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Eight Years of Documented Bowne House Residents' Involvement in a Network of the New York Underground Railroad from 1842-1850

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Eight Years of Documented Bowne House Residents' Involvement in a Network of the New York Underground Railroad from 1842-1850 The Underground Railroad by Charles T. Webber (Reproduction), 1893 Eight Years of Documented Bowne House Residents’ Involvement in a Network of the New York Underground Railroad from 1842-1850 By Ellen M. Spindler, Collection Volunteer, and Charlotte Jackson, Bowne House Archivist In the middle to the late years of the 1830s, abolitionism was transformed from a sentiment into an organized national movement, an “expanding array of anti-slavery societies whose members would provide the white rank and file of the Underground Railroad, linking them together with isolated cells and African American communities into a system that, in time, would spread across more than a dozen states.”1 Although New York had abolished slavery by 1827, there were still many fugitive slaves from the South and other freedom seekers, such as free blacks at risk, who resided in or travelled through New York and were in need of assistance to make their way to freedom upstate or in Canada. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened the penalties of the previous Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, both of which permitted slave owners and bounty hunters to search for escaped slaves in free states, and made assistance to these freedom seekers even more perilous.2 Early Bowne House Residents’ Anti-Slavery Activities Quaker settlements were among the early participants in abolitionist activities and then the Underground Railroad network. At its yearly meeting in 1768, the Flushing Meeting record reflects adoption of a committee report that "Negroes were by nature born free and when the way opens liberty ought to be extended to them..." 3 The New York Meeting finally issued a resolution in 1776 to ban the acceptance of contributions and services from those members who held slaves; thereafter those members were disowned.4 By 1787, the New York Yearly Meeting certified that none of its members held slaves.5 One former Bowne House resident who took a strong early stand was Robert Bowne, the founder of the Bowne & Co. printers. He was a founding member of the New York Manumission Society with Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and others in 1785. He also served as Trustee of the African Free School founded by the Manumission Society to educate free Blacks to assume their rightful place in society.6 In the next family generation, Robert Bowne’s niece Mary, who shared in the inheritance of the Bowne House, married the Quaker Minister Samuel Parsons. Long a sympathizer, Parsons became active in the abolition cause in the 1830s.7 In 1834 Parsons wrote a letter to a Joseph Talcott advising that the New York Meeting was raising over $1,000 dollars to move up north free Southern blacks who were being threatened with a return to slavery.8 In June 1837 a long denunciation of slavery by the New York Yearly Meeting appeared over his signature as Clerk of that body.9 Thousands of copies were printed and distributed throughout the South.10 Following the death of Mary (Bowne) Parsons in 1839, her share of the Bowne House passed to Samuel. The 1840 Federal Census indicates that the widower and his children then joined Mary's surviving sisters in the old homestead. According to one correspondent, Samuel Parsons spent his final days there poring over the proceedings of the World Anti-Slavery Convention with his sons.11 Finally, as circumstances worsened for blacks fleeing the South and trying to settle in New York City, Bowne house residents decided their faith and conscience required more direct action via participation in the Underground Railroad. In doing so, they faced potential prosecution due to the assistance they provided to fugitive slaves and other freedom seekers, such as free blacks at risk of kidnapping. However, as devout Quakers the family had survived social opprobrium and legal punishment before, and they had educated themselves well enough to know that slavery held even worse horrors. The sons of Samuel and Mary Parsons were interested in abolition from an early age. In 1837 Samuel B. Parsons undertook a voyage to the West Indies with the English Quaker minister Joseph John Gurney to observe and report upon the newly emancipated society there. In his memoirs, Gurney reports that upon their return to the United States, he brought 19-year-old Samuel Parsons, Jr. and just one other man with him for intimate audiences with Senators Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun and even President van Buren, to urge the cause of abolition.12 Decades later, Samuel B. Parsons’ obituary in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated that he “was a strong abolitionist and it was his boast that he assisted more slaves to freedom than any man in Queens County.”13 His brother Robert B. Parsons' obituary in the Herald Tribune claimed