalf of his incarcerated son.
While the family awaited the governor’s decision, Walker continued to nurture relationships with Latter-day Saint leaders. On Christmas Day 1848, Albert P. Rockwood preached in the Lewis home in Centralville. It does not appear that either Rockwood or Wilford Woodruff, who corresponded with Lewis during this period, had the same qualms as Appleby.[51]Two weeks after Rockwood preached in Walker’s home, Enoch was released from prison, a month before his sentence was up.[52] He returned to Lowell, where he was reunited with Matilda for the first time since the death of their child. The couple did not live far from Enoch Jr.’s place of burial at Hildreth Cemetery. The 1850 census lists Enoch as a twenty-four-year-old male Black barber. Matilda is listed as a twenty-seven-year-old White female. The young couple had endured much, but their trials were just beginning.[53]
“M.M.W. May 12, 1823”
Enoch likely returned to work with Walker in his barbershop in the Merrimack Hotel, though recovering a sense of normalcy would have been difficult. Enoch and Matilda appear to have had little to do with the Church during the early 1850s, even as Walker prepared to make a trip to the Salt Lake Valley, as many other Lowell Saints had done. In late March 1851, perhaps in anticipation of his journey west, Walker filed his last will and testament. He appointed his wife, Elizabeth, as executrix and stipulated that each of their four children would receive $400 from the sale of his Boston real estate. He indicated that $100 should be deducted from Enoch’s portion for a note held against him for that amount, likely for fines or fees tied to Enoch’s uttering case.[54] Extant records do not indicate when Walker left Lowell, but it was probably before early May 1851, when Enoch was again arrested.
On the night of May 4, Enoch attempted to break and enter a clothing store on Prescott Street in downtown Lowell, presumably to steal goods, but the owners were present, and he was arrested by a watchman. Enoch was taken to the Police Court the next morning and charged with attempted larceny and the attempt to break and enter a shop with intent to steal. Enoch pled not guilty, but the Police Court found him guilty and committed him when he could not provide the $500 bail. He was ordered to appear at the Court of Common Pleas in Concord. A local newspaper noted, “This is not the first time Lewis has been before the Court,” while another observed, “He is an old offender.”[55] The court sat inside the newly completed Concord Town Hall, where just one day prior—onMay 3—Ralph Waldo Emerson had delivered the first of his several addresses against the Fugitive Slave Law.[56] At Enoch’s trial in June, the jury found him innocent of attempted larceny, but guilty of attempting to break and enter at nighttime with intent to steal. He had used tools obtained from a woodworking shop near the barbershop where he barbered, but the court record clarified that Lewis was not armed and had not put anyone in the shop “in fear.”[57] This language aligned with the relevant statute, which stated that convicted persons “shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison, not more than five years, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisonment in the county jail, not more than two years.”[58] Enoch was sentenced to one day of solitary confinement and two years of hard labor at the state prison in Charlestown. At least one day of solitary confinement was mandatory for all individuals who were sent to this prison.[59] Enoch could have been imprisoned in a different location for a shorter duration, but the sentence he received was not uncommon.
On July 11, 1851, Enoch was committed to the prison. His appearance in the prison commitment register is revealing; it shows a unique way in which bodies can function as historical records. The register tells us where Enoch was born, where and when he was convicted and for what, his sentence, and when he was committed. The register further indicates that Enoch was five feet seven inches tall and “Negro.” It also indicates that Enoch had tattoos. The clerk recorded that his left arm (“A.”) featured an eagle with wings extended (“spread eagle”), perhaps perched on a ribbon or banner (“strip”). The clerk also recorded lettering on his arm—“M.M.W. May 12, 1823”—which may have been written on the banner. These initials and birthdate belonged to his wife, Mary Matilda Webster (or, Matilda Mary Webster). The transcription of Enoch’s tattoo is the only precise record of Matilda’s birth found to date. While tattoos of a spouse’s or lover’s initials were common, tattoos of their date of birth appear to have been rare. The prison clerk also noted that Enoch had a star “marked with blue ink”—perhaps a nautical star—on the back of his left hand.[60]
Enoch would have spent the first full day in solitary confinement, and the succeeding days and months laboring in strict silence alongside other inmates. The Charlestown prison had adopted the “reform” system pioneered at the Auburn Prison in New York, which restricted communication with those outside the prison and prohibited speaking to others inside its walls. While this approach marked a shift away from corporal punishment as the primary method of correction, it continued to exact a significant toll on the minds and bodies of the prisoners.[61]
While Enoch began serving out his sentence in Charlestown, his father made his way to Utah Territory. Walker had arrived by early October 1851, when he received his patriarchal blessing. A few months later, in January, he again offered up his tithes.[62] In that same month, the territorial legislature debated a bill that would authorize a form of Black slavery. Apostle and legislator Orson Pratt delivered a religiously reasoned antislavery address in opposition to the bill, but his fellow legislators passed the bill, and Brigham Young signed it into law.[63] In a speech in support of the law, Young decreed that Black people could not hold the priesthood.[64] Utah was not very welcoming for a Black, priesthood-holding abolitionist. Extant records do not indicate whether Lewis learned that the legislature had legalized a form of slavery and criminalized miscegenation, but his short stay in Utah is suggestive. A few months after the new law took effect, Walker returned east. By early November 1852, he was back in Lowell, where he continued his work as a barber, and again awaited his son’s release from prison.
“Exhaustion”
When Walker returned, Enoch was in the middle of his two-year prison sentence, and Matilda, his daughter-in-law, was in residence at the Worcester State Hospital. On March 26, 1852, after two months of severe mental distress, Matilda was committed to the hospital. The register indicated that she was residing in Cambridge at the time of her admission; perhaps she had moved there when Enoch was committed to the state prison. The probate court committed her, but the register does not indicate who initiated the process. The “supposed cause” for her distress was “Trouble Domestic.”[65] This clerical shorthand does little to convey all that Matilda had experienced, including the death of her child and the imprisonment of her husband.
