USA > Pennsylvania > Delaware County > Chester > History of the Underground railroad in Chester and the neighboring counties of Pennsylvania > Part 14
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there not some imposters among so many? "Oh, no, ma'am," he replied, "I'd know dem ole Maryland clo'es anywhars."
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law the determined members of the organization still persevered in their efforts to aid the fugitives to escape. Others faltered and knew not what to do.
At an evening company where several of these falter- ing ones were in attendance, two young school girls were present and listened to the conversation. The thought occurred to them to test by actual experience the standing of those present. Leaving the room upon some pretext they shortly after knocked at the kitchen door, and closely disguised and muffled, said they were fugitives, and asked for help. This brought the question home to the men present, " Would they give aid?" A long parley ensued, the girls being left in the kitchen. It was finally decided to take them to a neighboring house and, as soon as a wagon could be procured, two of the men volunteered to drive them to Quakertown. By this time the girls were so full of laughter at the success of their plan, that when passing close to a light their emotions were discovered to be other than those of grief and fright, and the disguise was detected. But the joke was so serious to some of the men that they could not laugh at it. The girls were severely repri- manded ; yet all concerned were glad at heart that they had discovered how those present stood in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law.
At a convention held in the old Court-house in Nor- ristown shortly after the enactment of that law, a com- mittee of prominent anti-slavery advocates was appoint-
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ed to circulate petitions for signatures asking for a re- peal of the law. Thomas Read's daughter Mary was appointed one of the committee. Being young at the time, she thought she had but to present the petitions, and names would willingly be put thereto. But she was astonished at the almost universal reception she met with. Doors were shut in her face as soon as she made known her desire. People insulted her, snubbed her, and would not talk with her on the subject. One minister, however, thought it his duty to talk with her, and pointed out the wrong she was doing ; "nay! she was committing a crime, for laws were made to be up- help, and not to be opposed." His morality took the law without question, and he wanted her to do the same. Needless to say she did not.
While this describes the general public opinion, there were many benevolent individuals who had not courage to express their secret convictions, yet were willing to aid the abolitionists by pecuniary contributions. John Augusta, an old colored resident of that place, and an important attache of the Underground Railroad said that many citizens came to him and remarked: "John, I know you must be needing considerable money to for- ward passengers on your road. When you need con- tributions come to me, but do not let my name be men- tioned as one contributing."
Norristown first became a station of the Underground Railroad about 1839, the year of the first meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society at that place. The number of fugi- tives who passed through there, assisted by their friends, increased from year to year-as many as fifteen or twenty being occasionally concealed within the town at one time.
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A very strong and bitter animosity existed there against the abolitionist, especially in the early days of the anti-slavery agitation ; and for individuals to make any active efforts in behalf of fugitives was to incur general denunciation and social ostracism. Malignant threats were made, but never carried into effect. The furthest extent of a mob demonstration was the stoning of the Baptist Meeting House and the breaking up of an anti-slavery meeting which was being held there. This was the only building in which these meetings were held in the early part of the work in that town.
In later times when public sentiment was growing strong in favor of emancipation, very many, even among public officials, were hearty sympathizers and silent helpers. The positions which they held, depend- ing upon public suffrage or popular favor, made it politic for them to enjoin secrecy when bestowing aid, and to make their sentiments known to but few, even of the well known and trusted abolitionists.
DR. JACOB L. PAXSON. (Born June 17th, 1812.)
As public sentiment in Norristown was inimical to the anti-slavery cause until the exigencies of the times and the acknowledged justness of universal liberty throughout the country made it popular, the harboring of fugitives in that place was particularly hazardous. Yet among those who dared to do it, who was openly known to do it, and who built a secret apartment in his house for that especial purpose which it was almost impossible to discover, was Dr. Jacob L. Paxson. In- dependent and fearless, he did his own thinking, kept
LONCACPE-CO.
DR. JACOB L. PAXSON.
