William Ingersoll Bowditch (August 5, 1819 – January 24, 1909) was an American lawyer, writer, abolitionist, and suffragist from Massachusetts.

The landmarked William Ingersoll Bowditch House in Brookline, Massachusetts, was a station on the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War.

[1] One historian has argued that "From 1835 to 1860 the history of the moral movement against slavery in America is the history of William Lloyd Garrison and his great coadjutors like Wendell Phillips, Theodore D. Weld, Parker Pillsbury, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Parker, Lucretia Mott, Stephen and Abby Kelly Foster, the sisters Grimké, Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray Loring, Maria Weston Chapman, David Lee and Lydia Maria Child, Francis Jackson, Samuel J.

[4] His older brother Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808–1891) was a doctor and Harvard Medical School professor who also heavily involved in the abolitionist movement.

"[8] Bowditch began his involvement in the abolitionist movement around 1841 when he got to know Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel Philbrick, and William P.

[9] When Ellen and William Craft escaped north in 1848, the first place they stayed in Brookline was Bowditch's house, before they had to be relocated for their own security.

[9] In 1854, Bowditch, Loring, and Martin Kennard were among the members of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which was devoted to protecting fugitive slaves.

Frequent meetings were held between 1854 and 1860, announced by notices which Mr. Bowditch tacked up along Walnut Street and near Coolidge Corner...in the hope that as many as half of them would survive the efforts of the vandals who sought to tear them down.

[12] After the raid on Harper's Ferry, one of John Brown's surviving sons "sought and found refuge at the home of Mr. Bowditch in Brookline.

[17] He was remembered by Henry Browne Blackwell in Woman's Journal: "With strong convictions and emphatic expression, Mr. Bowditch was a man of sterling integrity and warm affections.

My daughter and myself once had the privilege of being the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Bowditch for ten days, at their beautiful woodland home on Lake Chateaugay, in the heart of the Adirondacks, where we greatly enjoyed their reminiscences of 'the times that tried men's souls.