Matilda spent the next ten months in the hospital, which had been built in 1833 to provide a therapeutic setting and restorative “moral treatment” to individuals who had been neglected, discarded, and viewed as incurable. The impulses that shaped prison reform during this period, including a desire to bring order to a disordered world, also informed efforts to house those deemed to be “insane.”[66] The hospital had two wings, one for men and one for women, and the patients were further segregated by illness and social position. The exterior landscape and interior décor were designed to encourage healing. Male patients labored outside in agriculture, landscaping, and construction, and female patients labored inside making textiles, laundering, and housekeeping. Despite early optimism about the hospital and its success, treatment dropped off in the first few decades of its existence, as a concern with administration overwhelmed a focus on care. Furthermore, during the early 1850s, the hospital became severely overcrowded, which upset the balance between caretakers and patients.[67]
Matilda did not recover in the hospital. Many of those who appeared on the same page as Matilda in the register “recovered” or “improved,” while others were “stationary” or “transferred.” Still others had more ominous causes of removal, including “Old age,” “Marasmus” or emaciation, and “Suicide.” During these years, the hospital had a death rate of about five percent. Matilda’s cause of removal was “Exhaustion.” While “Trustees,” “Overseers,” or “Friends,” came to remove those who had recovered or improved, “Death” came for Matilda.[68] On December 28, 1852, heartbroken and exhausted, Matilda died of exhaustion. She passed away amidst strangers in a strange place and was buried among strangers in the Pine Street Burial Ground in Worcester.[69] A decade or so later, Matilda’s remains and the remains of others buried at Pine Street were relocated to Hope Cemetery in Worcester.
Matilda died while Enoch was still confined to prison. Records do not indicate whether or how Enoch learned of Matilda’s death while imprisoned. Her death may have contributed to Enoch’s early release. The commitment register indicates that Enoch was “discharged by Remission of Sentence May 3, 1853,” about two months shy of his two-year sentence.[70] Whenever Enoch learned the news of the one whose name and birthdate were tattooed on his arm, he must have been devastated. First his child and now his wife had died while he was incarcerated. And while Enoch could visit the grave of his son, it may have been difficult for him to locate Matilda’s burial location. His was a disoriented world.
“Adulterous Amalgamation”
It seems Enoch was intent on moving forward. Less than a year after Matilda’s death, and just over four months after he was discharged from prison, Enoch remarried in Lowell. His second wife, Elizabeth E. Shorter, was born in 1833 in Manchester, New Hampshire, to Moses Richardson and Eunice Brister Freeman, who had met and married in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1819.[71] The 1830 census for Boxford, Massachusetts, lists “Moses Richardson” as the head of a family of four “Free Colored Persons,” including one adult female and two female children.[72] Ten years later, the family included an additional female “Under 10.”[73] Elizabeth went by Eliza. In the 1850 census she was listed with her father, Moses, a carpenter, and her husband, James Shorter, a barber, whom she had married some time before. The census taker designated Moses and James as Black, while he labeled Eliza as “mulatto,” a designation that appeared for the first time in the 1850 census.[74] While the term suggests that Eliza was lighter skinned, at least in the eyes of the census taker, it remains unclear whether she was mixed-race. At some point, Eliza and James moved to Centralville, where her sister, Eunice, had moved with her husband, Peter Lew, who was a Black barber and likely knew Walker Lewis.[75] Eliza suffered a series of losses in 1853. Her husband, James, died of typhoid fever in May, and Eunice died of “Inf[lammation] of the Brain” in December.[76] In between these deaths, on October 13, 1853, Eliza Shorter and Enoch Lewis—both recently widowed and living in Lowell—married.[77]
The marriage soon unraveled. In late April 1854, Enoch entered a boardinghouse at 66 Southac Street on Boston’s Beacon Hill. He entered with a woman, but it was not Eliza. A day or two later, he was arrested for adultery.[78]
The case is detailed in the Boston Daily Mail, an innovative newspaper that used carrier pigeons to report European news, but also one that engaged in sensationalized and highly satirical reporting, as in its coverage of Enoch’s adultery case. The paper’s reporter employed trivializing language and racist tropes and exhibited prejudicial and xenophobic views in describing both Enoch, his wife, and his lover, Catharine O’Donnell, who was Irish. While he dramatized the events and appears to have fabricated certain elements, the reporter illuminated parts of the story that are corroborated by other accounts and included details not found in extant court files.[79]
The reporter described Enoch as Black, “about twenty-eight,” and a barber in Lowell, while noting that his wife was “mulatto,” around “twenty-five,” and a widow, and adding that the couple had been married for “about seven months.”[80]The reporter identified O’Donnell as the wife of Anthony O’Donnell, who was serving a seven-year sentence in the state prison in Charlestown for manslaughter. An 1850 Lowell birth record for “Elizabeth O'Donnell” lists Anthony and “Cath” as her parents and includes a note indicating that Anthony was in the “State Prison.”[81] The reporter stated that Enoch himself had served “eighteen months” in the same prison and implied that he had met Catharine there, almost surely a fabrication considering the prisoners’ restrictions on communication with those outside the prison. The reporter further asserted that “about four months ago,” Enoch saw Catharine outside his barbershop and invited her in, did her hair, “and joined in playing a friendly game of checkers,” a double entendre meant to serve as a visual metaphor of the article’s heading, “Adulterous Amalgamation.” The writer claimed that Catharine became pregnant, which led Enoch to hatch a plan to leave Eliza and flee to Australia with Catharine. The scheme involved moving to Boston, securing a place on the Crystal Palace—a ship then readying for a journey to Australia, where several thousand Americans traveled after gold was discovered in 1851—and calling for Catharine to join him in Boston before their departure.[82] Perhaps Enoch was hoping for a new start in a new land.
