Leah Anthony (b. circa
1829 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-8020
Fled from slavery, Dorchester County, Maryland, 1857
Biography:
On October 24, 1857, Leah
Anthony fled from the Cambridge
District of Dorchester along with twenty-eight slaves from the area.
She
belonged to Samuel Pattison, the owner of approximately fifteen to
eighteen
slaves. Leah escaped with her husband, Christopher
"Kit" Anthony, and their three children.1
Pattison placed a runaway
advertisement in local newspapers as soon as two days after the
incident.
He described Leah as "about five feet high, dark chestnut color, with
THREE
CHILDREN - two boys and one girl."2 At the time
of their flight, Murray
Anthony was only one year old, a fact which may have lent an
element of
surprise to the parents' choice to escape.
Kit, Leah, and the children were forced
to travel
through constant rain but ultimately made it to William Still's
Philadelphia
depot in early November. Here, Aaron
Cornish and Joseph
Viney were among the members of the large group that
recounted their
harrowing journey to the abolitionist. In Delaware, some of the party
had
even engaged in a violent skirmish with "several Irishmen," who may
have
been on the look out for fugitive slaves. While it is unknown whether
the
Anthonys were involved in that altercation, they certainly had an
arduous
experience, traveling with young children and slave catchers in
pursuit.
Still remarked that even with "nothing to appease the gnawings of
hunger
but parched corn and a few dry crackers ... not for a moment did they
allow
themselves to look back."3 The journey from
Pennsylvania to Canada was also
trying, as the region had some of the harshest winter weather it had
seen
in years. However, Leah and her family made it safely to St.
Catharine's,
Ontario, where many ex-slaves had been settling throughout the past
decade.
The 1861 Census of Canada lists the couple and their five children, two of which had been born since their arrival in the new country.4 While little else has been documented about Leah Anthony's life as a free woman, her husband Kit was hired by Harriet Tubman as an officer in the Fugitive Aid Society of St. Catharines.5 Like most of the other black ex-pats, Leah likely became a part of that extensive support network that dealt with the constant stream of former slaves adapting to their new homes. Unfortunately, it does not appear that she survived much longer in Canada. The rest of the Anthony family had moved to Elmira, New York by 1870, with Kit having taken a new wife.6 Leah Anthony may have fallen victim to the proverty and harsh weather that plagued many of the these black immigrants. There is no record of her after 1861.
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