{"id":1922,"date":"2022-08-17T21:11:27","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T01:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/?page_id=1922"},"modified":"2023-06-26T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T16:12:22","slug":"the-new-england-network-to-freedom-grover","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/regional-essays\/the-new-england-network-to-freedom-grover\/","title":{"rendered":"The New England Network to Freedom by Kathryn Grover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Banner image: <\/strong>Underground Railroad operatives in New England sometimes tried to disrupt slave catchers in this heavily antislavery region through aggressive public exposure\u00a0 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalcommonwealth.org\/search\/commonwealth:70796c91z\">Boston Public Library<\/a>)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Download PDF version of this essay (coming soon)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/category\/grover\/\"><strong>See related Timeline entries<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In mid-October 1850, about a month after President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, ten \u00a0\u201cfugitives from Southern Slavery\u201d issued a call to the people of Northampton, Massachusetts to attend a public meeting for determining \u201csuch measures, as they may deem proper to prevent Massachusetts from being made slave hunting ground; the purity of the judiciary form being soiled by legal bribes, and the public Treasury from being robbed to perpetrate these gross and enormous wrongs.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a> John Williams, who fled from Kentucky slavery by 1845, called the meeting to order. By January 1851, he left Northampton for parts unknown.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 50%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-1922 gallery-columns-2 gallery-size-large'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/William-Craft.jpeg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"475\" height=\"558\" src=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/William-Craft.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large\" alt=\"engraving man in suit, tie, beard and sideburns\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-2156\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/William-Craft.jpeg 475w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/William-Craft-255x300.jpeg 255w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-2156'>\n\t\t\t\tWilliam Craft (<a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/184\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener\">House Divided Project<\/a>)\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/Ellen-Craft.jpeg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"475\" height=\"565\" src=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/Ellen-Craft.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large\" alt=\"engraving woman with bonnet\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-2155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/Ellen-Craft.jpeg 475w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/09\/Ellen-Craft-252x300.jpeg 252w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-2155'>\n\t\t\t\tEllen Craft (<a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/182\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener\">House Divided Project<\/a>)\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>It is remarkable that people who had escaped slavery should identify themselves as fugitives, and by name, in the newspapers, especially just a month after the Fugitive Slave Act became law. Only two days after the Northampton meeting, men arrived in Boston to capture and return William and Ellen Craft to slavery in Georgia. The novelty of the Crafts\u2019 1848 escape\u2014Ellen dressed as a white man with a broken arm and William as the man\u2019s servant\u2014and their evident absence of concern about capture made them instant celebrities on the antislavery lecture circuit. Yet by 1850 their notoriety impelled the secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee to suggest that the Crafts should go to Boston, \u201cas it had then been about a generation since a fugitive had been taken back from the old Bay State.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\"><sup>[2]<\/sup><\/a> By August of that year the Crafts moved in with Lewis and Harriet Hayden, who had themselves escaped slavery, at their boarding house on 66 Southac Street, where the federal census also shows five Black male residents originally from slave states. William opened a furniture making and repair shop\u2014and is listed in the 1850 manufacturing schedules of the census\u2014and Ellen began learning upholstery from a \u201cMiss Dean,\u201d a friend of a white couple, George S. and Susan Hillard of 54 (now 62) Pinckney Street. George Hillard was a US commissioner and thus bound by the new law to return freedom seekers to bondage. But it was his wife Susan who told Ellen Craft that her enslaver\u2019s agent was in Boston and had her stay in the couple\u2019s Pinckney Street home while the town\u2019s Black and white abolitionists arranged to move the couple out of the city.