When Enoch and Catharine entered the boardinghouse at 66 Southac Street, they were stepping into the home of abolitionists Lewis and Harriet Hayden, formerly enslaved individuals who had escaped from Kentucky in 1844 and eventually settled in Boston. The Hayden home was a major site on the Underground Railroad and headquarters of the Boston Vigilance Committee, comprised of individuals committed to aiding fugitive slaves. The Haydens had housed and protected William and Ellen Craft during their famous escape in 1850. In 1851, Lewis had also helped rescue Shadrach Minkins, a fugitive slave who had been jailed in the courthouse on 26 Court Street. In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe visited the Hayden home. The Hayden home also served as a used-clothing store and a boardinghouse. The Daily Mail reporter noted that Enoch and Catharine “stayed at Hayden’s, in Southac street, two nights as man and wife.” Connecting an interracial affair to the Hayden home could have been a means of attacking the abolitionists and their equal rights efforts, including their success in overcoming anti-miscegenation laws, but the reporter did not dwell on this connection.[83] Furthermore, court records show that Harriet Hayden testified in the case, indicating that Enoch and Catharine had, in fact, stayed at 66 Southac Street.[84]
The relationship between Enoch and the Haydens, and the role of the Haydens in Enoch’s arrest and conviction, are unclear. Walker Lewis, who had longstanding connections to Boston abolitionists, likely knew Lewis and Harriet Hayden; perhaps Enoch had used the connection to secure a room in their home. While extant court records are silent about how the lovers were discovered, the Daily Mail asserted that Enoch “sent a cowardly and cruel letter to his wife”and began talking openly about his plans. The reporter also avowed that “the letter was shown” and “popular feeling sided with the injured wife.” If Enoch did send a letter of this nature to Eliza, did she show it to family members? Did she show it to her father-in-law, Walker Lewis? Did Eliza or someone else in Lowell travel to Boston with the letter? Did Enoch reveal his plans to Lewis and Harriet Hayden? And who revealed Enoch’s actions and whereabouts to the legal authorities? The Haydens were accustomed to harboring fugitive slaves, but it seems unlikely they would knowingly provide a place for activities that might undermine their abolitionist efforts. In any case, the reporter stated that the letter and the response it garnered led to Enoch and Catharine’s arrest, noting, “Officer Oliver Whitcomb was put on the track.” On or around April 29, he found and arrested them at the Hayden home, where Enoch was downstairs and Catharine was in bed in one of the rooms.[85] A few days later, on May 2, the couple appeared in the Police Court, where bail was set at $700, a sum that neither Enoch nor Catharine could produce. They were placed in the recently constructed Suffolk County Jail on Charles Street until their trial before the grand jury of the Municipal Court in June.
In the intervening weeks, Boston exploded into a panic during the trial of Anthony Burns. Burns had escaped from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, to presumed freedom in Boston in early 1854. A few months later, in late May, he was arrested and jailed in the courthouse on 26 Court Street, spurring abolitionists to action. On the night of May 26, an antislavery meeting in Faneuil Hall transitioned into a chaotic rush to the courthouse square, where Lewis Hayden and Thomas Wentworth Higginson led an attempt to forcibly rescue Burns from the courthouse. In the ensuing melee a US marshal was killed. President Franklin Pierce sent federal troops to maintain order and ensure Burns’s return to slavery. On June 2, after Commissioner Edward G. Loring gave his decision ordering Burns back to slavery, federal troops and local deputies escorted him to a southbound ship as excited crowds lined the streets and hurled chastisement on the officers. Lewis Hayden avoided authorities for several days. During these hectic and troubled days, Enoch and Catharine awaited trial in the Suffolk County Jail.
On June 5, three days after Burns had been marched down Boston’s streets, the June term of the Municipal Court began at the same courthouse where Burns had been held. One week later, on June 12—the very day Burns arrived back in Richmond—three individuals, including Officer Oliver Whitcomb and Harriet Hayden, were summoned to give testimony in Enoch and Catharine’s case set for the next morning. The arrival of the constable at 66 Southac Street must have been unnerving for Harriet, but perhaps she was relieved when she learned the visit had nothing to do with her husband’s involvement in the failed attempt to rescue Burns. The next morning, Enoch and Catharine were taken to the courthouse, where a larger police presence than usual attested to recent events. Enoch admitted to adultery, possibly to avoid further revealing the contents of his letter—if such a letter existed—or, more nobly, perhaps to try to resolve the trial quickly and take attention away from the Haydens, whom he had placed in an awkward position at an especially tense period. Catharine claimed innocence, but after hearing testimony, the jury convicted both of adultery.[86]
As reported in local newspapers—which made sure to note that Enoch was “colored” and Catharine was “white”—Catharine was sentenced to eight months of hard labor in the Suffolk County House of Correction, and Enoch was sentenced to ten months of hard labor in the same prison, which was located in South Boston.[87] The law on adultery—listed just before the law on polygamy in the printed statutes—allowed for imprisonment of not more than three years in the state prison, “or in the county jail, not more than two years, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars.”[88]Enoch’s sentence was lighter than it could have been. And it was far less violent than what Brigham Young had suggested should happen to Enoch and Matilda in 1847. Had Enoch maintained his connection to the Church and had Church leaders known about his affair, it may have drawn another strong condemnation as much or more for its interracial as for its adulterous nature.
