On this day, 150 years ago, the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Naturally the War (also known, among other names, as the War Between the States) is getting a lot of interesting coverage today. I was going to think of something battle-ish to write about, but decided instead to dig out this old article on the Underground Railroad, and the role Bucks and Montgomery counties played in it.
As an aside, I grew up across from the New Britain Baptist Church, New Britain Borough, and when I was a budding little elementary-aged nerdlinger I did a lot of reading on the Church's part in the Railroad. I remember being astonished to learn it wasn't, like, aliteral railroad, following dark, twisty rails deep underground, huffing its way to safety up north.
Anyway, check out this article, and the wonderful photos that ran with it.
October 27, 1975
Underground Railroad
Risking imprisonment and heavy fines, Abolitionists professed obedience to a higher law, preventing Bucks and Montgomery from becoming free hunting ground for southern slavemaster
By Matthew T. Corso and William G. Shuster
On a sweltering summer night in 1843, Rachel Moore, her six children clutching to her tattered dress, stole through the darkness on a journey to Bucks County and the light of freedom.
She was black and a slave and, like thousands of slaves before and after her, had decided to make the dangerous odyssey of escape rather than continue to submit to the oppression of racial subjugation.
Guided by the North Star, Rachel Moore and other slaves fled to freedom along paths which became known as the Underground Railroad.
It was, of course, not a railroad at all, but a system of welcoming homes, called stations, along the road north which provided food and temporary shelter for the slaves' quest for liberty.
Montgomery and Bucks Counties were the sites of numerous homes whose owners were sympathetic to the abolitionist movement of the times, a movement that epitomized the raging national furor over the "curious institution" of slavery which triggered the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad had faithful stations in Horsham, Upper Moreland, Montgomery and Abington in Montgomery County and Solebury, Quakertown, Doylestown, Yardley, Newtown and Buckingham in Bucks.
The Underground Railroad was an indispensable instrument for slave fugitives to bolt to freedom.
Again and again, courageous blacks risked the severe penalties of physical abuse or shipment to the Deep South by attempting escape.
And those whose homes were part of the Underground Railroad risked legal prosecution and often social censure by cooperating to aid the slaves.
When Rachel Moore gathered up her children and fled from the Maryland plantation where she was in bondage, she followed a route familiar to other black fugitives.
The Mason-Dixon Line, the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, was the unofficial demarcation between the free states of the north and the slave states of the south.
It was natural, then, for escaped slaves to seek out the opponents of slavery, especially the Quakers, along the Bucks-Montgomery corridor.
Yet both counties had ambivalent attitudes toward blacks. While slavery as an institution was generally condemned, there existed widespread racial prejudice against blacks.
Still, it was not difficult for slaves to find a friendly respite in Bucks or Montgomery, as numerous documented anecdotes point out.
For example, one of the better known escaped slaves who settled in Bucks was Big Ben Jones, an enormous man whose height was at least 6-foot-11, according to historical sources.
Big Ben, as he was called, escaped from Maryland in 1833 and reached Buckingham by way of the Underground Railroad. He lived in the Buckingham Solebury area, working for antislavery residents such as Jonathan Fell, Thomas Bye and William Stavely.
Several years after his escape, Big Ben was chopping wood in Forest Grove when his former slavemaster, William Anderson, and several cohorts surprised the fugitive and tried to apprehend him.
They did, but only after the captors wounded Big Ben with an axe. He was forcibly returned to Maryland where Anderson attempted to sell him.
But the leg wounds sustained by Big Ben diminished his value on the slave market. Meantime, neighbors in Bucks County who knew Ben raised $600 to buy his freedom from Anderson.
Big Ben lived out a long life in Bucks and he died at the county poorhouse at what is now called Neshaminy Manor.
Other slaves who escaped to Bucks County only to be apprehended later by southern slavemasters were "bought" by friendly persons in Bucks and freed.
Much of the itinerary which the slaves followed along the Underground Railroad is shrouded in mystery because secrecy served both the fugitives and those homeowners who volunteered sanctuary.
Strong emancipation sentiment was marshaled by the Bucks County Anti-Slavery Society, which was formed in 1832.
