Voting list for a multiracial group likely connected to the Boston Vigilance Committee. Labeled at the top "Legal Voters", the single page 7.5" x 4.75" sheet has thirteen separate signatures, each in the voter's own hand, and includes four African American abolitionists: Lewis Hayden, William C. Nell, Henry Weeden, and Macon B. Allen, as well as a number of other major figures in the Boston abolitionist community. No date provided, with details indicating a date circa 1845-1865, prior to Allen's departure to Reconstruction South Carolina.
Though the group and the specific time period are unidentified, the names strongly overlap with the Boston Vigilance Committee and associated groups, with nine of the thirteen signatories listed as members of the Committee in Bearse's Reminiscences of Fugitive-slave Law Days in Boston (Francis Jackson, Edmund Jackson, John Ayres, Lewis Hayden, Robert F. Wallcutt, Bela Marsh, William Cooper Nell, Thomas Russell, Amariah Stoars) and, while unlisted as part of the Vigilance Committee itself, Henry Weeden served as President of the African American-founded New England Freedom Association, of which Nell was also a founder, before it merged with the Vigilance Committee.
The additional three signatures include Macon Bolling Allen, believed to be the first African American to become a lawyer and to argue before a jury, as well George Curtis Rand, the publisher of Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig, and Henry Wood. While lacking in contextual details, the presence together in a voting list as part of a multiracial organization is of significance in and of itself, and may yield its own line of scholarly inquiry and further research. Hayden, Nell, and Bolling were all of pioneering African American abolitionists, with examples of their autograph rare in commerce and in institutional holdings.
