They traveled by foot and by covered wagon, moving under the cover of night. They sought refuge in cellars, and they relied on strangers for support. They were traveling the Underground Railroad, the secretive path of safe houses that led thousands of escaped slaves to “free” states in the North before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
In the nearly 150 years since the Underground Railroad ceased operation, myths and legends have grown around its memory. Neither literally underground nor an actual railway, the Underground Railroad ran throughout the nation, stopping wherever there was someone willing to provide assistance.
New Jersey alone had as many as four main routes, all of which converged in Jersey City.
“Jersey City, New Jersey was a crucial link in the operation of the eastern corridor of the Underground Railroad,” said Giles Wright, director of the Afro-American History program at the New Jersey Historical Commission since 1984. “Jersey City was a key community for the Underground Railroad for a number of runaways.”
As the last stop in New Jersey before fugitive slaves reached New York, Jersey City played an integral role – by some estimates, more than 60,000 escaped slaves traveled through Jersey City.
Facing resistance
These determined individuals were aided on their journey by free blacks and white abolitionists who provided shelter and transportation even when popular sentiment did not look kindly on escaped slaves or the abolition movement.
New Jersey remained a slave state for quite some time after other Northern states abolished slavery. In fact, for a time New Jersey was known as “the slave state of the North.” New Jersey – and especially North Jersey – was a dangerous place for runaways, particularly after the passage in 1850 of the Fugitive Slave Act, which made aiding a runaway slave a criminal offense.
Jersey City as a whole was overwhelmingly antagonistic toward abolitionists in the early and mid-19th century. Historians have noted that even prominent public figures such as Major Zebian K. Pangborn, co-founder of Jersey City’s Evening Journal, for which Journal Square is named, were stoned by crowds while making abolitionist speeches.
Such resistance to abolition and a general lack of sympathy for runaway slaves on the national level forced those involved in the Underground Railroad go about their plans covertly, making the job of historians difficult.
“Given the fact that this was a secret operation and the urgency of the situation, people didn’t take the time to sit down and write who was doing what,” said Dr. Carmela Karnoutsos, a professor of history at New Jersey City University who has studied Jersey City’s role in the Underground Railroad for 30 years and who maintains www.historyofjerseycity.org. “People were on the move, people were fearful, people didn’t have the luxury to do the documentation.”
Fortunately, after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ended the need for the railroad in 1863, some did take the time to write. Individuals either directly or indirectly involved with the railroad’s operation became the system’s best documenters.
In addition to historians such as professor Wilbur H. Siebert, who wrote The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom in 1898, other abolitionists such as New Jersey native William Still – whose parents had been slaves and who wrote the seminal 1870 book The Underground Railroad – and Jersey City newspaperman Alexander MacLean – whose father’s farm outside of Newark was used to harbor runaway slaves – documented the efforts of sympathizers and, very importantly, the routes taken by escaped slaves.
The path to freedom
A former associate editor for the Evening Journal, MacLean wrote in great detail about the path escaped slaves took through Jersey City in his 1908 paper, The Underground Railroad in Hudson County.
According to MacLean, “The general route led by the Newark or Belleville turnpike along Newark Avenue to the ferry, and thence to the railroad station in New York. Spies watched the wagons arriving after dark, and the necessity of paying ferriage on the cargo made it compulsory for drivers to divulge to the ferrymaster that there were passengers in the covered vehicle. Sometimes the spies caught sight of the fugitives, and captures and escapes were frequent. For this reason, there were always men in the crowd who knew how to guide the fugitives, and there were runways known to these guides which led to safety.”
The perilous journey took one of several different routes, MacLean wrote. “Friends directed the hunted creatures to New York by way of the Hoboken ferry to Barclay Street. Sometimes they were led to the foot of Washington Street, or to the lumber yard wharf near the ferry; sometimes they were taken to the foot of Hudson Street and hidden in the coal boats. … The guides shook off the pursuers and reached a coal-laden boat discharging a cargo, where the runaway was placed in a small, cave-like compartment beneath the cabin of the boat, the entrance to which was then covered with coal; there, half smothered by coaldust, the fugitive remained in hiding until the pursuit ceased, and he could be dug out and started again on his way to freedom.”
According to “Hidden Footprints,” a one-hour documentary created by former Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham in 1991, other known hiding places in Jersey City include the woods that once existed behind where the Jersey City Medical Center now stands – near Cornelison Avenue – and a handful of safe houses that would harbor fugitive slaves until it was safe to travel.
Safe houses
The most famous of the safe houses in Jersey City is the Hilton-Holden House, then known as Holden Mansion. Built in 1854 by David Le Cain Holden, a banker and amateur astronomer, Holden Mansion – which still stands today at 79 Clifton Place – was at the time the only house on the block.
“The man who owned that property had an observatory on the top of the house,” Dr. Karnoutsos noted. “The fact of the matter is, he would go up to the observatory to signal when it was safe.”
Other key figures in Jersey City’s Underground Railroad history include John Everett, a Quaker who was known as a “conductor” for his knowledge of safe routes, and Dr. Henry D. Holt, a physician and former clerk of the Common Council of Jersey City. Holt was an abolitionist and editor of the Jersey City Advertiser and Bergen Republican whose home at 134 Washington St. on the Morris Canal Basin was a depot on the Underground Railroad, according to information provided by Dr. Karnoutsos. A rear entrance on Plymouth Street provided the escaped slaves entrance to the home.