“Domestic Affliction”
The deaths of loved ones, legal troubles, scandals, and imprisonments appear to have almost entirely defeated Enoch. His state worsened in prison, where Enoch may have been having seizures. When he died three decades later, “Epilepsy” was listed as the cause, an important notation that may explain some of the first three decades of Enoch’s life, and that certainly illuminates his last three decades. During much of the nineteenth century, epileptic seizures were often viewed as the result of a mental disorder. They were often believed to be preventable and usually attributed to perceived moral and behavioral failures that damaged the brain, and those afflicted with such seizures were often labeled as “insane.” The 1855 census lists Enoch with others characterized under this term, an imprecise catchall for people presumed to have lost their reason, and a descriptor that followed Enoch the rest of his life.[89]
Immediately following his prison release, Enoch suffered two weeks of mental and perhaps physical anguish. In fact, these two weeks of suffering may have followed similar suffering in prison. Perhaps the prison warden or another prison official had communicated Enoch’s condition to the Lowell Overseers of the Poor, officials who addressed welfare concerns and often sent individuals to the state hospital. On April 27, 1855, Enoch was committed to the Worcester State Hospital. The clerk noted that Enoch was twenty-nine years old—which he would turn in less than a month—married, and a resident of Lowell at the time of admission. Perhaps he saw his father and family members, and even his wife, Eliza, before he was committed. Extant records suggest that Eliza remained married to Enoch and maintained her ties to the Lewis family. Perhaps her loyalty added to Enoch’s heartache. The patient listed just above Enoch Lewis, a “Horace Smith,” was admitted on the same day after a full year of suffering over a “Love Affair.” The clerk may have confused Smith and Lewis, though Enoch’s listed cause for his condition—“Domestic Affliction”—was an appropriately capacious, if also imprecise, description.[90]
During the mid-1850s, the state hospital in Worcester was severely underfunded and increasingly overcrowded, though Enoch’s dead loved ones may have been as much a presence in his life as the staff and other patients. The tattooed reminder of his late wife—who had died in the same institution in December 1852—must have been a source of pain as he walked the hospital’s haunted halls. Enoch may have also been physically restrained at times, as the use of restraints was quite common during this period. Meanwhile, the use of drugs became somewhat less restrained.[91] It is impossible to know how much healing Enoch found in such a place. On November 28, 1855, the overseers removed him owing to his “Recovery.” This was a less fatal and more optimistic cause of removal than Matilda’s, but his “Recovery” may suggest more about the hospital’s need to free up beds than it does about his mental state at that time. It would not be the last time he would reside in those hospital walls.
In the meantime, Enoch had more deaths to endure. For once he suffered a loved one’s death free from prison, though being present for such an occasion had its own horrors. In October 1856, about a year after Enoch’s release from the hospital, Walker Lewis died of “consumption,” or tuberculosis, the leading cause of death in the United States at the time, which often entailed the slow, painful “consumption” of the body.[92] He was fifty-eight years old.
Records do not indicate whether Walker maintained his relationship to the Latter-day Saint Church after his return to Lowell. He may not have had much choice. Many, perhaps most, of the Lowell members had gathered to the Salt Lake Valley by the time Walker traveled there in 1851. The Lowell branch may not have existed when he returned. A few months after Walker’s death, William Appleby was again assigned to oversee missionary work in the east. He was present at an April 1857 conference of the Church in New York, in which it was reported that there were “a few in good standing” in Lowell, but most “are scattered and lost.”[93] In July and August 1857, Elder Alexander Orr reported to President Appleby about his time in Lowell, indicating that he preached to the Saints there, organized them into a branch, and found them in good standing. None of these reports mentioned the recently deceased Walker Lewis, who had remained steadfast in the midst of trouble following Joseph Smith’s death, and whom Brigham Young had described as one of the best elders a decade earlier.[94] The reports were also untroubled by observations of interracial marriage, such as those Appleby had given during the same period. By the time of Walker’s death, the priesthood restriction had hardened into place.
