Peter Still MSA SC 5496-15222

Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

Peter Still (b. circa 1801 - d. circa 1868)
MSA SC 5496-15222
Fled from slavery, Eastern Shore, Maryland, between 1801 and 1807

Biography:

Peter Still was born on the plantation of Saunders Griffin, a planter from Maryland's Eastern Shore, in 1801 to parents Levin and Sidney Steel. While still a young boy, Peter's father Levin bought his freedom, and moved to New Jersey, leaving his wife and four children behind. Sometime between 1801 and 1807, Sidney decided to join her husband, and taking her children Peter, Levin, Kitturah, and Mahalah with her, fled to Greenwich, New Jersey. Slave hunters, presumably in the employ of Saunders Griffin, found and recaptured the five runaways and returned them to the Eastern Shore. Sidney Steel, also known as Charity, escaped to Burlington County New Jersey once again, but this time only took her two daughters with her, leaving her sons Peter and Levin behind. Soon after Charity, Kitturah, and Mahalah fled, Saunders Griffin sold Peter and Levin to a mason named John Fisher, in Lexington, Kentucky.¹

After spending several years as a slave, Peter eventually bought his freedom from a man named Joseph Friedman, in Bainbridge, Alabama, and travelled to Philadelphia, where he was reunited with his mother, Charity, his two sisters, and a score of new siblings and relatives. Among these newly discovered relatives was William Still, who together with abolitionist Seth Concklin, planned to liberate Peter's wife Vina, and children Peter, Levin, and Catherine, from their owner B. McKiernan. Unfortunately, the plan failed - Vina and Peter's children were recaptured by McKiernan, and Concklin's body was found on the banks of the Mississippi River, presumbably after having been murdered.² However, eventually Peter gathered the finances necessary to purchase his family from McKiernan, and they were reunited.³

1. William Still, Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, etc. (Philadelphia, PA: Porter and Coates Publishers, 1872), 37 - 38, and Kate R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed. Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife "Vina," After Forty Years of Slavery (Syracuse, NY: William T. Hamilton, 1856), 25 - 28. http://docsouth.unc.edu/pickard/pickard.html © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

2. The entire affair of Concklin's mission, and eventual failure, is detailed in William Still's Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letter, etc., pages 23 - 27.

3. Although the exact date of Peter Still's family reunion is unknown, an account of the events is given in Kate R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed," pages 364 - 374.