Moses Parker Hanson

Quick Facts

Significance:

Dentist, Surgeon, abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee, Civil War Surgeon

Place of Birth:

Portland, Maine

Date of Birth:

June 11, 1812

Place of Death:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Date of Death:

January 18, 1893

Place of Burial:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Cemetery Name:

Forest Home Cemetery

A dentist and surgeon, Moses Parker Hanson also served in the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee and later in the Civil War.

Born in 1812, Moses P. Hanson grew up in Maine. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1838. He practiced medicine in Sangerville, Maine, before moving to Massachusetts and working in Salem and, later, Boston. He married Ann Susan Haskell and began a family with her.¹

Considered "one of the early abolitionists in Boston," Hanson immersed himself in the local antislavery movement as an "an associate and co-worker" of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. When anti-abolitionists threatened Wendell Phillips, Hanson served "at the head of a small coterie of abolitionists who secretly banded together to protect Phillips from assault, and night after night, took his turn in watching Phillips' house."²

Following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Hanson joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization provided shelter, money, and other assistance to freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. Vigilance Committee records indicate several reimbursements to Hanson for unspecified assistance that he provided to freedom seekers including "Andrew J. Burton & family" and "Wm Talbot Fugitive."³

One obituary stated that as a "member of the Vigilance committee in Boston," Hanson "was one of a party that spirited a fugitive out of the police court." This might indicate Hanson's possible participation in the 1851 courthouse rescue of freedom seeker Shadrach Minkins. Boston abolitionists successfully rescued only one person, Minkins, from the courthouse during the Fugitive Slave Law years.⁴

However, the obituary also claimed that Hanson took the freedom seeker "in a carriage to his home, ten miles from Boston, where he was secreted for a week, and then passed him over the 'underground railroad' on his way to Canada." This is far less likely, though, given that Shadrach's subsequent flight to Canada has been well documented and did not include any mention of Hanson.⁵

In 1852, he worked with fellow Vigilance Committee members, including Lewis Hayden and Timothy Gilbert, to arrange a commemoration for the one year anniversary of the "forcible abduction" of freedom seeker Thomas Sims. Sims had escaped to Boston but had been returned to slavery under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law.⁶

In 1856, Hanson and his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he continued his medical profession. During the Civil War, he served as an assistant surgeon, and later as surgeon, in the Second Wisconsin Calvary of the United States Army. Following the war, Hanson headed the thermo-therapᴂ medical bath institution in Milwaukee.⁷

After a long illness and retirement from public life, Hanson passed away at 80 years old in 1893. One obituary remembered him as:

a man of indomitable energy, courageous to a fault, and inclined at all times to take the side of the weak against the strong...he never weakened in his belief that slavery would be abolished from the time his espoused the cause of the slave until he was mustered out of service at the close of the war.⁸

His remains are interred at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.⁹

Footnotes

1. "Was The Friend of Phillips," Daily Inter Ocean, January 20, 1893, 9; "Married," Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, May 30, 1837, 2; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 179.
2. "Was The Friend of Phillips," Daily Inter Ocean, January 20, 1893, 9.
3. The following broadside lists Hanson's work address as 38 Tremont Row. While Tremont Row now longer exists today, NPS maps geolocate Hanson at the approximate location of Tremont Row, the curved portion of Tremont Street at Government Center. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; Francis Jackson, Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, pages, 16 (April 11, 1851), 18 (May 15, 1851), and 20 (September 29, 1851), Dr. Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History,  Archives,  https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up.
4. "Death of Dr. M.P. Hanson," Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1893, 6.
5. "Death of Dr. M.P. Hanson," Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1893, 6.
6. "The Sims Anniversary," Salem Observer, April 4, 1852, 3.
7. "Was The Friend of Phillips," Daily Inter Ocean, January 20, 1893, 9.
8. "Was The Friend of Phillips," Daily Inter Ocean, January 20, 1893, 9.
9. "Moses P. Hanson (1812-1893)," Find a Grave Memorial, accessed December 2024.