What made it dangerous for Bucks and Montgomery residents to shelter slaves was the notorious Fugitive Stave Law, sponsored by southern Congressmen and reluctantly endorsed by their northern colleagues who had hoped it would serve as a compromise to stem the rising tide of Southern secession.
This law made it a federal crime for anyone to harbor or give aid to a fugitive slave, with the penalty of imprisonment or fines up to $2,000.
Nevertheless, residents in Bucks and Montgomery- as one historian noted- decided to profess "obedience to a higher law ... to prevent both counties from becoming a free hunting-ground for the southern slavemaster."
So efficient was the Underground Railroad that the slavemasters conceded they were stumped as to how slaves escaped the usual posse of outraged slavemaster and his pack of hounds.
In fact, one disgruntled slaveowner, after traveling hundreds of miles only to give up the chase, queried to close-mouthed northerners: "What do you have, an underground railroad up here?"
The name stuck and more than one slaveholder returned home from Bucks or Montgomery shaking his head and wondering how his slave got away.
The Underground Railroad thrived in the sister counties because of people like Isaac Warner of Hatboro, the Kenderdines of Horsham, Richard Moore of Quakertown and Jonathan P. Magill of Solebury, as well as dozens of others.
Moore, particularly, actively and boldly aided escaped slaves.
A respected potter, Moore operated a ceramic works and was a pioneer in the manufacture of slipware pottery.
His house on Main Street in Quakertown Borough is today adorned with a memorial marker acknowledging Moore's contribution to the cause of black freedom in Bucks.
Moore's home became the most frequently used station in Bucks County, giving shelter to dozens of escaped slaves.
One documented case illustrated how the Underground Railroad operated.
Billy Budd was a slave who decided to escape from his Maryland slavemaster. Once he reached Bucks, sympathetic abolitionists hid him under a load of hay in a wagon and took him to Richard Moore.
Moore not only aided Budd in eluding his pursuers but befriended him and gave him a job as a carter.
Budd, who lived in Bucks under the alias Henry Franklin, then became one of the black leaders who helped other fugitives.
Historical records show that Magill of Solebury often dispatched his children to Lower Bucks where they hid slaves in wagons filled with hay or straw.
Magill knew that bounty hunters would be less suspicious of children driving the wagons and instructed them not to stop on the route to their destination.
Not all the slaves were taken to Moore's. Those who were either found work in the area or pressed northward to New York or Canada.
Another house which served as a station is located on East State and Broad streets in Doylestown Borough and is now owned by Dr. John R. Siegler.
Like many of the stations, it was equipped with secret passageways and concealed tunnels.
A network of tunnels which remain in good condition today are located under the former Ewald home which is now situated in the Johnsville Naval Air Development Center, Warminster Township.
Documented evidence of other stations is scarce because many homeowners insisted on absolute secrecy.
The main route of the Underground Railroad in Montgomery County was York Road. In Bucks, the main road was Easton.
The danger in discovery was high because of the proximity to the city of Philadelphia, with its abundance of bounty hunters, and the advent of the telegraph and mass circulation newspapers which promptly reported and described black fugitives.
An advertisement appearing in the Philadelphia Gazette, placed there by Dr. Thomas Graeme of Horsham stated:
A mulatto slave named Will about 29 years of age, being of a Negro father and an Indian mother, has run away. Whoever secures him in a gaol shall have five pounds reward and reasonable charges paid.
The adherents of the Underground Railroad eventually found themselves in complicated litigation.
Two landmark court cases, one in Bucks and one in Montgomery, had an impact on slave law.
The Bucks case involved a young black man who had escaped from Virginia and found the protection of Robert Purvis, a professor and avid abolitionist.
The young man was Basil Dorsey who was married and had two children.
A jealous relative informed the slaveowner of Dorsey's whereabouts and he was apprehended in 1838.
Purvis hired the famous Philadelphia defense attorney David Paul Brown to represent Dorsey, who was detained in the county jail until a hearing was scheduled before Judge John Fox.
Brown, whose oratory prowess was legendary, did not dispute the fact that Dorsey was an escaped slave from Maryland. He conceded that the law permitted slavemasters from slave states to recoup fugitives.
