Collection Description

This collection consists of four manuscript journals of Reverend Luman Boyden documenting his missionary work in East Boston, Massachusetts. Boyden was a Methodist clergyman employed by the Boston City Missionary Society to visit and assist the city’s poor, including Protestant, Irish Catholic, African American, and immigrant families. Detailed, daily entries describe the families' poverty and privations; alcoholism; domestic violence and other crimes; suicides; illnesses such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and typhoid fever; and Boyden's attempts at conversion, distribution of Bibles and tracts, and advocacy of temperance. Boyden describes sending people to the Deer Island almshouse (a.k.a. House of Industry) and visiting inmates in prison. Entries list names and addresses, including many tenement blocks. Some entries relate to Boyden's personal activities, such as meetings, school visits, religious rites he officiated, and family matters. Also included are some monthly reports to the Boston City Missionary Society, as well as entries related to fellow missionary Armeda Gibbs. Gibbs was an abolitionist who had helped freedom seekers and became the first female nurse for the Union during the Civil War, which Boyden mentions in his diary on 6 Aug. 1862.