The success of the Underground Railroad depended on the participation of sympathizers in hundreds of areas throughout the country, each operating independently. Each area was distinctive both geographically and societally. This work focuses on the contributions of people in the Adirondack region, including their collaboration with operatives from Albany to New York City. With more than 10 years of research, the author has been able to take what for years in northern New York was considered akin to legend and transform it into history. Abolitionist newspapers--such as Friend of Man, Liberator, Pennsylvania Freeman, Emancipator, National Anti-Slavery Standard, and the little known Albany Patriot--that were published weekly from 1841 to 1848, as well as materials from local archives, were utilized. The book has extensive maps, photographs and appendices; key contributors to the cause are identified, abolition meetings and conventions are described, and maps of the Underground Railroad stations by county are provided.

A guide to underground railroad sites in eastern New York and a companion to the underground railroad in the Adirondack Region.

The Town of Chester in upstate Warren County, New York, was a secret haven for runaway slaves escaping to Canada along the Underground Railroad. The small Adirondack town holds as many as nine confirmed or suspected sites where fugitives once found shelter. Stories abound of residents discovering secret rooms containing beds and other artifacts within their homes. The first abolitionist pastor of the Darrowsville Wesleyan Church, Reverend Thomas Baker, reportedly hid fugitive slaves in the parsonage. Color photographs and interviews with current residents illuminate the region's hidden history with the Underground Railroad movement. With the support of the Historical Society of the Town of Chester, Donna Lagoy and Laura Seldman reveal these courageous stories of local families who risked everything in the pursuit of freedom for all.

This up-to-date compilation details the most significant stops along the Underground Railroad. Places of the Underground Railroad: A Geographical Guide presents an overview of the various sites that comprised this unique road to freedom, with entries chosen to represent all regions of the United States and Canada. Where most works on the Underground Railroad focus on the people involved, this unique guide explores the intricacies of travel that allowed the "conductors" to carry out the tasks entrusted to them. It presents an accurate picture of just where the Underground Railroad was and how it operated, including routes and itineraries and connections between the various Railroad locations. Through information about these locations, the book takes readers from the beginnings of organized aid to fugitive slaves during the period following the American Revolution up to the Civil War. It delineates the possible routes fugitive slaves may have taken by identifying the rivers, canals, and railroads that were sometimes used. And it shows that a network, though decentralized and variable over time and place, truly was established among Underground Railroad participants.

The Underground Railroad was perhaps the best example in U.S. history of blacks and whites working together for the common good. People of the Underground Railroad is the largest in-depth collection of profiles of those individuals involved in the spiriting of black slaves to freedom in the northern states and Canada beginning around 1800 and lasting to the early Civil War years. One hundred entries introduce people who had a significant role in the rescuing, harboring, or conducting of the fugitives—from abolitionists, evangelical ministers, Quakers, philanthropists, lawyers, judges, physicians, journalists, educators, to novelists, feminists, and barbers—as well as notable runaways. The selections are geographically representational of the broad railroad network. There is renewed interest in the Underground Railroad, exemplified by the new National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and energized scholarly inquiry. People of the Underground Railroad presents authoritative information gathered from the latest research and established sources, many of them from period publications. Designed for student research and general browsing, in-depth essay entries include further reading. Numerous sidebars complement the entries. A timeline, illustrations, and map help put the profiles into context.

A historian investigates evidence for the existence of the Underground Railroad in upstate New York. Because of its clandestine nature, much of the history of the Underground Railroad remains shrouded in secrecy—so much so that some historians have even doubted its importance. After decades of research, Tom Calarco recounts his experiences compiling evidence to give credence to the legend’s oral history in upstate New York. As the Civil War loomed and politicians from the North and South debated the fate of slavery, brave New Yorkers risked their lives to help fugitive slaves escape bondage. Whites and Blacks alike worked together on the Underground Railroad, using ingenious methods of communication and tactics to stay ahead of the slave master and bounty hunter. Especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, conscientious residents doubled their efforts to help runaways reach Canada. Join Calarco on this journey of discovery of one of the noblest endeavors in American history.

During the fourteen years Sydney Howard Gay edited the American Anti-Slavery Society's National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York City, he worked with some of the most important Underground agents in the eastern United States, including Thomas Garrett, William Still and James Miller McKim. Gay's closest associate was Louis Napoleon, a free black man who played a major role in the James Kirk and Lemmon cases. For more than two years, Gay kept a record of the fugitives he and Napoleon aided. These never before published records are annotated in this book. Revealing how Gay was drawn into the bitter division between Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, the work exposes the private opinions that divided abolitionists. It describes the network of black and white men and women who were vital links in the extensive Underground Railroad, conclusively confirming a daily reality.