River Alley, Doctor Jones and Freedom Seekers

Intersection of River and Barberry Alleys

This neighborhood was located at the northern limits of the borough, when it began, which may have limited its vitality and importance to the overall African American community. However, the remote character of the area worked to the advantage of those anti-slavery activists who were engaged in hiding fugitive slaves. This was one of the locations in Harrisburg where white and African American activists partnered to thwart the plans of slave catchers, as described below.

Edited excerpt from The Year of Jubilee, Men of God

William M. Jones was born in Maryland about 1791 and came to Harrisburg about 1823, establishing himself with his wife Mary in River Alley near Barberry (later Barbara) Street, on the northern edge of town. Other African Americans also lived in this neighborhood, including the formerly enslaved man Fleming Mitchell, but the neighborhood did not acquire the unique identity that other Harrisburg African American neighborhoods, such as Judy’s Town, did. Jones followed several pursuits, working for years as helper to a town druggist, but became notorious for his knowledge of herbal remedies and folk medicine, and by the 1840s was known even by white residents as “Doctor” Jones.

Although he collected fees for his treatments, Jones lacked the fancy diploma that would allow him to put professional letters after his name, and as a result, he took on a variety of other jobs to support his large family, one of which was the collection of rags from rag pickers for resale to paper makers. Jones turned this lowly social station to his benefit, however, using the cover of unobtrusive rag merchant on his rounds, while he carried out Underground Railroad missions.

Rudolph Frederick Kelker, a well-known white Harrisburg hardware merchant and community leader, sent freedom seekers, whom he had briefly taken into his Front Street mansion, to Jones at Barberry Alley. Kelker owned a barn and stables near Jones’ frame house, so regular traffic between Front Street and a nearby barn would have been a normal occurrence, unlikely to arouse suspicion from neighbors or watching slave catchers along the riverfront. When fugitives arrived at the barn, Jones took charge of them, secreting them in his own house where they were fed and cared for.

Although white Underground Railroad activists seldom used their own homes to hide fugitives—the Front Street mansions of Dr. Rutherford and Rudolph Kelker being notable exceptions—free African Americans commonly welcomed freedom seekers into their homes, despite the dangers. The homes of African American residents, however, were not safe from a surprise search, if slave catchers suspected that their prey was hidden within. Slave catchers would smash through the front door of an African American household with impunity, if they had sufficient numbers in their party to fight off a possible challenge from the inhabitants. If they felt they could not raid the house on their own, they solicited back up from the local sheriff and deputies, who often eagerly obliged them.

Because of this constant threat of a sudden surprise raid, Doctor Jones had a special hiding place prepared for such emergencies. Builders of the modest wooden row houses in River Alley had mimicked a feature of the brick and stone townhouses on Harrisburg’s fashionable main thoroughfares by including a narrow covered passageway from the alley to the rear yard. Jones had modified the passage between his house and the adjoining house by placing a movable board over the alley entrance. To the unknowing observer in front of his house in the alley, the board appeared to be part of the house’s outer wall. Behind it, however, fugitive slaves crouched unseen in the narrow passageway until the danger had passed.
(p.527-529)

The photo above shows modern day Barbara Street from the intersection with River Alley, looking west toward Front Street and the Susquehanna River. Barbara Street was originally laid out as Barberry Alley, in keeping with the scheme of naming alleys after fruit-producing plants and shrubs. These east to west secondary streets, originally designated as alleys, were Cherry, Blackberry, Strawberry, Cranberry and Barberry. Two of the town's original north to south alleys also bore the name of fruits: Dewberry and Raspberry (Raspberry later became Court Alley).

An African American church was begun at the intersection of River Alley and Walnut Street. This church, the borough's third African American church, served Harrisburg's African American Presbyterians, and was under the leadership of Charles Gardiner. From the Year of Jubilee: Men of Muscle:

African American Presbyterians, by 1857, worshipped generally on their own in conjunction with the established church, although they were not recognized as a separate congregation by their church’s General Assembly as such. Late in that year, Joseph Bustill and Mordecai McKinney began discussing the formation of an official African American Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg. Bustill contacted an old friend in Philadelphia, Reverend Charles W. Gardiner, then about seventy-five years old, who visited Harrisburg in September to explore the idea further and to negotiate possible aid and support for the church with Reverend DeWitt.

It turned out to be a bad time, economically, to discuss financing a new church. The nation was in the midst of a financial downturn that had put an end to the economic boom that followed the Mexican War. Plans for the new “Colored Presbyterian Church” were put aside indefinitely through the winter, and only revived when tragedy struck the First Presbyterian Church on March 22, 1858, in the form of a disastrous fire that burned the sixteen year old building to the ground, along with most of its records.

The homeless Presbyterian congregation was forced to hold services in Brant’s Hall, the new four-story public building that had been built by entrepreneur John H. Brant—the employer of James Phillips—in 1855 next to the courthouse. It was in Brant’s Hall, while squashed together in a too-small space for Sunday services, that Harrisburg’s Presbyterians realized that a split was imminent. From this arrangement, two new and separate churches would be constructed for the white congregants, and one for the African American congregation.

In April, Harrisburg’s Presbyterian African Americans rented from the Haldeman family the second floor of the building at the southwest corner of Walnut Street and River Alley and prepared to hold temporary services there, under the direction of Reverend DeWitt and his assistant pastor, Reverend Thomas Robinson. Mordecai McKinney agreed to supervise the Sunday school, and in mid-April, Reverend Gardiner returned to Harrisburg from Philadelphia to officially take charge of the new church. Assisting Reverend Gardiner were elders Jeremiah Kelly, a local tradesman, and Hiram Baker.

The charter congregation included the provisioner and caterer Curry Taylor, now in his mid-fifties, and his wife Elizabeth; Matilda Greenly, wife of Harrisburg caterer and oyster restaurateur James Greenly; several more members related to the Kelly family; and Hannah Humphreys, who would shortly become Joseph Bustill’s sister-in-law. (p. 165-166)