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his own counsel, took his own course, and concealed, fed, and forwarded hundreds that even the anti-slavery people knew nothing of. He kept a horse and wagon, and took them himself to William Jackson, Quakertown, Jonathan McGill, Solebury, and William H. Johnson, Buckingham, all in Bucks county. He entertained abolition speakers after the passage of the penal slave law, when they were refused admittance to the hotels.
One evening when Garrison, Burleigh and several others were at his place, Samuel Jamison who owned a large manufacturing establishment adjoining, came in and informed him of a conversation he had just over- heard in a small assemblage of men, concerning a plot which was being laid to burn his house if he did not dismiss his guests.
" Tell them to burn it," said Paxson, "and scatter the ashes to the four winds : I'm a free man."
A few days after the Christiana riot, Parker, Pinkney and Johnson, an account of whom is given in the de- scription of the tragedy, and the narrative of Isaac and Dinah Mendenhall, came on foot in the night to Norris- town, accompanied by another person whose name is not known. Dr. William Corson announced their arrival to John Augusta. The four men were concealed in a lot of shavings under a carpenter shop which stood three feet above ground on Church street, near Airy. There they remained four days, and were fed with food passed to them upon an oven-peal across a four-foot alley from a frame house in which Samuel Lewis, a colored man, lived. During this time the United States Marshal's detectives were watching every part of the town. On the fourth day a meeting was held by a
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few trusted friends in the office of Lawrence E. Corson, Esq., to devise means for their escape. Dr. Paxson proposed engaging five wagons for that even- ing, four to be sent in different directions as de- coys to lead off the vigilant detectives. The plan was adopted, and the wagons and teams were engaged of Jacob Bodey, whose sympathies were known to be in favor of fugitives. But he would accept no pay, saying he would do so much as his share. The first was sent up the turnpike road and shortly after, the second was sent down that road ; another was sent across the bridge toward West Chester, and the fourth out the State road toward Downingtown. The attention of the alert offi- cers being now attracted in these directions, the men after having shaved, and otherwise changed their per- sonal appearance, walked from the carpenter shop to Chestnut street and down Chestnut to the house of William Lewis, colored, where the fifth wagon which was to go directly through the town and up the Mill creek road was waiting for them.
Dr. Paxson was there also, and saw the men with William Lewis, colored, as their driver start safely for Quakertown. Lewis was a little tremulous with fear at the perilous undertaking, which, with the haste, some- what confused him at the start. On the road he be- came bewildered, and went several miles out of the way, which gave Parker the impression that he was partly intoxicated-a condition in which Lewis never was known to be. From Quakertown they journeyed to Canada, traveling part of the way on foot and part by public conveyance.
.
On the following day the United States Marshal was
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informed that they had left Norristown and were out of his reach. Officers were at once despatched to Quaker- town, but the Underground Railroad there disappeared from their view, and its passengers could be tracked no further.
At the close of the war, Judge Smyser, of Norris- town, was returning on a train from Philadelphia, and seeing Dr. Paxson in the same car called out to him, "Paxson, is that you ? I was at an entertainment last night, and some of the party said I was as great a radical as you are. I replied, 'I thank God that I am!' But," he continued, "there was a time when, had you been convicted under the Fugitive Slave Law, I would have given you the extent of the penalty ; for I looked upon you as one of the most dangerous men in the commu- nity, on account of your utter disregard for that law."
On Dr. Paxson's return home one afternoon in 1846 he saw on his back porch a very black, gray-haired woman, about sixty years of age ; also a mulatto woman about thirty, and a small, very fair child, with flaxen hair, of about six or seven summers. The old woman was conversing with Parker Pilsbury. Her cultivated thought and remarkable gift of language excited their interest and attention. On questioning her they found that she, her daughter and granddaughter, were all slaves. Paxson interrogated her relative to their escape. She stated that they had traveled through Maryland on foot by night, and during the day they crawled under corn- shocks or hid under leaves in the woods ; their principal food being roots and corn for many days. He said to her, " Did you not know that you were running a great risk of being caught and taken back, tortured with the K*
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lash and sold upon the auction block, and separated from your child and grandchild?"