“An Insane Person”
Walker’s death impacted his family in several ways, including in financial terms. It set in motion the execution of his last will and testament, which shaped Enoch’s legal status. Elizabeth used funds to pay for Walker’s funeral and burial services, conducted by St. Anne’s Episcopal Church. Walker and his family members had associated with St. Anne’s before his conversion to the Church, and Elizabeth may have continued the association. A few weeks later, Elizabeth met with the probate court to continue the work of settling Walker’s estate. And a few months later, on February 10, 1857, the estate inventory was exhibited. The inventory included musical instruments, home and barbershop furniture, tools, and supplies, and several notes. One note, dated July 27, 1855, revealed that Walker had loaned Enoch $100—another financial intervention by a father on behalf of his son—presumably to help cover the cost of his ongoing hospital stay.[95]It seems that Enoch could not pay the debt, and he could no longer draw on his father’s aid. On February 16, 1857, the mayor and aldermen of Lowell “voted to petition the Judge of Probate to appoint a guardian for Enoch Lewis, an insane person.”[96] Less than three weeks before Chief Justice Roger Taney would state that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” Enoch was stripped of his legal standing and autonomy.[97]
But Enoch’s family and community did not abandon him, and even his deceased father continued to look after him. The probate court appointed Perley Parker of Lowell as his guardian on March 17, 1857.[98] When Enoch’s assets were presented to the court several months later, he had no real estate and $300, per “legacy of his father.”[99] This accords with Walker’s will, which had stipulated that each child receive $400 and that $100 be deducted from Enoch’s portion for the money Walker had loaned him during his legal troubles. It appears that his mother did not elect to deduct the additional $100 his father had loaned him during his hospital stay. Perley Parker likely paid out portions of the remaining $300 to Enoch’s mother for his care. The 1860 census lists Enoch in Elizabeth’s household, together with other members of the family, who continued to live in the same house in Centralville.[100] He was labeled as “idiotic,” a term applied to individuals whose condition was thought to be congenital, though the 1865 Lowell census reverted to “insane.”[101]
In the same 1865 census, Enoch’s marital status changed from married to widowed. On January 11, 1863, Eliza Lewis died in Lowell. The register indicated that she was an “A[frican].”[102] Eliza died of tuberculosis, possibly contracted while in proximity to her father-in-law, who had died of the same disease. Although Eliza was not listed among the Lewis family in the city directories or censuses in the years following Enoch’s affair, she was nonetheless buried in the family plot in the Lowell Cemetery, a testament to her place in the Lewis family.[103]
Regardless of whether Enoch had remained in contact with Eliza, her death was one more loss in a life—and a nation—piling up with losses. While Enoch’s brother Walker Jr. served in the United States Navy during the Civil War, Enoch engaged in battles of a different kind.[104] As the national conflict drew to a close, Enoch increasingly fought them alone. During the mid-1860s, his inheritance may have begun to run out, or perhaps his condition worsened. Enoch appeared in both the Lowell and Taunton censuses of 1865, the latter taken a few months after the former. In the Taunton census, he was listed as a thirty-eight-year-old widowed barber who inhabited the same “dwelling” as everyone else on the page; Enoch was once again in a hospital. This time he was committed in Taunton, where a new facility had been constructed in the 1850s to assist with the overcrowded and underfunded facilities in Worcester, but the new facility quickly faced the same problems, which were exacerbated by the Civil War. Enoch may have been allowed, or even required, to cut the hair of male patients.
Over the next two decades of his life, Enoch spent most of his days in Taunton and Worcester hospitals. In 1867, he was listed in the auditor’s report for Lowell, which indicated that the city had paid for his care at the Taunton hospital over the prior year.[105] It seems that he returned to Lowell in June 1868, though he did not improve, and he was again in the Worcester State Hospital by September. His condition was listed as “Periodical” rather than “Hereditary.” He again “recovered” after about five months, and was released on January 28, 1869, when he again returned home.[106]
Enoch celebrated his forty-fourth birthday on May 20, 1870. On that same day, William Appleby died in Salt Lake City. Orson Pratt delivered the funeral discourse.[107]
Enoch remained home until late November 1870, when he was again admitted to the hospital in Worcester.[108] This time the clerk indicated that Enoch’s condition had lasted “15 years,” a medical marker tracking his continuous decline since he had been first committed in 1855. The clerk also noted that Enoch was “Married,” perhaps a lazy clerical error based on the record of his original commission. “Intemperance,” or alcohol abuse, was listed as the cause of his most recent breakdown, perhaps a misdiagnosis of Enoch’s possible self-medication for neurological decline. After another seven months, Enoch had again “Improved” and returned home. Before long, however, Enoch was sent back to the hospital in Taunton, where he seems to have remained for several years.
While Enoch was in Taunton, his mother, Elizabeth, died. In February 1874, after having reached seventy-nine years old, she succumbed to liver cancer.[109] She had cared for her troubled son throughout his life. And while she and her late husband had built a legacy of respect in Lowell, marginalization followed her into the grave. Elizabeth died on February 5, and yet in one record of her death, she appears only after all others who had died in that month. She was the only person who died in February for whom the clerk wrote “A[frican].”[110]
Elders of the Latter-day Saint Church continued to preach in Lowell during this period. In June 1876, Elder Benjamin Cummings wrote to Brigham Young, reporting on the state of the Church in Lowell. Cummings noted that he had “failed in every effort to get at the people in public meetings” and added that the “small branch” did not fill a room.[111] When he wrote from Lowell almost three months later, he was more optimistic. He reported that the branch had fifteen members, indicated that a few more individuals were likely to convert, and anticipated that some of the Lowell Saints would soon emigrate to Salt Lake.[112] There would be no members of the Lewis family among their number.
In 1877 or 1878, Enoch was returned to Worcester. In 1877, the Worcester State Hospital moved from its original location on Summer Street to a new, much larger campus on Belmont Street. At the same time, the worn down Summer Street hospital was rebranded as the Temporary Asylum for the Chronic Insane, which, despite its name, became a permanent asylum for those deemed incurable. The staff did not aim to help patients recover but simply provided them with basic care. After a short stay at the new structure on Belmont Street, Enoch—who was deemed incurable by this point if not before—was returned to the old familiar Summer Street institution, where he appears to have remained until about 1885.[113]
Enoch died on February 26, 1885, at the age of fifty-eight, the same age his father had been at his passing. Death records indicate that Enoch died in Lowell, and one of the records seems to show that he died in the Lowell “Alms House.” [114]Although Enoch had spent much more time in the Worcester hospital than Matilda had, he escaped her fate of dying within those walls. And while she had been buried among strangers in Worcester, Enoch was buried next to his father, his mother, his second wife, and other family members in the family plot in Lowell Cemetery.[115]
“Epilepsy”
As noted above, Enoch’s death records indicate that he died of “Epilepsy.” Because of these notations, these sources are as revealing—and just as tragic—as any of the other documents on which Enoch’s name appears. They help make sense of the last three decades of his life. During the very decade in which Enoch was first committed to a state hospital, the understanding around epileptic seizures began to change, as research began to show that epilepsy was neurological (or physical) rather than neurotic (or psychological).
