Still, William, Underground Rail Road:
A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, Etc.

Porter & Coales, Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1872
Call Number: 1400, MSA L1117

MSA L1117, Image No: 308   Enlarge and print image (65K)

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Still, William, Underground Rail Road:
A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, Etc.

Porter & Coales, Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1872
Call Number: 1400, MSA L1117

MSA L1117, Image No: 308   Enlarge and print image (65K)

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  << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
286 ZZTtf UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. parents, brothers, and sisters, all owned by different slave-holders. Kit had a wife, Matilda, and three children, Sarah Ann, Jane Frances, and Ellen, slaves. SEPTEMBER 28, 1866. ARRIVAL OF FIVE FROM THE EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND. CYRUS MITCHELL, alias JOHN STEEL ; JOSHUA HANDY, alias HAMBLE-TON HAMBY; CHAELES DULTON, alias WILLIAM ROBINSON; EPHRAIM HUDSON, alias JOHN SPRY; FRANCIS MOLOCK, alias THOMAS JACKSON; all in "good order" and full of hope. The following letter from the fearless friend of the slave, Thomas Garrett, is a specimen of his manner of dispatching Underground Rail Road business. He used Uncle Sam's mail, and his own name, with as much freedom as though lie had been President of the Pennsylvania Central Rail Road, instead of only a conductor and stock-holder on the Underground Rail Road. 9 mo. 26th, 1856. RESPECTED FRIEND :—WILLIAM STILL, I send on to thy care this evening by Rail Road, 5 able-bodied men, on their way North; receive them as the Good Samaritan of old and oblige thy friend, THOMAS GARRETT. The "able-bodied men" duly arrived, and were thus recorded on the Underground Rail Road books as trophies of the success of the friends of humanity. CYRUS is twenty-six years of age, stout, and unmistakably dark, and was owned by James K. Lewis, a store-keeper, and a "hard master." He kept slaves for the express purpose of hiring them out, and it seemed to afford him as much pleasure to receive the hard-earned dollars of his bondmen as if he had labored for them with his own hands. " It mattered not, how mean a man might be," if he would pay the largest price, he was the man whom the store-keeper preferred to hire to. This always caused Cyrus to dislike him. Latterly he had been talking of moving into the State of Virginia. Cyrus disliked this talk exceedingly, but he "said nothing to the •white people " touching the matter. However, he was not long in deciding that such a move would be of no advantage to him; indeed, he had an idea if all was true that he had heard about that place, he would be still more miserable there, than he had ever been under his present owner. At once, he decided that he would move towards Canada, and that he would be fixed in his new home before his master got off to Virginia, unless he moved sooner than Cyrus expected him to do. Those nearest of kin, to whom he