But in a brilliant stroke of courtroom strategy, Brown argued that the prosecutor, representing the slavemaster, had failed to show concrete evidence that Maryland was a slave state.
Therefore, Brown contended, the slavemaster had no recourse in law to remand the fugitive.
The prosecutor was astounded and asked for a delay to acquire documentary evidence regarding Maryland's slaves statutes.
But Judge Fox ruled that the prosecutor should have been equipped before the hearing and stunned the courtroom by dismissing the case and freeing Dorsey.
This tactic was used again by lawyers who aided slaves until slavemasters got wise and learned to carry the necessary documents.
While that case was a victory for freedom, a different case in Montgomery County did not turn out as well.
One of the most famous and controversial cases in Montgomery County's history involving the recovery of a fugitive slave occurred in Horsham Township in 1822. It involved all the ambiguities and emotional issues of slavery and shows the attitudes of local, state and federal officials toward those who sought and those who harbored escaped slaves.
It was about 8 p.m. on Oct. 20, a Sunday, when five men from New Jersey in a closed wagon drove up the path to the farmhouse of Issachar Kenderdine.
They stopped the wagon a short distance from the house. One of them, Ralph Johnson, stayed with it while the other three - his brother Caleb; John Skilman and Phineas Wirthington - walked slowly and cautiously to the house.
Caleb Johnson guarded the kitchen door while the other two went to the front and knocked.
"Sorry to trouble you, ma'am," said Wirthington to Mrs. Kenderdine when she answered the door. "But our horse fell down and got hurt. Could your man there give us some assistance?"
Mrs. Kenderdine looked at her husband Issachar, who nodded assent and she beckoned to their black workman, named John, to assist the strangers.
As John came out of the house, Wirthington seized him by one of his arms.
"It's him we want," shouted Wirthington to the startled Kenderdines. "There's nothing wrong with the horse. This one must go with us."
Caleb Johnson ran around the house and helped his confederates hustle the black man to the wagon. The men "forcibly took him, at the same time using threats to those about him. When they got him out, they handcuffed him and put him in the wagon," recalled Issachar's nephew John later on.
But Skilman had a different memory. The black man, he later claimed, "came out of his own accord and there were no arms used."
The men (who were referred to by residents in subsequent testimony as the Jerseymen) then boldly drove up to the farmhouse and demanded the captive's clothes.
The Kenderdines, still confused by the swift turn of events, said they would get them. The initial compliance may have been prompted by federal law which had stiff penalties for anyone caught harboring a runaway slave and preventing his recovery.
But Mrs. Kenderdine "didn't seem in a hurry" to get the clothes, Skilman grumbled later. The men got impatient and prepared to leave.
Issachar Kenderdine came up to them and said they should go before a local judge to show what authority they had to seize the black man.
One of them shouted, "We have authority enough," while another drew out a pistol and told Kenderdine to "stand off or I'll blow you through."
They shouted to their horses and drove off, the black man handcuffed inside the wagon. The perplexed Kenderdines stood for a few moments in the dust of the wagon, watching them go.
Suddenly, Issachar called to his nephew John to mount his horse. Together they rode off to alert the neighborhood.
About two miles from the Kenderdine house, on Horsham Road, going east towards Hatboro, the Jerseymen were overtaken by a crowd of 20 to 30 people, composed of whites and blacks - men, women and children. Some yelled "Stop them" and others, possibly the children, "threw stones and threatened to stop us on the road," recounted Ralph Johnson.
Issachar Kenderdine and others demanded the Jerseymen go before a local judge to prove their ownership of the black.
Kenderdine rode to the front of the team of horses pulling the wagon and made as though he would take the reins.
"If you do, I will blow you through," warned Wirthington as he aimed his pistol at Kenderdine. Each of the Jerseymen was armed, some carrying two pistols, as though they had expected trouble.
The crowd, uncertain what to do and momentarily put off by the threat, fell back. Kenderdine let go of the team as some in the crowd shouted, "Don't throw any stones."
The Jerseymen seized the opportunity to start again and drove off down the road to Hatboro.