Ironically, the death records obscure Enoch’s race, as both sources—either through silence or notation—seem to indicate that he was “W[hite],” harkening back to the marriage record for Enoch and Matilda, where the term “colored” did not appear. Such notations, or the lack thereof, are not uncommon in these kinds of records, but perhaps the death records suggest that White contemporaries, including clerks, cared less about policing the racial boundaries of individuals such as Enoch once they had died.
Enoch was a historical actor whose context and culture shaped him as a person, and whose decisions contributed to the contours of his lived experience. Enoch’s actions often brought constraints, particularly when society judged those actions to be criminal. Enoch was also a victim of misunderstanding, as some people coded his skin color as a problem. Remarkably, his mixed-race family had an outsized influence on the teachings and policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, surfacing racist ideas and, it seems, informing far-away legislative and ecclesiastical developments. Enoch was a victim of misunderstanding in other ways as well, particularly when others viewed his seizures as a sign of insanity. For him and many other individuals, changes in the ways in which people understood bodies, including phenotypical traits and involuntary movements, came too late.
But for these and many other reasons, Enoch and his story still have much to teach us.
By Jordan T. Watkins.
Dedication and Acknowledgments
To Ardis, who we can only hope to emulate in our archival wanderings.
I’m grateful to Paul Reeve for accepting my offer to write this entry, and for his patience as my timeline for completing it expanded into the future. I’m indebted to those who have researched the Lewis family before me, including scholar Connell O’Donovan and archivist Martha Mayo, as they established the groundwork for further research on the Lewis family. Several other archivists also deserve thanks. Tony Sampas and Carisa Kolias aided me in my time at the Center for Lowell History, Conor Snow helped me track down prison records housed at the Massachusetts State Archives, Meagan Rood assisted me in finding hospital records kept—for the time being—at the Center for the History of Medicine in Harvard’s Countway Library, and Christopher J. Carter helped me locate court records contained in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
If readers notice errors or find more information on Enoch, Walker, or other members of the Lewis family, I welcome corrections and insights (jordan_watkins@byu.edu).
[1] The most proximate sources, including a court record, marriage records, and a census record, suggest that Enoch was born in 1826, though other records, including two records of Enoch’s death, indicate that he was born a year earlier in 1825. It seems unlikely that the couple would have married only six days after Elizabeth gave birth. See “Petition of Enoch L. Lewis,” Pardon Files (1849), Massachusetts State Prison (Charlestown) Records, Massachusetts Archives, Boston, MA; United States, 1850 Census, Middlesex, Massachusetts; and Lowell Marriages (1853), “Massachusetts Marriages, 1841–1915,” FamilySearch; and Lowell Deaths (1885), “Massachusetts Deaths, 1841–1915,” FamilySearch.
[2] For more on Walker Lewis, and for citations to records that help detail his life, see Jordan T. Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis,” Century of Black Mormons.
[3] On these organizations, see Christopher Cameron, To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2014), 84–100.
[4] United States, 1850 Census, Lowell, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[5] See The Lowell Directory and Almanac (Lowell, 1842), 44; and The Lowell Almanack, and Pocket Memorandum, for 1852 (Lowell, 1842), 34. Walker Lewis’s brother Enoch appears to have been living in Cambridge. See United States, 1840 Census, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[6] “Lewis, Walker” in The Lowell Directory (Lowell, 1841), 108.
[7] Floyd’s Lowell Directory for 1835 (Lowell, 1835), 177.
[8] On the African School see James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 70–75.
[9] During this same period, Black abolitionists led the effort to abolish segregation in Boston’s public schools and ultimately succeeded in 1855. See Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829–1889 (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 124–33, 167–71.
[10] Suzanne Wray, “R. Winter’s Unrivalled Exhibition of Chemical Dioramas, Chrystalline Views, Chromatropes, &c: The Traveling Exhibitions of Robert Winter,” The Magic Lantern Gazette 19 (Winter 2007): 8–19.
[11] “Our Colored Citizens,” Lowell Courier, 13 August 1844, [2].
[12] Lowell Courier, 15 August 1844, [2]. For Winter’s response, see Letter to the Editor, Lowell Courier, 15 August 1844, [2].
[13] Theodore Edson, Journal, 5 March 1839.
[14] Edson, Journal, 8 March 1839.
[15] See also, Connell O’Donovan. 'The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis: "An Example for His More Whiter Brethren to Follow".' The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 26 (2006): 62-64. The 1840 census lists five males in the Walker Lewis household, including one between 36 and 55 (Walker), three between 10 and 24 (Enoch and two others), and one under 10 (Walker Lewis Jr.).
[16] Edson, Journal, 15, 22, and 29 March, 1839.
[17] Edson, Journal, 5 April 1839.
[18] See Eli Maginn to Joseph Smith, 1 and 3 May 1842, in JSP, D10:8–15; and “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 3:844.
[19] Journal History of the Church, 11 September 1842 and 9 February 1843, Church History Library.
[20] See Wilford Woodruff, Journal, 9 September 1843, in The Wilford Woodruff Journals, 6 vols., ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Benchmark Books, 2020), 1:572; and Boston Conference Minutes, September 1843, in Historian's Office minutes and reports (local units), 1840-1886, CHL. Benjamin F. Grouard reported on the Lowell branch at a conference held in Boston on September 9. See Benjamin F. Grouard, Journal, 4 and 17 August, and 9 September, 1843, CHL. On LDS missionary efforts in Lowell during this period, see Ronald O. Barney, “‘There is the Greatest Excitement in This Country That I Ever Beheld’: Mormonism’s New England Ministry of the Forgotten Eli P. Maginn,” Mormon Historical Studies 15 (Fall 2014): 217–22, 241–44, 246–7; and O’Donovan, “The Mormon Priesthood Ban,” 65–70.
