Underground Rail Road
Freedom and Family on the Underground Rail Road
Family is a central theme across many of the materials in this case. From Comfort Jany’s letter to her mother, to William and Peter Still’s miraculous reunion in Philadelphia, they show the lengths to which enslaved, fugitive, and emancipated people would go in order to maintain family connections. This work continued well into the 1890s as newly freed people took out ads in newspapers like The Christian Recorder to search for lost family. Black writers from Frances E.W. Harper to Pauline Hopkins drew on Still’s narratives and this larger print culture to craft historical novels like Harper’s Iola Leroy (1895). These documents also show all the ways that freedom-seekers themselves were the most active abolitionists of the day. The antebellum antislavery movement could not exist without their efforts to liberate themselves and to come forward with their stories in print and on the lecture circuit.
“Runaway Slave Broadside.” 1853.
Antebellum print was filled with freedom notices (or fugitive slave ads), as enslavers attempted to capture self-emancipated people. The notices demonstrate enslaved people’s consistent striving for freedom and provide key details about their appearance, skills, and education. Freedom on the Move, a multi-institution project based at Cornell, has digitized over 30,000 notices from newspapers. $200 equals roughly $8,000 in modern currency.
Gail and Stephen Rudin Slavery Collection.
View Cornell's copy fully digitized
For an extensive, searchable database of freedom notices, see Freedom on the Move
Signed and Notarized Document attesting that Joseph Carroll is a “Free Person of Color.” Rhode Island. October 29, 1842.
Gail and Stephen Rudin Slavery Collection.
Letter to Salmon P. Chase. Washington, D.C., October 25, 1847.
Letter from Comfort Jany to her mother. Cuthbert, GA, November 19, 1859.
“Your Affectionate Daughter, Comfort Jany.” Comfort Jany, an enslaved woman, wrote this letter to her mother, an enslaved woman in Georgia, to announce the birth of her daughter. The letter offers evidence of literacy among enslaved people and demonstrates how they maintained family connections despite sale and separation.
Gail and Stephen Rudin Slavery Collection.
Kate E. R. Pickard. The Kidnapped and the Ransomed. Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife “Vina.” Introduction by Samuel J. May. Syracuse: William T. Hamilton, 1856.
The Kidnapped and the Ransomed tells the harrowing decades-long story of Peter Still’s attempts to escape enslavement and reunite with his wife, Lavinia. After several unsuccessful escape attempts, Peter (brother of William Still) eventually raised enough money to purchase himself, his wife, and their three children. He dictated his story, and Pickard published it in 1856. A note inside the book reads: "Bought of Peter Still himself… July 21, 1858.”
The portrait titled “The Kidnapped and the Redeemed” is based on an image of Charity (Sidney) Still, mother of Peter and William Still. She escaped enslavement in 1811 with two daughters but was forced to leave her sons, including Peter, behind. William was born after her escape. Charity was reunited with Peter after Peter’s case came to William’s notice in Philadelphia.
William Still. The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1872.
“These records on more than one occasion since the war, have been of service as a General Directory by means of which families long separated have been united” (Christian Recorder, 1872). First published in 1872, The Underground Rail Road draws on Still’s extensive records from his tenure as Chair of Philadelphia’s Vigilance Committee and underground railroad “conductor” to offer first-hand accounts from self-emancipated people.
Beatrice Brown. “Cass Junction for ‘Freedom Train’ of Before Civil War.” The Niles Daily Star (Niles, Michigan). June 3, 1949.
This newspaper clipping, giving the history of Underground Railroad activity in Cassopolis, Michigan, was found folded in Cornell’s copy of the 1872 edition of Still’s Underground Rail Road.
William Still. The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. Revised edition. Philadelphia: People’s Publishing Company, 1879.
By 1879, Still had taken full control of the publication and distribution of The Underground Rail Road. The 1879 edition features new advertisements about the book along with a new index of names. Still sold the book in a variety of bindings at various price points, ranging from a basic affordable binding to more expensive options with gold lettering, like this copy.
William Still. An Address on Voting and Laboring: Delivered at Concert Hall, Tuesday Evening, March 10th, 1874. Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Co., 1874.
William Still explains his vote for the People’s Party candidate for mayor. He opens by arguing that he is equally invested in the representation of Black Americans in the Centennial Exhibition as in politics and that other Philadelphians should be, as well.
This copy is bound in a volume titled U.S. Political Pamphlets.
Letter from William Still to Karl Kotz. November 7, 1883.
Still wrote to Knotz promising to send him a copy of the latest edition of The Underground Rail Road. Still’s letterhead advertising the “new and revised edition” of Underground demonstrates his marketing savvy.
James Lowell Gibbs Collection of African-American Documents.