The Mormon Priesthood Ban &

Elder Q. Walker Lewis:

"An example for his more whiter brethren to follow"

Connell O'Donovan

[Originally published in the 2006 issue of the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal] 

Important updates (since publication) are in GREEN

Uncovering the rich, complex, and challenging life of Walker Lewis has been a profoundly rewarding experience over the past 27 years. When I first heard of his existence through the "Mormon Underground" in 1979, all I was told was that a black man named Lewis from Massachusetts or New York had been ordained an Elder in the 1840s, something which I was sure had to be incorrect; I had grown up believing that black men had always been banned from the Mormon priesthood until LDS President Spencer W. Kimball reversed that long-standing policy in 1978. I was not surprised at all to find that in Mormon historical circles Walker Lewis was little more than a very curious footnote, far outshone by Elijah Abel, the black man who had been ordained to Mormon priesthood by none other than the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints himself, Joseph Smith. However while combing early manuscript diaries and correspondence of Mormon apostles and missionaries who had been in the Lowell and Boston areas, I was surprised to learn that Elder Lewis was well known and well respected among those early Mormon leaders.

Further genealogical research into Lewis and his relatives was even more exciting – his large and extremely influential family is perhaps the best-documented African American family, partly due to their critical role in Massachusetts’ abolitionist politics. Walker Lewis himself was literate, educated, upper-middle class, and well connected socially and politically. Laboring his whole life as a barber (in the African-American socio-economic strata of the day, barbers were solidly middle class until the 1870s), Lewis was a radical abolitionist, a prominent organizer of and participant in the Underground Railroad, a Most Worshipful Grand Master of Freemasonry, one of two – or possibly three[1] - free black men known to hold the higher Mormon priesthood in the 1840s, and he almost became Mormonism’s first and only black polygamist. Despite his abiding faith in Mormonism and acquaintance with and influence among the highest rank of LDS leaders, racism ultimately prevailed in the LDS Church. The inter-racial marriage of his Mormon son to a white Mormon woman so infuriated Brigham Young when he learned of it at the end of 1847 that he wished to have the newlywed couple murdered, and soon thereafter Young instigated a complete priesthood ban against all men with any African ancestry at all (and a temple ordinance ban against both black men and women). In February 1852, under pressure from Young, Utah’s first governor, the very first territorial legislature passed a law prohibiting all sexual relations between consenting Africans and white people (whether married or not), accompanied by a severe criminal punishment. Pointedly, Young stumped for - and the legislature passed - this racist law during the half-year that Elder Lewis happened to be in Utah.

While I plan to complete a comprehensive online history of the Walker, Lewis, and allied families later, for this essay I here provide a summary of the more important highlights of their history as background to Walker's own fascinating life.

Born Quack Walker Lewis on Friday, August 3, 1798 in Barre, Worcester County, Massachusetts to Peter P. Lewis Sr. and Minor Walker Lewis, he was named after his 45 year old maternal uncle, Quacko Walker (who was also born in August, probably on Saturday the 4^th, 1753 – Kwaku is Ghanian for "boy born on Saturday", a common naming device among African tribes of the time). Walker was the couple’s fourth of eleven children. His older siblings were:

·     Samuel Alexander Lewis (1792 – 1852); married first Susanna "Sukey" Maldree in 1815 and then Elizabeth Munroe in 1841

· Adam Lewis (1794 – ?)

·     Sophia Lewis (1796- 1852); married black abolitionist John Levy [2] in 1822

Walker's younger siblings were:

·     Joseph Lewis (1800 - ?); married Sylvia A. _____

· Enoch Lewis (1801 – before 1844); married Azuba Nichols in 1823

· Rosanna V. Lewis (1802 – 1826)

· Dinah S. Lewis (1805 – ?); married first William F. Bassett in 1827 and then Isaac Davidson in 1842

· Andress Valentine Lewis (1806 – ?); married first Martha Lew in 1832 and then Urania Silver in 1846

· Peter P. Lewis Jr. (1807 – 1845); married Relief Ingalls Lovejoy – the sister of Walker's wife – in 1830

· Simpson Harris Lewis (1814 – 1887); married Catherine Jackson in 1833, Susan M. Jackson in 1841, Caroline F. Butler about 1845, and Frances Ellen Brown in 1875[3]

Little is known about Peter P. Lewis Sr. until his marriage to Minor Walker in Barre, December 5, 1792. In land records he is called a "yeoman" (gentleman farmer); he was born about 1758 and was from Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massaschusetts.

