![]() ![]() View the Kennett Underground Railroad Center brochure and tour. The Kennett Underground Railroad Center is working to develop several tours in Chester and Delaware counties which will complement this trail. The Pennsylvania portion of the trail currently brings the traveler over the Mason and Dixon line on Route 52 in Kennett Township to the Longwood Progressive Meeting House, and follows Route 1 and I-95 into Philadelphia and the Independence Mall. The Harriet Tubman Freedom Trail continues the Byway through the story of slaves escaping to safety from the states where slavery was legal to the first state north of the Mason and Dixon line in Pennsylvania where slavery was not legal. The story begins at the newly dedicated Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The trail highlights sites and stories that demonstrate not only the significance of the role the Underground Railroad played in the eradication of slavery, but as a cornerstone of our national civil rights movement. The object of this letter is obviously to obtain for this unfortunate, and I am informed, very deserving girl, the speedy and effectual protection which her case demands, and which will I presure be a sufficient apology for this hasty address from an entire stranger.The purpose of the Underground Railroad Freedom Trail is to continue the over 200 mile Harriet Tubman Scenic Byway through southern Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania to Independence Mall in Philadelphia. I am unacquainted with the persons mentioned but have the information from an undoubted source in New Bedford by a Letter received this morning. She has been residing in the Family of Nathaniel Hathaway in New Bedford, whose wife was Anna Shoemaker of Philadelphia, who is on a visit among her connections there and has the girl with her. Thus far the exertions of her friends have been successful in withholding her from his grasp, but information has reached here that Barclay will be here soon (perhaps this day) that he is still determined to recover his slave, and it is also known that many persons who are not to be trued, nay many who are seeking to betray her are possessed of the leading circumstances of her present condition and only want his arrival to disclose them to him. She has been pursued by her master with the most implacable determination and there is reason to fear that if he should succeed in recovering her that her persecutions would be redoubled. Although professing great suavity of manners and much apparent kindness the master & mistress of this girl treated her with great severity, so much so as to induce some of the friends of Freedom in this place to assist her in making her escape from such intolerable and cruel servitude. For most people today as for most Americans in the 1840s and 1850sthe phrase Underground Railroad conjures images of trapdoors, flickering lanterns, and moonlit pathways through the woods. In the summer of 1822 or 23, a person by the name of Anthony Barklay, or Barclay came from the south to spend the summer here accompanied by his Family in which was included a black girl held by him as a slave. The following letter by a Rhode Island Quaker, Edward Lawton of Newport, describes the efforts to help a female slave escape her cruel owner, and asks Thomas Evans, a Philadelphia druggist, to help prevent the woman's recapture. Nevertheless, some abolitionists like Levi Coffin (1798-1877), William Still (1821-1902), and Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) actively assisted fugitives. The protagonist of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is a slave on the plantation where her grandmother, Ajarry, died while picking cotton, and her mother, Mabel, escaped from years ago. They had to borrow or forge passes, devise disguises, locate hiding places, or stow away on boats or trains. Most runaways had to rely on their own wits. Others hid with free blacks in southern cities.įor the most part, those fugitives who fled northward could not depend on an organized system of underground railroad stations to ferry them to freedom. Many headed toward Florida or to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina, where they established "maroon" colonies. Those fugitives who were trying to escape slavery did not necessarily flee northward. While masters often offered rewards for the return of runaways, sometimes they used ads to plead or bargain with a fugitive. Groups of slaves sometimes ran away to protest overwork or cruel punishment. Many ran away to visit spouses or children. Slaves might hide in nearby swamps to escape punishment or sale. ![]() Most runaways fled only a short distance. About a thousand slaves permanently escaped slavery each year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |