Posted:
10/21/2021
The Underground Rail Road in Lancaster County, PA
Lancaster County abolitionists and their “safe houses” played a key role in the heritage of the Underground Railroad.
Pictured Above: The Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Historic Site. Courtesy of LancasterHistory.
Special thank you to Randy Harris and Robin Sarratt from LancasterHistory for ensuring this blog's historical accuracy.
The Underground Railroad was a loose network of people who worked together to offer shelter and aid to freedom seekers from the American South. People of African descent took the first steps toward self-liberation from enslavement and they found some people in the state of Pennsylvania – both Black and white – willing to help at great personal peril.
Learn more by taking a tour at the Christiana Historical Society.
By the 1830s, Lancaster County became an important area for those individuals on their journey to freedom. The county's location along the Mason-Dixon line, some of its residents' devotion to freedom (supported by religious convictions), and Lancaster’s transportation connections to other free northern states made it ideal as a pathway to freedom. Some made their way to Columbia, others crossed the Susquehanna River into Southern Lancaster County at Peach Bottom, and still others followed a path that led them along the Octoraro Creek in the southeastern portion of the county. Regardless the route, their destination was often Christiana and eventually, Philadelphia, New England, or Canada. However, many stayed in Lancaster and established families, some of which exist today.
The Susquehanna River town of Columbia was the site of an early, spontaneous, and well-documented community uprising against slavery. Thomas Boude (1752-1822), a Revolutionary War veteran officer and former US Congressman, provided refuge for freedom seeker, Nancy Smith, in 1804. Nancy’s son, Stephen, was an indentured servant, bound to the Boude Family. Stephen’s mother escaped her enslavers near Harrisburg to be with her young son and the Boude family allowed her to stay with them. When Nancy’s “owner,” Mrs. Cochran, arrived unannounced in Columbia with plans to drag her back to her home, Major Boude and his family resisted and drove off Mrs. Cochran, rather than allowing the forced return of the mother to enslavement. Boude later paid for Nancy’s freedom but this spontaneous act of resistance is described as an inspiration to others in Columbia that opposing the institution of slavery was a good and acceptable action.