Who's Who in Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad

Documentation:  Charles A. Garlick, Life, Including His Escape and Struggle for Liberty, 1902, electronic edition, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Charles A. Garlick, 1827-." http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/garlick/garlick.html, accessed January 10, 2006.

Fugitive slave Charles A. Garlick escaped to Pittsburgh from Virginia in 1843, then traveled fifteen miles to the home of Samuel Marshall, with whom he stayed for about a week.  Garlick recalls "Then I was sent to a relative of his, John Rainbow, at New Castle, where I found refuge at Rev. Bushnell's, who had a brother in Cherry Valley."  From this point he made his way to Brookfield, Trumbull County, Ohio, and the station of Amos Chew.

Documentation: "Death of Edward H. Rauch," Lancaster Examiner, 10 September 1902.

Lancaster prothonotary clerk Edward Rauch was hired by slave catcher George Hughes to prepare paperwork needed in order to hunt down and arrest suspected fugive slaves hiding in Pennsylvania. Working for Hughes between 1845 and 1847, Rauch secretly reported all of Hughes' pending slave-catching operations to Thaddeus Stevens, who in turn gave advance warning to the stationmasters and safe house keepers before Hughes' men could reach them. He later established and edited two newspaper, the Independent Whig and the Inland Daily, both representing the anti-slavery branch of the Whig party.

Documentation: Gerald G. Eggert, "The Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law on Harrisburg: A Case Study," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109 (October 1985, 537-569).

Harrisburg lawyer Charles C. Rawn was one of two lawyers hired by Blacks and sympathetic whites to defend those accused of being fugitive slaves during the days of the federal Fugitive Slave Act.  Rawn and Mordecai McKinney frequently rushed to the defense of hapless men, women and children brought before the federal slave commissioner, Richard McAllister, whose office was in Harrisburg. Click here for a detailed article on Rawn's activities.

Documentation: Andrew J. Waychoff, Local History of Greene County and Southwestern Pennsylvania, 1975, p. 85. |  U.S. Census, Center Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania, page 272.

"There was nearby in the woods a family of colored people in hiding. John Adams kept them about a week. John Remley of Rogersville placed baskets of food near some springs in the woods thinking that hunger would force them out and he could find and catch them."  (Thanks to Jan Slater for this information.  See her letter for additional details.)  The 1850 census of Center Township shows John Remley as a carpenter, age 23, living on the Annanias White farm.  George Remley, age 21, was also a resident.

Documentation: The Liberator, 24 December 1836.  G. Craig Caba, Gettysburg: 1836 Battle Over Slavery, 2004, n.p. (5-8).

Rev. William M. Reynolds was a professor at Pennsylvania College in Gettysburg, and a staunch advocate of abolitionist principles.  He was a founding member of the Adams County Anti-Slavery Society, in 1836, and a delegate to the 1837 Pennsylvania State Anti-Slavery Convention in Harrisburg. He supported William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator through subscriptions and donations.

Documentation: Murder of a Supposed Fugitive, The National Era, May 6, 1852; The Fatal Slave Case at Columbia, Frederick Douglass Paper, May 13, 1852; The Columbia Murder, The National Era, May 20, 1852;  May 27, 1852.

Baltimore sheriff who, armed with a warrant issued by Commissioner Richard McAllister, cornered fugitive slave William Smith in a lumberyard in Columbia, Lancaster County.  When Smith resisted arrest, Ridgely shot him in the neck and the man died almost immediately.  Ridgely fled the scene, returning to Baltimore where he died not long after the incident.

See "Johnson, Catherine M."

Documentation: S.S. Rutherford, "The Underground Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County, 1928, p. 6.

During an October 1845 incident in which a party of Maryland slave catchers was led from Harrisburg to the William Rutherford farm in Swatara Township, Moll Rockey, a Harrisburg resident, was employed by the slave catchers as extra help.  S. S. Rutherford described Rockey as "a host in himself and proved a valuable acquisition to the slave catchers, for in a short time the negroes surrendered."  Rutherford wrote that Rockey later "spoke of that night's escapade as one of the things of which he had repented."

