Huntoon and Van Rensalier 
Underground Railroad
Historic Site

Arriving in Paterson in late 1841, Vermont-born industrialist Josiah Huntoon (1813-91), achieving prominence in the coffee/spice trade, joined with emergent industrial leaders herein their already vocal and interracial anti-slavery partnership. Between 1849 and 1855 he built his home and steam-powered Excelsior Coffee/Spice Mill at Broadway and Bridge Street—“Huntoon’s Corner,” in the heart of what was later to become the city’s Fourth Ward. Here 20th century research has uncovered further partnership with William Van Rensalier, a Black engineer in his employ, and confirmed that, as thousands of Paterson Union supporters joined the war, Huntoon continued to collaborate not only with Van Rensalier, but with John and Harriet Kline, Henry and Mary Low and many other local activists in the rescue of fugitives, and to express—in writing and political action—abolitionist views uniformly described by contemporaries as ‘fierce.’ A local founder Republican, Huntoon was the only Patersonian introduced privately to William Lloyd Garrison on his postwar visit to family here in 1869. After his death in 1891, wife and political partner Sarah Doremus Huntoon gave an account of their activism to their son, Yale professor Louis Huntoon, confirming many other previous published assertions that “[d]uring the war, [Huntoon’s] cellars formed a link in the ‘Underground Railway’...for the freeing of slaves.”

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, information began to appear in the local press of individuals who participated in the networks of assistance for the freedom seekers whose journeys brought them through Paterson. These first hand accounts were published into the 1910s. Written by white men, these lists were predominately focusing on the activity of other white men. The attribution made it into a county history. In 1901, historian William Nelson included his observations. In a chapter about the treatment of the enslaved in New Jersey in the early 18th century, Nelson observed, “This town was a well-recognized “station” on the road by which runaway slaves from the South were helped on their way to Canada and freedom. John Avison, Darius Wells, Isaac Van Blarcom, Henry M. Low, Josiah P. Huntoon, Nathaniel Lane, and Alexander H. Freeman were among the anti-slavery men in Paterson early in the present century, who were ready to take great risks to aid the fugitives on their flight toward the North star.” Two African American operatives were also identified. William Van Rensalier’s descendants have stories of participation and John Kline, and his family, also were noted participants. The individuals whose history is described below are the ones with the most documentation uncovered to date. It is anticipated that the others in the lists of participants will be explored, and other names will surface.