HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MASSACHUSETTS 1873.

Rare Photo Book filled with small photographic portraits of the 1873 Massachusetts House of Representatives. Most notable is it Includes the African-American LEWIS HAYDEN, an ex-slave who escaped with his wife Harriet from Kentucky to Canada, then moved to Boston where he was an abolitionist, and where he and his wife were an important part of the Underground Railroad. The Lewis and Harriet Hayden house is now a National Historic Site on Boston's Black Heritage Trail.

Original hardcovers, 3/4 leather (spine and corners), gilt page edges, marbled endpapers, 8x8.5 inches oblong, with 12 cardstock leaves (24 pages) with mounted photo plates. Hayden Lewis, representative from Boston, is the only African-American. It was his only term.

VERY GOOD condition, rubs and scrapes to the leather spine and corners, otherwise tight, bright, clean, clear and unmarked. A solid, lovely copy of this important historic record.

About LEWIS HAYDEN (extracted from Wikipedia):

******Lewis Hayden, b.1811 d.1889, was a slave who had a number of different owners. At one point his first wife and son were purchased by U.S. senator Henry Clay, who sold them to slavers in the deep South. Hayden never saw them again. He later remarried. In 1844 he and his family escaped Kentucky and fled to Canada with the aid of Kentucky abolitionists Delia Webster and Calvin Fairbank, both of whom upon their return were arrested and imprisoned. Hayden later moved to Detroit where he established a school and a church for African Americans, then went to Boston to aid in the abolition movement. In Boston he was an abolitionist lecturer and businessman. He and his wife, Harriet Hayden, were an important part of Boston's Underground Railroad, helping numerous fugitive slaves, often sheltering them at their house.

In 1873 Lewis Hayden was elected as a Republican representative from Boston to the Massachusetts state legislature. He helped found numerous Black lodges of Freemasons. Located on the north side of Beacon Hill, the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House has been designated a National Historic Site on the Black Heritage Trail in Boston.******

About the LEWIS AND HARRIET HAYDEN HOUSE (from the National Park Service website):

******The Lewis and Harriet Hayden House at 66 Phillips (formerly Southac) Street served as the preeminent Underground Railroad safe house in Boston during the 1850s. In the 1840s, the Haydens escaped slavery in Kentucky and eventually settled in Boston. They lived in this house by 1850, operated it as a boarding house, and turned it into one of the most documented safe houses in the area.******

PLEASE READ THE FULL LEWIS HAYDEN WIKIPEDIA PAGE and take a look at the many other articles about him and his wife HARRIET HAYDEN to be found on the Internet.