Page 8 - My FlipBook

Voices from the Past

An enslaved woman named Ann Maria Jackson escaped from

Delaware with seven of her nine children in 1858. After learning
that the slaveholder was planning to sell four of her children, she

took her children and escaped. “This Fall he said he was going

to take four of my oldest children and two other servants to
Vicksburg. I just happened to hear of this news in time. My master

was wanting to keep me in the dark about taking them, for fear

that something might happen.” They were picked up by a carriage
1
just outside Wilmington, Delaware. A second carriage took them

to Pennsylvania, which was a free state. They continued on to Information about the Underground Railroad was often shared by
word of mouth.
New York and then to St. Catharines, Ontario, while avoiding slave
hunters. Eventually they settled in Toronto. Jackson’s youngest son,

Albert, became Canada’s first Black letter carrier in 1882.

1 Still, William. Still’s Underground Rail Road Records. Revised ed.

Philadelphia, PA: William Still, 1886, p. 514. Google Books.

A conductor transported “passengers,” or escaped

enslaved people. Passengers were brought to safe houses,

called stations. Safe houses could be homes, businesses,

churches, barns, or anyplace where passengers would

be safe. Stations were located in towns or cities called

12

SAUN_BLKH_RLRD_INT.indd 12 6/7/19 11:00 AM