Robert Fisher (1824 - d.?)
MSA SC 5496-8160
Fled from slavery, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, 1854
Biography:
Robert Fisher lived in the North-Western part of Anne Arundel county, Maryland. His owner, John E. Jackson, owned a farm there, where Fisher along with fellow slaves including Nathan Harris worked for a master described as "a very hard man."1 At the time that Fisher and Harris ran away, Jackson was forty-seven years old and lived with his four children. Fisher managed to escape from the Jackson farm at the end of 1854 at the age of thirty-four. He convinced Harris to accompany him on his trek northward, and the two escaped shortly after Christmas. Although they left in the midst of the winter, the hardships of the weather were worth enduring to take advantage of the slave owner's distraction during the season's festivities and disappear. Fisher and Harris survived their winter on the run, and made their way to Philadelphia, where they received assistance from William Still, an "agent' of the Underground Railroad, and continued North. William Still later recorded this account of Fisher's escape in Underground Railroad, a book he produced from a log of fugitives received at his home.
1.William Still, Underground Railroad: A Record of Fact, Authentic Narratives, Letters, etc. (Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coales, Publishers, 1872), 206.
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