Thomas Dalton (1794–1883) and Lucy Lew (1790–1865) were African Americans in Massachusetts.[1]
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Lucy Lew was born in Dracut, Massachusetts (now Lowell, Massachusetts) on May 7, 1790 one of 13 children. Her father, Barzillai Lew (1743–1822), born a free black, was a Revolutionary War soldier and a talented musician. Her mother Dinah Bowman (1744–1837), born a slave, was fair skinned and described as "bleached by the sun." About 1766, Brazillai Lew bought Dinah’s freedom from the Blood Family for 400 pounds (today $28,000.)[2] Shortly after they married, they purchased a large piece of farmland on the north side of the Merrimack River in Dracut, Massachusetts.[3]
Lucy Lew and her brothers and sisters attended the integrated public Coburn Mission School in a small gray wooden building with a tall wooden bell tower off Varnum Avenue. On Sunday mornings, she would listen to her father sing in the choir at the Pawtucket Congregational Church near the thunderous Pawtucket Falls.[4] Occasionally Lucy and her family traveled to Boston, Massachusetts to visit friends in the black community on the north side of Beacon Hill.
On June 11, 1811, she watched her older brother Peter Lew inducted as Grand Master of the Prince Hall Freemasonry Lodge on Cambridge Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1791 by Prince Hall it was the first masonic lodge for men of color in the United States.[5][6] Attending the celebration dinner were men and women of color from all over Massachusetts dedicated to improving the condition of their race.
Another brother, Zadock Lew, also a lodge member, was very well learned and accumulated one of the largest libraries in Northern Middlesex County. He was considered eligible as "a town leader or state official if not for his color." [7]
As a young adult Lucy Lew married Mr. Francis and moved to the black community on the north side of Beacon Hill. In Boston, Lucy Francis became very involved in the cultural activities of her community.[8][9]
Thomas Dalton was born October 17, 1794, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas Dalton, Sr. had probably been a servant or slave to Tristram Dalton of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a wealthy merchant who was elected United States Senator from Massachusetts to the First Congress. It appears, Dalton’s mother Polly Freeman was the daughter of former slave Cato Freeman from Beverly, Massachusetts.[10]
His Uncle Gloucester Dalton in 1785 was one of the eighty-five charter members of the Charter of Compact of the Gloucester Universalist Society, the first Universalist Church organized in America.[11] Another Uncle Scipio Dalton and his wife Sylvia were founding members of the African Society, instituted in Boston in 1796 for the "mutual improvement, protection, and support of the colored inhabitants of this city." Scipio and Sylvia Dalton also helped organize and raise money to build the First African Baptist Church now African Meeting House, dedicated in December 1806 as the first black church in America.[12]
As a young man, Thomas Dalton moved from Gloucester to Boston and married a woman named Patience.[9] He worked at various times as a bootblack, tailor, clothing storeowner, waiter, and caterer. Together, serving the black and white communities of Boston, they were successful and by 1820 owned a home on Butolphe Street on the north side of Beacon Hill.[13] Over the next 63, years, the Dalton’s purchased several buildings in Boston and Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Thomas Dalton began his life-long commitment working to improve the condition of his race by joining the Prince Hall Freemasonry Lodge in 1825. He was selected Grand Master of the lodge from 1831–1832 and again at the age of 69, he served from 1863-1872.[6] Several members of the Prince Hall Lodge met together in 1826 and established the Massachusetts General Colored Association "to promote the welfare of the race by working for the destruction of slavery." The elected officers were Thomas Dalton, President; William G. Nell, Vice President; and James G. Barbadoes, Secretary.[14] Other association members included Walker Lewis and David Walker (abolitionist), who became the organization's spokesman and shocked the nation in 1829 by writing the Appeal[15] "Remember Americans we must be as free as you are. Will you wait until we shall under God obtain our liberty by the crushing arm of power?"