<sup> <a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a><\/sup> Susan Hillard is documented to have sheltered at least five others who had escaped slavery at her home, as her neighbor James Freeman Clark recalled:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My neighbor and friend, Mr. George S. Hillard, was an United States Commissioner. It might be his business after the slave law was passed (1850) to issue a warrant to the marshal for the capture of slaves. But Mrs. Hillard, his wife, was in the habit of putting the fugitives in the upper chamber of their own house, and I think Mr. Hillard was aware of the fact and never interfered. There was once a colored man, a fugitive, put in this upper room, and when Mrs. Hillard went in she found he had carefully pulled down the shades of the window. She told him she did not think there was any danger of his being seen from the street. \u201cPerhaps not, Missis,\u201d he replied, \u201cbut I do not want to spoil the place.\u201d He knew that after he had gone, there would be some one else who would need to be protected. He did not want any one to see his colored face there, lest it might excite suspicion, to the injury of his successors.<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\"><sup>[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of the ten who had signed the Northampton meeting call, six of them lived in \u201cBroughton\u2019s Meadow\u201d (by 1852 the Northampton village of Florence), two lived in Northampton, and two cannot be positively identified, though one may have used an alias in one Northampton newspaper and his given name in the other. Like John Williams, four other signers left town within a few years and have not so far been found elsewhere.\u00a0 But three\u2014Basil Dorsey, Lewis French, and Henry Anthony\u2014remained in or near the village. Dorsey\u2019s 1837 escape from Maryland had been well publicized, like the story of the Crafts, but he lived apparently peaceably in nearby Charlemont for six years before moving to Florence, where he died in 1872. Anthony was probably living in Florence by 1840 and died there in 1880. French, who had worked in the Florence daguerreotype case factory of Alfred Critchlow and stayed there with Critchlow when he learned he was being pursued, married an African American woman and moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he remained through at least 1860.<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4596\" style=\"width: 639px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4596\" class=\"wp-image-4596 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-709x1024.jpg\" alt=\"regional map\" width=\"629\" height=\"908\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-709x1024.jpg 709w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-208x300.jpg 208w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-768x1109.jpg 768w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-1063x1536.jpg 1063w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England-900x1300.jpg 900w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/New-England.jpg 1242w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 629px) 100vw, 629px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4596\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">New England region, c. 1850s (House Divided Project)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Acknowledging instances of people escaping slavery and living more or less openly in New England\u2014many such cases are documented\u2014does not minimize the real danger some faced during their northern lives. John W. Thompson, unnerved by renditions in Philadelphia after he had escaped from Maryland in 1842, told the captain of New Bedford whaling bark <em>Milwood<\/em> that he reckoned a whaling voyage was \u201cthe place where I stood least chance of being arrested by slave hunters.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref6\"><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/a> And just as the Crafts were hunted in 1850, Moses Roper\u2019s escape was advertised when he left North Carolina slavery aboard a cattle and lumber schooner from Savannah to New York in 1834. He worked on the New York canals and was going to school in Ludlow, Vermont, when he learned of the advertisement. Roper fled to a \u201cretired place\u201d outside of Ludlow, then to New Hampshire, where he felt unsafe, and finally to Boston, where he attended services at the African Meeting House until he found that \u201cslave-owners were in the habit of going to this colored chapel to look for runaway slaves.\u201d Soon afterward, Roper fled to England and did not return to the United States until after 1861.