Minor (or Minah and variants) Walker was born a slave in 1758 on the homestead of her parents’ owners, James and Isabel Oliver Caldwell, in Barre (Rutland District), Worcester County, the second child and oldest daughter of slave parents Mingo (also known later as Nimrod Quacko or Quameno) and Dinah. (Minor/Minah is a common African woman’s name with various possible meanings; Dinah is a Muslim name; Quameno, from Ghanian kwamin, means "boy born on Wednesday", and Mingo is apparently Bobangi for "defiant one", an apt name as will be shown.)[4] Mingo eventually had at least twelve children by Dinah, or by his second wife, Elizabeth Harris (married September 19, 1773).

James Caldwell’s home where Walker's mother,

Minor Walker, was born – the first frame house built in Barre, Mass.

The naming practices of this family over the decades are really quite interesting. The first generation of Mingo, Dinah and their first two children, Quacko and Minor, maintained their ethnicity with names of African origin, but beginning with Mingo’s third child, the names became somewhat campy, even mocking, apparently imposed on them by their masters – especially for the boys Step, Prince, Boston, and Cato Walker. However, around the time of the American Revolution, the family began using bourgeois New England names and naming practices, perhaps being influenced by the first wave of white abolitionists, the Quakers. Over the next one hundred years the vast majority of names of this and allied families, such as Relief Ingalls Lovejoy or William Bradford Peck, could just as easily have come from some Monthly Meeting records of the Society of Friends. This, ironically, led some Mormon genealogists to believe they were in fact white and had LDS temple ceremonies performed vicariously for many of these people, decades before the ban against this would be lifted.[5]

Mingo was born in Africa but apparently enslaved and deported to America while still quite young, perhaps at ten to fifteen years of age (for we know that he spoke "middling good English" and children learn other languages better than adults do). He may have been the son of one Rose Mingo, of Framingham, Massachusetts.[6] Mingo and Dinah started a family together about 1752, while slaves owned by Zedekiah Stone, of Rutland District, Worcester Co. When their first born, Quacko (later surnamed Walker), was about nine months old, the whole family was sold (ultimately very fortuitously as it turned out) to James Caldwell (1711-1763) of Barre on May 4, 1754. His brother John Caldwell, Esq. (1714-1807) was a witness to the sale, and this John would later marry Mingo – aka Nimrod Quameno – to his second wife, Elizabeth Harris, in 1773 as Justice of the Peace in Barre.[7]

1754 Bill of Sale for Mingo, Dinah, and "Quork"

Rutland District, May 4 1754.

Sold this day to Mr. James Caldwell of said District, in the County of Worcester & Province of the Massachusetts Bay, a certain Negro man named Mingo, about twenty years of Age, and also one Negro wench named Dinah, about nineteen years of age, with her Child Quaco – about nine months old, all sound & well, for the sum of One hundred & eight pounds, lawful money, recd. to my full Satisfaction which Negroes I the subscriber do warrant & defend against all claims whatsoever as witness my hand

                                                           Zedekiah Stone
In presence of
Jno. Murray,
John Caldwell

As James Caldwell grew older, he increasingly came to feel that slavery was wrong and he promised Quacko that on his 24^th or 25^st birthday, he would be manumitted and become a free man. Unfortunately, one month before Quacko turned eleven, Caldwell died. Caldwell and his slave (undoubtedly Quacko’s father, Mingo) had "taken refuge under a tree during a heavy thunder shower. The tree [was struck] by lightning and a limb detached which killed him and broke the thigh of the negro" on July 18, 1763.[8] Despite his untimely and tragic death, his widow, Isabel Oliver Caldwell (who had been born in Ireland), then promised to free Quacko at the age of 21, which would have been in August 1774.

Quacko’s father Mingo on the other hand was not promised his freedom. As defiant as his name suggests, Mingo escaped from his now-widowed mistress, Isabel Caldwell, in June of 1765. A Boston newspaper’s notice of his escape portrayed him as speaking "middling good English, a sprightly little Fellow, about five Feet and five or six Inches high…[wearing] an all wool brown colour’d great Coat, with large white metal Buttons, and an all wool Jacket of the same Colour; a blue and white striped woolen Shirt, and a worsted Cap, an old Hat, a Pair old leather Breeches, and light blue Stockings: a pair of Shoes about half worn, tied with leather Strings".[9] He was eventually recaptured and returned to Isabel Caldwell (for he fathered children with Dinah in 1767 and 1770, and with Elizabeth Harris in 1774).

The widow Caldwell then married Nathaniel Jennison on March 28, 1769 and he moved into her home and took possession of her property, including Mingo and his family. But as fate would have it, just weeks before Quacko turned 21, Isabel Oliver Caldwell Jennison died around June 1774, and the African family’s new master, Nathaniel Jennison, a mean-spirited and abusive man, refused to stand by the Caldwells’ bargain and Quacko remained a slave in the Jennison household, even after Jennison had to return to his own farm when the Caldwell children inherited their mother’s estate and legacies.

