Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Lives of the Past Informing the Future | Page 10

Joshua Bowen Smith (1813–1879)
Joshua Bowen Smith was an African
American born free in Pennsylvania and
educated by Quakers. When he moved to
Boston in 1836, he worked as a waiter at the
Mount Washington Hotel (in South Boston).
He quickly attracted the notice of Francis
Shaw, a prominent Boston businessman and
abolitionist. Shaw hired Smith to be chief
steward of the Shaw household, where Smith
got to know the young Robert Gould Shaw,
who would lead the Massachusetts 54th
Colored Regiment in the Civil War. After
Colonel Shaw died in battle in South Carolina,
Smith led the effort to create a monument to
Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th on Boston
Common.
When the Shaws moved to New York,
Smith remained in Boston and started his
own catering company, which served at
almost every important public banquet in
Boston over the course of forty years. He was
especially known for his skill as a pastry chef,
but his company’s fare was diverse—they
served 65 different dishes at Boston’s Fourth
of July banquet for 1,600 people at Fanueil
Hall in 1850. 1
Smith was also a determined abolitionist.
He was an early member of Boston’s Vigilance
Committee, dedicated to stopping slave
catchers. His home in Cambridge served as an
important stop on the Underground Railroad,
and he frequently employed runaway slaves
as waiters and cooks in his catering business.
This not only gave them employment but
also allowed them to serve as an intelligence-
gathering network, as they quietly served
among crowds of the well-connected.
In 1850, Smith famously preached a
sermon at the Belknap Street Church in
Boston (AKA the African Meeting House) in
response to the passing of the Fugitive Slave
Law. Brandishing a pistol in one hand and a
knife in the other, he urged listeners to resist
slave catchers by any means necessary—to
kill them, or if that was impossible, to kill
themselves, rather than be dragged into
slavery.
He was friends with Charles Sumner
and many other notable politicians and
abolitionists, and Sumner served as his
attorney when Smith sued the state of
Massachusetts over a catering bill for $40,000
($1.2 million in today’s dollars) that Governor
Andrew had refused to pay, for supplying
the 12 th Massachusetts Regiment with three
months of meals. The debt incurred dogged
Smith for the rest of his life.
After the war, he remained active
politically and was elected as Cambridge’s
state representative from 1873–74.
Smith’s house on Norfolk Street in
Cambridge is now an AirBnb. I wonder what
he would think about that?
I love that Joshua Bowen Smith was a self-
made man who took action to fight slavery
and to promote civil rights. To be honest, I
never thought about catering as an important
nineteenth-century profession, but it allowed
a black man to amass a fortune and use his
connections to push for positive change. Plus
he was a badass who could also make a mean
puff pastry. (I’m writing about Joshua Bowen
Smith as part of a moonlight abolitionist play
that’s in its early stages.)
Support for The Mount Auburn Plays has been generously provided by the following:
8
Funded in part by a grant from the Mildred Jones Keefe Fund for
Massachusetts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Bob Jolly Charitable Trust
Mary Lee T. & Peter C. Aldrich
Eliza & Michael Anderson
Jennifer J. Gilbert
Patricia B. & John Jacoby
Virginia J. Brady & William F. Mann
Jeanne & Joel Mooney
Caroline V. Mortimer