<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref7\"><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Acknowledging instances of people escaping slavery and living more or less openly in New England\u2014many such cases are documented\u2014does not minimize the real danger some faced during their northern lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-2 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-2 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 50%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-2 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-2 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-2' class='gallery galleryid-1922 gallery-columns-2 gallery-size-large'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/HD_grimesLAc-2.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/HD_grimesLAc-2.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large\" alt=\"Leonard Grimes\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-2-4711\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-2-4711'>\n\t\t\t\tRev. Leonard Grimes ( <a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/27551\">House Divided Project<\/a>)\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/HD_burnsA1c.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/HD_burnsA1c.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large\" alt=\"Anthony Burns\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-2-4712\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-2-4712'>\n\t\t\t\tAnthony Burns ( <a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/1283\">House Divided Project<\/a>)\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>Well-publicized successful and unsuccessful renditions from Boston\u2014George Latimer in 1842, Thomas Sims and Shadrach Minkins in 1851, and Anthony Burns in 1854\u2014created the general impression that those who had fled slavery were everywhere and always in danger. These efforts were threatening enough that in some places African Americans left en masse: a correspondent to the <em>New York Independent<\/em> reported in 1853, for example, that some 150 left Boston after the Fugitive Slave Act, sixty of them from Leonard Grimes\u2019s Twelfth Baptist Church, even then known as the \u201cfugitive slaves\u2019 church.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref8\"><sup>[8]<\/sup><\/a> Contemporary newspapers and correspondence cite numerous cases of fugitives being pursued into northern New England. Attempted renditions occurred even as far north as St. Albans, Vermont, 16 miles from the Canadian border, despite historians who assert that the absence of commercial connections between Vermont and the South meant \u201cno safer place\u201d existed for freedom seekers.<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref9\"><sup>[9]<\/sup><\/a> In March 1854 African American minister John W. Lewis reported in <em>Frederick Douglass\u2019 Paper <\/em>\u00a0that four fugitives had arrived in that town with the \u201ctyrants . . . close on their track,\u201d and local abolitionists promptly \u201chad an express train under way\u201d to take them into Canada. In May 1856 an enslaver and a federal marshal arrived in St. Albans to retake an unnamed fugitive who had escaped from Baltimore in January and had been working for several months for the cattle and sheep breeder Alanson M. Clark. \u201cOn making inquiry of the object of their pursuit, they were kindly informed that they would be more successful in securing the prize at Waterbury, Vt., than at St. Albans,\u201d the <em>St. Albans Messenger<\/em> reported. \u201cMeantime the friends of the \u2018colored brother\u2019 transported him a few miles further north in a sleigh and placed him in a freight train, and in a few hours he was beyond the reach of the U. S. Marshall safe on British ground.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn10\" name=\"_ednref10\"><sup>[10]<\/sup><\/a> John W. Lewis reported in August 1854: \u201cDuring the last winter, spring, and this summer, we have had companies of two and four at a time, arriving in St. Albans, and leaving for Canada. In no instance do our citizens let them lack for substantial means for their comfort. And such is the feeling of that whole community, a kidnapper would endanger his life to attempt an arrest. \u2018Resistance to tyrants in obedience to God,\u2019 is the motto of all.\u2019\u201d<a href=\"#_edn11\" name=\"_ednref11\"><sup>[11]<\/sup><\/a> Vermont newspapers and other accounts document numerous chance encounters between freedom seekers and their enslavers or others who had known them in the South.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4716\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4716\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4716\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM-300x225.png\" alt=\"Hayden\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM-1024x769.png 1024w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM-768x577.png 768w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM-900x676.png 900w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-1.04.01-PM.png 1198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4716\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Hayden boardinghouse in Boston is now part of the Network to Freedom ( <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nps.gov\/articles\/000\/npb-and-ntf.htm\">NPS<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Yet it is likely the case that many more people who had escaped slavery lived without direct threat from enslavers and their agents than were pursued into northern places.