As the movement for American independence from Great Britain spread through the colonies, the Caldwell family became convinced more and more that slavery was immoral and should be abolished. Befriending Mingo’s family, the Caldwells quite effectively educated them during the American Revolution, keeping them versed in the latest political happenings and rhetoric of freedom. In April 1780, when Massachusetts passed its state constitution that declared that all men "were free and equal", the Caldwell’s pressed this ideal into the mind of young Quacko and finally, on or about May 1, 1781, Quacko escaped from the cruel Nathaniel Jennison and took up employment as a paid laborer for father and son, John and Seth Caldwell. Jennison, enraged at Quacko’s audacity, gathered helpers and found Quacko harrowing in the Caldwells’ fields, where they captured him, beat and shackled him, took him back to the Jennison farm, beat him again severely with a whip handle and locked him in a shed.

Two hours later, the Caldwell men discovered the abuse the man suffered and broke into the shed to rescue Quacko Walker and return him to the Caldwell home, where he recuperated and continued to be hired by them for his labor until June, when the exasperated Jennison entered his "plea of Trespass" against the Caldwells. John Caldwell offered legal services to Quacko to sue Jennison for the beating, kidnapping, and enslavement. The case went to the Inferior Court in September 1781 and Quacko (spelled "Quork" in the legal dockets presented by Jennison) Walker won his case and 50 pounds. (Jennison counter-sued the Caldwells for theft of private property, etc. and he also won initially. But the Caldwells appealed the decision to the State Supreme Court in 1783 and won their case against Jennison as well.)

Both the 1781 Quarko v. Jennison and the 1783 Jennison v. Caldwell et al. cases are cited as the case that emancipated all slaves in the state of Massachusetts, the second state to free its slaves (Vermont being the first in 1776) and literally scores of legal and historical articles, essays, and books have been published debating and detailing the importance of this landmark case in United States jurisprudential history.[10] In the midst of this legal battle, Jennison very viciously "took the younger portion of his slaves to Connecticut and sold them there", but the young members of Mingo’s family (such as Quacko’s brother Prince) escaped and returned to Massachusetts now that it was a free state.[11] During the trial, Quacko took on the surname of Walker, certainly as a way of establishing himself as a citizen; however Jennison, consumed with condescension, constantly referred to him during the court proceedings only by his first name. One story claims that Prince Walker took his last name from a prominent Walker family in the county (perhaps Obadiah Walker or Christiana Walker?) but another possibility is that Walker is rather homophonic with kwaku, and since Quacko was the eldest child, and the most famous, perhaps that was the origin of their newly chosen surname.

With this incredible judicial victory, the Walker family became immediately famous and they maintained their friendly connections for many decades with New England politicians, lawyers, judges, senators and members of prominent families involved in the case like the Strongs, Lincolns, Cushings, and Caldwells, propelling them into the upper-echelons of African-American society in Massachusetts. The men of the family as soon as they could afford to, began to purchase property and were voting as early as 1803.[12]

In 1792, Peter P. Lewis and Minor Walker were married in Barre by Rev. Josiah Dana (whose wife was a Caldwell sister) and within three months, Peter Lewis had purchased a tract of land in the town, to raise their family on. Most of the newly freed blacks formed the "little colony" of African-Americans in the west part of Barre township, known as "Guinea Corner." Quacko Walker however had settled in the easterly part of the town with his wife, Elizabeth Harvey (married in 1786), where he died about September 1812.[13]

Although Quacko Walker never learned to write (he signed his deeds with an "X"), his sister Minor and her husband Peter Lewis were taught to read and write (both Peter and Minor signed their names to a deed in 1812; her other siblings only "gave their marks").[14] In turn all their children learned to read and write as well.

Signatures of Minor Lewis, her children, and their spouses in 1844

(except Walker and Elizabeth Lewis and Peter P. and Lephia Lewis Jr.),

petitioning the Probate Court, as Peter P. Lewis Sr. died intestate

(Digital image courtesy of Connell O'Donovan , 2006)

Walker Lewis grew up in "Guinea Corner", and attended the integrated First Congregational Church of Barre with his family. Minor Walker Lewis had been baptized there in 1771 while a slave of Jennison. On August 20, 1815, her husband Peter, and five of their sons and all three daughters were also baptized into "the First Church". Walker Lewis’s baptismal record that day is the only known instance where he went by his full name of Quack Walker Lewis.