Refuge was also provided by many free blacks, some of them former slaves. Thomas and John Vreeland Jackson were born into slavery on the estate of the Vreeland family in Greenville in 1800 and 1803 respectively. According to information provided by Dr. Karnoutsos, the brothers were freed in 1828 and 1830 and bought a piece of land on the Newark Bay to pursue careers as oystermen. They used their home as an Underground Railroad station to help numerous slaves escape to freedom. The street in Jersey City that is today known as Winfield Avenue was originally named Jackson Lane, for the family that played such an important role in the railroad’s course through Jersey City.
Though most of the churches in town in the mid-19th century were staunchly anti-abolitionist – some even banned abolitionist speeches – the city’s opponents of slavery were eventually able to form a parish of their own. The Congregational Tabernacle Church at the southeast corner of York and Henderson streets was founded in 1858 and came to be known as the “People’s Palace” for its work with the city’s poor, according to information provided by Dr. Karnoutsos. The Reverend John Milton Holmes used the church as a station for the Underground Railroad, hiding fugitive slaves there.
In a single night, MacLean wrote, some 25 or 30 escaped slaves might make their way to a safe house in Jersey City. This often placed a great strain on the homeowner, who would provide food, shelter, clothing and transportation to the fugitives. Train fare from New York would sometimes exceed $100 in a single night, according to MacLean.
“John Everett’s house became a base of supplies,” MacLean wrote. “His resources as well as his ingenuity were frequently taxed to the utmost, in order to provide for his guests. … But the chain of contributors kept him supplied, though who these contributors were, was not always known even to him.”
The ‘River Jordan’
Those traveling the Underground Railroad through Jersey City would often be led to New York City across the Hudson River, which became known to escaped slaves as the “River Jordan,” beyond which they would find salvation. From the Hudson River Passenger Station at the corner of Church and Chamber streets, fugitives would be placed on a train to Albany or Syracuse, where public sentiment was more favorable, or Canada, where slavery had been abolished by the British Empire in 1834.
If the station was too closely watched by slave hunters, MacLean noted, the fugitives would be taken to the Chatham Street Chapel off Broadway. “This afforded temporary shelter until it was safe to travel,” MacLean wrote. The chapel was run by Lewis Tappan, an abolitionist and devout Christian who played a decisive role in the Amistad trial, and his older brother, Arthur.
Other times, however, circumstances forced an even deeper change in plans, and New York City would be skipped altogether in favor of a location more upriver. MacLean wrote that small sloops, schooners and canal boats were often used to ship fugitives from Jersey City to other ports further north.
“Some of these small vessels arrived at Harsimus Cove at the foot of Washington Street,” MacLean wrote. “Some brought lumber for Samuel Davidson at the foot of Montgomery Street – his wharf being about where the First National Bank now stands.”
Fugitives taking this route may have exchanged their service as workers for river passage. According to MacLean, the skippers were “willing to run some risk for the sake of the free labor offered – a very desirable item in windy weather on a canal boat.”
The Morris Canal that ran from Pennsylvania to the Hudson River through Jersey City until it was abandoned in 1924 and largely dismantled, was another waterway that provided fugitive slaves an opportunity to exchange work for safe transportation.
“The people who owned the Morris Canal, they looked for runaway slaves because they could operate the canal barges,” said Theodore Brunson, founder and consultant for the Afro-American Historical Society Museum, located on the second floor of the Greenville Public Library. “They used to have mules dragging the barges, and they [the fugitives] would help the owner get the mules to walk along the ridges of the canal and keep them going straight.”
But obstacles faced those traveling the Underground Railroad for the length of their journey, and occasionally dangerous conditions forced escaped slaves to bypass Jersey City altogether. As Wilbur H. Siebert wrote in 1898, “Just east of New Brunswick the conductors sometimes met with opposition in attempting to cross the Raritan River on their way to Jersey City. To avoid such interruption the conductors … took a by-road leading to Perth Amboy, whence their protégés could be safely forwarded to New York City.”
However, if all went well when the party reached the Raritan River, the fugitives carried on to Jersey City. “When the way was clear at the Raritan, the company pursued its course to Rahway,” Siebert wrote. “Here another relay of horses was obtained and the journey continued to Jersey City.”
Legacy
Though the Hilton-Holden House is believed to be the only remaining artifact from Jersey City’s important involvement with the Underground Railroad, new information continues to surface to this day.
“We’ve recently found out that seemingly Jersey City was also linked to the Underground Railroad operation in Nyack, New York,” said Giles Wright. “Up until that time, we had simply assumed that runaways came into Jersey City [and] crossed the Hudson River into New York.”
As it turns out, Jersey City may have played an even more complex part in the railroad’s operation. As Wright notes, “Some [escaped slaves] went into New York City, some stayed on the west side of the Hudson and went into Nyack.”
Today, a memorial plaque at the Martin Luther King Jr. Light Rail station at the corner of MLK Drive and Virginia Avenue commemorates Thomas and John Vreeland Jackson so that their important contribution to the pursuit of freedom will never be forgotten.