A Near Approach to Freedom Passageway to Freedom

After a sojourn of a day or two They had come to the city by the than twenty thousand are Second, the city was an active Finally, the city was home to This brochure takes visitors on I waited until the captain went in Philadelphia, Samuel and his Underground Railroad, neither believed to have made their way part of an extensive coastal a large population of color. In a tour of sites related to the down below to dress for going companions left for New Bed- “underground” nor a “railroad” into Canada. trading system. New Bedford 1850 people of color were 6.3 Underground Railroad in and ashore, and then I made a dash for around New Bedford Whaling ford. Canada was named to but rather a loose network of merchant vessels carried oil, percent of the city’s population, liberty . . . when the ship tied assistance to persons escaping New Bedford was attractive to whalebone, apples, hats, shoes, a greater proportion than pre- National Historical Park. Though up at the wharf at the foot of them as the safest place for all some buildings and streets have American slavery. This network African Americans for four main and other food and factory vailed in Boston, New York City, Union Street . . . I was over Refugees; but it was in vain to long since disappeared from the was “underground” only in a reasons. First, whaling, the third products to southern ports and and Philadelphia. Between 1850 the edge and in the midst of an attempt to convince “Sam” that landscape, they remain signifi- figurative sense. The activities of most profitable industry in the West Indies and returned and 1855, the threat of capture excited crowd. “A fugitive, a Canada or any other place on cant in public and private record fugitive,” was the cry as I sprung runaways and those who aided Massachusetts at midcentury, with cotton, flour, rice, beef, after the Fugitive Slave Act and in memory. this Continent, was quite equal them were kept as secret as pos- had made the city both wealthy pork, and naval stores (lumber, passed impelled many African ashore . . . Had never heard the to New Bedford. sible, and this very secrecy has and in constant need of labor at turpentine, pitch, and tar). Fugi- Americans once held in bondage word “fugitive” before and was pretty well scared out of my wits. made it difficult to estimate pre- a time when the less hazardous tive slave narratives document to flee to Canada, which dimin- – William Still, The Underground But a slave had little to fear in Railroad (1871) cisely how many southern slaves and possibly better paying work that runaways took advantage ished the black populations of a New Bedford crowd in slavery escaped to the North and to factories offered—exclusively to of this commercial network. many northern cities. Yet the days . . . they stood aside and let When Samuel Nixon escaped Canada between the 1780s and white men and women—had Often aided by crew members number of people of color me pass. from slavery to New Bedford, the Civil War. Surely they num- begun to draw workers away and dock workers of both races, in New Bedford actually rose Massachusetts, in the early bered in the tens of thousands. from whaling ships and wharves. they stowed away amid ships’ between these years, as did their Having escaped from Maryland summer of 1855, he took the In the 1850s alone, when the The maritime trades had histori- cargoes; sometimes sympathetic share of total city population, early in 1842, John W. Thompson name Thomas Bayne and found passage of the Fugitive Slave cally been more welcoming to vessel captains brought them from 6.3 to 7.5 percent. And came to New Bedford after lack

New Bedford Whaling New Bedford National Historical Park Massachusetts National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior “many old friends” from his Act gave federal sanction to black participation than other north. Many, like Frederick fully 30 percent of New of maritime experience kept him native Norfolk, Virginia, already southern slave owners’ efforts endeavors, and whaling may Douglass, traveled over both Bedford’s people of African from securing a berth on a New living in the small but bustling to retrieve escaped slaves, more have been the most open of all. land and water to New Bedford, descent in 1850 were born in York City merchant vessel. “I was port city. By that time New while others, like Joseph M. the South, compared to only advised to go to New Bedford, where green hands were more Bedford was considered “one of Smith, traveled entirely by