[21] Neither Walker, nor Enoch, nor any other member of the Lewis family has been found in the Record of Members Collection, 1836–1970 (CR 375 8), housed in the Church History Library.
[22] Wilford Woodruff to Brigham Young, 16 November 1844, Brigham Young office files, 1832–1878. On these developments and their repercussions, see Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis”; and O’Donovan, “The Mormon Priesthood Ban,” 77–82.
[23] For sources on Walker Lewis’s donations and instruments, see Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis.”
[24] John Greenleaf Whittier, The Stranger in Lowell (Boston, 1845), 26.
[25] O’Donovan, “The Mormon Priesthood Ban,” 76–77.
[26] On the repeal of the anti-miscegenation law, see Kyle G. Volk, Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 101–16.
[27] “Lewis, Enoch L.” and “Webster, Mary M.,” in Vital Records of Cambridge Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, vol. 2 (Boston, 1915), 241.
[28] I have not found Enoch Jr.’s birth record. The date of his birth is indicated by a record of his death. See “Lewis, Enoch R. L.,” Vital Records of Dracut, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1907), 286. This record is based on Enoch Jr.’s grave marker.
[29] 26 March 1847, Historian’s Office, General Church Minutes, 1839–1877, CHL.
[30] William I. Appleby to Brigham Young, 2 June 1847, Brigham Young office files, 1832-1878.
[31] On these developments, see W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 106–61; O’Donovan, “The Mormon Priesthood Ban,” 82–89; and Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis.”
[32] Biography and Journal of William I. Appleby, 24 May 1848, 234, CHL.
[33] Appleby noted the presence of “a Coloured Brother,” named “Walker Lewis,” who William Smith had ordained an elder, but Appleby’s entry was written in light of later developments, which colored his account. He wrote that Smith had ordained Lewis at an earlier period, while Smith “was a member of the Church, contrary though to the order of the Church on the Law of the Priesthood, as the Descendants of Ham are not entitled to that privilege.” Autobiography and Journal of William I. Appleby, 19 May 1847, 170–71.
[34] It is possible that what I have rendered as an ‘o’ here is an ‘a,’ though it makes more sense that he meant to write “our Church” rather than “a Church” given his statement about being “ashamed” and “disgusted.”
[35] Autobiography and Journal of William I. Appleby, 16 June 1847, 177.
[36] United States, 1850 Census, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[37] Floyd’s Lowell Directory (Lowell, 1835). Sidney and Nell, Plan of the City of Lowell, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: S. Moody, 1850).
[38] The house was later renamed “River Street,” and it is now named “Lakeview Avenue.” A city directory shows that Walker Lewis Jr. was living in a home on River Street as late as 1886. The Lowell Directory (1886), 363.
[39] See Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 132–34.
[40] General Church Minutes, 3 December 1847, CHL.
[41] See Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 134–36. On fears of miscegenation in nineteenth-century America, see Elise Lemire, “Miscegenation”: Making Race in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
[42] Altered Lowell Bank Note (1845), in Commonwealth v. Enoch L. Lewis, No. 1149 (Middlesex County Court of Common Pleas, 1848), Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston, MA.
[43] “Petition of Enoch L. Lewis” and Statement of Committee on Pardons, 8 January 1849, Pardon Files (1849).
[44] “Notice,” 29 and 31 December 1846, Lowell Advertiser, [3].
[45] William I. Appleby, “History,” 135.
[46] “Petition of Enoch L. Lewis.”
[47] Uttering was punishable with imprisonment of no more than five years in the state prison or no more than one year in the county jail. The Revised Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, 1836), 729.
[48] Lewis, Enoch R. L.,” Vital Records of Dracut, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1907), 286. This record is based on Enoch Jr.’s grave marker, which reads, “ENOCH R. L. Son of Enoch L. & Matilda M. Lewis Died Sept. 5, 1848 Æt. 17 mos.” Author’s photograph of Enoch R. L. Lewis Headstone, 2 May 2023, Hildreth Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts.
[49] Enoch R. L. Lewis, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/20341930/enoch-r_l-lewis.
[50] “Petition of Enoch L. Lewis.”
[51] See Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis.”
[52] See “Convention….No. 103,” in Documents Printed by Order of the Constitutional Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston: White & Potter, 1853), 23.
[53] United States, 1850 Census, Middlesex, Massachusetts. As was common, the column for “White, black, or mulatto” was left blank for Matilda and other “White” individuals, while it was marked “B” for Enoch.
[54] Last Will and Testament of Walker Lewis, Middlesex County, Massachusetts Probate Records, in Probate File Papers, 1658–1871, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.
[55] “City Matters,” Lowell Weekly Journal and Courier, 5 May 1851, [2]; and 6 May 1851, Lowell Advertiser, [2]. See also, “Court of Common Pleas,” Lowell Weekly Journal and Courier, 18 July 1851, [1]; and 10 July 1851, Lowell Advertiser.
[56] “Address to the Citizens of Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law, 3 May 1851,” in The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843–1871, ed. Ronald A. Basco and Joel Myerson, 2 vols. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2001), 1:259–76.
[57] Commonwealth v. Lewis, No. 371 (Middlesex County Court of Common Pleas, 1851), Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.
[58] Revised Statutes, 722.
[59] Revised Statutes, 766.
[60] Enoch Lewis, Commitment Register (1851), Massachusetts State Prison (Charlestown), Massachusetts State Archives.
[61] See Philip Gura, ed., Buried from the World: Inside the Massachusetts State Prison, 1829–1831 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2001).
[62] See Watkins, “Quack Walker Lewis.”
