Despite the divided landscape, freedom seekers still found their way through northern New Jersey on their journeys and networks developed to assist them as needed. Connections between participants in the community were familial as well as through participation in causes like temperance and abolition, as well as in the development of the Republican Party in New Jersey.
Newspaper Accounts, 1853-1859
Few incidents appear in the anti-slavery press about the Underground Railroad work in Paterson, New Jersey. The earliest reference was published on April 22, 1853, in the Frederick Douglass Paper, titled “Results of Slave Catching.” This was a re-told account from The Pennsylvania Freeman. According to the article, told the narrow escape of freedom seeker Robert Thomas, who took his freedom twenty years before. According to the article, “some ‘hunters of men’ from Virginia . . . came to Trenton, NJ to capture” him, but came without the required warrant. The news spread of what these men were up to, and the article reported “. . . at Paterson, and before they could return with their warrant, the winds had whispered their errand, and the destined prey and escaped.” While it is not clear whether the warrant had to be obtained at Paterson, or Mr. Thomas was at Paterson, a network was in place to get this information to help save this man from this fate of being taken back into enslavement.
Two incidents also covered provide information about the network of assistance in place to assist freedom seekers. On May 11, 1855, Frederick Douglass’ Paper published an article submitted by the “Under-Ground Railroad Office, Paterson, New Jersey.” The letter was dated May 1st and was titled “Escape of Fugitive Slaves.” The text read:
Within the last forty-eight hours, a slave named S----, with his wife and children, who were proceeding from the “land of Legree and the home of the slave,” were helped forward in their journey by friends here, to “that borne whence no (colored) traveler returns.” It is to be presumed that by the time your readers have seen this, they will be where the servant is free from his master. He stated that his former master was Major H-----, of Maryland near Baltimore.
The author of the article wanted to promote this activity in the anti-slavery press but was concerned about providing a buffer of time for the family to get to Canada before describing where this family came from, their enslaver, and the destination. This person used the term “Under-Ground Railroad” to describe this network. Curious whether the names were redacted by the author of the submission or the editor of the paper.
Paterson was referenced in a story published in The National Era on April 15, 1858, that placed it on the road to safety in Canada. In a piece titled “Slaves and Souls”, the story of an unnamed freedom seeker placed Paterson as a place of safety after a harrowing near capture event over 300 miles west of this community in the western Pennsylvania town of Blairsville. The article begins with this unnamed person “arriving at Paterson, NJ on Sunday, and was fed, and forwarded towards British free soil.” Paterson was the destination after, “A Mr. Stump, from Virginia caught his runaway African at Blairsville, PA, a few days since, by the aid of the U.S. Marshal, and was about to ship him to Virginia, when an excited crowd surrounded the negro and his captors. Stump got frightened and discharged his pistol into the crowd, and then he and the marshal immediately took to their heels. A colored mob followed Stump to the dept, hooting and pelting him, and he returned to Virginia, while his negro was put on the underground railroad in an opposite direction.”
In April 1859, Douglass Monthly reprinted an article from Paterson (NJ) Guardian, the account of freedom seeker Jack Black whose path brought him through Paterson on what seems from the article to be a well-worn path. Without the original text from the Paterson Guardian, it is hard to determine how much the article has been edited and which observations are by Frederick Douglass or which came from the author in Paterson. According to the article, Mr. Black was enslaved in an unidentified southern state and was engaged in hauling lumber to a beach and load it onto a vessel which was bound for a northern port. He stowed away on the ship which landed at Jersey City. For the rest, the account is quoted:
From Jersey City he made his way to Paterson in company with a friend. Here he was duly taken in charge; a ticket over the Underground was purchased, and after being duly labeled and delivered, Jack was entrusted to the Lightning Express which conveyed him safely to the region where- “The wicked cease from troubling, and the Weary are at rest. Where the servant is free from his master.”
What is clear is that there was a system in place to guide Mr. Black from his arrival at the port at Jersey City to safety along the Underground Railroad, and that trail led through Paterson. What does not appear in the article are any names of the individuals who assisted Mr. Black. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that attributions were made to this work in the obituaries of participants. Additionally, families transmitted their memories of this work through the generations through oral preservation of this history.