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The Year of Jubilee (1863)

1840:  William W. Rutherford Supports Garrison's Liberator By Subscribing

1840  Dr. William Wilson Rutherford, a member of the large and actively anti-slavery Rutherford family of Paxtang, was a physician living and practicing in Harrisburg. As president of the Harrisburg Anti-Slavery Society, Rutherford had arranged for Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison to visit Harrisburg in 1847.

His home, at 11 S. Front Street in Harrisburg, is generally accepted as an URR station. Located near the end of the Market Street bridge, Rutherford was said to shelter fugitives, who crossed the river from Cumberland County either at that point, or at the railroad bridge further south, in his home until they could be sent out what is present day Derry Street to the farms owned by his relatives in Swatara Township. The Jeremiah Zeamer papers in the archives of the Cumberland County Historical Society note that the toll keepers on the Harrisburg Bridge would allow fugitive slaves to pass for free because they were in sympathy with the cause.

While living in the town of Harrisburg, Rutherford subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. The page from Garrison's account book, below, shows that William W. Rutherford paid $2.50 for a subscription, on 22 June 1840. This support not only helped support the publication financially, but also made Garrison's reporting on anti-slavery issues available to those in Harrisburg with whom Rutherford shared the publication.

Notes:

Covering the history of African Americans in central Pennsylvania from the colonial era through the Civil War.

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The Year of Jubilee, Volume One: Men of God, Volume Two: Men of Muscle