The family of John Kline (1817-1865) and his wife, Harriet (1819- c. 1896) were deeply connected to Paterson’s AME Zion Church. Their Underground Railroad attribution came from self-declared Underground Railroad supporter, Orrin Vanderhoven, the editor of Paterson newspapers, who periodically published his recollections of the history of Paterson as he observed it. On July 15, 1886, his column focused on the development of Paterson’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He included the biography of John Kline, a religious man with a fine singing voice who one of three founding trustees. According to Vanderhoven, John Kline was born enslaved in Hunterdon County, New Jersey and was able to work himself free under the apprentice law when he was 25 years old.
John and Harriet Kline had already started their family before coming to Paterson in 1842. Also included was, “His house was for years one of the stations on the underground railroad and many a fugitive slave has been hidden and fed under his roof.” Public record documentation of the Kline family presence in Paterson can be confirmed. They appear in the 1850 and 1860 East Ward census returns and Harriet appears in the 1866 Paterson city directory as widowed and living on Lafayette Street. In 1913 the AME Zion church installed a marble tablet honoring the founders of the church, including John Kline and Harriet Kline.