Although, separate black anti-slavery societies existed in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Connecticut, and New Jersey, there was a strong feeling against the organization of separate anti-slavery societies. In January 1833, Dalton as president led a successful petition for the Massachusetts General Colored Association[14] to join the New England Anti-Slavery Society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator. Together they organized Anti-Slavery conventions and speaking programs throughout Massachusetts and New England. In 1844, the Massachusetts General Colored Association published Light and Truth by Robert Benjamin Lewis, the first history of the colored race written by an African American.[16]
In June 1832, Thomas Dalton's first wife, Patience, died.[9] In the spring of 1833, Thomas Dalton and Lucy Lew Francis were among a small group of women and men who formed the Boston Mutual Lyceum on West Central Street to sponsor educational lectures for the colored citizens living in the Boston area. One of the first lectures was "What Are the Best Means to Adopt, to Remove the Prejudice which Exists Against the People of Color?"[17] Lucy Lew Francis and Thomas Dalton were married on June 5, 1834 by Rev. Baron Stow[18] at the Rowe Street Baptist Church in Boston.[19]
Thomas Dalton was elected president in 1834 of the Infant School Association. Dalton along with others in the African American and abolition community of Boston organize the colored citizens of Boston to elect supportive School Committee members. "Resolved, That to secure the blessings of knowledge, every possible effort should be made by us…to secure such persons as we know to be favorable to the elevation of the people of color to their natural, civil, political, and religious rights, and are interested in the education of our children." They forced the reopening of two African American primary schools, secured the opportunity for children of color to compete for prizes formally reserved for white children, and required the selection of competent instructors. And the established of an African grammar school Abiel Smith School for colored children built on Belknap Street (now Joy Street) headed by a college graduate appointed to teach the same curriculum as the white grammar schools.[20] The conditions of schools and the quality of the teachers was not maintained by the Boston School Committee, children of color were excluded from Boston's high school and Latin school. The efforts to create a separate but equal school system in Boston failed.[21]
From the establishment of Lowell, Massachusetts in 1826, its primary and grammar schools and with the opening of its high school in 1831, the Lowell School Committee supported integrated schools.[22] In the mid-1840s, through successful lawsuits, the towns of Nantucket and Salem were forced to integrate its schools. In response to the failed segregated school system in Boston and the success of integrated schools in other Massachusetts communities, Thomas Dalton lead seventy other fellow citizens in an effort to allow their children into the white district schools of Boston. They sent petitions imploring the Boston School Committee: "People are apt to become what they see is expected of them...avoided as a degraded race...Do not say to our children that however well they behave, theor presence in our achools is a contamination to your children."[23] Repeated petitions and demands to integrate Boston's schools were ignored by the Boston School Committee for eleven years. Finally, the long fight to integrate the schools of Boston ended when in 1855 the Massachusetts legislature reversed the Boston School Committee's policy by outlawing race as a criterion for admission to a public school in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."[24]
In the late 1830s, Thomas and Lucy Dalton bought a home in Charlestown at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument. Here they continued to campaign for equal rights and justice along with their black neighbors, the Dewson Family.[13] Alexander Dewson arrived from Hawaii to Massachusetts in the 1830s. Shortly after he arrived he met and married Eliza Butler Walker the widow of black abolitionist David Walker, author of Appeal. In the early 1840s, Alexander, Eliza, and her son Edwin Garrison Walker, moved from Southac Street on the north side of Beacon Hill to Charlestown next door to Thomas and Lucy Dalton.[13] Perhaps it is through Lucy Dalton’s connections in Lowell that Edwin Garrison Walker, one of the first African Americans to become a lawyer in Massachusetts and to be elected to the Massachusetts legislature, met and married Hannah Van Vronker. Hannah was born in Lowell and one of Henry and Lucinda Webster Van Vronker’s three daughters.[25]
Lucy Lew Dalton died in Charlestown on April 12, 1865.[26] By 1870, Thomas Dalton had moved back to the north side of Beacon Hill and was living on South Russell Street.[27] He died on August 30, 1883,[28] leaving a sizable estate to his three nieces (Catherine L. Dalton Henson, Mary E. Freeman Freeman, and Harriet P. Freeman Johnson.)[29]
Lucy and Thomas Dalton strongly believed that integrating schools and improving education for the colored children of Boston was the best avenue "to remove the prejudice which exists against the people of color." They dedicated their lives to this mission.