Boston Mutual Lyceum


Boston Mutual Lyceum was an African American lyceum organization founded in 1833. It included women and had a female vice-president. Two of five managers were also women. The Adelphic Union was an African American literary society in Boston at the same time.
Officers were: Dudley Tidd, president; Joel W. Lewis, 1st vice-president; Sarah H. Annible, 2nd vice-president; Nath Cutler, secretary; and Thomas Dalton, treasurer. Managers were Joseph H. Gover, John B. Cutler, Henry Carroll, Lucy V. Lew, and Mary Williams. Josiah Holbrook helped organize the group.
Tidd was a laborer who became a property owner along with Dalton, who had been a bootblack.
The abolitionist newspaper The Liberator published by William Lloyd Garrison published a brief notice of the formation of the group listing its officers and managers.
A Lew family history is known and she may have become Thomas Dalton's wife, known as Lucy Lew Dalton. Lucy Lew Dalton is part of the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.