Label
Writing Desk, 1857
Used by Rufus Kinsley (1831 – 1911)
Boston, MA
Wood, metal, leather
Gift of Sumner E. Kinsley, #1992.30.2b
Rufus Kinsley grew up in Fletcher and then moved to St. Albans to work as a printer for the St. Albans Messenger. He followed that trade to Boston around 1850, where he worked for a series of papers including the Massachusetts Life Boat and the Boston Evening Traveller.
Kinsley was raised in a deeply Christian household by a father who was a staunch abolitionist. While in Boston he lived in an integrated neighborhood in the West End and attended the May Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. The May Street Church was well-known as a radical abolitionist institution, and its pastor, the Reverend Elijah Grissom, had himself escaped from slavery. Kinsley served as superintendent of the Sabbath School at the church, and when he stepped down from that position in 1857 the Church gave him this writing desk.
In 1861, Kinsley enlisted in Company F of the 8th Vermont Regiment. Four of his brothers also enlisted in the Union Army. Kinsley took on a variety of tasks for the Army, including supervising a camp in Algiers, Louisiana that cared for formerly enslaved Black refugees. While there, he volunteered in the camp school, using this desk to teach reading and writing.
In August 1863, Kinsley was appointed second lieutenant in a regiment of Black soldiers. (During the Civil War, most regiments with Black soldiers were assigned white officers.) Many of the men serving with Kinsley had been enslaved, and he again used his writing desk and took the time to teach what he later estimated to be hundreds to read and write.
After the war, Kinsley returned to Vermont and married. He suffered from a series of illnesses that made his life as a farmer difficult, and it took him years to claim his Army pension.