1815 baptismal record, First Church of Barre

Peter Lewis "A[d]ult, Negro", his two adult sons, and his five minor sons

(Digital image courtesy of Connell O'Donovan , 2006)

Although their roots had been firmly in Barre for almost a century, by 1819 Peter and Minor’s second son, Adam Lewis "a man of culler," was living in Cambridge and purchased land there on October 8 for $250. More Lewis children would soon follow to the neighboring cities of Cambridge and Boston, as well as Lowell, a bit farther to the north. Walker Lewis moved to that area in the early 1820s and bought a home and set up his barbering business in the Belvidere section of Tewksbury (which was annexed to Lowell in 1832). He returned to Barre to marry Elizabeth Lovejoy there on March 26, 1826. She was already some six months pregnant with their first child at the time of their marriage. I can only speculate that after Elizabeth became pregnant, Walker waited to marry her to become more financially secure. The newly-weds returned to Lowell to start their family. As Martha Mayo of the Lowell Center for History has noted, the public school system became fully integrated when Lowell was incorporated as a town in 1826 (making it one of the earliest cities in the state to do integrate), mainly because of the leadership of Rev. Theodore Edson, Chairman of the Lowell School Committee, and later the President of the Lowell Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. (Edson had been preaching in what eventually became St. Anne’s Episcopal Church since 1824, and as its pastor in 1839 he actively encouraged participation in his church by the Walker Lewis family – see below.) Mayo also indicated that several other black families who lived in the area since the mid-1700s, particularly those of Anthoney Negro and Barzillai Lew, had "amazing relationships" with the community in Lowell and nearby Dracut, and she feels this certainly helped contribute to the integration of the Lowell schools.[15]

Lowell, Mass. and its cotton and woolen mills in 1838

(Image is in the public domain, courtesy of wikipedia.org)

Elizabeth was the daughter of Peter Lovejoy, who was black, and Lydia Greenleaf Bradford, a white woman. Elizabeth Lovejoy Lewis was so light-skinned she sometimes passed as "white" (and is listed as such in the 1850 census). She was one of six girls and one boy born to the Lovejoys in Amherst, Hillsboro County, New Hampshire. Their inter-racial parents had married there on October 3, 1786. Their mother may have been a Quaker, as both the Greenleafs and Bradfords are well-known Quaker families, but I have been unable to connect her to any specific branch of either family. Peter Lovejoy may have been born September 26, 1764 in Methuen, Essex County, Massachusetts to Jonathan Lovejoy, but I do not have firm evidence of this.

Elizabeth Lovejoy Lewis gave birth to their first child, a son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, on May 20, 1826. This son would also join the LDS Church in the 1840s and enrage Brigham Young for his inter-racial marriage to a white Mormon. Enoch’s birth was followed a year and a half later with the birth of the couple’s first daughter in November 1827, Lydia Elizabeth Walker, named for her mother and her mother’s mother.

Four years after Walker and Elizabeth were married, Walker's younger brother, Peter P. Lewis Jr., married Elizabeth’s youngest sister, Relief "Lephia" Ingalls Lovejoy on August 4, 1830.

Around the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Lovejoy, Walker Lewis is first known to actively engage in abolitionist activities. Along with some thirteen other prominent black abolitionists, he was a founding charter member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA) in 1826, the first such all-black organization in the United States. Other founding members included the famous author and journalist William Cooper Nell and his father William Guion Nell, Coffin Pitts, and the "dangerous" radical David Walker (no relation), who would later advocate black armed resistance to enslavement and other curtailments of black equal rights. Many members of the MGCA were outspoken advocates for the immediate emancipation of all slaves and full racial equality across the board, which most white abolitionists rejected, favoring a more gradual process of emancipation and only a few equal rights for blacks. Three years after its founding, David Walker released his radical and incendiary call to arms, the 76-page Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, through the MGCA, causing scandal and division amongst the abolitionists, white and black, and terrifying southern slave-owners. Part of the work of the MGCA was to distribute the Appeal to slaves in the south, sparking slave empowerment and resistance. The printing was also done by a white printing company that had previously printed the African Grand Lodge’s articles, certainly through the assistance of Walker Lewis, since he was the Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Lodge at the time.[16] The black clothiers in Boston, such as David Walker himself, William Guion Nell, and Walker's youngest brother, Simpson Harris Lewis, helped covertly distribute the Appeal by sewing copies of it into the linings of clothing destined for sailors going to southern ports.

