When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land. My home, after all, was down in Maryland, because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.
—Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman did traverse the route of the Byway that bears her name – several times in fact!
The Famous Christmas Escape
A few days after Christmas, there was a knock on the door of the Allen Agnew farm just over the line in Chester County. Thomas Garrett, who became Tubman’s friend over the years, wrote that he had sent “six men and one woman to be forwarded across country to the city.”
Harriet and her brothers left Maryland’s Eastern Shore on Christmas Eve 1854 after she had received news that they were to be sold to new owners immediately after the holidays. They had attempted to escape earlier but could not bear to leave their wives and children behind then. Five years later, she sent another message through the Underground Railroad that read: “tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, be ready to step on board.” When they received that message, the brothers began preparing their escape a second time.
Christmas Was the Best Time to Escape
Christmas was the optimal season to attempt an escape, as many of the enslaved were given an extended holiday break and passes to visit family members at nearby plantations. The brothers used the passes under the guise of visiting their mother; instead, they hid in a corn crib until nightfall. They traveled over 100 miles with Harriet before arriving at the Agnew’s door. The group included three of Tubman’s brothers, Robert, Ben, and Henry, Ben’s fiancé, Jane Kane, and two of the brother’s friends, John Chase and Peter Jackson, who were to be sent on to William Still in Philadelphia, who ultimately assisted thousands of freedom seekers to get to Canada.
Garrett wrote that she and one of her brothers had worn the shoes off their feet, saying he gave them two dollars to fit out new ones and “directed a carriage to be hired at his expense” to carry them forward. What Garrett really did was enable Tubman’s party to reach Chester County. When they arrived in South Wilmington, DE, where they found shelter with free African Americans, word was sent to Garrett that the only bridge across the Christiana River was guarded by police looking for runaway slaves. Garrett sent two wagons to pick up Tubman and the rest of the freedom seekers. They carried a load of straw while the bricklayers on the trip acted as if they had been drinking all day. Their actions distracted the police, who did not bother to inspect the wagons.
An 1856 Escape
Thomas Garrett wrote to William Still in Philadelphia again in 1856: “Those four I wrote thee about arrived safe up in the neighborhood of Longwood, and Harriet Tubman followed after in the stage yesterday.” Likely, Tubman and the freedom seekers she was guiding stopped at the Isaac and Dinah Mendenhall home, Oakdale, as Garrett’s second wife Rachel was Isaac’s sister.
According to their descendants still living in Chester County, Isaac and Dinah were two of the primary “conductors” of the Underground Railroad in southern Chester County. They and a network of Friends worked with Harriett Tubman to aid several hundred freedom seekers. Tubman would first lead fugitives from the South to Delaware. Thomas Garrett, another Quaker abolitionist, would then direct those on the railroad to “go on and on until they came to a stone-gate post, and then turn in it.” Garrett would send these stowaways from Wilmington, DE, to Kennett Township in Chester County, with a note that read, “I send you three bales of black wool,” and the number of bales would indicate the number of passengers headed toward Pennsylvania. The letters assured that the people seeking out Isaac and Dinah were not imposters.
An 1860 Escape
Harriet Tubman made her last rescue in 1860, the year before the Civil War began, to bring the Stephen Ennets family to safety. On December 1, Thomas Garrett wrote to William Still a message that illustrates that tensions and conditions were getting worse for freedom seekers as the Civil War drew near.
I write to let thee know that Harriet Tubman is again in these parts. She arrived last evening from one of her trips of mercy to God’s poor, bringing two men with her as far as New Castle. I agreed to pay a man last evening to pilot them on their way to Chester County; the wife of one of the men, with two or three children, was left some thirty miles below, and I gave Harriet ten dollars, to hire a man with a carriage to take them to Chester County. She said a man offered for the sum to bring them on. I shall be very uneasy about them, till I hear they are safe. There is now more risk on the road, till they arrive here, than there has been for several months past, as we find that some poor, worthless wretches are constantly on the lookout on two roads that they cannot well avoid more especially with carriages, yet as it is Harriet who seems to have had a special angel to guard her on her journey of mercy, I have hope.
– Thomas Garrett
Kennett Square
Considered a “hotbed of abolitionism”, Kennett Square was home to free African Americans who aided freedom seekers, plus Quakers and others who passed them from house to house, many of whom aided Harriet Tubman on her journeys. One of the most well-known locations in town is now known as “The Pines”, owned by Dr. Bartholomew Fussell, a Quaker physician and anti-slavery activist who had opened a Sabbath school for African Americans in Maryland. He also helped to organize the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 and proposed a Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (now a part of Drexel University College of Medicine) in 1847.
He and his wife Lydia lived in the residence from 1827-1837, providing safety, shelter, food, and clothing to more than 2,000 freedom seekers. The property was owned by abolitionists Summer Stebbins from 1837-1841 and Chandler and Hannah Darlington from 1841-1882. Plans are to install a glass window on the rear façade of the house to allow visitors to see the actual catacombs and crevices in the basement where the freedom seekers were protected. In view of the many trips Harriet Tubman came through Chester County, it is inevitable that she knew the Fussells and that they aided her journey at one time or another.
Hosanna Meeting House
The development of the Hosanna Church, in the free African American village of Hinsonville, where Harriet Tubman hid some of her freedom seeking charges, was a reflection of the triumphs of free black settlements in the United States before the Civil War.
Freedom seekers whose journey often included swimming the Susquehanna River or hiding in the haystacks on local farms, were hidden in the basement of the meeting house. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman spoke of the need to abolish slavery upstairs in the sanctuary. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission placed a marker on Baltimore Pike in 1992, to honor Hosanna’s significance.
Coming From York County
There are accounts that Harriet Tubman came through York County, PA, twice, once staying overnight with Underground Railroad conductors Ezekiel and Eliza Baptiste in Newberry Township and another meeting William Goodridge, a formerly enslaved freedom seeker who became an Underground Railroad station master.
Moving from York County through Lancaster County and on to Chester County, Harriet Tubman would likely have come into Chester County at Eurcildoun, settled by Quaker farmers at the end of the 1700s. The Fallowfields Friends Meeting House was constructed in 1811, and the Anti-Slavery Society here met there until it was raided by anti-abolitionists. The society purchased land next to the meeting house in 1845 and built a hall called the Free Hall, and later the People’s Hall. The group declared that “every question, creed, or race was welcome on our platform.”
Located about 15 miles north of Maryland, Eurcildoun became known as an important stop on the Underground Railroad as parties of freedom seekers as large as 33 people passed through town. Jacob Carter, who with his enslaved brothers passed through while escaping, bought land and began his ministry here after the Civil War.