Suddenly, "there was a report like a pistol behind me and (we) were again overtaken by some persons." said Wirthington later. The men in the wagon, their bravado gone, now agreed to go before a magistrate in Hatboro if the crowd would let them continue to their hotel.
They spurred on their team and drove quickly to Marple's Inn, Hatboro. They were soon followed by some of the people who had stopped them as well as others attracted by the commotion.
"We were surrounded by 50 people who wished to tear us up and eat us," recalled the shaken Wirthington.
The Jerseymen retreated into the tavern, taking their handcuffed captive with them. Soon, Issachar Kenderdine arrived on horseback at the inn, after consulting with a local judge. He got off his horse and stomped into the tavern.
He told the Jerseymen they "must go before Judge (Hiram) McNeill (who lived in Hatboro) by his (McNeill's) order," recalled a witness to the confrontation. "If they would not go willingly, they (Kenderdine and the crowd with him) must fetch them by force."
Innkeeper Marple later recalled, "the house was filled with people and the Jerseymen got frightened and told me they would go before a judge and prove (they owned) the black."
During the commotion, a black man named John Chester, who was visiting in Hatboro, was told by another man that some Jerseymen had kidnapped a black man from a local farm. He and the other man went into the inn where the shackled captive was being held "and tried to get off the irons," recalled Chester "but we were put out of the house."
Then, possibly to delay the Jerseymen's departure, Chester "cut the traces (harness) off while the horses were (attached) to the wagon."
"I did this of my own accord," said Chester later, "in order to free my color and then went away."
When the Jerseymen, the handcuffed black man and Kenderdine came out, they found the cut harness. This was too much for Skilman who yelled at the crowd he would "whip the whole concern." Kenderdine, whose temper was also short, ordered them into the wagon otherwise he would tie them up himself.
The innkeeper quickly mended the cut harness and they drove to Judge McNeill's house.
At the house, McNeill asked the crowd who made claim to the handcuffed black man.
"Caleb Johnson stepped forward and said he was (and) presented two papers purporting to be receipts for money paid for (the black man)," said McNeil later.
"I asked for a bill of sale. They said they had none or never had any. I told them receipts were no proof of a claim of that kind since there was no description of the black (on them).
"Since the paper didn't identify him, you could take any black you wanted named John," said the judge.
Now the black man, the center of the storm, was finally asked a question.
"I asked him if he ever had been a servant of either of these people (Caleb or Ralph Johnson)," said McNeill.
The black man replied he had been in the service of a Judge Thomas Berrian of New Jersey but that service had ended with Berrian's death, according to the judge's will.
Neither he nor the Johnsons could prove their claims.
McNeill ordered the black man be held in jail and that the Jerseymen remain in the custody of Moreland Township constable Silas Roney. (This was when Upper and Lower Moreland and Hatboro were still one municipality).
Reading the Jerseymen a law against kidnapping, he also told them "if they took regular means (they) were as secure under our laws as any other." Under what laws the black man would be secure weren't dealt with.
John Kenderdine, his cousin Justinian and others in the crowd went with Roney and the black man to Esquire (district justice) Isaac Tomkins office. There, the Kenderdines posted $800 bail for the man until the next session of the county court in Norristown. Roney took the handcuffs off him and released him to the Kenderdines.
The Jerseymen were held by the constable at the Marple tavern. When they got there, they were "kept up all night and not allowed a bed," claimed Ralph Johnson. But Marple later testified he had "brought them something to lay down on."
The next day, Monday, the men were taken before Tomkins to be arraigned. After listening to several witnesses, Tomkins was prepared to hold them for trial and set bail when the Jerseymen asked for an extension of time so they could get the money.
Their benefactor turned out to be Marple who apparently showed more sympathy for them than his testimony indicated. He went to "Newtown to hunt bail (for them) that afternoon. Their bail came the next morning."
Although the Jerseymen at one point offered to give up claim to the black man, they subsequently told everyone who would listen they would prove he belonged to them.
But on Tuesday morning, just before they went back before Tomkins, Caleb Johnson and John Skilman were chatting with Isaac Ellis, one of the borough residents, at the tavern.