\u00a0 Historian Stanley W. Campbell noted that no fugitives were returned to slavery from New England after the Burns rendition. The Fugitive Slave Act was a \u201cdead letter\u201d in New England \u201cnot because the law could not be enforced; it was because it was not economically feasible to trace, capture, and return fugitive slaves from there. In fact, it never had been.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn12\" name=\"_ednref12\"><sup>[12]<\/sup><\/a> In addition to the sheer expense of the endeavor, Campbell suggested, New England personal liberty laws and \u201chostile public opinion\u201d also kept pursuit at a low level.\u00a0 Armed African Americans barricaded themselves in Lewis Hayden\u2019s Boston home to prevent the seizure of William Craft. A reported 20 African American men stormed a Boston courthouse to rescue Shadrach Minkins. The escape of Edinbur Randall from Jacksonville, Florida, on the lumber bark <em>Franklin<\/em> in 1854, and the efforts of the vessel\u2019s captain to return him to slavery, triggered several aggressive countermeasures. Upon his escape to Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Randall received help from one Gay Head Indian woman who hid him in her attic and \u201cdeclared that she would have a large kettle of hot water ready to scald the sheriff, or any of his understrappers, who crossed her threshold.\u201d A group of Indians, African Americans, and Afro Indians \u201carmed with guns, pitchforks, clubs, and almost anything that would do to fight with\u201d gathered on shore to prevent anyone from stopping two Indian men from rowing Randall to the mainland. Unaware of this action, the Boston Vigilance Committee sent one of its own to Bath, Maine, the <em>Franklin<\/em><em>\u2019<\/em><em>s<\/em> destination, to help organize a local committee to board the vessel and take Randall. But Randall, according to Beulah Vanderhoop, the Gay Head Indian who had engineered his removal from the Vineyard, spent the next seven years \u201cworking about wharves\u201d in New Bedford under the alias Edgar Jones.<a href=\"#_edn13\" name=\"_ednref13\"><sup>[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In New England, fugitive populations were generally largest in the port cities with greater populations of color, the opportunity for work both aboard and on shore, and robust abolitionist sentiment and activity. That would embrace New Bedford, Boston, and Springfield in Massachusetts; Providence and Newport in Rhode Island; Hartford and New London in Connecticut; Portland, Maine; and Burlington, Vermont. In such places, freedom seekers could and did disappear into waterfront districts crowded with people of color and transients or into African American neighborhoods that many law officers either tended to avoid or knew little about. The largely African American north slope of Boston\u2019s Beacon Hill, for example, featured an intricate array of alleys, courts, and enclaves that were virtually invisible to people who did not live in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>The dynamic in rural areas was the opposite of the port cities. In rural areas, the more remote the area the better, as long as at least some active sympathizers were present. Unitarian cleric Joshua Young, a fugitive assistant in Boston and Burlington, Vermont, defined the Underground Railroad as \u201csimply the aiding and passing on from one well known and trusty agent to another, of the fugitives on their way to Canada\u201d chiefly by \u201chelping the fugitive in avoiding the central and more public places on his route to Freedom.\u201d Florence was a fugitive \u201chaven\u201d because it was the home in the 1840s to the Northampton Association of Industry and Education, the only known communal experiment to have formally embraced racial equity. In 1847 the Boston Vigilance Committee sent Josiah Thomas, his wife, and their child to Ashburnham, Massachusetts, and asked thread spool manufacturers Gilman Jones and Enoch Whittemore to give Thomas work and shelter the family. The Thomases remained in that town through at least 1860. James Lindsay Smith escaped from Virginia in 1838 to Philadelphia and then New York, where African American abolitionist David Ruggles sent him through Hartford and to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was told to \u201cmake yourself at home.\u201d Thomas worked at Rufus Elmore\u2019s wholesale shoe shop for a year, lectured on the antislavery circuit, and moved in 1842 to Norwich, Connecticut (David Ruggles\u2019s birthplace), where he was a minister and shoemaker until he died in December 1884.