She answered " Yes," and the tears rolled down her cheeks ; "but I believed that God would help those who tried to help themselves; and with confidence in that power I started out, and it has brought me here. And may God be praised !"
" Now tell me," said Paxson, " what induced you to make this effort."
Rising to her feet, and turning deliberately toward her child, with utterance choked by emotion, she said, "See you not, marked upon her features, my own pol- lution that the white man has stamped there ! See you not upon this grandchild, with its flaxen hair and florid face the pollution of a fiendish nature over her! It was to save that grandchild from the terrible pollution which slavery sways over all whom it dare call a slave; it was to save that fair and beautiful creature from a life of shame that I dared, and have accomplished what I did ; and there shall ever go forth from my innermost nature a feeling of gratitude that I have her thus spared."
Dr. Paxson is now residing in Philadelphia. With an active temperament, a good constitution and good health, he possesses mentally and physically the vigor and elasticity of his early manhood, when he displayed earnestness of purpose and determination of will to dare and do for the right.
CHAPTER XIV.
JOSEPH SMITH .- Incident in Canada .- Marriage and Death .- OLIVER FURNISS .- JOHN N. RUSSELL .- THOMAS GARRETT .- Inspiration .- Marriage .- Arrested and Fined .- Prospered Afterward. - Reward Offered .- Plan of Management .- Woman Escaped in wife's Cloth- ing .- Death .- Jacos LINDLEY .- Earliest Worker .- Death .- LEVI B. WARD .- Kidnapping .- JAMES N. TAYLOR .-- Assisted Parker, Pinkney and Johnson.
JOSEPH SMITH.
(Born Fourth Month 15th, 1801 .- Died Seventh Month 19th, 1878.)
Among the first fugitives that came to Joseph Smith's, Drumore township, Lancaster county, was one from Maryland, in June, 1844. It was early in the morn- ing. The man was without hat or shoes. His appear- ance suggested that something was wrong. Joseph's anti- slavery principles were known; and as the men whom he had working for him were then at breakfast, and were opposed to interfering with slavery, although they were members of the Society of Friends, he ordered the man to be kept out of sight until he could have the op- portunity to question him.
The fugitive stated where he was from, and, using his expression, said, "his master was h-1." He was fed and concealed during the day, and at night was sent in care of one of Joseph's colored mien to Thomas Whit- son, who sent him on the following night to Lindley Coates ; from there he was safely sent from friend to friend until he reached Canada.
After this, many came and were forwarded to other agents, and his house became widely known as one of
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the important stations on this long line of nightly travel with its many branches like arms of beneficence ex- tended to the hunted slave to aid him on his way from a land of bondage, to seek freedom within the American domain of England's Queen.
The largest number that came at one time was thir- teen-all from Virginia. On being asked where they first heard of Joseph Smith, they replied, "Down where we come from. They don't like you down there. They call you an abolitionist."
"And was that the reason you tried to get here ?"
" Yes, sir, it was. We know'd you'd help us on to Canada where we'd be free."
They were asked how long they were planning their escape, and said "several weeks, and we've been just three weeks getting here. We were afraid of being caught and taken back, and every little noise scared us. But we were determined to be free. We traveled only at night, and in day time we lay in swamps where the thickets were almost as dark as night itself. There were plenty of them in Virginia, but we didn't find any in Maryland. Sometimes we were two or three days with- out anything to eat." One of this number was a lad of fourteen.
Many of the farmers in Drumore township went to Baltimore market with loads of produce, taking with them their colored drivers. The slaves sought opportunity to talk with these teamsters and to ask them many questions, as to where they came from, whom they lived with, and what kind of work they did, how they were treated, etc., etc. These colored teamsters gave them all the information they could, which was liber-
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ally conveyed to others, and especially to the slaves who accompanied their masters from the planting states to Baltimore on business. These would tell it to other slaves on their return South, and say "if they could only get to Joseph Smith's in Pennsylvania he would help them on to a land of freedom." This stimulated their inborn love of liberty to devising plans by which to reach Smith's, and from there be assisted to where no task-master should exact from their weary limbs the daily requirements of uncompensated toil. And so suc- cessful was the management of this station that all who reached it were passed on safely toward the goal of their desires.
