Local history: These abolitionists in the northern Poconos answered the call

Editor's note: This column originally published in the Hawley News Eagle in 2014, which has since become part of the Tri-County Independent.

HAWLEY – The Wayne County Herald gave a report of the public meeting held November 7, 1850 in the new schoolhouse in Hawley. This may have been the school erected the year before at Shanty Hill (Marble Hill), which still stands.

The purpose of the meeting was to establish resolutions to be published, denouncing the recently enacted law. This federal law made it a crime for citizens to harbor runaway slaves or otherwise assist them in their escape to freedom.

James Purdy was named president of the session; Amzi L. Woodward and William L. Stuart were named vice-presidents, Dr. John R. Thomas and Frederick Saxton were appointed secretaries. Thomas, along with Saxton, William C. Freeman, Charles Jameson and Charles Daniels were named to the committee on resolutions.

Purdy, we found, was a charter member of the Baptist Church in Hawley, founded in 1834, and the son of early Paupack Township settler and Baptist preacher Elder William Purdy. James and his wife Charity operated a farm along the Plank Road just west of Hawley, opposite the canal and river. This is today Route 6, in the general vicinity of Wallenpaupack Bowling Center. James was 77 when he died in 1860.

A question is raised, did anyone in this group do more than denounce the Fugitive Slave Law? Could anyone have participated as an “agent” on the Underground Railroad?

Not an actual rail line, this was the term used for numerous routes where sympathetic northerners would secretly harbor and transport escaped slaves from the South.

The Susquehanna River Valley through Pennsylvania is well known to have been a major conduit for this compassionate but controversial activity. A less well-traveled route occurred in eastern Pennsylvania, through Stroudsburg. There were Underground Railroad “stations” at Carbondale and Montrose, Pa., where runaways would have headed on their way north to Canada.

By its very nature, the Underground Railroad was clandestine.

Honesdale

Researching factual information is elusive. We do know that there was an ardent abolitionist in Honesdale who gave safe passage for slaves, by the name of Isaac Post Foster.

Foster (1788-1876) was a shoemaker, a prominent and wealthy merchant in early Honesdale, and one of the first elders of the Honesdale Presbyterian Church. Foster helped to organize the first temperance society in Wayne County and was said to be the County’s first abolitionist.

This brought conflict with the Presbyterian church leaders at the time, who favored abidance by the law and changing those laws, as a path to end slavery, over more radical intervention. Foster was forced to resign as ruling elder.

He was known for his eloquence on the subject.

Isaac P. Foster and his wife Mary opened their home at Park and Main Street (where Protection Engine Co. 3 fire station now stands) for fugitive slaves heading north. There are two accounts, that he hid them in his cellar, as well as in his barn out back. Hundreds of African Americans were said to have been assisted by Foster.

Foster was later reinstated in good standing with his church, which had come around to embrace his views on the slavery question.

Wilsonville

There must have been stops along the way from Stroudsburg to Honesdale, for the fugitives seeking freedom. This was an overnight journey in the days before the motor vehicle. Where the fugitives stayed or were taken on their way to Honesdale is not clear, but an historian researching the subject in 1945, Dr. Wilbur H. Siebert at Ohio State University, said that he had information runaway slaves passed through Wilsonville.

Correspondence on file at the Wayne County Historical Society show that he was in contact with Mrs. Myrtle V. Newton, Society Custodian on the subject. She replied to him that she had not heard anything about an Underground Railroad “station” at Wilsonville but was making inquiries. Siebert did not have knowledge of who was taking care of runaway slaves in that area.

Were those who had escaped taken by wagon? They may have been secreted up the Milford-Owego Turnpike to Honesdale, or perhaps they took the shorter route by way of the

Plank Road- Route 6— past where James Purdy lived at that time, on the outskirts of Hawley.

Passage by canal boat seems less than plausible, given the fact that canal boat owners did not own the Delaware & Hudson (D&H) canal, and could have risked trouble with the canal’s managers. In addition, the canal locks were closed at night, when transportation of runaways would have more likely occurred.

Being that Wilsonville is only a mile from Hawley, it is not hard to speculate that abolitionists in town, as well as in the surrounding countryside, may have exhibited both their hospitality and brazen courage in what they saw as a moral act of civil disobedience. There could have been more than one house or barn where they were taken, to help avoid suspicion.

We do know that Hawley, like many other northern communities, answered the Call to Arms when the War of the Rebellion broke out in 1861. A militia from Hawley was sent to Harrisburg, very possibly boarding Pennsylvania Coal Company coaches on the gravity railroad.

Sunflowers

While we have not yet determined who may have given the runaway slaves shelter in the Hawley area, it is not unreasonable to consider the list of supporters of overturning the Fugitive Slave Law, who met at the schoolhouse one November night in 1850.

Did the escaped slaves find refuge at the Purdy farm? We don’t know, but it was directly on the way to Honesdale and Isaac Foster’s stop.

Mrs. Newton wrote to Dr. Siebert, “Mr. Harry Rockwell, an old resident, remembers hearing that one of the signs signifying that help would be given to slaves, was three sunflowers under a west window of the house.”

We wonder if any among this Hawley group were raising sunflowers.

Sources:

• Lincoln: The Northeastern Pennsylvania Connection by Aileen Sallom Freeman (2000)

• Wayne County Historical Society files

• History of Hawley, Pa. (1927) by Michael J. McAndrews • History of Wayne County, Pa. (1880) by Phineas G. Goodrich

• History of Wayne County, Pa. (1880) by Phineas G. Goodrich

This article originally appeared on Tri-County Independent: These abolitionists in the northern Poconos answered the call