Thomas Boston This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Nantucket Features

   www.yesterdaysisland.com/06_ar - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/1/2006   Last Visited: 9/1/2006

   This brilliant match lasted the rest of Absalom,s life and produced five more children: Phebe Ann, Absalom Jr., Oliver, Thomas, and Sarah.
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   Little Absalom and Sarah did not survive childhood, but Absalom Senior could look with pride on Charles, Henry, Carolyn, Phebe Ann, Oliver, and Thomas.
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   By the time Absalom and Hannah reached the end of their lives, there were only three children left alive: Carolyn, Oliver, and Thomas.
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   With the collapse of Nantucket,s whaling economy the family real estate had been losing value precipitously, and after their parents, death, Carolyn, Oliver, and Thomas sold it off.
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   Oliver and Thomas left Nantucket and through Hannah,s Indian connections became enrolled members of the Dartmouth Tribe.
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   And so we come to Thomas Boston, a young man who just didn,t fit in. Unlike his brothers, he was not cut out for the sea. Instead he apprenticed as a barber, a profession to which he aspired not at all. His life-long love was music, and while still in his teens, he was an accomplished violinist. It was said that he craved the company of white Nantucketers so much that he would play at their private parties for free. Someone who knew him described him as ,a dandy but not a fop., It was also reported that he had said he would gladly be skinned alive if only he could be white himself.
   
   Before leaving Nantucket after his parents, deaths, he dropped by to bid farewell to the Reverend Phebe Hanaford and told her he had a good job in a Boston store where he had already won respect. At the same time, in his registration with the Dartmouth Tribe, he reported that he lived in nearby Westport and was employed as a daguerreotypist.
   
   The next time Nantucketers heard of Thomas Boston was after the Civil War when the Nantucket newspapers carried the story of his marriage to Anna Wilson, the daughter of a cashier at the Freedman,s Savings and Trust Company in Washington D.C.
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   Anna was reported to be ,famed in Washington for her personal charms, and intellect., Thomas was described as an assistant cashier at the Freedmen,s Bank and leader of a popular Washington dance band.
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   Thomas seemed to have fulfilled all his parents, dreams for their children. He was employed by an institution that had branches throughout the former slave states to provide security for the earnings of African Americans. In the nation,s capital he had married a veritable African-American princess. A newspaper article published in Washington in 1871 described Thomas Boston as ,young, airy, and dressed in the height of fashion., He was living very well indeed. Some said he was living beyond his means.
   
   Three years later the Freedmen,s Bank collapsed, eaten away from within by embezzlement. One of the embezzlers was Thomas Boston, who had emptied the savings account of an illiterate depositor of nearly a thousand dollars.
   
   With the doors of the bank closed, Thomas and his wife Anna moved to a less prestigious address, and he went to work in a laundry. Ultimately they left Washington and eventually resurfaced in Chicago where Thomas patched together a living by playing and teaching music and working as a clerk. A newspaper carried a favorable review of a piano recital he gave in Ohio. Years later he become a member of a Masonic lodge in Illinois.
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   After Thomas passed on, she took in his cousin Benajah Boston and cared for him to the end of his long life.
   
   Like his brothers before him, Thomas had died childless.