![]() ![]() ![]() Jacob knew the sheriff would get a warrant to search his house. The sheriff and the slave owner were looking for her in the neighborhood. In March 1858, Uncle Jacob told him he had to transport a woman fugitive in broad daylight. Six decades later, Cundall told the Providence Journal about one close call. Foster farther north.īabcock enlisted his 16-year-old nephew, Isaac Cundall, to take the escapees in a wagon to Mr. He hid fugitive slaves in tunnels under his house, then brought them to a Mr. Babcock, a prosperous mill owner, believed strongly in temperance and in abolition. Jacob Babcock’s house in the village of Ashaway served as the first Rhode Island stop on the Underground Railroad. Free blacks and wealthy industrialists both conducted fugitives north to safety. As a result, the tiny state had a busy Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Rhode Island had both a sizable number of Quakers who supported abolition as well the densest African-American population in New England. 20 High St., Ashaway, R.I.Ģ0 High Street. They say he probably helped others passing through. Historians say the slight mention suggests that Wood did not consider the event to be particularly unusual. There is little additional information about the fugitives helped by Wood. I fixed him a bed in wool room,” according to Slavery & the Underground Railroad in New Hampshire, by Michelle Arnosky Sherburne. On June 1, 1862, Wood noted: “A fugitive slave? come here abt 10 o”clock this eve to stay all night. His journal from 1862, discovered by Steve Ristelli in a New Hampshire antique shop, uncovered additional details. Wood’s involvement as the station keeper for New Hampshire’s Hillsborough County on the Underground Railroad had scant documentation. Wood dealt in hay, kept bees and surveyed land. James Wood, a prosperous and industrious Quaker, owned the 800-acre farm. On the Croydon Turnpike in Lebanon, N.H., just before the East Plainfield line, the Wood Farm served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. To make an appointment for a tour, call 50. The New Bedford Historical Society owns the Nathan and Mary Johnson Properties at 17-19 and 21 Seventh St. One of the Johnson properties was a residence, the other a Quaker meetinghouse. They were prominent abolitionists Nathan, a pharmacist, was elected the president of the 1847 National Convention of Colored People in Troy, New York. ![]() Nathan and Mary Johnson owned a confectionery store, several businesses and their home, a stop on the Underground Railroad. It was estimated that at any one time before the Civil War, 300 to 700 fugitive slaves lived in New Bedford. New Bedford, a port city, was attractive to African-Americans because its industries - whaling and the maritime trades – were open to them.īy 1853, New Bedford had the highest population of African-Americans in the Northeast, and 30 percent said they came from the South. The couple were free blacks who married in 1819 and became part of New Bedford’s robust African-American community. Quakers Nathan and Mary Johnson harbored Frederick Douglass in 1838 at their home in New Bedford, Mass. The Abyssinian Meeting House, 75 Newbury Street. On March 10, 2022, Congress passed a bill that gave $1.7 million to restore the building. Then the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 brought attention to the old meeting house, and $400,000 in donations poured into the committee. The city of Portland seized it for back taxes and in 1998 sold it to the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian for a small fee. Amos Noe Freeman hid a fugitive from slavery in the meeting house.Īfter Portland’s big fire in 1866, the Abyssinian Meeting House fell into disuse. Portland’s Underground Railroad operated in complete secrecy, and the only written record of a successful escape appeared in the memoirs of a stationmaster’s descendant. Reuben Ruby, a church founder and hack driver, conducted slaves to freedom in his coach. They found safe houses for escaped slaves, fed them and transported them. Abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison both spoke from the Abyssinian’s pulpit.Īfter the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850, the church’s members organized escape routes for fugitives to England and Canada. The meeting house hosted a school for black children, church suppers, concerts and, of course, religious services. Then they started building the Abyssinian Congregational Church, a wood-frame building on a high brick foundation on Newbury Street. So they formed their own church, the Abyssinian Religious Society, in 1828. In the 1820s, Portland’s African-Americans got fed up with shabby treatment by the Second Congregational Church. They mostly worked as mariners, on the waterfront or on the railroads. The city’s 600 or so free blacks clustered in the Munjoy Hill neighborhood. Portland became a northern hub of the Underground Railroad because it was so easy to get to by rail and sea. ![]()
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