David Walker himself wrote of the Massachusetts General Colored Association that,

The primary object of this institution, is, to unite the colored population, so far, through the United States of America, as may be practicable and expedient; forming societies, opening, extending, and keeping up correspondences, and not withholding anything which may have the least tendency to meliorate our miserable condition.[17]

Frontispiece of David Walker's Appeal

(Image is in the public domain, courtesy of wikipedia.org)

The Appeal called for immediate, unconditional, and universal emancipation of all slaves. Recolonization in Africa was also out of the question – America had been bought by the slaves with their blood:

Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites – we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: – and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?[18]

Slaves were also told that there might be justice found in armed resistance and violence in overthrowing the institution of slavery:

If you commence [a revolt], make sure work [of it] – do not trifle, for they will not trifle with you – they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us to that wretched condition – therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed....[I]t is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.[19]

Black abolitionists called this treatise a "smooth stone" up against "many mighty Goliaths"; it is still referred to as "the most incendiary antebellum abolitionist document". [20] It was such a radical, frightening document to slave owners that anyone caught with the Appeal in their possession in the southern states would likely be killed on the spot; Louisiana and Georgia made distribution of it illegal, and a $10,000 reward was offered for David Walker, dead or alive. Walker Lewis, as a leader in the MGCA, undoubtedly supported these radical aims, despite white abolitionists urging them to caution and lesser aims. Only one year after his Appeal was published and distributed through the Massachusetts General Colored Association, David Walker died at 34 (most likely of "consumption" or tuberculosis), just months after completing the Appeal, leaving a pregnant widow, much as his own enslaved father had died before David’s birth to a free black woman in Wilmington, North Carolina.[21]

Sometime before 1823, Walker Lewis also became initiated, crafted, and raised into Freemasonry, through the all-black African Lodge in Boston. The Lodge, active in limited Masonic work since 1776, had been granted a charter or warrant in 1784 to organize by the Grand Lodge of England and through the support of the lodges of Ireland, with Revolutionary War soldier and black abolitionist Prince Hall, as its founder and first Grand Master. Prince Hall organized the African Lodge #459 on May 6, 1787. One year after Prince Hall’s death, the African Lodge then became the African Grand Lodge #1 in December 1808. Besides "Masonic work", the African Grand Lodge was also deeply involved in abolitionist and equal rights activities (especially advocating educational rights for black children), which created occasional divisive moments between it and the all-white Massachusetts Grand Lodge. Around 1825, to his great honor and credit, Master Mason Walker Lewis was raised as the sixth Right Worshipful Master of the African Lodge #459. One year later, on May 29, 1826, he was elected as Senior Warden for the Lodge. Two years after becoming a Grand Lodge, Lewis was elected as the Most Worshipful Grand Master for 1829 and 1830.[22] Unfortunately a fire destroyed most of the Lodge’s records in 1869, making further research into Lewis’ participation in Freemasonry very difficult. When Lewis later joined the LDS Church, it should be noted that this made him one of the oldest, and certainly the highest-ranking, Freemason in the church. This may have caused some consternation, anger, and fear among the Mormon hierarchy (most of whom were also Masons).[23] This will be discussed in further detail later.

African Lodge #459’s 1784 Charter from the Grand Lodge of England

The mass anti-Masonic hysteria of the mid-1820s seems to have been solely focused on white Freemasons. The African Grand Lodge seems to have passed through that era relatively unscathed and unmolested. Perhaps the African Freemasons took advantage of the chaos among white Masons to declare themselves independent. For in 1827, the current Right Worshipful Master John T. Hilton, along with Walker Lewis and Thomas Dalton as "Past Masters" signed a Declaration of Independence from the Grand Lodge of England. This enabled the newly named African Grand Lodge to grant warrants and charters, and establish other African Lodges elsewhere, "when they are found worthy", so that "succeeding generations...may under its happy influence enjoy peace, union, prosperity and safety forever". They published notice of the Declaration in both the Columbian Sentinel and Boston Advertiser on June 26, just after the annual St. John’s Day procession, an important Masonic ceremonial day. Walker's signature on the Declaration of Independence is only one of two known holographic signatures of his; the other is found on his last will and testament. The newspaper article in the Boston Advertiser indicates that the Lodge had attempted several communications with the Grand Lodge of England "to be placed on a different and better standing" but had never received any replies. Therefore they felt justified as brothers with "what knowledge we possess of masonry, and as a people of colour by ourselves, we are and ought by rights to be, free and independent of other Lodges…and we will not be tributary, or governed by any Lodge than that of our own". [24] As a result, "Prince Hall Freemasonry" now has some five thousand lodges and 47 grand lodges all around the world, all stemming from the moment that the Declaration of Independence was signed by Walker Lewis and his two Masonic brothers in 1827.

In 1830, Lewis purchased a tract of land for $200 in Cambridge near the Botanic Gardens and bordered on the south-east by Harvard College and sold it a year later to his brother Peter. He also owned a house and barbershop in Boston by this time, as well as the home and barbershop in Lowell, frequently traveling back and forth between the two. His barbering business boomed, as he apparently had found the perfect niche marketing – he was apparently really good with children and specialized in cutting their hair.[25] That same year brought the addition of Walker and Elizabeth’s second daughter (named for her father’s mother), Lucy Minor Walker.