..
An old colored man living near Baltimore who was acquainted with Joseph Smith, gave passengers a start at that end of the road by piloting them to another colored man near the Susquehanna. This man would go in the night, see them across the river, and direct them to the house of Isaae Waters, living near Peach Bottom Ferry, York county, and then return before morning. Waters would then take them to Smith's. Here they were concealed in the back part of a dark apartment in the barn entirely underground, and victuals carried to them while they remained.
While Joseph had many pro-slavery opponents, yet none, he believed, informed on him-at least they gave him no trouble. One of them, while at the ferry, on his return from York county, observed some men waiting, whom he ascertained were slaveholders coming into Lancaster county in search of slaves. Thinking if there were any fugitives in that neighborhood they would most likely be at Smith's, he sent him word that these
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men were " hunting their niggers, and might give him trouble." The act of warning him was certainly kind, even if the language was uncouth. The notice, however, did not alarm him, as no slaves were then about his premises. His only fears were that some might come at that time. The following morning four men were seen coming up the road toward the house; they looked steadfastly at it, but passed by. During four days they were observed to pass frequently along the road. On that fourth night the family kept watch and saw them several times lying in wait around the house, evidently determined not only to foil any effort clandestinely to aid fugitives in escaping, but to prosecute those who attempted it. It was subsequently ascertained that these were the four men whom Smith was apprised of, and that the slaves they were in search of had not left the plantation when they started in pursuit of them. Learn- ing the course their masters took, they left in another direction, crossed the river at a lower ferry, and made an easy and safe transit to their prospective homes of freedom.
Smith's house was never searched, except once. At that time some hunters drove up under pretence of looking for stray horses. After a short conversation they arrogantly demanded of him to "bring out his niggers." He replied that he had none. Unwilling to accept his word as truth, they proceeded, without per- mission or ceremony, to search the house. This was peremptorily refused them, unless it be done legally. Whereupon some of the men went to a Justice of the Peace to procure a warrant, while others were stationed to guard the house. After the warrant arrived a search
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was instituted, Joseph's daughter, Rachel, accompany- ing them. But no "niggers " were found. Two weeks after, the family learned from a friend of theirs that he had taken that party of negroes to Lindley Coates, and by that time they were out of the reach of slavery. The hunters had missed the trail.
The last slaves who came to Joseph Smith's were a woman and her two children. Her master had once been in affluent circumstances, but was now very much reduced in his possessions. His next move to raise funds was to sell this woman and her children. His son, a young man of tender feelings for others, felt it an act of cruelty to sell her and her children who were entwined within her affections, and thus to thrust them out upon the uncertainty of having a good or a bad master told her of the decision of his father and advised her to go away. He and his wife were acquainted with Joseph Smith and family, and had visited them and others in the neighborhood. He directed them there, saying that he would be chosen to go on the hunt of them, and he would be sure not to go to that place.
They were taken to Smith's in the night. During the day she said in a pathetic tone that " she did pity her young Missus, for she didn't know how to do any work, and she did wonder how they would get along without any one to help them."
In October, 1859, Joseph's daughter Rachel visited Niagara Falls, and registered at the Cataract House. The head waiter, John Morrison, seeing her name and residence upon the book, approached her one day and politely made apology for intruding himself; but said he would like to ask if she knew a man named Joseph
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Smith in Pennsylvania. She replied that he was her father. He continued, "I would like to tell you about the poor fugitives I ferry across the river. Many of them tell me the that first place they came to in Pennsyl- vania was Joseph Smith's. I frequently see them when I visit my parents at Lundy's Lane. Many of them have nice little homes and are doing well." He ferried some across the river during two of the nights she was there.
Joseph Smith was a member of the Society of Friends. He was born near London Grove Meeting House, Chester county, Fourth mo. (April) 15th, 1801; removed to Drumore, Lancaster county, Third mo. (March), 1818 ; was married to Tacy Shoemaker, Ninth mo. (September) 17th, 1823; and died Seventh mo. (July) 19th, 1878.