"They regretted that they had been caught in such difficulties," recalled Ellis. "Johnson told me he had thought the black belonged to him but had doubts whether he could prove it and stated he would pay the expenses, provided they could go home."
While Johnson was at Tomkins, Ellis asked Skilman "if he had not been in the practice of this before. He said if he could get off this scrape, he would not undertake to run Negroes again without first proving them."
The Jerseymen returned home without their quarry, and the black man named John returned to the Kenderdine farm uncertain of his future.
The case came before the county court in January, 1823. The three-man panel included McNeill.
The state's case was that the men's claim to the black man was invalid and that they were guilty of kidnapping. One witness, Dr. John H. Hill, a Hatboro doctor, noted that the black man "had always passed for a free man."
The Jerseymen's action, contended the county district attorney, was "a high-handed act of kidnapping." Under the federal kidnapping law of 1820, they were liable to seven to 21 years of hard labor and a possible fine of $500 to $2,000.
But the defendants claimed the man was a runaway slave and "(they) didn't intend to run him out of the state without proving him which would be hard if they were confined for 21 years."
To prove their point, Thomas Berrian, son of Judge Berrian, of Middlesex County, N.J., was introduced as a witness. He told the court the black man had been born to slaves of his parents.
"I took him as my share of the estate at 20 dollars when he was about 10 or 14 months old. This was in 1792," he said.
He had sold John to a man named Pierce Ranley in 1807 when the black man was 17 and Ranley had resold him the same year to Caleb Johnson.
"Judge Ross (president judge) charged the jury at considerable length, in which he stated his doubts as to the slavery of the black man but as there was contradictory evidence, he advised them to err on the side of mercy," according to a contemporary account of the trial.
The jury retired for the weekend and the black man was locked up in the county jail.
On Monday morning, after only six total hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
The black man was returned to bondage. The Jerseymen immediately went to a local judge who gave them a pass to take the black man out of state.
But the verdict wasn't the end of the case. For the Kenderdines and their friends it was only the beginning of 10 years of legal entanglements and court cases.
In April, 1823, Caleb and Ralph Johnson and John Skilman each brought legal action in the U.S. Circuit Court in Philadelphia against 12 Hatboro and Horsham residents who had blocked recovery of the black man, including the Kenderdine family and Isaac Tomkins.
Each of the Jerseymen asked damages of $10,000 from each of the defendants. They claimed they had been assaulted, "struck with stones, beat and ill-treated and compelled to go out of a public inn in Horsham Township to drive to the office of a justice of the peace in that township where they were imprisoned without cause for 24 hours by which reason they were hurt. They could not attend to their business and were compelled to expend money procuring their discharge and in being cured of their wounds and bruises and were greatly injured in good name, credit and circumstance," read their legal suit.
Adding insult to injury, they also demanded each defendant pay a $500 fine for harboring an escaped slave.
The Jerseymen's case against the Hatboro and Horsham residents was based on a 1793 United States law. That law read, in part:
Any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder or prevent such claimant - slave-master or his agent - from arresting such fugitive or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive so as to prevent discovery and arrest of such person after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from such service or labor as aforesaid shall for either such offenses be subject to a fine not exceeding $6,000 and an imprisonment not exceeding six months by indictment and conviction before the district court of the United States in which such offense may have been committed.
The case was finally scheduled for May 1825, but postponed several times over the succeeding years. During that time, Issachar Kenderdine and fellow defendant John Iredell tried unsuccessfully to bring suit against the slave-catchers (or "man-hunters" as they were called then also) in the Montgomery County court. They hoped the Jerseymen would drop their legal action.
Some of them did but Caleb Johnson's suit finally came to trial May 29, 1833, in federal court. A week later the jury brought in a verdict of guilty against five of the defendants, including Issachar Kenderdine and Isaac Tomkins. They were ordered to pay $4,000 in damages to the Jerseymen.
The Quakers of Horsham (Kenderdine being a Quaker) and other Bucks-Mont neighbors, distressed at the verdict and the burden it put on their friends, donated the money for most of the fine. The two cases of Ralph Johnson and John Skilman were dropped with the defendants liable only for court costs.
