III. SOME KEY CONCORD ABOLITIONISTS
III.I. The Prescotts:
Antislavery was important in the household of Timothy and Maria King Prescott, who in 1833 moved with their family from Littleton to Monument Street (across the road from and a little closer to the town center than the Old Manse, which the Reverend Ezra Ripley then still occupied). In his diary (held by the Houghton Library at Harvard), Timothy Prescott noted the locations of meetings of the Ladies' Antislavery Society and his attendance at antislavery lectures. He recorded that on September 5, 1837, his wife visited abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké (who were in Concord to lecture) at the home of Mary Merrick Brooks. Maria King Prescott was a founding member of the Concord Ladies' Antislavery Society, and an occasional hostess for its meetings (for example, those of October 16, 1838 and June 7, 1843). The Prescotts employed a young black man—William Garrison, son of Monument Street neighbor Jack Garrison—to help with his farm work.
Not surprisingly, the Prescott children demonstrated early awareness of racial issues. At the bicentennial celebration of Concord's incorporation on September 12, 1835, nine year old Abba—later the daughter-in-law of Mary Merrick Brooks—insisted on walking in the procession with a black public school acquaintance—likely Ellen Garrison—who feared not finding anyone willing to accompany her. (The story is told in an 1851 obituary of Abba Prescott Brooks.) And after visiting the home of Mrs. Jack Garrison, Abba's older half-sister Martha—who attended the Concord Academy and who eventually became Mrs. John Shepard Keyes—wrote of Mrs. Garrison in her diary on April 2, 1836, "Mrs. G. is really quite agreeable. Her colour is all that draws the line between her & many of our aristocratic dames, for in sound sense she far surpasses many of them." Much later, in 1864, Abba's and Martha's brother George Lincoln Prescott gave his life at Petersburg in the war that brought an end to slavery.
52. Tintype portrait of Maria King Prescott. CFPL Photofile.
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