A native of Paterson, William “Billy” Langwith (1830-1888), was the first child of Charles Langwith, an immigrant from Cheshire, England and New Jersey native Amanda Crowell. According to the 1850 federal census, he was living in a boarding house with his younger brother, Samuel. Billy was a machinist, and his brother was a molder. By 1860, he had married, lived in his own home and rented rooms to four single men. He had opened a restaurant that served oysters as a specialty. He was interested in the temperance movement and did not serve liquor there until the mid-1860s. He also expanded his business into a hotel and was very successful. His obituary described his failing health but success in business that provided support for his extended family.
His business was faced on Broadway but also had a back entrance that opened on to the Dublin Spring Creek Ditch which was well used as a back route between stations along and near this corridor. Langwith’s obituary also described his participation. In this recounting it focuses on the rotation of places in this vicinity to support freedom seekers. His obituary states,
“Then under the hardware store now on the corner of Main and West Broadway, Mr. Langwith had a modest dining or oyster saloon. There was no liquor sold and it was no resort for loafers, and it was a safe place for an underground railroad station, as all these places of refuge for runaway slaves were termed then. The oyster shop entrance was on Broadway right near an alley which then went along the Dublin Spring Brook run, to Van Houten Street. It was easy in case of alarm to run the slaves through the alley from Van Houten Street or else through the then open space in front of the Industry Mills, as Low’s factory was called, out over the Flour Mill or Bently Bridge straight up to Langwith’s. No one ever suspected … William Langwith in this was true and worked with Darius Wells, H.M. Low, Nathaniel Lane, Wm. Cook, and others.”