William Lambert

William Lambert (1817 – April 28, 1890) was a prominent African-American citizen and abolitionist in Detroit during the mid to late 19th century. With a formal education and a background in the anti-slavery movement from a young age he would become a significant figure in Detroit's local black community and the city at large for over 50 years. In the late 1840s Lambert's actions in helping a fugitive slave's escape into Canada from Detroit would play a part in the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.

Early life William Lambert was born free in 1817 in Trenton, New Jersey. Sources are mixed on the status of parents, but at least one of his parents was free at the time of his birth, possibly both. Crucial to his later success, Lambert was taken under the wing of a Quaker schoolmaster. This school master, Abner Hunt Francis, provided Lambert a valuable formal education and being an abolitionist himself introduced Lambert to the movement at a young age. From 1832 to 1838 while his mentor worked with the local abolitionist movement in Buffalo, Lambert would start making his own way in the world by traveling the Great Lakes region and Detroit by hiring out as a cabin boy on commercial steamers. In those last few months Lambert started having difficulties being aware of his surroundings, with one anecdote from the obituary noting how he had been found one morning at an old place of business having wandered from his home in the middle of the night. On the night of April 28 after the rest of his family had retired to their beds, William Lambert committed suicide by hanging in the woodshed on his property. It is unknown though speculated as to whether his advanced age and deteriorating lucidity had anything to do with his death.

He would be laid to rest at Elm Wood Cemetery on April 30, 1890, where many of Detroit's other abolitionists were laid to rest including George DeBaptiste, Lambert's long time friend and colleague in the Underground Railroad.