During the mid-1830s the abolitionist organization that Walker Lewis had helped found became even more outspoken in its politics by exercising its clout when the MGCA voted in November 1832 "to send a petition to Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia", its unbearable presence there sullying the principles of freedom and democracy in the nation’s own capitol. Walker Lewis's abolitionist activities are also summarized in a few scattered articles appearing in The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's famous abolitionist paper. We learn from the newspaper that Lewis was one of five men who formed the Standing Committee of the MGCA as of May 28, 1831. The following year, Lewis again appears in The Liberator as the President of the African Humane Society in Boston for at least one year, from August 1831 to August 1832. The African Humane Society was formed in Boston about 1796, to aid in burial expenses, assist widows, and eventually build the African School in Boston. It also sponosred a "settlement project", returning desirous African Americans to Liberia. The Society was formally incorporated with approval from the Governor, Senate, and House of Representatives on June 19, 1819. Lewis appears another time in Garrison's paper, indicating that Lewis had remitted $4.50 to Garrison and his anti-slavery society in June 1837.[26]

Walker Lewis's appearance in William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator of 1831 and 1832 [click on images to enlarge]

At the beginning of 1833, after many months of discussion pro and con, the MGCA voted to end its existence as a black-only, separatist organization, and instead became an "auxiliary" to the increasingly-powerful New England Anti-Slavery Society headed by William Lloyd Garrison, whom Walker Lewis undoubtedly met through the activities of the MGCA.[27] In April 1833, the newly renamed Boston Anti-Slavery Society featured an address by the popular and dignified African American abolitionist Maria W. Stewart, who openly chided the former members of the MGCA for not being strong and courageous enough. She finished her address by calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia as well.[28] Her address has the honor of being the first time that a woman (and a black woman nonetheless) ever formally addressed a public meeting, a major step in women’s equal rights.

Many members of the Lewis family were active in the abolitionist and equal rights movements. We know from extent records that at the very least Walker Lewis and his two brothers, Andress Valentine and Simpson Harris Lewis, Simpson’s wife Caroline F. Butler Lewis and their son Frederick, and Walker's brother-in-law John Levy were all publicly involved in equal rights activities. John Levy in particular became quite well known for his abolitionist activities and even wrote an autobiography, The Life and Adventures of John Levy. In November 1841, Levy helped arrange to have the "Amistad Africans" (now of Steven Spielberg movie fame) speak in Lowell, and "rendered important services" to the Africans who were on tour through New England trying to raise money for their return voyage to Africa.[29] Levy also helped white abolitionists Maria Weston Chapman and Sarah Clay to form the Lowell Woman’s Anti-Slavery Society in 1843; and in 1844, along with Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, he helped organize a series of one hundred anti-slavery conventions throughout the state of Massachusetts. [30]

Walker's younger brother, Peter Lovejoy Lewis Jr. and his four children aged seven to eleven years (Peter III, Theodore Walker, Levi, and Mary Elizabeth) became embroiled in an equal rights controversy in 1844 when, as part of a school field trip to the Chemical Painting Exhibition at Mechanics Hall in Lowell, the four black children were denied entrance, even though the school system had long been successfully integrated and served as a model for the rest of the state, if not the country. The Lowell community erupted in anger at this bigotry and strong editorials were published in the Lowell papers, defending the right of the Lewis children to see the exhibit. One read:

We deem it the duty of the press to protest your sort of exclusiveness, having its origin in a narrow-minded prejudice, and to stand up manfully for the rights of the colored citizens when trampled upon in any way. The proprietor has very much mistaken the public sentiment of Lowell by adopting such a cause; in our public schools, he will see the children of colored parents sitting side by side with those of white parents, a living evidence of toleration and respect. [31]

In addition, in 1850, Walker's mother, Minor Walker Lewis, and his sister, Sophia Lewis Levy, were harboring an escaped slave named William H. Taylor from Virginia;[32] and the famous escapee Nathaniel Booth (who would later also serve as one of three men appointed to take an inventory of the Walker Lewis estate in probate) was living in the home of Walker's widowed sister-in-law, Relief Ingalls Lovejoy Lewis. Whatever expenses Walker Lewis or his family members may have incurred in their equal rights and Underground Railroad activities, they did not request remuneration from the Treasury of the Boston Vigilance Committee between 1850 and 1861, for their names are not found in the committee’s account books for that period, with one exception. Walker's brother Simpson Harris Lewis did receive financial assistance three times from the Vigilance Committee in 1857 and 1858 (through William Cooper Nell).[33]

