Edmondson Sisters (Washington Post Magazine)

Sources
A key secondary source is Mary Kay Ricks’ Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad (2007). In addition, a short essay from the Washington Post Magazine has been reposted on this flickr page. Other sources include The Case of the Edmondson Sisters (1848) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Edmondson Family and the Capture of the Schooner Pearl (1856).

Places to Visit
The Edmondson sisters were imprisoned at the Bruin Slave Jail, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and located at 1707 Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1854 Harriet Beecher Stowe explained in The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin that she used information about the jail to help write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In addition, you will find a statue of the two sisters at Edmonson Plaza (1701 Duke Street). The statute was unveiled in June 2010 and serves as a memorial to those suffered while in the jail. You can learn more about the Bruin Slave Jail from a short overview at the Alexandria Black History Museum’s website. Also see this short essay from the Virginia African American Heritage Program. Visitors should note that this building is not open to the public.

The Franklin and Armfield slave dealers office, which is now home to the Freedom House Museum, is located several blocks away at 1315 Duke Street.

Images
The image of the Edmondson sisters was posted online at this page on Flickr. The image is originally from the Washington Post Magazine. In addition, a daguerreotype from 1850 is available at the Syracuse University Library. Other abolitionists, including Samuel J. May, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass, are also in the picture. The original daguerreotype is held at the Madison County Historical Society.