Funkstown – Foggy Bottom’s Rev. Leonard Grimes in the Abolition Hall of Fame

By Frank Leone

Foggy Bottom Underground Railroad conductor Rev. Leonard Andrew Grimes – who helped 400 enslaved people seeking freedom – was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame on October 19, 2024. The same day our FBA History Project/George Washington University Museum Walking Tour included a stop at 22nd and H Streets, which contains a plaque memorializing it as the site of Grimes’ home.

Induction of Leonard A. Grimes into the National Abolition Hall of Fame (Stephen Wyman, Oct. 19, 2024)

Grimes (1815-1873) was born a free African American in Leesburg, Virginia. After working in the deep south, he moved to Washington and ran a successful hackney coach business. This job facilitated the transport of enslaved people to freedom. He lived with his wife Octavia and their children in a house they owned at the corner of 22nd and H Streets from 1836 to 1846. Octavia was a teacher and ran a school with 25 children adjacent to their house.

In 1839, Grimes successfully rescued from slavery the wife and six children of a free black man in Loudoun County. But he was observed by a woman who kept a coach stop he passed by and was suspected of aiding the escape. Grimes was arrested, convicted and sentenced to two years in the state prison in Richmond plus a $100 fine, a relatively light penalty, due to “the former good character of the Prisoner.”

Plaque honoring Grimes at 22nd and H Streets, on the GWU Campus lists donors to the $4,000 cost of the installation (F. Leone, Aug. 2023)

Upon Grimes’ release, he became a minister. In 1846, he moved to New Bedford, and in 1848 to Boston, Massachusetts, where he continued his abolitionist work. He served as pastor of the new Twelfth Baptist Church for 27 years, and because many of its members had escaped from slavery, it became known as the “Fugitive’s Church.” Grimes intervened to help several parishioners captured pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1863, Leonard recruited African American volunteers for the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and Octavia raised funds to outfit the unit. They also raised money to build colleges in the South to educate newly freed men and women (including Virginia Union in Richmond).

The GWU plaque was proposed by GWU Professor Emeritus Ambassador Ronald Palmer, who was trying to raise awareness of the Underground Railroad in DC. He contended that the project would advance GWU President Stephen Trachtenberg’s “general concept of enabling GW to be not just in Washington but of Washington and it could provide an opportunity for GW to become a focus of the still unfolding story of the Underground Railroad.”

 Thanks to GWU alumnus Stephen Wyman who nominated Grimes for induction into the Abolition Hall of Fame. The Hall and museum features exhibits, art installations, and anti-racism resources. Grimes is one of 32 members of the Hall. You can even get Leonard Grimes T-shirts and other merch.

The banner honoring Rev. Grimes was co-sponsored by Frank Leone and Denise Vogt on behalf of the Foggy Bottom Association History Project (Stephen Wyman, Oct. 19, 2024).

Sources:  Stephen Wyman, Nomination of Rev. Leonard Andrew Grimes for Induction Into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, Jan. 30, 2023; Jenny Masur, Heroes of the Underground Railroad around Washington, D.C., Charleston SC: History Press, 2019; “Grimes, Leonard Monument”  File,  GWU Special Collections Research Center; Foggy Bottom History Project. For more, see our posts on Slavery in Foggy Bottom; The Underground Railroad and Foggy Bottom and Emily Edmundson, the Escape on the Pearl, and the GWU President’s House; and don’t miss GWU Museum DC Mondays excellent presentation Abolitionist Leonard Grimes by GWU student Eileen Cunha.