"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

The next care was to bestow new titles upon the fugitives, that they might never be known by their former names to the pursuer and the betrayer.

From what has been already said, it may be supposed that these names were not always selected for their euphony or æsthetic associations. One tall, finely-built yellow man, who trembled when he was questioned in the sitting-room, lest his conversation about his old home and the free wife whom he longed to have brought to him should be overheard in the kitchen, expressed to me his dissatisfaction with his new name—Simon. “I never knowed anybody named that,” he said. His beautiful bright wife—bright in the colored sense,—that is, bright-colored, or nearly white,—was secretly and safely brought to him, and nursed him through that fatal disease which made him of no value in the man-market,—the market which had been the great horror of his life. The particulars Friend Wilson collected concerning his humble charge the venerable man entered in his day-book, in a place especially assigned to them. If this record were still existing, I should, perhaps, be able to tell what name the fortunate and unfortunate Simon had been obliged to renounce. This record, however, is lost, as I shall mention hereafter. If the services of any of these fugitives were needed, within-doors or without, and the master’s pursuit was not supposed to be imminent, they were detained for a while, or perhaps became permanent residents in the neighborhood; otherwise, they were forwarded at night to Friends living nearer Philadelphia. Of these, two other families willing to receive the poor exiles lived about twelve miles farther on.

The house and farm were generally pretty well stocked with colored people, who were a wonder to the neighbors of the Wilson family; for these were in a great measure “Pennsylvania Dutch,”—a people anxious to do as much work with their own hands and by the hands of their own family as possible, in order to avoid expense. It is a remarkable circumstance that, although Samuel Wilson during thirty years or more entertained the humble strangers, and although he received so large a number, only one of them was seized upon his “plantation” and taken back to slavery. This was owing partly to the secluded situation of his house, and partly to the prudence and discretion that he exercised. “He was crafty,” it has been said.

Neither did he suffer any legal expenses, such as lawsuits, from the slaveholders who came in pursuit of their fleeing bondmen. Two friends who lived not far from him, and who prosecuted kidnappers, had their barns burned, and others, of whom he had knowledge, suffered great pecuniary loss in consequence of their assisting runaway slaves. He, however, limited his care to receiving, entertaining, and forwarding those who came to him in person, and never undertook any measures of offence,—any border raids, so to speak,—such as sending secretly into Maryland and Virginia for the relatives and friends of fugitives who were still living in those States as slaves. The one person of whom I have spoken, who was recaptured from the Wilson farm, was a young girl of fifteen or sixteen. Samuel and Anna were absent from home at the time, gone on a little journey, such as they frequently took, to attend their own monthly and quarterly meetings; assisting to preserve the discipline and order of the Society of Friends. The men who came in pursuit of the young girl told her that her friends, who had run away too, had concluded to go back South again; and the poor child, under these circumstances, could hardly do anything but go with the beguilers; not, however, to find the friends whom she expected.

There was also a man who was very near being taken,—a man who had “come away,” to use the brief euphemism sometimes employed in the Wilson family in speaking of fugitives from slavery. He escaped by having gone down the creek or adjacent mill-stream to set his muskrat-traps. This creek where it ran by the house was well wooded; therefore the colored man, looking up to the house, could see the white strangers without being seen himself. With what trembling did he see that they were persons whom he “knowed in Murrland,” as he expressed it! However, the friendly woods sheltered him, while Samuel at the house was talking with the slaveholder or his agents,—kidnappers, as the Wilsons called them.

The men told Samuel that they had come after a runaway nigger,—black, five feet ten inches high, lost one of his front teeth, etc. To this description Friend Wilson listened in silence. I do not know what he would have done had he been directly questioned by them, for the different items suited him of the muskrats,—the man who had gone to the woods. But during Samuel’s continued silence they went on to say, “He’s a very ornary nigger; no dependence to be placed on him nohow.” “There is no man here,” rejoined Samuel, greatly relieved, “that answers the description.” “We’ve very good reason to think he came here,” said one; “we got word very direct; reckon he’s lyin’ around here. Hain’t there been no strange nigger here?”

“There was a colored man here, but he has gone away; I don’t know as he will ever come back again.” For, from the man’s protracted absence, he doubtless had some idea of his having seen his pursuers, and having sought shelter.

“Tell him that his master says that if he will only come back again, down to Baltimore County, he sha’n’t be whipped, nor sold, nor nuthin’, but everything shall be looked over.”

“I’ll tell him what you say,” said Samuel, “if ever I see him again; but,” he added, regaining his accustomed independence, “I’ll tell him, too, that if I was in his place I’d never go back to you again.”

The men left, and under cover of the friendly night the fugitive sought a more secure hiding place.