Enslavementto
freedom
People involved with the story of Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad network, including activists, freedom seekers, station masters, conductors, financiers, lawyers, slave hunters, abolitionists, anti-slavery and pro-slavery adherents, politicians, heroes, villains, and more.
Study Areas
Who's Who in Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad
I Surnames
- Ingraham, Edward D.
- Location: Philadelphia; Role: Federal Fugitive Slave Commissioner
Documentation: American Anti-Slavery Society, The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims, Anti-Slavery Tracts #13, 1856.
Philadelphia lawyer appointed as United States Commissioner to hear cases under the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When Harrisburg's Richard McAllister resigned from the office of slave commissioner sometime in the mid 1850's, slave catchers were forced to take their captives to Philadelphia to appear before Commissioner Ingraham. It was Edward D. Ingraham who issued to Maryland slave owner Edward Gorsuch the warrants for the seizure of four fugitives, said to be hiding in Pennsylvania, that led to the fight at William Parker's house in Christiana. Ingraham died in late 1854.