vessel 15 percent of New York’s black e sy Ne w Be dford W ha l ing M us um court wanted,” he wrote. Upon his to the port. population and 16 percent of New Bedford waterfront the greatest assylums [sic] of arrival he came to these wharves Boston’s at the time. the fugitives,” as whaling mer- to sign on as steward of the chant Charles W. Morgan put it. Third was New Bedford’s “lib- 1 State Pier whaler Milwood, which left For fugitives like him, Virginian eral spirit,” as U.S. Senator This African American commu- You stand now on what was New Bedford that June. At sea George Teamoh wrote, the city Charles Sumner called it. nity was active in antislavery once George Howland’s and later Thompson confessed to the was “our magnet of attraction.” Quakers, who controlled the reform since at least the 1820s. Merchants’ Wharf, one of more vessel’s captain: than twenty slips and wharves in city’s political and economic life When Frederick Douglass arrived New Bedford in the late 1840s. into the 1820s, had taken in 1838 he found New Bedford’s I am a fugitive slave from People who claimed to know Both whaling and coasting vessels an early stand against oppres- people of color “much more Maryland, and have a family something of the Underground were repaired and outfitted for sion and any form of forcible spirited than I had supposed in Philadelphia; but fearing to Railroad’s operation at the time their voyages at these wharves. remain there any longer, I thought estimated that from three hun- resistance, an inclination that they would be. I found among Here those who escaped slavery dred to seven hundred fugitives remained strong among a sig- them a determination to protect on coasting vessels first set foot I would go on a whaling voyage, lived in New Bedford between nificant group of the city’s anti- each other from the blood- on free soil. And fugitives who as being the place where I stood the mid-1840s and 1860. In a slavery leaders until the Civil thirsty kidnapper, at all haz- came to labor-hungry New Bed- least chance of being arrested by Born in Richmond, Virginia, per- city whose official population of War. Though some early ards.” In 1855 he wrote: ford stepped from these wharves slave hunters. haps into slavery, Lewis Temple color hovered around one thou- Quakers had held slaves, onto whaling vessels. At sea from had settled in New Bedford by individual Quakers, and many No colored man is really free sixteen to sixty months, they Such a motive may have inspired 1829. He was a vice president sand persons, the number of others who escaped slavery, fugitive slaves in New Bedford Unitarians who had once been in a slaveholding state. He virtually assured themselves that of New Bedford Union Society, wears the badge of bondage they would not be pursued and but only a handful have been an anti-slavery society formed by was large even by the more Quakers, were among the city’s identified among whaling crews , We st C h e r PA returned to slavery. people of color in 1833. The toggle conservative estimate. staunchest abolitionists. while nominally free, and to date. is often subjected to hard- harpoon he invented in 1848 vastly In 1911, on his one hundredth ships to which the slave is increased the efficiency of the birthday, Joseph M. Smith told a whale hunt. When fugitive Henry a stranger; but here in New local reporter that he had escaped LEFT: An engraving in Life and Times “Box” Brown came to New Bedford Bedford, it was my good for- from North Carolina on a lumber of Frederick Douglass (1881). Douglass’s in 1849 he found “many friends third autobiography, depicts his and tune to see a pretty near vessel to New Bedford about 1830: his new wife’s encounter with New here who former[ly] lived in Rich- Bedford’s Joseph Ricketson and William approach to freedom on the mond,” no doubt including Temple C. Taber in Newport, Rhode Island, after part of the colored people. his escape from slavery. and William Henry Johnson, who escaped from a plantation near J ohn R obson RIGHT: Frederick Douglass, ca. 1848. e sy C h st r ounty H istorica l S oci ty C ourt

The Underground The Bedford New Railroad: Richmond in 1833. Passageway to Freedom Underground Railroad/New Bedford Map and Guide

Sydney Howard Gay on March 30, 1849. Ricketson housed a male runaway at the time and in1851 wrote a friend about “the Slave woman & child consigned to me.” How many fugitives from slavery Ricketson may have housed is unknown, but his involvement in the Underground Railroad is the best documented of any of the city’s white abolitionists.