Thus the score of one legal case between slavecatchers and Bucks-Mont residents who opposed their action:
-The black man was returned to bondage, the question of his slavery never satisfactorily resolved.
-The Jerseymen were absolved of all guilt and brought counter legal action.
-The Horsham residents who had tried to block the removal of the black man were sued and found guilty and forced to pay a substantial fine.
And this was only miles from Valley Forge, half a century after the American Revolution and only 30 years before the Civil War arid the Emancipation Proclamation.
Free blacks in Bucks and Montgomery were often in the front-line defense of fleeing fugitives.
One institution that regularly harbored escaped slaves was the Mount Gilead African Methodist-Episcopal Church in Buckingham Township.
Originally built in 1835 of logs, the church sits serenely on the western side of Buckingham Mountain.
Black parishioners gave sustenance to slaves in the church, often leading them to caves in the mountain where they were sheltered until the pursuers gave up the chase.
The church was rebuilt in 1852 and it is little used today.
One of the leaders of the abolitionist movement was Lucretia Mott, the fiery 90-pound Quaker writer and social reformer who lived with her husband, James, in Cheltenham.
Their home was well known as a station on the Underground Railroad.
A documented incident involving Mrs. Mott and the great black leader Frederick Douglass sadly gave evidence to the racial prejudice of the times.
Dr. Hiram Corson, a historian of the abolition movement, wrote that Mrs. Mott and Douglass walked arm-in-arm one afternoon on their way to a luncheon meeting.
Mill workers got word of this and soon "spread the news that a white woman had (held) a colored man's arm." That night, at a meeting of the Montgomery County Anti-Slavery Society in Norristown, about 60 persons hurled stones and obscenities at those inside the meeting.
The local burgess, aided by some sympathetic men, ordered the rioters to disperse but the incident served to reflect the anti-black feelings among many persons.
Elizabeth Newport and her son, David, both of Willow Grove, were leaders of the anti-slavery movement in Montgomery County.
Both were ministers in the Abington Friends Meeting. Newport at one time was justice of the peace in what was then Moreland Township and later was appointed Montgomery County tax collector by President Lincoln during the Civil War.
The home of Nathaniel B. Boileau, now the YMCA on S. York Road in Hatboro, is believed to be one of the stations of the Underground Railroad.
The Boileau home, according to county historians, was used by Quakers from Plymouth Meeting to whisk slaves past bounty hunters to the safe environs of Upper Bucks.
There were stations along the Limekiln Pike, especially near Jarrettown, and from Plymouth Meeting to Quakertown.
Further west, the line ran through the farm of Seth Lukens near Kulpsville.
Thus, the Underground Railroad wasn't a single, direct route, like a highway or rail line.
It constantly changed and altered, meandering when necessary because of suspicions from officials and slavemasters.
Some escaped slaves settled and even prospered, despite the prevalent racial prejudice even among those who opposed slavery.
Billy Budd, for example, became the chief janitor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Samuel Scott, who escaped from Queen Anne County in Maryland, domiciled in Solebury Township and became known as a humorous spinner of yarns. He lived into his nineties.
The Underground Railroad in Bucks and Montgomery was a testament of their people's moral outrage.
Slaves like Rachel Moore and Jane Johnson successfully made the "long and lonely midnight travel" to freedom, as one historian noted, only with the aid of those willing to put their conscience in opposition to the written law.
In effect, the Underground Railroad was a moral act of civil disobedience to repugnant laws.
The long night of slavery was broken, at least for hundreds of black Americans, by the respite slaves found in the homes of dozens of Bucks-Mont families.
The Underground Railroad was a freedom trail whose history enriches our heritage.
Matthew T. Corso, a resident of Plumsteadville, has been a staff writer with The Daily Intelligencer since 1968, the last three years covering county government and politics. He has won news writing awards in the Keystone Press Association competition and was runner-up for the Philadelphia Press Association reporter of the year award in 1973. He is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University.
William G. Shuster, a graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, has done graduate work in communications at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. He joined the staff of The Daily lntelligencer in 1973, following a two-year stint in the Army Medical Service Corps.
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