I have been unable to locate anyone named "Moll Rockey" in the 1850 Pennsylvania census. This is probably a nickname.

Documentation: Marshall R. Anspach, Ed., Historical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 1961.

As residents and property owners in an African American community just north of town known then as "Nigger Hollow," (now Freedom Road) in Loyalsock Township, the Rodericks used their homes as hiding places for fugitive slaves brought to them from Williamsport.  Lawyer Charles W. Scates was one person who sent fugitives to the Roderick home.  From this location, fugitives were led to the next station at Trout Run, often by a member of the Daniel Hughes family.

Documentation: S.S. Rutherford, "The Underground Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County, 1928, p. 7.

Located on the west side of present day Derry Street, in the vicinity of 61st Street, Abner Rutherford's farm was used as a secondary station, when the other Rutherford farms were being watched by slave catchers. Abner, Samuel S. and William W. were all sons of William Rutherford Sr.

Documentation: S.S. Rutherford, "The Underground Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County, 1928, p. 3.

William W. Rutherford sent fugitives from his Front Street home to the farm of his brother Sam, in Paxtang. This was likely the first stop after leaving Harrisburg. From this location they traveled further east on the turnpike (now Derry Street) to one of the other Rutherford farms. Two structures from this farm are still standing today. The mansion house, built in 1858, is visible from Interstate 83 and is owned by the County of Dauphin, which maintains it as a senior center. The springhouse is located on Paxtang Parkway, beneath the Interstate 83 overpass. While it is possible that slaves were sheltered in the springhouse at one time, Rutherford family historian S(amuel) S(choll) Rutherford, grandson of Samuel S. Rutherford, writing in 1928, states that the barn, which is no longer standing, was used instead. There are no stories or evidence that mention the use of the mansion house as a shelter for freedom seekers. The barn that was used was torn down when the highway was constructed in the 1960's.

Documentation: S.S. Rutherford, "The Underground Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County, 1928, p. 4.

The Thomas Rutherford family owned about 400 acres of land in present day Swatara Township and Paxtang Borough in 1755. The original family farm was divided between two sons, William and Samuel, upon Thomas's death in 1804. William's portion was located where the Lawnford Acres Development now stands. This original farm was one of the first Underground Railroad stations operated by whites in the area, and may have been operating as early as the first decade of the 1800 s. A barn, built by William Rutherford in 1805, was standing until the late 1990 s, and was a documented hiding place for fugitive slaves in the 1840 s.  According to family historians, William Rutherford sent fugitives to Joseph Meese in Linglestown.  William Rutherford Sr. died in 1850.

Documentation: S.S. Rutherford, "The Underground Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County, 1928, p. 3.

Dr. William Wilson Rutherford, a member of the large and actively anti-slavery Rutherfords 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 cited by family historian S(amuel) S(choll) Rutherford (grandson of Samuel S. Rutherford, above, as an URR station. Located near the end of the Market Street bridge, Rutherford sheltered 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 in Harrisburg to the farms owned by his relatives in Swatara Township.

The Jeremiah Zeamer papers in the Cumberland County Historical Society archives 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.  Local lore says that a tunnel ran from Rutherford s home to the riverbank, providing covert access to and from his home for fugitives. There is no evidence to support this claim.

Frederic Godcharles, in his Chronicles of Central Pennsylvania (1944) says that the accused fugitive slaves from the 1847 McClintock Riot in Carlisle were sent to Dr. Rutherford, who forwarded them north. (page 149). When Garrison visited Harrisburg in 1847, he characterized Rutherford as an old subscriber to the newspaper. A page from Garrison's account book lists W. W. Rutherford as a subscriber, dated 22 June 1840.