Harriet Bell Hayden

She and her husband, Lewis Hayden, escaped slavery in Kentucky and became the primary operators of the Underground Railroad in Boston.

They aided the John Brown slave revolt conspiracy, and she played a leadership role in Boston's Black community in the decades following the U.S. Civil War.

[4] On September 28, 1844, after careful planning, the Haydens and Joseph escaped from Kentucky,[5] travelling via Ohio and Michigan to Canada.

[2] Upon settling in Boston, Harriet and Lewis began putting significant financial resources into helping blacks escape the South and move North.

Harriet and her husband were praised by fellow abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison for their efforts in aiding escaped blacks.

[6] In 1853 when Harriet Beecher Stowe was gathering material for her documentary work A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, she was brought to the Haydens' house and saw 13 fugitive former slaves being sheltered there.

[12] Her son Joseph served in the United States Navy from November 1861 until his death from disease in Alabama in June 1865 at the age of 26.

[2] Following the war the Haydens supported the temperance movement and Boston's West End Woman Suffrage League.

[9][2] She took on another role after Lewis Hayden died in 1889, taking issue in public with how some of his associates, including George T. Downing, had arranged for his burial.