Who's Who in Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad

The legend of Maggie Bluecoat is from Elsie Singmaster's 1924 story A Boy at Gettysburg, and is based upon family stories of Mag Palm's brush with kidnappers in 1858.  Although she did fight off two kidnappers, and remained a courageous woman during the 1863 invasion, there is no evidence that Mag Palm actually shepherded fugitive slaves along the farm roads of Gettysburg, with a loaded musket at the ready.

Born enslaved in Maryland, Parker escaped to Lancaster County where he vowed to resist the slave powers with all of his being. He headed an informal self-defense force that fought with slave catchers and made numerous attempts to rescue captured fugitive slaves. In September 1851, slave catchers attacked his small farm near Christiana, PA, in which fugitive slaves were sheltering. Parker's wife Eliza, amid a hail of bullets, blew a horn to summon help from nearby African American farmers. The slave catchers were themselves soon surrounded, and in the resulting fight Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch was killed. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, wrote that Parker's resistance at Christiana "more than all else, destroyed the fugitive slave law."

Sugar Grove resident Mortimer Payne noted in his diary the visit from a fugitive slave destined for Canada.  Payne aided the slave on his journey.

Born in Darby, Pennsylvania of Quaker heritage, John J. Pearson was a lawyer, politician and judge.  As a U.S. Congressman in 1836-1837, Pearson voted consistently in support of the anti-slavery petitions introduced by John Quincy Adams.  As president judge of Dauphin and Lebanon Counties, a post he assumed in 1849, Pearson favored fugitive slave rights over slaveholder rights.  In a significant case that occurred as the Fugitive Slave Law was taking effect in 1850, Pearson freed three men accused of being runaways, but they were immediately seized as they left the courthouse by deputies of the newly appointed Federal Slave Commissioner in Harrisburg, Richard McAllister.  A daughter of UGRR activist Joseph Bustill wrote that a Harrisburg judge "used to keep her father informed as to the hunted ones."  Although she never named Pearson, some historians strongly suspect he was the sympathetic judge.

Virginia-born John Peck settled in Carlisle in 1821 as a young man to practice barbering, where he remained for nearly two decades before moving to Pittsburgh.  Very active in the A.M.E. church, Peck also became devoted the cause of abolition, supporting The Weekly Advocate, The Colored American and The Liberator newspapers and subscribing and writing letters to the Frederick Douglass Paper.  It was in Peck's barbershop that Carlisle resident and Dickinson College student James Miller McKim first picked up a copy of Garrison's The Liberator. McKim engaged Peck in long conversations on the subject of colonization and abolition, and eagerly read additional publications given to him by the barber. McKim credited Peck as a benefactor who opened his eyes to the evils of slavery. William Lloyd Garrison described Peck as "my old friend John Peck."  In Pittsburgh, Peck worked closely with Martin R. Delany and John B. Vashon, and was instrumental, with Rev. Charles Avery, in setting up the Allegheny Institute (later Avery College), serving as vice president of the board of trustees.

James Phillips was a well-known Harrisburg teamster who had lived in town for many years and was married with two small children.  He was accused in June 1852 of being a fugitive slave, escaping in 1833 from Virginia. U.S. Commissioner Richard McAllister frustrated every attempt made by attorneys Mordecai McKinney and Charles C. Rawn to defend Phillips, and sent Phillips back to Virginia the next morning with the men claiming him as their property.  Phillips was promptly sold to a Richmond slave dealer and faced shipment to the deep south when Rawn was dispatched by several citizens of Harrisburg to buy his freedom for $800.

Known locally as a fiddler at events and fairs, Bill Piper lived in a remote cabin on the Westminster Road. Eyewitnesses saw at least one group of freedom seekers being fed breakfast in his cabin. Long-time Hanover resident George Frysinger in 1872 related the following eyewitness account: "One morning, a few of us started early for the woods above Gitt's mill, and seeing a light through a crack in a shutter of (Piper's) cabine, we cautiously peeped in. There, to our surprise, sat seven stalwart Negroes eating a well-prepared breakfast. . . Bill was taken quite aback one day when I told him what we had seen, with the assurance, however, that he had nothing to fear at our hands. I drew from him the facts that he was an agent for the Underground Railroad. It is probable that he was on the Carlisle route and that he conveyed the fugitives to the Frederick Road, thence to a road which intersected the McSherrystown Road. Beyond that it was easy to reach the South Mountain and Carlisle."

Note: This person should not be confused with William Piper, abolitionist and UGRR conductor of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Early settler Isaac Post and his brother David were sympathetic to fugitive slaves, allowing them to live and work on their land in the town of Montrose.  By the 1840's, Isaac Post was sheltering fugitives in his own office when the local tavern had no room.  His death in 1855 was noted by the Provincial Freeman newspaper, Canada:  "Isaac Post, of Montrose, Pa., fell asleep in Christ on the 22nd of March last, in his 71st year. He had been identified with the Anti-Slavery and Free Mission causes from the first, and he remained so to the last." (13 October 1855) 

Most fugitives were conducted to Montrose from Wilkes-Barre by Rev. William C. Gildersleeve.  Fugitives entering Montrose were sometimes intercepted by Benjamin R. Lyon, who sent them to the Post family.  Historian Magill mentions the Post home and Caleb Carmalt, in Friendsville, as Susquehanna County stations.

Maryland slaveholder who arrived in Harrisburg along with a Mr. Buchanan, also from Maryland, looking for several fugitive slaves.  The Maryland men stayed at Cloverly's Hotel, where a waiter named James Millwood tipped them that the fugitives were hiding on the farm of William Rutherford.  Harrisburg resident John W. Fitch led the party to Rutherford's farm.