[63] For Pratt’s speech, see Jordan T. Watkins and W. Paul Reeve, “‘Slavery Is a Great Evil’: Orson Pratt’s Antislavery Speech (1852),” in Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory, ed. Richard Benjamin Crosby and Isaac James Richards (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2026), 58–68. On the mostly unfulfilled abolitionist potential of the Latter-day Saint tradition, see Jordan T. Watkins, “‘It Is Not Right That Any Man Should Be in Bondage One to Another,’ Abolitionist Potential in the Latter Day Saint Tradition,” in A Radical Spirit: The History and Potential of the Latter Day Saint Tradition, eds. Andrew Bolton, Taunalyn Ford, and Patrick Q. Mason (forthcoming, The University of Illinois Press).
[64] On the background, passage, and aftermath of the 1852 law, see W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and Lajean Purcell Carruth, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
[65] Matilda Lewis, Commitment Register (1852), Worcester State Hospital Records, 1833–1913, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University. At the time of writing, the Massachusetts State Archives was accessioning these records.
[66] David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971).
[67] Gerald N. Grob, The State and the Mentally Ill: A History of Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, 1830–1920 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966).
[68] Commitment Register (1852), Worcester State Hospital Records.
[69] Worcester Deaths (1852), “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988,” Ancestry.
[70] Enoch Lewis, Commitment Register (1851), Massachusetts State Prison (Charlestown).
[71] Andover Marriages (1819), “Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626–2001,” FamilySearch.
[72] United States, 1830 Census, Boxford, Essex, Massachusetts.
[73] United States, 1840 Census, Topsfield, Essex, Massachusetts.
[74] United States, 1850 Census, Lawrence, Essex, Massachusetts.
[75] United States, 1850 Census, Dracut, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[76] Lowell Deaths (1853), “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927,” FamilySearch.
[77] Lowell Marriages (1853), “Massachusetts Marriages, 1841–1915,” FamilySearch; and Lowell Marriages (1853), “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988,” FamilySearch.
[78] Commonwealth v. Lewis, no. 593 (Municipal Court of the City of Boston, 1854), Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston, MA.
[79] “Life in Town,” Boston Daily Mail, 2 May 1854, [2]. See also, “Manifestations of Monday,” 2 May 1854, [1].
[80] This information was fairly accurate, except Eliza was probably about twenty-one at the time.
[81] Lowell Births (1850), “Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988,” Ancestry.
[82] “Life in Town.”
[83] “Life in Town.”
[84] Summons, in Commonwealth v. Lewis (1854).
[85] “Life in Town.”
[86] Commonwealth v. Lewis, no. 593.
[87] “Affairs About Home,” The Boston Herald, 13 June 1854, [4]; “Affairs in and about the City,” Boston Daily Atlas, 14 June 1854, [2].
[88] Revised Statutes, 739.
[89] United States, 1855 Census, Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts.
[90] Enoch Lewis, Commitment Register (1855), Worcester State Hospital Records.
[91] Grob, The State and the Mentally Ill, 121–43.
[92] Lowell Deaths (1856), “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638–1927,” FamilySearch.
[93] “Minutes,” The Mormon, 11 April 1857, [2].
[94] “A Traveling Sketch” and “Correspondence of President Ott,” The Mormon, 18 July and 5 September 1857, [3].
[95] Inventory, in Last Will and Testament of Walker Lewis.
[96] “City Items,” Lowell Daily Citizen and News, 17 February 1857, [2].
[97] Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 Howard), 393, 408 (1857).
[98] Complaint and Bond of Enoch Lewis, Middlesex County, Massachusetts Probate Records, in Probate File Papers, 1658–1871, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.
[99] Inventory of Enoch Lewis, Middlesex County, Massachusetts Probate Records.
[100] United States, 1860 Census, Lowell, Middlesex, Massachusetts; The Lowell Directory (Lowell, 1861), 138–39.
[101] United States, 1865 Census, Lowell, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[102] Lowell Deaths (1853), “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927,” FamilySearch.
[103] Elizabeth Lewis Lot Card, no. 873, Lowell Cemetery, Martha Mayo Research Files, Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
[104] Boston Enlistments (1862), “United States, Naval Enlistment Rendezvous, 1855–91,” FamilySearch. See also, author’s photograph of Walker Lewis Jr. Headstone, 4 May 2023, Lowell Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts; and Walker Lewis, Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14403740/walker-lewis.
[105] City Documents of the City of Lowell for the Year 1866–67 (Lowell, 1867), 50.
[106] Commitment Register (1868), Worcester State Hospital Records. See also, City Documents of the City of Lowell for the Year 1871–72 (Lowell, 1872), 69.
[107] “Local and Other Matters,” Deseret News, 25 May 1870.
[108] See United States Census, 1870, Lowell, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
[109] Lowell Deaths (1874), “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638–1927,” FamilySearch.
[110] Lowell Deaths (1874), “Massachusetts, Deaths and Burials, 1795–1910,” FamilySearch.
[111] B. F. Cummings to Brigham Young, 2 June 1876, in Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
[112] B. F. Cummings to Brigham Young, 26 August 1876, in Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878.
[113] City Documents of the City of Lowell (Lowell, 1873–1885). See also, “City and Vicinity,” Lowell Daily Citizen and News, 28 September 1874; and United States, 1880 Census, Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts.
[114] Lowell Deaths (1885), “Massachusetts Deaths, 1841–1915”; Lowell Deaths (1885), “Massachusetts Deaths and Burials, 1795–1910,” FamilySearch. In both sources, most individuals are designated as White, though the clerk(s) wrote “A” for “African” in connection with a few names. These records indicate that Enoch was fifty-nine at the time of his death, though earlier records indicate that he would have been fifty-eight.
[115] Elizabeth Lewis Lot Card, no. 873, Lowell Cemetery. See also, author’s photograph of the Lewis Family plot, 4 May 2023, Lowell Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts.
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