that "before the Civil War, no fugitive slave who sought his assistance was turned away from his door."14 Evidence from the Bowne House Archives shows that their younger brother William was also an agent of the Underground Railroad. Bowne House Residents Become Involved in the New York Underground Railroad At least three known Bowne House residents—Samuel Bowne Parsons (1819–1906), Robert Bowne Parsons (1821–1898), and William Bowne Parsons (1823–1856)—made documented connections with prominent activists involved in the Underground Railroad in New York. As sons of Samuel and Mary (Bowne) Parsons, and great-nephews of Robert Bowne, the brothers comprised the third generation of Bowne House residents to work for emancipation and racial justice. Parsons family papers attest to contacts with known Underground Railroad agents over a period of at least eight years, from 1842–50. Their connections included the ministers Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher; philanthropists Lewis Tappan and Gerrit Smith; and New York Vigilance Committee officers Charles B. Ray and William Harned. During this period, Simeon Jocelyn ministered to the First Congregational Church of Williamsburgh and served as Vice- President of the New York State Vigilance Committee. Henry Ward Beecher was the fiery anti- slavery preacher at the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights. Lewis Tappan of Brooklyn was a co-founder and benefactor of Beecher's Plymouth Church and numerous other anti- slavery institutions. Gerrit Smith, a wealthy donor based in Peterboro, New York, near the Canadian border, served as President of the New York State Vigilance Committee and other anti-slavery organizations. Charles B. Ray was a black Manhattan minister and the director of the New York Vigilance Committee, described as the initial "hinge" upon which the Underground Railroad network in the City turned. Brooklyn Quaker William Harned was the Vigilance Committee's corresponding secretary and treasurer. This tightly interwoven network of activists also connects Bowne House with at least two verified Underground Railroad sites in New York: the Gerrit Smith Estate in Peterboro and the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn.15 In 1842, a year after the death of Robert’s father Samuel Parsons, Lewis Tappan gave him a letter of introduction to an even more radical reformer, Gerrit Smith. Smith's upstate property is now a listed site with the National Park Service Network to Freedom, due to his involvement in purchasing the freedom of enslaved blacks, arranging their transport to Canada, and providing land upstate to those who were emancipated. Thus Robert B. Parsons already knew Lewis Tappan before 1847, when Tappan co-founded the Plymouth Church, whose first minister was Henry Ward Beecher. Plymouth Church itself is a listed Network to Freedom site, with evidence that fugitives were hidden in its tunnel-like basement until they could be transported to boats in the East River or moved elsewhere.16 (Notably, Robert converted to the Congregational faith by 1851, when he raised funds to build a church in Flushing, armed with a written endorsement from Beecher himself.)17 Samuel Parsons inherited Mary (Bowne) Parsons' share of the Bowne House upon her death in 1839, and the 1840 Census indicates that the family had moved in with Mary's sisters. Upon Samuel's death his share passed to his children. Although his son Samuel B. Parsons moved across the street to the Parsons’ former residence following his marriage in 1842, his brothers Robert and William still resided at the Bowne House with their maiden aunts and unmarried sisters (as seen from the 1840 and 1850 federal censuses and a contemporaneous news article18 from 1843). They only moved out to their own households when William married in 1851 and Robert married in 1857. Thus the public record establishes the brothers' residence at Bowne House during the period under discussion.19 ; . 1850 Federal Census, Flushing, Queens Co., New York Documentation of Bowne Residents’ Involvement in the New York Underground Railroad Network The collection Papers of the Parsons and Bowne Families in the Bowne House Archives contains several hundred items of Bowne and Parsons family correspondence and memorabilia, predominantly from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although these items were accessioned into the Museum’s collection in the 1980s, they were not systematically processed or read until recent years. Other Parsons and Bowne papers from the Bowne House were dispersed and now reside in other local Archives, such as the Queens Library and SUNY Stonybrook. Thus, our archivist and researchers continue to make significant new discoveries about the Bowne House’s involvement in anti-slavery activism and the Underground Railroad. A. After his father Samuel Parsons’ death, Robert Bowne Parsons is introduced by Lewis Tappan to Gerrit Smith in a letter dated August 10, 1842 "My dear Sir, The bearer is Mr. Rob't B. Parsons, of Flushing, son of the late excellent Samuel Parsons of the Society of Friends, and friend of Jos.
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