5 Nathan and Mary Johnson e sy n w b dford wha l ing mus um court Properties, 17-21 Seventh New Bedford in 1807, oil on canvas by William Allen Wall, 1855 Street On September 17 or 18, 1838, a

2 The Four Corners e sy univ rsity of massachus tts dartmouth court young man of color named e sy th T rust ee s , Ne w Be dford F r P ub l ic Library court The junction of Union and Water Daniel Drayton, frontispiece from “The ‘Resurrection’ of Henry ‘Box’ Brown,” engraving in William Still, Nathan and Mary Johnson House, Frederick Johnson (Frederick Liberty Hall with its 1795 bell 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Streets was the heart of the Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, for The Underground Railroad (1871) 21 Seventh Street Augustus Washington Bailey in Infantry Plaza shoreside district that supported Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner slavery) arrived with his new wife (for Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail The frame, double house next rying away of fugitive slaves from 7 54th Regiment Massachusetts whaling. Along the streets closely (Boston and New York, 1853) Anna at the 21 Seventh Street paralleling the waterfront and 4 Joseph Ricketson Home Site home of Nathan and Mary door to the Johnsons’ home also New Bedford.” Upon sighting a Volunteer Infantry Plaza those running from the shore Union Street Johnson. The front part of the belonged to them. Built in 1785, strange vessel in the harbor, On this site was the local recruit- also identified William Bush, a discouraged, and broken by th to about Second Street was a On the north side of Union Street house had not yet been built, and it had been the first meeting- abolitionist Rodney French rang ing station for the 54 Regiment, free black man from Washington, more than four years in prison, vast industrial and commercial across from Seventh Street stood the couple lived in the older, now house of the Society of Friends Liberty Hall’s bell (whose largest the first African American regi- D.C., as a boardinghouse keeper Drayton was buried in New Bed- district of ropewalks, candle and the home of Joseph Ricketson Sr. rear, section. Nathan Johnson paid in New Bedford and was moved subscriber in 1795 had been a man ment ever commissioned. Some whose rooms were always open ford’s Rural Cemetery. The per- oil works, sail lofts, coopers’ and and Jr. It was probably Joseph the freight charge for the pen- diagonally across Spring Street by of color) to alert fugitive slaves fifty New Bedford men of color to escaping slaves. During the petual care of his burial lot was th th blacksmiths’ shops, ships’ bread Ricketson Sr. who, with William niless couple’s baggage and took 1822, when Quakers built their living in the city. The raid, how- enlisted in the 54 and the 55 , 1850s Bush housed George funded in part by New Bedford and biscuit bakeries, clothing C. Taber, met Frederick Douglass them in. Because there were many second, brick meetinghouse on ever, never occurred, and while the regiment formed from the Teamoh, who escaped indirectly people of color. stores and tailors that outfitted and his wife on the Newport Johnson families of color already its site. It was here in 1828 Boston was inflamed by the return surplus of recruits, and some of from Norfolk, and helped him sailors, dozens of restaurants and wharves and brought them to in the city, Frederick wrote, “I that Benjamin Lundy, founder of of Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns them are known to have escaped find work in the mid-1850s. 3 Carney Panel, Union Street “rum shops,” and scores of board- New Bedford. Here, at what gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of one of the nation’s first antislav- to bondage in the 1850s, no fugi- slavery. William Carney was one. Teamoh wrote of him in the 1870s, This panel commemorates William inghouses. was then 179 Union Street, choosing me a name.” From then ery newspapers and cohort of tive is known to have been taken So was John L. Wright, a married H. Carney Jr., the first African Ricketson’s son Joseph housed on he was known as Frederick William Lloyd Garrison, gave back to slavery from New Bedford. laborer who enlisted eleven days American to receive the The boardinghouses and their Quite a large number of fugitives the famed Henry “Box” Brown. Douglass, one of the most pow- what may have been the town’s after Carney did and whose Congressional Medal of Honor keepers were critical to the whal- for a time stayed at his house and Charles Morgan wrote that erful and persuasive advocates of first antislavery lecture. This first Liberty Hall was name in slavery was Stethy Other Underground Railroad For more information, contact the for his heroism during the Union ing industry. Keepers helped pro- received the same hospitalities as Brown had escaped “packed up equal rights in nineteenth-century destroyed in October 1854 by a Swons. Wesley Furlong, who had Sites in New Bedford: New Bedford Historical Society, assault on Fort Wagner in 1863. spective crew find a suitable did his regular boarders, notwith- in a box about 3 ft 2 in long America. 6 Liberty Hall, corner of fire so intense that it melted the worked as a ship’s steward in Nathan and Polly Johson House, One newspaper account noted Daniel Drayton’s Grave vessel on which to ship out; vessel standing the former were not able 2 ft 6 in wide & 1 ft 11 in William and Purchase Streets famed bell. Parts of the metal New Bedford since about 1860, 21 Seventh Street, New Bedford, that Carney, who had been work- New Bedford Rural Cemetery Massachusetts 02740, (508) owners and agents visited these to pay their way. If any reliance deep and sent on by express The Johnsons were among the On this site stood Liberty Hall, were recast into miniature bells, stated in his 1910 application ing in the coasting trade in his Dartmouth Street 979-8828, [email protected], or lodgings to recruit crew. At a may be placed in the statement of from Richmond to Philadelphia— best known and most active initially the city’s first Congrega- one of them given by Rodney for a veteran’s pension that he native Norfolk, “confiscated him- visit the New Bedford Whaling waterfront boardinghouse he did many of the older citizens of N.B. marked ‘this side up.’ . . . He was black abolitionists in New Bedford. tional Church. Its first floor was French to the Rev. William had been born “in slavery.” The Rev. William Jackson House (1858) self” and came to New Bedford twice turned head downwards & converted to shop space and its Jackson, the pastor of the city’s Rev. William Jackson became the National Historical Park Visitor not identify, John W. Thompson Deacon Bush . . . has been one Nathan Johnson had involved him- 198 Smith Street Center at 33 William Street, (508) in 1859. Carney’s father, who had once remained so on board the th met an injured ship’s cook who of the most zealous, hard working self with fugitive slave issues in the upper floors to an auditorium Second and, later, Salem Baptist chaplain of the 55 Massachu- 996-4095. You can also visit the also escaped slavery, had pur- steam boat while she went 18 Loum Snow House (1852) instructed him in the rudiments of and liberal friends the fugitive city since at least 1822. How and and meeting rooms in 1838. The Churches. Jackson was a free man, setts Volunteers and was the first park’s web site at www.nps.gov/ chased the freedom of his mother. 465 County Street stewardship. ever found. miles—which almost killed him when he came to the city is not nation’s most prominent aboli- but his journal and correspon- chaplain of color in the United nebe. To learn more about Loum Snow, a New Bedford mer- and he said the veins on his tem- precisely known, nor is his status. tionists—William Lloyd dence document that in both Phil- States Army. Second Baptist Church the Underground Railroad visit chant who employed William Two black boardinghouse keepers William Bush was the last person ples were almost as thick as his Johnson was a delegate to most of Garrison, Charles Lenox Remond, adelphia and New Bedford he 201 Middle Street www.cr.nps.gov/ugrr Carney Sr., helped him secure his had notable careers in the Under- whom Daniel Drayton, the mari- finger.” the early conventions of free col- Lucy Stone, William Wells Brown, assisted in fugitive escapes. The city of New Bedford built and John Briggs Home (ca.1836) wife Nancy’s release. About 1850, ground Railroad. By the mid- ner who attempted the unsuccess- ored people in the United States, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick dedicated this plaza in February 29 Allen Street: Briggs’s daughter Grant funding for this Snow’s granddaughters told a The Philadelphia Vigilance brochure was provided by the 1830s William P. Powell operated ful rescue of seventy-seven slaves but he may have been a fugitive Douglass—all spoke here in the On this block of William Street, 1999 as a memorial to New Martha kept school in this home for Works Progress Administration Committee sent Brown on to New Bristol County Convention a “seamen’s temperance boarding from Washington, D.C., aboard himself. Like Ricketson, Johnson is 1840s and 1850s. between Pleasant and Purchase Bedford people of color who escaped slaves and Visitors Bureau. researcher in 1939, Snow had York City and from there to Streets, several people of color had fought for the Union in the Civil house” at 94 North Water Street. the Pearl in April 1848, visited e sy car l cru z court known to have sheltered others arranged for an enslaved young William H. Carney Home (ca.1850) An avowed fugitive assistant, before he took his own life at Ricketson in New Bedford. “I who escaped slavery in his home. But Liberty Hall is most famous for businesses in the years before the War. All told, more than 350 New William H. Carney Jr. in his 54th Regiment girl, Isabella White, to be received your very valuable con- 128 Mill Street: now Martha Briggs Funded (in part) by the Commonwealth of Powell housed many black sailors New Bedford’s Mansion House in uniform and bearing the standard from Twenty-one Seventh Street is now an incident that occurred here in Civil War. One of them was the Bedford men of color served in Massachusetts/Department of Economic Development, shipped out of the South to signment of 200 pounds of March 1851. Frustrated by the fail- dentist Thomas Bayne, the escapee the Union forces between 1861 Educational Society Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism. For who had come to ship out on a June 1857. Bush’s wife, Lucinda the assault on Fort Wagner the headquarters of the New statewide planning information visit massvacation.com New Bedford in a barrel marked th th New Bedford whaling vessel; no Clark Bush, is believed to have Humanity last evening and as Bedford Historical Society, dedi- ure to return Shadrach Minkins from Norfolk who made his way and 1865 in the 54 and 55 Lewis Temple House (ca.1830) “sweet potatoes.” doubt some were fugitives from helped bring the hopeful escap- merchants say will dispose of it cated to preserving and interpret- to slavery from Boston, the U. S. to the New Jersey coast by boat, Regiments, the Fifth Cavalry, 54 Bedford Street slavery. Numerous accounts have ees to Drayton’s schooner. Poor, to the best advantage,” Ricketson ing the history of people of color Deputy Marshal was said to be walked to Philadelphia, and settled and the U.S. Navy. wrote to New York abolitionist in the city and region. planning “the seizure of and car- in New Bedford.