Peter Freedman, the Kidnapped and the Ransomed

On August 6, 1850, Peter Freedman, a formerly enslaved black man who had recently purchased his freedom, arrived at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (PASS) building in Philadelphia. Only a couple hundred miles separate Philadelphia and the Maryland Eastern Shore where Peter was born. But his journey to Philadelphia, marked by a detour in bondage to the deep south, was anything but brief.

Peter was born to Levin and Sidney Steel, both owned by enslaver Saunders Griffin. By 1800, Levin Steel had earned several hundred dollars–enough to purchase his freedom–by hiring himself out for pay after completing his duties on the Griffin plantation. But without the funds to secure freedom papers for his wife Sidney and their four children, or the belief that Griffin would permit such a transaction, the couple made a plan for Sidney and the children to escape to Philadelphia where Levin would be waiting for them. In the spring of 1805 Sidney seized an opportunity to escape with their four children–Levin Junior, Peter, Mahala, and Kitturah. They’d ultimately reunite with Levin Sr. in Greenwich, New Jersey. After a short-lived reunion, a crew of slave catchers tracked the family down and returned Sidney and children to the Griffin plantation.

Sidney spent the next few months confined to an attic, only being released to complete her household chores. In the winter of 1806 when Griffin finally loosened his hold, Sidney decided that it was necessary for her to be free, once and for all. Fearing particularly for the physical and sexual abuse her young daughters would face as they matured, she made the difficult decision of carrying them with her but leaving her older sons behind with her mother. Sidney prayed for protection over Levin and Peter, now eight and six years old respectively. Then she made her escape.

Sidney eventually reached the free state of New Jersey, where she reunited with her husband. To keep a low profile Sidney changed her first name to “Charity” and the family adopted the surname “Still”.

The historical record is uncertain on the specific details of Levin Junior's and Peter’s lives. What is certain is that the young boys fell into the hands–either by purchase or kidnapping–of John Fischer, who owned a large brickyard in Lexington, Kentucky. As teenagers, they were then sold to Nat Gist. Gist by many accounts was a drunkard and harsh master who believed in the frequent flogging of his twenty-something slaves that worked at the Fischer brickyard. By 1821, both brothers would find themselves in Bainbridge, Alabama, laboring on the 480 acre cotton plantation of Nat’s nephew, Levi Gist. They were permitted to marry and visit their wives who were enslaved on nearby plantations. Yet Levin passed away a decade later in 1831. In the wake of his brother’s death, Peter declared that he would one day be a free man and reunite with his long lost family.³

He’d make this vow a reality by purchasing his freedom in 1850, nearly fifty years after his father purchased his and his mother ran for hers. Peter shared this story, in much greater detail, with William Still, the black abolitionist and mail clerk for PASS who welcomed him in Philadelphia.

William Still & The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society

William Still was the youngest of his mother’s eighteen children, four of whom are assumed to have died at birth.⁴ As he listened to Peter’s story, he could not help but notice similarities between Peter’s family history and his own. He knew that his parents had been born, raised, and wed in slavery on the Maryland Eastern Shore. He knew that he had two older brothers who had remained in slavery at the time that his parents and two of his sisters had been liberated.

The very next day after their encounter, the brothers traveled to Burlington County, New Jersey, where Peter was reunited with their mother Sidney Steel, now eighty years old and living under the alias Charity Still. Years after this reunion, Peter, with William’s help, would go on to free his wife and children who had remained enslaved in Alabama.

This family reunion would further motivate William and his wife, Letitia George, to aid and hide fugitives escaping from slavery in the south. With the assistance of dozens of Underground Railroad stationmasters and conductors, William Still would go on to coordinate and facilitate the escapes of nearly one thousand runaways.

As an adolescent in Burlington, Still labored across various timber yards, farms, and markets. In 1844, he relocated to Philadelphia with just three dollars, a bag of clothing, the values instilled by his parents, and a hatred for the “atrocious character of slavery” that’d been brewing in his spirit due to his family history and his own encounters with fugitives seeking their freedom.³ In September 1847, he applied and was hired to work as a clerk of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society (PASS).

Still would go on to become chairman of the PASS’s new Vigilance Committee that aimed to provide aid and structure to the liberation efforts of fugitives seeking sanctuary in Pennsylvania in the wake of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act: “Vigilance committees, which existed in many northern cities, were the most structured vehicles of the UGRR. In Philadelphia, Quakers established and supported the PASS, but working-class blacks served as the backbone of its vigilance committee. Free blacks sheltered and transported fugitives and gathered and relayed crucial information to Still. Others kept watch for suspicious whites they observed in the hotels or boardinghouses or on the streets of the city.” By 1850 Philadelphia boasted the nation’s largest free Black community. This community “raised the bulk of the Vigilance Committee’s operating funds from African American benevolent societies and AME Church-affiliated auxiliaries”.³

In addition to the Vigilance Committee, the UGRR was supported by a vast network of individuals who took on various levels of risk to aid self-emancipating slaves. Abolitionists leaned into the vocabulary of the railroad to speak discreetly about their work.

• Station: Home where fugitives were harbored
• Stationmaster: Abolitionist who housed runaways in their home
• Conductor: Abolitionist who guided fugitives between stations
• Stockholder: Co-conspirator who “played a less dangerous—and less conspicuous role, but one that was extremely important. They provided the finances needed for bribes, transportation, food, and clothing.” ³

Notes on a Criminal Conspiracy

“The risk of aiding fugitives was never lost sight of, and the safety of all concerned called for still tongues. Hence sad and thrilling stories were listened to, and made deep impressions; but as a universal rule, friend and fugitive parted with only very vivid recollection of the secret interview and with mutual sympathy; for a length of time no narratives were written. The writer, in common with others, took no notes. But after the restoration of Peter Still, his own brother (the kidnapped and the ransomed), after forty years' cruel separation from his mother, the wonderful discovery and joyful reunion, the idea forced itself upon his mind that all over this wide and extended country thousands of mothers and children, separated by Slavery, were in a similar way living without the slightest knowledge of each other’s whereabouts, praying and weeping without ceasing, as did this mother and son. Under these reflections it seemed reasonable to hope that by carefully gathering the narratives of Underground Rail Road passengers, in some way or other some of the bleeding and severed hearts might be united and comforted;”

— William Still, Preface to The Underground Rail Road (1872)²

Fortunately for historians, William Still not only coordinated, but also recorded the "hardships, hair-breadth escapes, and death struggles" of hundreds of fugitives along the Eastern Line of the UGRR. And fortunately for archivists, James A. McGowan and William C. Kashatus compiled a database of the runaway slaves interviewed by William Still between 1853-1861.⁵

Almost three hundred of these freedom seekers were fleeing slavery in Virginia. Fugitive Data Portraits pairs the text of these testimonies with data visualizations to explore the identities of these individuals and their journeys to freedom. Still's records include detailed information about a person's age, sex, mode of transportation, literacy, date of escape, whether or not they were armed, and the reward amount for their capture, if any.

Each of these stories is rich with reflections on family and friends, joy and pain, freedom and slavery, memories and future aspirations. I'm grateful for the efforts of the people documented in these records. That gratitude also extends to William Still, who in his efforts to preserve these stories risked his own life. He championed these fugitives as their own heroes and recognized the necessity of preserving their stories.