"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

One who warmly loved and greatly respected Friend Wilson took him once to the rooms of an eminent daguerreotypist, hoping that while he engaged the venerable man in looking at the objects around the room, the artist might be able to catch a likeness. But Samuel suspected some artifice, and no picture was taken. Some time after, however, the perseverance of his friend was rewarded by obtaining an excellent oil-painting of the aged man, from whom a reluctant consent to sit for his likeness had at length been obtained. It was remarked, however, that the expression of the face in the painting was sorrowful, as if the honorable man was grieved at complying with a custom which he had long stigmatized as idolatrous,—as idolatry of the perishing body.

Although at the time of the great division in the Society of Friends Samuel Wilson had decidedly taken the part of Elias Hicks, yet was he seldom or never heard to discuss those questions of dogmatic theology which some have thought were involved in that contest.

Samuel probably held, with many others of his Society, that the highest and surest guide which man possesses here is that Light which has been said to illumine every man that comes into the world; that next in importance is a rightly inspired gospel ministry, and afterward the Scriptures of truth. One evening, when certain mechanics in his employ were resting from their labors in the old-fashioned kitchen, he fell into conversation with them on matters of religion, and shocked one of his family, as he entered the sitting-room, by a sudden declaration of opinion. It was probably the uncommon warmth of his manner which produced this effect, quite as much as or more than the words that he spoke, which were nearly as follows: “There’s no use talking about it; the only religion in the world that’s worth anything is what makes men do what is right and leave off doing what is wrong.”

As far as was possible for one with so much fearless independence of thought and action, Samuel Wilson maintained the testimony of Friends against war. Not only did he suffer his corn to be seized in the field rather than voluntarily to pay the military taxes of the last war with Great Britain, but he went to what may appear to some a laughable extreme, in forbidding his young son’s going to the turnpike to see the grand procession which was passing near their house, escorting General Lafayette on his last visit to this country. He was not, however, alone in this. I have heard of other decided Friends who declined to swell the ovation to a man who was especially distinguished as a military hero. But we shall see hereafter that Friend Wilson met with circumstances which tried his non-resistant opinions further than they would bear.

The distinctive trait of his character, however,—that trait which made him exceptional,—was his attachment to the people of color. It was in entertaining fugitives from slavery that he showed the wide hospitality already referred to; and in this active benevolence he was excelled by few in our country. He inherited from his father this love of man; but I have imagined that the hostility to slavery was made broad and deep in his soul by removing, with the rest of his family, in his youth, from Pennsylvania into Delaware, and seeing the bondage which was suffered by colored people in the latter State contrasted with what he had seen in the former. Be that as it may, no sooner was he a householder than his door was ever open to those who were escaping from the South, coming by stealth and in darkness, having travelled in the slave States from the house of one free negro to another, and in Pennsylvania from Quaker to Quaker, until in later times the hostility to slavery increased in our community so far that others became agents of this underground railroad, and other routes were opened.

When the Wilson family came down in the morning, they saw around them these strange sable or yellow travellers (“strangers,” they were called in the family), who, having arrived during the night, had been received by some wakeful member of the household.

What feelings filled the hearts of the exiles! Alone, at times, having left all that they had ever loved of persons or of places, fearful, tired, foot-sore, throwing themselves upon the charity and the honor of a man unknown to them save by name and the direction which they had received to him, as one trustworthy.

Sometimes they came clothed in the undyed woollen cloth that showed so plainly to one experienced in the matter, the region of its manufacture; the heavy, strong cloth which had delighted the wearer’s heart when he received the annual Christmas suit with which his master furnished him, but which was now too peculiar and striking for him safely to wear. Women and children came too, and sometimes in considerable numbers.

When they had eaten and partaken of the necessary repose, they would communicate to Friend Wilson, in a secure situation, some particulars of their former history, especially the names and residences of the masters from whom they had escaped.

Some years after he had begun to entertain these strangers, Friend Wilson commenced a written record of those who came to him, and whence and from whom they had escaped. This list is estimated to have finally contained between five and six hundred names.