In high school in Utah, the history I was taught regarding the abolition movement, was that all abolitionists had been white, well-meaning, educated New England blue-bloods who took the burden of racial injustice upon themselves to assist "the hapless and helpless Negro," and the Underground Railroad was more a myth than reality, consisting of a few scattered Quaker (i.e. white) homes trailing off into the unknown North. Just from my one peek into the machinations of the Boston Vigilance Committee through its financial records, in reality black Bostonians were fully at the core of the abolition movement, and not just "preaching the word", but actively engaged in sheltering, warning, hiding, and transporting fugitive slaves to safe places (usually Canada, but sometimes local). The financial records are complete with the names and familial relations of the slaves – many of them women with children, where they had come from, any special needs they might have, sometimes quick notes about their misfortunes; they show a massive, wonderfully organized, carefully nurtured Underground. While much of the funding came from white churches, black people (free and fugitive alike) were definitely in the trenches, doing all the hard work of feeding, clothing, educating, befriending, doctoring, barbering, and boarding these traumatized people.[34] I am surprised at the accuracy and detail of these records; if the wrong hands had confiscated this record book, hundreds of people could have found themselves in dire legal trouble, if not worse. I must also note that the beautiful penmanship of the Committee’s Treasurer, Francis Jackson, is so perfect it’s nearly of typographical quality. His careful, comprehensive accounting of every penny coming in and every penny going out of their organization shows just how sacrosanct this work was for all these people.

Meeting the Mormons

As stated earlier, Walker Lewis had been baptized into Barre’s First Church, which his mother had joined while still as slave belonging to Nathaniel Jennison. By the 1830s, however, it appears as though Walker Lewis and his family had converted to the Episcopal Church. The diary of Rev. Theodore Edson of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Lowell, reveals that in the month of March, 1839, he set up special meeting times for the Lewis family to attend his services on Friday night, when it would be most convenient for the Lewis men to participate. On March 8, Edson wrote,

In the evening I commenced holding a little meeting for the colored portion of my people, if they maybe called mine who so seldom come to church though they have a pew. The evening was very stormy, muddy and dark, My object was to be able to come at the young men. Out of six who I suppose might be expected I got but two. How the thing will succeed I do not know and though they were very civil and expressed great sense of my kindness in coming I could not quite satisfy myself whether it is likely to be on the whole sufficiently satisfactory to the mm [males?] to induce their attendance. The time of the next meeting was unsettled. [35]

Although Edson only ever referred to the Lewis family as "my colored people" without specifically name them, Martha Mayo has assured me that this phrase can only refer to the Lewises. In his entries for March 15 and April 5, Edson also referred to meeting the black family "in Belvidere", which is the area of Lowell where Walker Lewis lived, and Mayo, who has traced the presence of every African American in Lowell, has found that only the extended Lewis family lived there in the 1830s. [36] From the above diary entry we learn that although the Lewis family had been renting a pew at the church for some time, they were not very active there.

St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Lowell

Engraving from July 15, 1841 edition of the Lowell Offering

(Image courtesy of the Lowell Historical Society)

After another disappointing meeting on April 5, 1839, Edson gave up his efforts to hold Friday night services just for the Lewises. That night in Belvidere, he recorded:

I found three women with whom I talked upon religion and prayed but the men did not come in til nine oclock. I do not see that it is desirable to continue the appointment I can call and see all the women at times more convenient, so as to accomplish just as much with them and the men for whose sake the arrangement was specially made do not come and I do not see as there is any prospect of their attending.[37]

Elizabeth Lovejoy Lewis probably was not in attendance as she gave birth to their last child, Walker Lovejoy Lewis (who also went by Walker Lewis Jr.) that very month. George A. Levesque has documented that when in Boston, Walker Lewis was a member of the African (Baptist) Church in 1830, while his oldest brother, Samuel, served in that church as a Deacon from 1832-1836. Another brother, Joseph Lewis, also served as a delegate to the church's Yearly Associational Meeting in 1836 and again in 1849, while another brother, Enoch, served in that capacity in 1840. Lastly, his brother Simpson did the same in 1859 and 1860. A curious note in the Baptist church records for 1843 states that during that year, "113 added by baptism, 46 dismissed", leading me to question if one of those "dismissed" was not Walker Lewis, who had certainly been baptized LDS around 1843.[38]

How, when, where, and under what circumstances Walker Lewis first heard Mormonism preached, and why he converted to it, are unknown and remain speculative at best. None who knew him ever explained this in the known accounts of him that exist. Certainly his conviction to and faith in it were strong, for once he was converted, Lewis remained faithful for nearly a decade. There is only one small clue as to who might have actually baptized Walker Lewis into the LDS Church. In 1890, when black Mormon Jane Elizabeth Manning James wrote to Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith requesting to be allowed into the temple, she informed him of "a Coloured Brother, Brother Lewis" whom she had met, and that "parley P Pratt  or dained Him an Elder."[39] As will be shown hereafter, it was in fact Apostle William Smith who ordained Walker Lewis an Elder; therefore I propose that Apostle Parley P. Pratt actually baptized him a Mormon, not ordained him to the priesthood, and perhaps Jane James simply confused the two events that she had heard about some forty years earlier. (James may also have been subconsciously influenced by the fact that the controversial William Smith had long-ago abandoned mainstream Mormonism – thus calling into question the validity of the ordination, while Parley P. Pratt had remained faithful.) We know Pratt was in Boston in the fall of 1835 and again in the summer of 1843. If Pratt indeed baptized Lewis, it was likely during his latter time there.