<a href=\"#_edn14\" name=\"_ednref14\"><sup>[14]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even as abolitionists were a distinct minority of the regional population, a significant number held positions of importance in their communities, which sometimes presented a formidable obstacle to enslavers and their agents. In 1838 Chauncey L. Knapp was Vermont\u2019s secretary of state when he drove to the home of sheep farmer Rowland T. Robinson in Ferrisburg to bring the Virginia fugitive Charles Nelson to Montpelier. \u201cThe lad (Charles) is now sitting in my office in the State House,\u201d Knapp wrote to an assistant in Saratoga, and Knapp set about looking for a home, a school, and an apprenticeship for Nelson. For his part, Robinson is said to have sheltered \u201cscores\u201d of fugitives and is documented to have employed several; his home, Rokeby, is now the site of Vermont\u2019s only permanent Underground Railroad exhibition.<a href=\"#_edn15\" name=\"_ednref15\"><sup>[15]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence Brainerd of St. Albans was a US senator and a major investor in Lake Champlain steamboats and, after 1850, the Vermont and Canada Railroad. According to his son, he used both conveyances to move fugitives north.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4717\" style=\"width: 670px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Rokeby.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4717\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4717\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Rokeby.jpeg\" alt=\"Rokeby\" width=\"660\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Rokeby.jpeg 660w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Rokeby-300x136.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4717\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rokeby Museum in Vermont (<a href=\"https:\/\/rokeby.org\/exhibits\/underground-railroad-vt\/\">Rokeby<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Brainerd was far from the only vessel and railroad investor to help freedom seekers, and the role he, others similarly situated, and transport employees played in the movement of fugitives deserves thorough investigation. Erastus Hopkins of Northampton and Springfield, Massachusetts, was the president of the Connecticut River Railroad and Seth Hunt of Northampton, the company clerk. Both assisted fugitives and used the Underground Railroad to do so. In 1859 Hopkins wrote to his nephew that though he had retired from the \u201cabove ground railroad\u2026.for the first time I act as Prest. of the Underground Railroad.\u201d Brown Thurston, a printer in Portland, Maine, stated that he conveyed fugitives to Canada by coasting vessels and the Grand Trunk Railroad, which charged half-fare or no fare at all. Elizabeth Buffum Chace conveyed fugitives from her Valley Falls, Rhode Island, home to the Providence and Worcester Railroad, where a conductor received them and assured that they transferred \u201cto the Vermont road, from which by \u2026 arrangement, they were received by a Unitarian clergyman named Young, and sent by him on to Canada, where they uniformly arrived safely.\u201d William Ingersoll Bowditch sent fugitives from Boston to the Newton home of William Jackson, a farmer and prominent railroad promoter, builder, and agent from 1826 to 1847. \u201cHis house being on the Worcester Railroad, he could easily forward any one,\u201d Bowditch later wrote.<a href=\"#_edn16\" name=\"_ednref16\"><sup>[16]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Much as railroads, rivers, and canals were significant in the passage of people who escaped slavery, the means of their passage through, or settlement in, urban and rural New England places were multiple, multifaceted, \u201cas various as the instances of rescue,\u201d Joshua Young pointed out. \u201cThe Abolitionists of New England were pretty well known to each other, at least, by name and residence, through their contributions to the cause of anti-slavery, and their being subscribers to the Liberator, Mr. Garrison\u2019s paper,\u201d Young stated, \u201cand it was sufficient to inform one another of what was going on\u201d to make the Underground Railroad a functioning feature of antebellum New England life.<a href=\"#_edn17\" name=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Further Reading<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Bartlett, Irving H. \u201cAbolitionists, Fugitives, and Imposters in Boston, 1846-47,\u201d <em>New England Quarterly<\/em> 55, 1 (March 1982): 97-110.<\/li>\n<li>Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery Collection. https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/bplscas<\/li>\n<li>Still, William. <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em>. Philadelphia: Porter &amp; Coates, 1872.<\/li>\n<li>Wilbur H. Siebert Underground Railroad Collection. Ohio Memory Connection. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohiomemory.org\/digital\/collection\/siebert\/\">https:\/\/www.ohiomemory.org\/digital\/collection\/siebert\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Zirblis, Raymond Paul. \u201cFriends of Freedom: The Vermont Underground Railroad Survey Report.\u201d Montpelier, VT: Vermont Department of State Buildings and Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 12 December 1996.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Citations<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cTo the Citizens of Northampton,\u201d <em>Hampshire Gazette<\/em>, October 15, 1850, and <em>Northampton Courier<\/em>, October 20, 1850.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\"><sup>[2]<\/sup><\/a> William Still, <em>The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &amp;c., Narrative the Hardships Hair-breadth Escapes and Deaths Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom, as Relation by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by <\/em>the Author (1871; reprint, Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1970), 384.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\"><sup>[3]<\/sup><\/a> Still, <em>Underground Railroad<\/em>, 387-88.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\"><sup>[4]<\/sup><\/a> James S. Freeman Clark, <em>Antislavery Days<\/em> (New York: John W. Lowell, 1883), 83.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a> See Kathryn Grover, \u201cAfrican Americans, Abolition, and Reform in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1820-1900: Statement of Historic Context\u201d (Northampton, MA: David Ruggles Center for History and Education and Committee for Northampton, January 2021), National Register Historic District nomination for Florence, (2021) and Dorsey-Jones House, National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (2009), David Ruggles Center, Florence, MA.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref6\" name=\"_edn6\"><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/a> <em>The Life of John Thompson, a Fugitive Slave, Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and His Providential Escape. Written By Himself<\/em> (Worcester, MA: John Thompson, 1856), 103, 107-8.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref7\" name=\"_edn7\"><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/a> <em>A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery<\/em> (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838); see also Roper\u2019s documented Wikipedia entry.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref8\" name=\"_edn8\"><sup>[8]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe Colored Population of Boston,\u201d <em>Pennsylvania Freeman<\/em>, August 25, 1853, from the <em>New York Independent<\/em>. See also Fred Landon, \u201cThe Negro Migration to Canada after the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,\u201d <em>Journal of Negro History<\/em> 5, 1 (January 1920): 22-36.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref9\" name=\"_edn9\"><sup>[9]<\/sup><\/a> R. L. Morrow, \u201cThe Liberty Party in Vermont,\u201d <em>New England Quarterly<\/em> 2, 2 (April 1929): 234-48, 234. Morrow\u2019s assertions about Vermont were repeated almost verbatim in Wilbur H. Siebert, <em>Vermont\u2019s Anti-Slavery and Underground Railroad Record<\/em> (Columbus, OH: Spahn and Glenn, 1937), 23.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref10\" name=\"_edn10\"><sup>[10]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cEscape of a Fugitive Slave,\u201d <em>St. Albans Messenger<\/em>, April 24, 1856. Lawrence Brainerd, probably St. Albans\u2019s most active white abolitionist, may have had something to do with the fugitive\u2019s employment, as Clark had once clerked for Brainerd. as well as with his flight further north.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref11\" name=\"_edn11\"><sup>[11]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cLetter from J. W. Lewis,\u201d <em>Frederick Douglass\u2019 Paper<\/em>, August 25, 1854. Lewis lived in St. Albans from at least June 1853 probably until 1858 or 1859; he died in Haiti in 1862 after having shepherded a group of African Americans there to settle.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref12\" name=\"_edn12\"><sup>[12]<\/sup><\/a> Stanley W. Campbell,\u00a0<em>The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860 <\/em>(Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 185.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref13\" name=\"_edn13\"><sup>[13]<\/sup><\/a> New Bedford <em>Standard<\/em>, September 29, 30, 1854; Francis Jackson, \u201cFugitive Slaves,\u201d <em>The Liberty Bell. By Friends of Freedom<\/em> (Boston: National Anti-Slavery Bazaar, 1858): 29-43; Netta Vanderhoop, \u201cThe True Story of a Fugitive Slave: Or the Story a Gay Head Grandmother Told,\u201d <em>Vineyard Gazette<\/em>, February 3, 1921. Jackson\u2019s account does not mention the armed party. New Bedford censuses do not record Jones under this name, Edinbur Randall, or John Mason, another alias he used.