OLIVER FURNISS.
(Born near Chadd's Ford, Chester county, Pa., First mo. 11th, 1794 .- Died in Little Britain Township, Lancaster county, Eleventh mo. 19th, 1858.)
Oliver Furniss, of Little Britain, assisted in a quiet way all fugitives who came to him. It was a custom with himself and family to ask them but few questions about where they came from. They were always re- ceived warmly and kindly by him as human beings whose misfortunes, to be born and owned as claves claimed his sympathy. He was known as the "fugi- tives' friend," and they often expressed themselves as " feeling safe in his hands." The neighbors were not generally disposed to interfere much with the colored people, or to throw obstructions in the way of assisting fugitives to freedom. If any who appeared to be
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strangers in the neighborhood inquired for work, or for persons friendly to colored people, they were directed to his place. From there they were sent on different routes through Lancaster and Chester counties.
As the family were always reticent upon the subject of the aid which they contributed, no reminiscences of individual cases, or the amount of work done, aside from the general labor which all performed, has been gleaned. Theirs were good works quietly accom- plished.
JOHN N. RUSSELL.
(1804-1876.)
John Neal Russell, of Drumore, Lancaster county, received fugitives from different points, and forwarded the greater number to Henry Bushong, about nine miles distant. His place was well known throughout Lancas- ter and the adjacent counties as one of the regular and prominent stations on the slaves' route toward the North Star. Many interesting incidents could be related, and some of them full of romance.
During the height of the Torrey campaign, when Charles T. Torrey was making his adventurous and precipitate excursions into the very heart of the slave States, gathering up large numbers of slaves who wished to be free, and conducting them northward, a company of twenty-two was brought to John N. Russell about twelve o'clock one night by Samuel Bond, a thick-set, heavy, stout mulatto, who frequently piloted the ebon- hued travelers in their nightly peregrinations toward an abiding place of freedom. He threw a pebble against the window of the sleeping room occupied by John and
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his wife. The signal was understood, the window raised, and " Sam " spoke with his peculiar guttural sound of voice, " Please come down quick ; I got a whole field full of 'em." They were taken into the sitting-room and a large table of substantial food was soon set for them in the kitchen. They sat down to it, and one of their number, a very black but intelligent man asked a blessing with uplifted hands. He seemed to be the leading spirit among them, and said that he was a body- servant of Dr. Garrett, of Washington ; that the Doctor was a kind master, and had often promised him he should be free ; but somehow he always forgot it. It went hard with him, he said, to leave "massa " and "missus," but when his friends who were not so well treated, were going away, he could not stay behind. While he was a fine specimen of a well-bred negro, the others pre- sented quite a different appearance-coarse, dejected and ignorant, and were evidently field-hands. Supper over, they tumbled themselves into a four-horse covered farm wagon, and were driven to Henry Bushong's house.
The editors of this work have received from Slater B. Russell, Esq., of West Chester, Pa., the following inter- esting reminiscences : "My father, the late John Neal Russell, was born of Quaker parents in Brandywine Hundred, Delaware, on the third day of July, 1804, and died in Drumore township, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, December 23d, 1876. He was quite a small child when the family moved to Lancaster county. They bought and settled on a large farm in the valley of the Conowingo in Drumore township, at a point about eight miles from the Delaware line.
The proximity to the slave border afforded my father,
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while yet a small boy, a good insight into the workings of slavery. When he was about ten years of age, a light colored woman, the mother of two small children, was taken quite near his father's house in broad day- light, tied, gagged, thrown into a wagon and, amid the cries of the little ones, hurried off across the border. She was sold into Georgia, and the children grew up in my grandfather's family.
This incident, in particular, seems to have stirred the boy's nature to its depths. He became the champion and friend of the fleeing slave from that hour and re- mained so till slavery was abolished. He was fearless and resolute, not to say rash. I often look back in wonder at the spirit of defiance he manifested toward his pro-slavery antagonists on both sides of the border. It must have been that his very boldness was his safe- guard. * * *
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