After his conversion to the LDS faith, Walker Lewis would come to know at least seven members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles personally (including Brigham Young, William Smith, Wilford Woodruff, Ezra T. Benson, Orson Hyde, Orson Pratt, and Parley P. Pratt, all of whom labored as missionaries in Lowell, Cambridge, and/or Boston), as well as a number of other early Mormon leaders, earning their esteem, appreciation, and gratitude, while also profoundly challenging their long-held beliefs and stereotypes. Evidence suggests that none other than Brigham Young himself was the first Latter-day Saint missionary to preach in Lowell, sometime in the summer or fall of 1835. However, we do know that Orson Hyde and Joseph Smith’s younger brother Samuel H. Smith had baptized about 25 people in Boston and formally organized a branch there in the summer of 1832. Later Smith and Hyde, on their way to Providence, Rhode Island, stopped in Lowell, Massachusetts to visit Hyde’s sister, Laura, and her husband, William B. North. However both received the two missionaries "very coolly on account of my religion", as Hyde reported. Although they tried to convince Hyde’s family of Mormonism’s value, the Norths were unwavering in their rejection. Mr. North told Hyde he was welcome anytime "on account of relationship", however "he did not care to entertain my colleague, Brother Samuel H. Smith". Incensed at this, Hyde "stayed only long enough to discharge my duty, and never again voluntarily returned" to Lowell. The two missionaries left Lowell and returned to Boston without staying to try to establish a branch of their church in Lowell. [40]

That same summer, Joseph Smith had sent out most of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on a mission to the eastern states. As Apostle Parley P. Pratt recalled, the proselytizing apostles "continued our journey through the Eastern States, holding conferences in every place where branches of the Church had been organized, ordaining and instructing Elders and other officers; exhorting the members to continue in prayer and in well doing....The month of August 1835, found us in the State of Maine, and the mission completed.... We now returned to Boston, and from thence home to Kirtland, where we arrived sometime in October [1835]." [41] In a letter to an unnamed woman from Lowell, Brigham Young informed her that, "I believe it was in the year 1835 that I visited Lowell, when I held meetings and preached to the people the doctrines believed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."[42] It is possible but doubtful that Walker Lewis converted to Mormonism at this time, as little missionary or other Mormon activity is known to have continued there for the next six years, and as far as I know, no formal "branch" of the church existed in Lowell at that time. Even if someone there were to convert to Mormonism at that point in its history, the next immediate step as a sign of faith would have been to join the "gathering Saints" further west in Kirtland, Ohio, not stay to build the church in their native place.

A year later, during most of the month of August, 1836, Joseph Smith himself was in the Boston area, along with Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, and his brother Hyrum Smith. Ostensibly there as missionaries, once they arrived in Salem, Massachusetts (via Boston), Joseph revealed to the men that they were in fact there to seek for buried gold. A Painesville Telegraph article had claimed that there was "a vast treasure buried beneath an old house" in Salem, and a Mormon convert claimed he knew the location of the house. The potential embarrassment of the situation was ameliorated when Joseph produced a revelation from God stating,

I, the Lord...have much treasure in this city for you, for the benefit of Zion....And it shall come to pass in due time that I will give this city into your hands, that you shall have power over it, insomuch that they shall not discover your secret parts; and its wealth pertaining to gold and silver shall be yours....Tarry in this place, and in the regions round about; and the place where it is my will that you should tarry, for the main, shall be signalized unto you by the peace and power of my Spirit, that shall flow unto you. This place you may obtain by hire. And inquire diligently concerning the more ancient inhabitants and founders of this city; For there are more treasures than one for you in this city. [43]

But the financially strapped church would find no relief, despite the revelation that God had treasures of gold for the Mormons awaiting them in Salem. Still they toured the area and preached. Brigham Young and Lyman E. Johnson showed up as well. Young had been proselytizing "through New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts, in company with his brother Joseph Young", and had "baptized a good number into the Church; they remained in Boston two or three weeks, and baptized seventeen persons."[44]

The first missionary to really establish a strong and stable presence in the Boston area was Eli P. Maginn, and the earliest evidence indicates he was in that area in February 1842. He was quite successful in converting people to the faith, focusing his proselytizin