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref14\" name=\"_edn14\"><sup>[14]<\/sup><\/a> Irving H. Bartlett, \u201cAbolitionists, Fugitives, and Imposters in Boston, 1846-47,\u201d <em>New England Quarterly<\/em> 55, 1 (March 1982): 102-3; Jody Fernald and Stephanie Gilbert, \u201cOliver Cromwell Gilbert: A Life,\u201d University of New Hampshire Scholars\u2019 Repository, 2014, <a href=\"https:\/\/scholars.unh.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&amp;context=library_pub\">https:\/\/scholars.unh.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&amp;context=library_pub<\/a>;<\/p>\n<p>James Lindsay Smith, <em>Autobiography of James L. Smith.<\/em> (Norwich, CT: Press of the Bulletin Company, 1881).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref15\" name=\"_edn15\"><sup>[15]<\/sup><\/a> Raymond Paul Zirblis, \u201cFriends of Freedom: The Vermont Underground Railroad Survey Report\u201d (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Department of State Buildings and Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 12 December 1996), 40, and \u201cAnti-Slavery Action in 1838: A Letter from Vermont\u2019s Secretary of State,\u201d <em>Vermont History<\/em> 5, 41 (1973): 7-8O. On Robinson, see Allan S. Everest, ed., <em>Recollections<\/em> (Plattsburgh, NY: Clinton County Historical Association, 1964), 58, cited in Tom Calarco, \u201cThe Fresh Air of Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Vermont\u201d (Paper, n.d.), 4, 32 n.6.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref16\" name=\"_edn16\"><sup>[16]<\/sup><\/a> Erastus Hopkins to John B. Wheeler, July 11, 1859, cited in Bruce Laurie, <em>Rebels in Paradise: Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists<\/em> (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 140-41, 170 n. 64; Thurston\u2019s obituary in the <em>Eastern Argus<\/em>, April 25, 1900, cited in H. H. Price and Gerald E. Talbot, <em>Maine\u2019s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People<\/em> (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 2006), 255-56; Elizabeth Buffum Chace, \u201cMy Anti-Slavery Reminiscences\u201d (Valley Falls, R.I., 1891) in <em>Two Quaker Sisters from the Original Diaries of Elizabeth Buffum Chace and Lucy Buffum Lovell <\/em>(New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1937), 127-28; William I. Bowditch to Wilbur Henry Siebert, 5 April 1893, vol. 1, \u201cThe \u2018Underground Railroad\u2019 in Massachusetts,\u201d Material Collected by Professor Wilbur H. Siebert, Ohio State University, Columbus, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref17\" name=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> Joshua Young to Wilbur Henry Siebert, April 21, 1893, Wilbur H. Siebert Underground Railroad Collection, available online from Ohio History Connection, https:\/\/ohiomemory.org\/digital\/collection\/siebert\/id\/24691<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Author Profile<\/h2>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Grover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2342\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Grover-161x300.jpg\" alt=\"Grover\" width=\"161\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Grover-161x300.jpg 161w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Grover.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 161px) 100vw, 161px\" \/><\/a>KATHRYN GROVER<\/strong>\u00a0is an independent researcher, writer, and editor in American social, ethnic, and local history. Grover\u2019s publications include:\u00a0<em>Make\u00a0<\/em>A<em>\u00a0Way Somehow: African American Life in a Northern Community<\/em>\u00a0(Syracuse University Press, 1994);\u00a0<em>The Fugitive\u2019s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts<\/em>\u00a0(University\u00a0of\u00a0Massachusetts Press, 2001)\u00a0<em>Rochester, New Hampshire, 1890\u20132010: \u201cA Com\u00adpact Little Industrial City\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(Peter E. Randall, 2013);\u00a0<em>The Brickyard: The Life, Death, and Legend of an Urban Neighborhood<\/em>\u00a0(Lynna Museum and Historical Society, 2004). She is editor of\u00a0<em>New Jersey History<\/em>\u00a0of the New Jersey Historical Society. Grover has also published a Historic Resource Study of the antebellum African American community on the north slope of\u00a0Beacon Hill\u00a0for Boston African American National Historic Site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Banner image: Underground Railroad operatives in New England sometimes tried to disrupt slave catchers in this heavily antislavery region through aggressive public exposure\u00a0 (Boston Public Library) Download PDF version of this essay (coming soon) See related Timeline entries &nbsp; In mid-October 1850, about a month after President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, ten [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3200,"parent":1609,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1922","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1922\/revisions\/1923"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}