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
N Surnames
- Naylor, Freeman
- Location: West Middletown Borough, Washington County ; Role: UGRR
stationmaster, conductor
Documentation: Earle Robert Forrest, History of Washington County, Pennsylvania, 1926, p. 426.
Virginia-born free African American who aided fugitive slaves escape from Wheeling Virginia to West Middletown. Forrest says that Naylor settled in West Middletown after the war, but the 1850 census shows him there as a 28-year-old laborer with a small family.
- Nelson, Grayson Snowden
- Location: Reading Borough, Berks County ; Role: UGRR
stationmaster, conductor
Documentation: Still, William, The Underground Railroad, 1872.
G. S. Nelson operated an "Underground Railroad Depot" per William Still, who received freedom seekers from Nelson. Nelson was a link between Joseph C. Bustill in Harrisburg and William Still in Philadelphia, utilizing the actual railroad lines to move freedom seekers between cities. Nelson also forwarded freedom seekers by rail directly to John W. Jones in Elmira, New York, who forwarded them to Canada.
John W. Jones and Grayson S. Nelson had both been enslaved in Leesburg, Virginia, and both began operating in their respective cities about 1851.
- Nelson, James
- Location: Greene Township, Beaver County; Role: UGRR stationmaster and activist
Documentation: J. F. Richard, History of Beaver County, 1888, chapter XXVIII.
A Greene Township farmer who, according to J. F. Richard's county history "aided and sheltered fugitive slaves."
- Nesbit, Wiliam
- Location: Altoona, Blair County; Role: UGRR conductor and anti-slavery activist
Documentation: Obituary, "William Nesbit: Death of a Much Respected Colored Citizen of Altoona," Altoona Tribune, 28 October 1895.
Born in 1822 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Moved to Hollidaysburg circa 1841 and worked as a barber. Married Sarah Thomas (1815-1888) in 1842. Nesbit visited Liberia in 1853 under the auspices of the American Colonization Society but returned to Hollidaysburg after four months, thoroughly discouraged with the conditions there. In 1855 he and his family relocated to Altoona where he continued barbering and became active in politics, anti-slavery and the Underground Railroad. A member of the Union League and first president of the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League, he worked for and was instrumental in the creation and passage of the 14th Amendment. His obituary (1895) states "During the prevalence of slavery he was always an active worker in the schemes of the 'underground railway,' and many a negro is living to-day who first tasted of freedom through the efforts of Mr. Nesbit and his associates."